Posts by BenWilson
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While I doubt that's how it's intended
So do I. I doubt Simon is making excuses for Hitler - he's more pointing out that we tend to focus far more on him and his purported amazing skills than on the much bigger picture of how Nazi Germany operated.
I recall Tolstoy making a similar analysis of Napoleon in War and Peace . He pretty much tries to debunk the idea that Napoleon was an amazing strategist, and that the way the French armies crushed enemy after enemy all the way to Moscow was more a factor of large, and in some ways inevitable, historical forces at work. He points out that in most of the major battles, Napoleon was nowhere near where the action was happening, had little idea what was going on, gave orders that were mostly not followed, nor could be. The French victories could be analyzed in terms of many brilliant maneuvers, but mostly on account of being superior armies in the first place, with highly seasoned soldiers and low level commanders.
So he argues that Napoleon was mostly a figurehead who rode these forces, and in my own analogy, was much like a surfer thinking they are controlling a wave.
Which did not excuse Napoleon for anything he did - surely he was a motivational force behind most of the choices about who to aggressively betray and attack, but it's quite possible that pretty much anyone else in his place would have done much the same job. Perhaps the same goes for Hitler.
I had the misfortune to argue with my father in law about this on the weekend - he was lamenting the barbarity of the Russians in WW2, and I suggested "these things happen when you attack a country of the size and power of Russia - I doubt Germany was ever going to win". To which he angrily said that the Germans managed to get within sight of Moscow, and if they had only managed to press on they might have won the Eastern Front. I pointed out that Napoleon actually managed to capture Moscow, and didn't win his war against Russia. Exactly as happened to the German army, so happened to the French, they were overstretched, their supply lines cut off by distance and shocking weather conditions, and when the 'unthinkable' happened, and Russia did not capitulate just because they lost their capital, the disastrous retreat was only a matter of time for the French.
Tolstoy is not particularly praising the Russian leadership either. He felt that the harrying of the French on the way out of Russia was not glorious at all, and led mostly to higher Russian casualties than could have otherwise have been achieved. The French were still formidable in battle and it was the winter and lack of supplies that was killing them anyway. He felt that the Tsar's active role in this was mostly for the worse. Kind of ballsy thing for a Russian to write, actually, considering Russia was still Tsarist at the time.
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Damm, I knew my refusal to join Facebook would hurt me eventually. I now feel alienated and disengaged
Or are you just recalcitrant? I received a demand from a friend via the email account I've had since about 1991 to join Facebook "so he could keep in touch with me". Email is just too koryu now.
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I tend to think using the words 'democratic', 'undemocratic', 'more/less democratic' isn't really that useful in the context of this discussion. That's a discussion about the meaning of the words, not about how good the various systems under discussion are. It's probably better to be more specific about the various merits than to just talk about the 'level of democracy'.
I find this amusing because I remember having this discussion in the 80s with a friend about socialism, we discussed whether one system was more socialist, less socialist etc. In the end it was kind of pointless because the problem with a word like socialism is that it is used in so many different ways and we kind of settled on perhaps using the word 'democratic' to really better characterize what we really were about. But now, in NZ, I think the term has become just as much of hot potato, and for that reason, just about as worthless.
Who cares if MMP is more or less 'democratic'? The question is whether it is better or worse. If you don't go back to that question, then you just defer it - once you've settled which is more democratic (and I doubt that would be settled since it is a semantic debate, and such things are totally characterized by polarized positions becoming more and more entrenched), then you still have to actually justify which is better.
Can we have that debate instead? I/S I actually agree with you that lower thresholds are better. But I'd say my reasons are because lower thresholds exclude minorities less.
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@I/S
MMP has given us stable government. And lowering the threshold and letting our democracy expand to its full potential won't change that.
I agree about lowering thresholds, btw, in case it wasn't clear. Personally I'd like to see them lowered well beyond 0.8%, but the means to that end are far too radical to expect them anytime soon.
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@Graeme
I just don't see it happening.
Thanks for all that. I figured it was a prediction, albeit a highly educated one.
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> There will always be restrictions on representation. The number of MPs in parliament always sets a minimum barrier, of about 0.8%. Anyone who gets below that won't make it under any system you set up.
Indeed, and I explicitly acknowledge that.
It's true so long as we retain the concept of MPs, which is not the only way things could be done. But I doubt any of the proposed options will not be representative democracy in one form or another.
It seems to me that just tinkering with it is trying to have a bob each way and as my Nan nused to say the only place you can do that is at the races.
Your Nan is totally wrong then. You can have a bob each way in just about anything. And I don't think tinkering with it is a bob each way anyway. It's just 'a less radical change' which could easily be more palatable to far more people.
Serious question, Ben: What exactly do you mean by "marginalization of minorities"?
Serious answer, I mean minorities not getting any effective say (in this case by exclusion from political power). They are 'pushed into the margins'. Their cause becomes 'marginal'.
Now I don't have a problem with majority rule - as I see that is the very definition of democracy (but that's just the way I see it). But I do have a problem with suppression of groups from proportional power, because they are small. It's bad enough being small in the first place in terms of powerlessness, there's no need to institutionalize further removal of any power.
You are missing the point talking about a wasted vote for electoral representatives - the wasted vote in MMP is for parties under the threshold with no electoral representative. It's not just about 'losing a ballot'. That's not a wasted vote.
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Good luck with that - because to me it just looks like special pleading and an aristocratic claim to greater moral worth than others.
Well there is the old chestnut of "stability" that everyone always brings up. There might even be truth in it, but I don't think stability is worth quite so much as others do, when the price of it is marginalization of minorities.
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@Phil Lyth, thanks for that. I hadn't understood that the first referendum had 2 questions and the second was the enabler (just like last time). I had thought there were only 2 questions period.
@Graeme Edgeler
It won't be written that way,
You're sure? I know it wasn't last time, that the changes were all radically different to FPP, but is there something that says it must be this way? MMP Redux just can't be one of the options?
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How about an alternative way of putting it, that two of history's lessons are that from among the broad range of today's quackery only a modest proportion will emerge as tomorrow's orthodoxy.
I guess that's a better way of putting it (except that it seems to be only one lesson). Actually an incredibly small proportion.
The corollary would be not so much that quackery per se must be tolerated, but that one should be careful in assessing non-orthodox practice, insofar as it does no harm, as there may well be some good stuff in there.
I'm giving what I believe to be Feyerabend's corollary, so no, it's not my own approach, as you say. There is the fairly valid criticism that he is trying to legislate against a scientific theory (about the method of science), and his position is thus self-contradictory (a stock standard problem with all kinds of relativism). Also, the complete lack of any guidelines given seems unhelpful, as others have said here. His position seems to be only against another, rather than a position of his own. I felt it was rather like a lot of postmodern thought, but I'm no expert on that. It contains interesting criticism, but doesn't really pose any serious alternative.
To that end, Lakatos had a far better theory. Feyerabend didn't call him a "fellow anarchist" for nothing. He seemed to believe that Lakatos had found a way within the idea of competing research programs to accommodate the possibility of any-view-at-all, whilst still giving guidelines about which views were 'better'. So in the end his own response was basically a polemic warning against the idea of trusting too much in any particular research program, including Lakatos' own one. It built on Kuhn's case study of the Copernican Revolution which showed that many more factors than just the science came to bear in the eventual triumph of Galileo, and it looked in a lot of depth at the actual methods of Galileo, showing just how shonky they would be considered today, compared to the much squarer approach of the Church scientists. His point is that we really judge Galileo on his final results far more than we judge him on his actual methods, but the mythology of science tells a different story because that shonkyness doesn't really sound anywhere near so good as the lovely idea of an all-embracing method.
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So change that.
Sure. But the referendum can't do that. It'd be baby, bathwater, etc. That was the point of the question above.
I should note that I'm very strongly in favour of retaining MMP.
Is it totally impossible that one of the options in the second referendum could be "the status quo"? I'm asking if the first referendum could guarantee change, or if the second, having laid out the options in more detail, could actually give the opportunity to reject change?
Also, is it impossible for one of the other options in the second referendum to be 'tinkered with MMP'?
I don't know the answer to these questions...
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