Notices by M. Grégoire (mpjgregoire@mastodon.club), page 75

@trickster Indeed, modern Western society is so shaped by #liberalism, it is hard to realise that not everyone thinks (or thought) outside the framework of rights, individuals and equality.

"It is a hard thing, being right about everything all the time."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/06/right-again

@Modern_Industrial Correlation is not nothing, but neither (I think) are the arguments I made: the usefulness of majorities, the virtues of throwing parties out of power, and the incommensurability of voting bloc power with the number of votes for a party.

The essence of a parliamentary system is discussion; yes, the majority does often ignore the other parties in the short term, but they do have the right to speak. In the long term, voters reward parties who were right.

@Modern_Industrial I've always been told, and I believe it, that the average Canadian voter decides for whom to vote based on:
1. The leader
2. The party
3. Policies
(from most important to least)

So the fact roughly 60% of Ontarians voted for parties with left or centre-left policies does not convince me that the results of the 2018 election are somehow wrong.

@Modern_Industrial I'm not sure we really want to argue about the Ontario PCs; but we can if you want.

In terms of the Ontario election, your claim is that the majority of Ontarians voted for left or centre-left *policies*. My claim is that Ontarians first decided they wanted to get rid of the Liberal government, then they hesitated between Ms. Horvath and Mr. Ford, and at last the anti-Liberals mostly chose the #onpc , giving them the power to make major changes.

@trickster Oh, I largely agree with your original proposition with regard to the US. And FWIW I'm not a liberal, classical or otherwise -- I'm a Tory.

@arjaybe I'm not quibbling. I genuinely believe that the current BC electoral system is superior to any system of PR for the reasons I've stated.

@Modern_Industrial We don't know yet well how the Ontario PC party will govern; it will be hard going in any case given the awful fiscal policies of their predecessors. FPTP made it easy for Ontarians to throw out the Wynn government, and the PCs were the preferred choice of the anti-Liberal voters.

Why do you say the PCs are captured by private interests?

#onpol

@Modern_Industrial I think the countries you have in mind are "socially progressive" not because they have PR; they are socially progressive and they have PR because of the sort of societies they are (homogeneous, egalitarian, and consensus-oriented). Even if PR is conducive to consensus, the BC government will not become Norwegian.

I also disagree that "constantly squabbling" is so bad; an adversarial approach is often the best way to see all sides of a complicated issue.

@trickster Is that true in the context of English law (or my own Canadian offshoot)?

Thinking of #democracy, there was the "Glorious Revolution", but since then the Bill of Rights, the Reform Act, Catholic emancipation, women's suffrage, etc. were essentially accomplished by lawful means.

(All right, yes, the suffragettes weren't 100% peaceful.)

As for #liberty, again I think that was mostly achieved by parliamentary measures.

Please do tell me what I'm missing.

@nigelsezyarr Let us consider a range of accords in a language, from Chinese (no conjugation of verbs to match the subject) to Greek (conjugations, declensions, genders and numbers for adjectives). Your example is in the middle, but closer to Chinese.

Since #proportionalrepresentation does necessarily result in a government that better reflects the public will (its purported advantage), and since it loses the useful features of easily creating and throwing out majority governments, it should be rejected.

Caveat: Governments depend on political culture as much as formal rules; changes to the system ought to be considered in a specific context, not on an a priori basis.

#bcpol

But when you consider the voting coalition necessary to pass a law, any single elected party has a majority; any two parties could achieve a majority. To the degree the parties maintain "voting discipline", they are all equal.

Since the right and the centre are the main rivals, and the right and the left would find it difficult to agree, the government is more likely to be centre-left, contrary to the public preference.

2. Proponents argue that assigning representatives proportionate to the vote will produce a government that better reflects the popular will; but it's not so simple.

Proportional representation is not the same as proportional government.

Consider a vote that is 49% for the party of the right, 49% for the party of the centre, and 2% for the part of the left. The public preference (to the degree there is such a thing) would be for a centre-right government.

Since #pr normally results in a legislature with many parties and a governing coalition, it is much more difficult for voters to throw out one party and replace them by another.

Hard decisions are also more difficult to take, unless the political elites tend to develop consensus on such issues.

1. Yes, FPTP gives a majority of the legislature to parties receiving only a plurality of the vote (typically ~40%). That is a strength of the existing system. A majority allows governments to enact big decisions (e.g., a carbon tax). But it is also easy for a 10% shift of votes to oust a party from government, so parties use that power carefully. In Canada, parties typically hold a majority for about eight years and then are replaced by their opponents; that is healthy.

I oppose #proportionalrepresentation .

Proponents claim many advantages, which largely depend on the variant used; I could criticise them one by one. (e.g., PR elects more women! But closed-list PR makes MLAs responsible to their parties not constituents!)

Let me instead address two general problems.

#bcpol