myata

Beyond comments, them Australians actually got to vote on what they want.. wow.... and a whole decade back at that. Such political audacity.. mindboggling indeed! Here though we're much more given to precision refinement of every precious bit of verbal excrement from our everlasting ruling duo. And I wouldn't be holding breath for any change.. anytime soon.

Indeed that is my hope how the things will be in some far away future where people have no more interest in useless politicking or finger pointing simply because they have so many other interesting and exciting things to fill their time with. Imagine: - an interest group has identified issue and presented it to a virtual citizens forum; - alternative proposals created and presented by other interest groups; - a self governing panel of experts have come together; experts know the worth of each other so no bulls.. would be tolerated (not like it's not impossible, take e.g. Internet forum, any number of free source software development sites); - after qualified vote has happened, experts define solution; it's approved by the "government" that will ensure its execution. Owned by no-one, what a dream!

This is because our governments are totally unable to handle these challenges that modern day presents. Taxation, government information, gun registry, eHealth, IT, you name it. Our governments exist in the reality about 100 years back when highly important handwritten directives were carried by mounted couriers.

While I see a value in adding a direct disposal cost to the price of most products, the only way I would support it would be with complete transparency, that should come into effect on the same day as the charges. No taxation without responsibility and accountability, anybody?

I'm in for it, with a couple of additions: a) qualification - voter takes a quiz to qualify to a counted ballot. Perhaps links to information on the issue can be provided in the same context. b ) refinement - once a general choice has been established professionals refine and detalize it to the solution that will be implemented. Could be the next step once we figure out #1.

Oh give me a break. You mean a pensioneer checking your easily fabricated ID is somehow more secure than SSL that is used for secure transactions all over the world? Just say that it would be a big scary unbearable risk because it would give us some real meaningful say in politics, something that the dees would want one last thing before the end of the world, it would be more credible. You mean when (true to the golden rule, some hundred years after it should have happened) we attempted to create our own political system and ended up with something we're now afraid to touch with a stick?

The technology is certainly there to do something. If you trust "SSL" to purchise $5000 TV on your credit card, it should be good enough for a vote on Canada's participation in Afghanistan (that - such vote - should be mandatory for any democracy of this age that genuinely intends to live up to its name). Who wants to do that, is another question. Tweedledum? Tweedledee? If anything we should do away with the illusion. This system will never effect any meaningful change because change goes entirely and absolutely counter to its very nature. The only way to effect any real political change that would take people interests into it is to get outside the system. Stop participating. It has to get to the absolute level of absurdity and obvious detachment from reality of life to even think of a possibility to reform itself.

The only real choice is to stop playing the stupid game. If we have to tell something to the government, there're other legitimate ways, outside of pointless and meaningless election game that right from the song, does nothing but "degrade" our intelligence.

Our politics is about one hundred years behind our life. So many things are now possible: full, unlimited access to information; the way our moneys are spent; programs are managed; projects, ideas proposed by parties; citizen participation in political decision making; including critical decisions, like overseas military campaigns; and so on.. and so little if anything happening. The elites want to play the same old tune, "dum... dee....dee... dum" and nobody seem to care. Take the thing with the recent GG: I heard all about him, his full curriculum etc, what he did and what he won't do etc. One thing I haven't heard questioned once in the mainstream media is the obvious, how come an individual elected by nobody would have the power to decide our government? That's right, just as hundreds years back in good colonial times, appointee of the government decides who's going to govern. Good luck to us all in our total unshakable complacency. Maybe we do need that dictator, to remind us that democracy is only as good as people's interest and participation in it?

At least it's a choice. Between total control, total incapability and boredom, and a political whacko - all cheer for the best political system in the world!

Our options reflect our aspirations. What would a strong, visionary leader do in political environment where even a minor trivial step forward takes decades if not centuries? Harper or Iggy is all the choice we merit today.

Well one of them will be our next Prime Minister. Guaranteed as night changes day, courtesy of our antiquated political system.

This is a general problem in our country. We're governed by monopolistic, near oligarchy style governments wtih population highly apathetic to politics. I guess we'll just sail through the good times while they last, and then only god knows. With the governments of our style, always hugely inefficient in any meaningful development, always dead last to adopt any serious innovation - god help us, as we seem to be perfectly unwilling to help ourselves.

Well, here's a proposal: a bill that any new tax / levy / fee, etc collected by the government or government agency has to comply with standard accountability practice. Collected revenues and expenditures, in detailed format, in the public forum, regularly. Failure to do can be grounds for class suit.

Nobody has to choose between unworthy depressing options. It's simple, really: all (real) choices are bad, I'm out. Before the democracy seem to have been about responsibility of the parties to present us with the best; now it's more like about us having to choose between what's available. Not good enough, for me at least.

Indeed, and the less competion is there in the political system, the less like it is to ever happen.

What is needed here is a full transparency. Which products are affected, with what justificaiton, how much is collected, and where it is going. Looks like once again, as with proportional vote referendum, the government is seriously failing the communication responsibility.

As said, if fairness of representation does not matter then everything becomes abstract. System that guarantees one party 99% of representation would be just as legitimate as ours and as a full proportional representation that correctly reflects voter's choices. Everything is the same so no need to go anywhere. End of story. Right, wouldn't it be so sad and unjust? Party that fails to either win majority of popular support, or establish or participate in a coalition with such, could be excluded from power.. an obscenity! Our guaranteed dance of two is so much more credible. Your turn - my turn - and to hell with the "mathematics", right? One more time: if a party polls above representation threshold filtering out marginal groups, who's there to define it as "nuts" etc? Are some of us more worthy than the others? Maybe we should just scrap the whole idea of universal vote, and give it only to those who have the "right" ideas? Yes it would. What does not exist is your explanation how it would consitute a serious risk to our system (given that pretty much every other democracy has moved or is moving to some form or element of proportional representation). No, there's no machine, but there's a rational, measurable real indicator that is called "popular support". You're free to not notice it even than it's glaring straight in your eyes, but I'm afraid that impossibility theorem is only created because you slept through, or were otherwise distracted from grade 3 math (remember, than you studied such things as percentages and proportions)? Funny how we could be so apt in applying these to seriously important matters like daily taxes, fees, etc and go completely at loss when it touches the question of how we elect our government.

I'm sure there can be all kind of examples, but what about serious ones like thrown out electronics; investments to clean up water from pharmaceutical contamination by all the clueless people who dump unused or expired pills in the toilet? tires? used engine oil? and any number of such things. How's the "existing tax base" going to pay for something that never existed before? Of course the best way to encourage even slightest thinking about environmental consequences of our choices is to include the full cost of recovery into the price of product. If we want to have any chance of moving toward a sustainable society, it's a must economic truth that has to be incorporated into practice now. Good stuff that somebody actually has the courage to do it, rather than useless and endless discussions, studies, reports, etc, blah, yada all the useless and endless verbal ball game that's taking by far most of our active resources now. Now, where I'm going to have some concerns is how efficiently these extra funds will be handled. Aren't looking for them to sponsor another expensive and useless consultancy a la e-Health Ontario.

Like, there can actually be more "power over MP" (theoretically) than in this system here?

We only way to achieve that without extra "fee" covering the cost of responsibility would be to dictate the prices to the market. I.e. you (manufacturer) do more for the same end price. The only practical choices there are here: 1) dump, no recycling and no extra cost; 2) make the party responsible for the product pay for its disposal. Now, who would be that party? "The corporate world"? Or I myself, when I decided that I need to buy it?

Well I have to because they were never answered. I wouldn't call cosmetic changes that does not address the essense of problem "improvement". Nor would I interested in any of these. Correct. And some "formulae" reflect actual political composition of the country, while others - (much) less so. As in situation where 35% of popular support translates into absolute domination of the government. And how we decide them doesn't matter because everything is subjective and "an abstraction of power"?Dictatorship is democracy, choice is mandatory and freedom is the absense of it? Not as much as there're working real democracies that allow their citizens real political choice. The difference is real and measurable, e.g. by the number of real political choices we can make, so not everything reduces itself to "abstraction" and "prose". I already defined my notion of political fairness as correct unobstructed representation of popular support given to the party. Don't tell next time that it's abstract or prose because you see it on the screen every election time. And no it does not translate into anything even remotely similar in the actual balance of power. No fewer than they have now. If they garner highest popular support they would be likely to form the majority coalition. The only difference is that they wouldn't be able to dominate it absolutely and unconditionally which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Correct, you've yet to answer it. So one more time, who or what is that mysterious force that should be able to decide which public choices are worthy and which should be excluded? Of course, but because you failed to name any concrete ones, that argument becomes empty commonplace against any change. Again, given by who / what? Why should some parties get more representation than their actual popular worth, and others - less?

Let's answer the principal question: if sophisticated or costly effort is required to dispose of your refused products, should it be done? And who should be picking up the tub? See above. Should electronics, tires, etc be recycled? Or kept summarily dumped in the dumps (which we're running out of space for, and surprisingly, nobody, yourself included, wants to have anywhere near their place of living)? Well, there's no miracles, is there? Because nobody was paying to recycle your garbage it went straight there, in the dump!

No, let's have a vote and rename our Senate to "Elected Senate of Canada". Gotta be one real change!

We've been through this a lot, but I can't let this pass without comment. Fairness is only one aspect of the argument. Representation (i.e. lack, suppression of it) of political agendas, ideas and priorities is another. Our system where a majority government could absolutely ignore any voice from the opposition, and a minority one - very much so, creates rigid, inflexible and stagnating political system that is strongly aversed to any meaningful improvement or change unless it cannot absolutely be avoided. Only when one has already prejudged that what they have is the absolute best and they couldn't possibly have anything that is better i.e. can be improved. It's in such contrast with the general notion of evolution and progress in nature, but who cares if in this little quiet corner of things we can afford to think that way - for a while. The point is somewhat mute. It's not that my party does not get power, but how popular will translate into it. Does 40% of popular support give one party a mandate to fully and completely dominate political process? Should political groups with significant support (in double digits) be completely excluded from it? So, how's this "abstract"? Let's imagine a system where one party, you name it, always gets at least 95% percent of representation in power, no matter what. Would you call that also "abstract mathematics" though it completely changes the nature of political system, to obvious dictatorship a la any number of examples? In the essence of things our system is a controlled democracy only one step away from those that are being practiced in countries like China or Russia. Good for us is that till now this extends only to political system per se, but who knows how it'll play out in the longer run. I think in the essense it's still the same question: how popular support translates into party's mandate to power. Until we have a system where party's status reflects its popular support in a fair, unskewed manner, we can't claim that we have fair representative democracy. Controlled democracy as a tradeoff for predictable, stable government, it's your choice. Best government possible - your presumption. Indeed, probably removing the whole notion of one party majority government. Is it necessarily a bad thing, that one party is able to force it's political way on the contry without any meaningful check or othersight? In your example, just like in reality of many countries, CPC would still be able to form a majority coalition, in which it would play a major role. What it would lose is the absolute, unchecked and unrestricted in any way control over government. Some would see it as good thing. Does not this assume some extra (to the public that elects parties) point of view on who and what should be allowed to power. And who that extra point that will be deciding what is good for us, you forgot to mention. And if there isn't any such extra point, then what choice do we have then to allow us - our collective will represented by our electoral votes - to decide how our government will operate, and nothing else? I dunno what to say here. Yes anything can have "repercussions". E.g. I can take a bike and run into a tree. Is it because riding bike was a bad idea, despite millions or billions others riding it daily, or any number of other circumstances. If possibility of things going wrong were a valid argument, no change anywhere in human life would have been possible or rather there wouldn't be any human or otherwise life in the first place. I agree with some safeguards in the transition that are fair to all or great majority of parties involved. Such as representation thresholds. And I completely disagree with any unfair skewing of representation that would result in nothing else but justification of the existing status quo by another name. If political competion is inherently unfair, there's no point pretending that it could produce a fair result, and therefore no reason to participate in it.