JamesHackerMP
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Posts posted by JamesHackerMP
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OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH KAAAAAAAYYYYY.....Before I respond to the reaction to this thread, I'm going to have a Coke-on-ice hold the rum and calm down.
Now that I've calmed down a bit, I want to make a few things clear.
My intent was NEVER to "tell" Canadians what they "ought" to do. It is my firm belief that "self-determination" means precisely that: don't force your opinions or the way to run a country on other countries, whether by the barrell of a gun, or through one's opinions. The way I asked my questions and provided a few anecdotes (some of which have come from Canadian citizens I know, btw) was not intended to tell Canadians "oh, you shouldn't do this in your own country it won't work" but to find out what you were thinking, and what your desires were. My very first thread on this website was titled something like "American in search of mutual exchange of information" which is exactly what i intended (and still intend) to do.
Now, on the other hand, if I came off smug in so doing, I deeply and humbly apologize.
But you have to admit, there's a whole section on this website's forum about US politics, where Canadians are free to comment on US politics and the US system, isn't there? Seems to be a bit of a double standard that none of us are calling you smug for commenting on our elections. But I guess that's par for the course when you live in the superpower. During the 1980s, Americans would have said lots of sh*t (mostly nasty stuff) about the Russians when we should have minded our own business (like who cares who just got promoted to the Politburo, etc.) So maybe that's only fair. But that doesn't change the facts that I'm here with a different purpose than the one you seem to have assumed.
Now my reason for "advising"--and it wasn't TELLING it was really more just finding out what you were thinking--you to avoid PR in favour of FPTP; I majored in political science in college, and my area of concentration was international relations, not American Government. Why have I taken such an active interest in your country's politics? Because my own government <yawn!/le yawn!> bores the heck out of me. For some reason I don't fully understand, I find Canadian federal and provincial politics far more exciting than the morose goings-on in Washington and Annapolis.
One would think that that would produce at least a modest result of flattery, but flattery is not what I'm after, it's mutual exchange of information, because this sort of thing FASCINATES me, as I stated. In fact, why do you think my screen name is "James Hacker, M.P."? For those of you who are unaware, it refers to the main character of a BBC sitcom from the late 1970's/early 1980's about a Minister (later Prime Minister) of the UK. If I was the sort of person you seem to think I am, I would have styled myself "America, F**** Yeah!" or something of the sort. Not the name of a member of a parliament of your chief commonwealth partner. Right?
Again, my apologies if I made my point in a way that sounded egregiously America-centric or jingoistic!
I will re-explain my views in this thread in the future, once I can clearly put them in a correct, inoffensive order. Fair enough?So put your feet up, have a hot--whatever you guys drink when it gets colder than usual--and calm down a little bit, too. In my opinion, Canada is a wonderful ally to the United States, a good friend; and there's enough room in the world for both The Star-Spangled Banner AND O, Canada!
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!
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I disagree. With computers, the ranked ballot system the computations are instant. Also with the ranked ballot system I believe that more people will cast votes. At this time, the voter knows that casting a ballot for someone from an obscure party is a wasted vote but their second choice will probably be counted as to getting somebody from one of the major parties over the 50% barrier. Their participation will be influential in the final decision.
But wait, aren't Canadian elections counted by hand? Would the Canadian people sit idly by and hand control of their good old "hand counted" ballots and "let the machines take over" like so many American states have? Would Canadians stand for that? Again, it's not for me to tell you all what to do, I'm not Canadian. But believe me, after several years of computer counting, the State of Maryland went back to paper ballots again. They're "machine" counted, but like simple optical scanners, not "actual computers" per se.
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Forgive me, my last post didn't go through because I was trying to do it from my smart phone.
I asked if Canadians would "know what to do with it" and jacee's answer was "sure". Exactly how sure are you Jacee? Has a national poll been taken about changing the method of election of the House of Commons from FPTP ridings, to PR or ranked ballots or God knows what else innovations? How can you be so sure?
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Would Canadians know what to do with it? I'm not saying you aren't intelligent enough to figure it out, but after what, 42 federal general elections with FPTP, all of a sudden you would have this weird s**** like PR and ranked ballots. Would your people, used to the old way of doing things, suddenly adjust with little or no problems understanding exactly what they were doing and how when they go into the voting booth?
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A ranked ballot system is different from straight PR, non?
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It wouldn't be difficult to know who represents the riding.
How, though?
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Really? Harper's lasted several years? I had been told that the average Canadian minority government lasted about a year or so.
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Nice. How do ranked/preferential ballots work, anyway? An Aussie explained them to me, once, and my head was spinning. Perhaps you could make sense of them.
My point though is, how do you know who "your" MP is? In the US, you can always go to your own congressman or senator for help with this or that thing. But if we had a House of Representatives allotted entirely by PR, there'd be no way to know who would be responsible for which group of constituents, specifically.
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I think this is actually one of the strengths of FPTP, you get periodic actual significant changes in government, whereas with PR you just get an endlessly shifting coalition which mostly consists of the same entrenched individuals forever.
Agreed. as an international observer who has studied politics to an extent, to go from FPTP to PR in the Commons in an attempt to improve the political system is like going "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Coalition governments are undemocratic and allow the leaders of the participating parties to betray the principles that got them elected in the name of "compromise". Minority governments, well, they don't last too long in Canada...
Besides, how would you know who "your" MP is with PR?
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Ok here is my point. If the House of Commons used PR, here is what the House would look like as a percentage of the popular vote:
Liberal = 134
Conservative = 109
NDP = 67
Bloc Qu. = 16
Green = 12
Needed for majority = 170/338
So Mr Trudeau would have been 36 seats short of the promised land. So, where exactly does he go for those votes? Minority government? Coalition with NDP?
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oops, I found it on Wikipedia LOL
I also started to reply about if the House did PR, but somehow I accidentally hit a key which backed me up and erased everything I typed.
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I haven't been able to find what I was looking for. I wanted a percentage of the popular vote for each party which was on the ballot in all 338 ridings.
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Right.
But here's my question: even though you have a bizzilion parties (so do we, but they hardly garner even a miniscule percentage of the vote), in the average riding, what percentage of the vote would the Liberal and/or Conservative take? In a typically Liberal riding, or in a typically Conservative riding?
My question about proportional representation: where could I find out what the % of the popular vote was? According to Wikipedia (and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, I'm just on one of my usual "statistical kicks") the following are the % of the 338 seats in the Commons, counting the vacant seat as a distinct seat (in other words, using 338 instead of 337 as the divisor).
Lib = 54.14%
Cn = 30.00%
NDP = 13.02%
BQ = 2.96%
Green, Indepenent, and Vacant each = 0.30%
Obviously the % of seats won would have been different if PR were used. Where could I find that out?
And this is, of course, assuming I didn't **** up using my calculator. That's always a possibility with my mathematically-inept mind.
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Hate to nitpick, but I just wanted to point out that the thread title "Tragedy of the Commons" is a little misleading (or it has a double meaning that you might not have intended.)
The term "tragedy of the commons" is an economic term that refers to a situation where you have some resource that has no single owner. Because of that, individuals may use that resource over and above what they might otherwise be entitled to (or what is sustainable)
Picture 3 people walking along the street and they see a pie... The first person cuts it in half and takes a piece. (After all, why not? Free pie! And he didn't take it all). The second person takes the second piece (And why not? He's not doing anything the first person didn't do.) The last person gets nothing, because the resource has been used by the first 2.
In the real world, "tragedy of the commons" could be applied to situations like fishing stocks (where a single fisherman may not have an incentive to limit his catch, resulting in a depletion of the species as each fisherman individually tries to maximize their catch). It could even be applied to environmental situations (where the common resource is a clean environment.)
I know. It originally refers to public grazing rights in England. I just saw a book review on amazon.com called "Tragedy on the Commons" (making a pun of the word).
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We've tried various measures at curbing lobbying in Washington. They've gotten around quite a bit of them. But some lobbying is beneficial. Not all of them come from Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
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I never played sports in my life, but recently developed a fascination with lacrosse. With ADHD I cannot sit and watch a whole game of anything, lacrosse or US football (speaking of which I was on this one date where I had to sit through an entire Ravens game, OMJG!) but lacrosse is a little easier to watch if you miss something because it's going so fast and there's so much action anyway.
I understand that "modern" lacrosse is the result of an Anglophone dentist from Montreal (good profession for a champion of a sport where teeth could potentially be knocked out?) and that it's Canada's official sport, second only to hockey.
I just think it looks more fun than other sports. If I was not the kind of person who can by the Grace of God tie my own shoes and wipe my own *** without help AND had athletic skills, I think it's the one I would have chosen.
Anyone here into it? Is it widely played at Canadian high schools and universities? I'm talking about the field version, though, not box lacrosse (which looks just as interesting). I come from Maryland, which is America's lacrosse capital, give or take.
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Well said!
I pity the people who, unlike us, haven't even tried to read books like The Wealth of Nations. I'm assuming you skipped the appendix "on the herring bounty" as well? Like I said I have only made it through 80 pp. With Adhd it's hard to read anything, let alone a book originally published in 1776.
Yes, the MP stands for, as I'm sure you know, Member of Parliament. James Hacker was the fictitious "Minister of Administrative Affairs" in Yes, Minister, a BBC britcom from the late 70s/early 80s, so he naturally carried the title MP as one of "Her Majesty's Secretaries of State". Then there was a special hour-long episode in which the Prime Minister resigned and he won the fight for the party leadership (after that, the series was called Yes, Prime Minister of course).
Did you ever pick up The Federalist? You sound like someone who reads intellectual things.
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ahhh. Very difficult to do. What do you expect to do about that? Big Brother every lobbyist in Washington?
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That's what I was thinking. A couple of Britons were telling me the same sort of thing about the House of Lords (only they don't step down at 75!) The Lords can consider things apolitically, whereas the Commons cannot in the UK, so it's detached from the MP-machine of the House of Commons in Westminster. The difference is, they have a much better cross section of "professions" in the Lords that can actually give EXPERT scrutiny to bills the HOC cannot---in Canada, it seems (from what you have all told me) that they're "party hacks".
However, if ALL members were elected for the same parliamentary mandate (it's 5 years, right?) wouldn't that preclude the "obstruction" that many of you seem to worry about?
In Maryland, the state legislature is completely fercockta---excuse the Yiddish profanity---but the method of the election between the two chambers (state Senate and House of Delegates) is exactly at the same time, for exactly the same length of term: everyone in the state is elected for four years, at the same election.
Now, for the United States, yes, that's fercockta; but in Canada, would this not solve the problem of preventing "obstructionism" between Commons and Senate? And in the mean time, allow for an elected Senate? Just a thought I'm throwing out there...one of you did poo-poo the Australian arrangement as precisely that.
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But do any of you see an actual ADVANTAGE in the Senate, the way it is now? Any advantage at all?
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In Canada? Bumper stickers for an American election?
This is what I meant about a double-standard.
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I don't understand what you mean by in-camera lobbying.
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Australia does seem to have a system by which the Senate is useful, without being overly obstructive to the will of the People. I met someone playing Diplomacy who was a senator's aide in Canberra, and gave me a run down on the system. I think---and this is just my opinion---that Canada could adopt their method of internal checks & balances, via an elected Senate that the government cannot always control by political patronage instead.
There is a mechanism to prevent the political infighting between House and Senate that they've developed. It's actually pretty ingenious in my opinion, and for Canadians, who seem afraid of the Senate turning into an obstructive machine, it might actually work in Canada. Or not. Who am I to say?
In any case, PR would make your problem worse. I majored in political science, as my profile says, and we discussed and analyzed systems using PR and FPTP systems.
Would you have the ENTIRE Commons use PR? or would it be "half and half" like the Bundestag in Berlin?
Tragedy of the Commons
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted
And fun's what it's all about. And Squid, you need to calm down, too. I'm not spreading false information about other systems, nor am I insinuating you won't be able to figure it out. Put your feet up and chill as well.