h a l f b a k e r y"This may be bollocks, but it's lovely bollocks."
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
I think that these days, peoples' opinions are reflected in
what online community they mentally live in, not what
geographical community they physically live in. I think
that
political representation should reflect this.
To bring back some of the political experience of a "city",
I propose
"Virtual Geography" in which people can form virtual
city-
states and have House (of Commons) representation
based
on membership in those states. In other words, city-
dwellers would join "internet forums" and for each
census
each city-dweller would have to report a single "internet
forum" where they reside on the Internet. Then,
representative districts would be drawn up or
"gerrymandered" in a way that (hopefully) placed like-
minded people into districts. Free of geographic
constraints, this "gerrymandering" process seems like it
would more closely approximate people's actual
opinions,
since Internet Forums can be grouped into ideologically-
similar "virtual representative districts" without the
limitations of geography.
This plan would increase the diversity of political
discussion, by assigning representatives to speak for
people
who are a distinct City or State but who are
geographically
dispersed.
Travel to faraway cities used to take
weeks or months. As a result, cities had more of a unique
character: accent, dress, customs, and identity. Also,
people tended to have more blood relatives living close
by. Hundreds of years ago, representation based on
geography made sense.
The shift
from small agricultural towns to large cities, and the
high frequency of
movement within cities, means that "cities" these days
are
often purely economic zones which are more or less the
same anywhere in the world, with the same fashions, the
same coffee shops, and the same traffic. As a result, the
representatives elected by the cities tend to be similar
too.
This change to virtual cities would increase the variety of
political
opinions
in the House (of Commons), and each representative
would
be backed by a virtual city of voters who agree fairly
closely with the representative's platform. Instead of a
choice between two parties, each voter would have the
choice to join one of possibly hundreds of "virtual cities"
each with a unique platform. The representatives
elected
by these cities would still need to vote for one of the
two
parties, but they could at least speak for their
supporters'
unique views.
[link]
|
| |
Would this not risk voters' decisions actually influencing the political process ? |
|
| |
I was thinking in a similar way: instead of "local rep", just
have the pool of hopeful politicians (all around the country),
and you vote for the one you want in the government,
regardless of where they actually live.
This idea requires joining a virtual society; other than this
one, I mostly don't want to...
Hmm... a halfbaked politician... probably WKTE. |
|
| |
This sounds really familiar. |
|
| |
This idea is not an "open primary" or a "national popular
vote", both of which prevent third-party representatives
from being elected to office. |
|
| |
This idea is to update census boundaries to reflect the
reality that what really matters is the location of a
person's mind in virtual space, not the location of their
body in physical space. In other words, to assign
Representatives to each "virtual district". This would
encourage democratic debate, as every representative
would be backed by a like-minded Internet forum, and
every voter would have a representative that actually
represented their home and community. I talk to my
Internet community every day, and I rarely talk to my
neighbors. It's time for census boundaries to reflect this
new reality. |
|
| |
Better perhaps to go the other direction, have constituencies defined geographically, so that each 1000km square returned one representative. That would get rid of most of those pesky urban opinions that blight politics. |
|
| |
How can you blight something that's already a blight in itself ? |
|
| |
Politics exist wherever there's more than one person. Saying
that politics is a blight in itself is like saying that weather is a
blight in itself. |
|
| |
Yes, we know, that subjectively you don't like people. But it's
boring when you pretend that this corresponds to an
objective condition. Could you just stop scratching that itch
for a bit? It only gets inflamed and then leaves another nasty
scar. |
|
| |
If everyone was nice the world would be a better place. |
|
| |
Bun for at least putting some thought into a better way to
handle the ongoing political challenges we all share.
Exploration and discussion of alternatives to the way we do
things currently is always a nice change from the screeching
"Our side is all good and always right about everything 100
percent of the time and
their side is all bad and always wrong everything 100
percent of the time." rhetoric. |
|
| |