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Sigh, read my earlier post. Medieval Europe. Based on knowledge of army sizes, city sizes, and distances Westeros has a population density of 10 people per square mile at best. Medieval England on the other hand had a population density of 80 people per square mile, and England had a low population density compared to most of the rest of Europe at the time. That means that other factors need to account for a factor of 8 at least. If you look at a map of Westeros, even if you consider that the North (due to cold), Dorne (due to deserts) and the Eerie (due to mountains) to have little or not very good farmland, you are still left with about half of Westeros. So differences in arable land can explain a factor of 2 at best in differences in population densities between Westeros and Medeival. Then you have the 'harsher climate' due to the longer winters & longer summers. But from what we know in the book, the southern part of Westeros (where most people live) isn't that affected by the Winter and it does not even snow in Dorne. Plus, all the above estimates of population density for Westeros were all made using population numbers that occurred after the long summer. Meaning that the population density should be lower on average so the discrepancy in population density should be even larger. I cannot really see justifying more than a factor of 2 in population density due to the longer winters and summers. That still doesn't add up to a factor of 8 and I'm giving lots of benefit of doubt to make the population density reasonable but I just don't see it. There is a large discrepancy between size and population of Westeros.

No, STV would mean permanent liberal government, not PR (see my earlier post). The idea that PR would primarily benefit left wing parties in general in nonsense. Sure in the very short term in Canada, PR would be better for left wing parties such as the greens and the NDP. But the system itself doesn't inherently benefit the left. Before unite-the-right, the PCs and Alliance were greatly harmed by FPTP. Parties like the libertarian party and the freedom party still get zero seats. The left wing Bloc Quebecois greatly benefited from FPTP. Nationalist and Euro-skeptic parties in the recent European elections get under represented due to their non-proportional system. The 3rd largest party in the US, the libertarian party, never gets any representation in Congress or the Senate.

I don't disagree that a government doesn't need a leader to function, and I see the value of not having a leader. But despite that, I question how feasible it would be to implement a no-leader-policy since parties could still have unofficial leaders. The other problem is that regionalism is a huge problem with our current system, and your proposed changes do not try to address this and may make it worse.

It would be a better system than the current FPTP system, sure. But it wouldn't be better than mixed-member-proportional or pure proportional representation. I disagree with your definition of what parties are supposed to try to do. They are supposed to represent the electorate, and that should include people who have non-mainstream or extremist view points. There is a lot of value in having extremists have a say in parliament because sometimes the majority opinion is wrong (example: funding terrorist groups in Syria by western governments) and giving representation to extremists will allow people with differing view points to challenge the policies of the government. And how does proportional representation imply that fringe parties will have the 'balance of power'? What prevents 'mainstream parties' from forming a coalition?

This is unfeasible (how could you prevent parties from having an unofficial leader?) and would promote regionalism even more than it does now.

Why not? If people want to form a Christian Heritage Party, a Jewish Party, or a Sharia Law party, then why not let them and let them have voice in parliament if they have sufficient support? I'd rather that these groups have support in parliament and feel that they can voice their concerns peacefully and democratically as opposed to have then resort to other methods (terrorism, rioting, etc.) because they feel like the political process gives them no representation.

This is the same thing as single transferable vote, right? This has a number of issues. The first is that it massively favors centrist parties (aka the liberals). Most conservative voters would prefer liberals over NDP, and most NDP would prefer liberals over conservatives. As a result, the liberals will pretty much win a majority for every election. STV is not that bad if the political parties were oriented more like in Australia (1 centre left party, 1 centre-right party, with a few minor fringe parties), but since Ontario has 3 major parties it basically gives indefinite political monopoly to the liberals. The second is that small parties like the greens, libertarian, freedom party, etc. will still get 0 representation under this system. Sure the centrists and main-stream parties will get votes, but that doesn't mean that extremists & fringe parties should not get a vote in parliament to represent the segments of the population with strongly differing views. The third is that both FPTP and STV over-promote regionalism since MPPs can only get elected by representing a single riding. This means that more provincial-national oriented candidates, or candidates with support less localized are at a severe disadvantage to candidates that are focused on getting the best deal for their riding (even if it is at the expense of the province as a whole).

Yeah, I expect that there will be a lot of flashbacks about the history of Westeros next season through Bran.

No, it didn't make me angry. Your post isn't a sufficient refutation of my claim that there is a large disconnect between population and size of Westeros. You haven't provided any 'estimates' of how large the difference in percent of arable land there is between say Europe and Westeros and shown that it is sufficient to offset the discrepancy that I have outlined (a factor of 8). Given the geography and climate of Westeros, and that Westeros has been inhabited for a very long time and the population is basically at steady state, differences in limitations to arable land are no where sufficient enough to account for this discrepancy.

That referendum was stupid. It only gave 2 options: FPTP or mixed member proportional. A lot of people that would prefer mixed member proportional over our current system didn't vote or voted for FPTP because they were upset that other options such as single transferable vote or pure proportional representation were not included. They should do a referendum with preference orderings + all the options to determine what should replace FPTP. Also, there are many parties that want to move away from FPTP. Just not the major 3. This is why you let people rank their preferences when picking the best system to replace FPTP, rather than let people only choose 1 option.

You completely ignore the absurdity of our first-past-the-post system, which inflates the governing party's representation even after taking into account people who do not vote, not to mention the negative effect the first-past-the-post system has on voter turnout since many people feel their vote doesn't not count or cannot vote for a party they want cause that party is not represented in their riding. Not to mention that our first-past-the-post system sustains at most 3 relevant parties per riding (better than the american system that only sustains two) based on how it affects voting decisions, which means that voters are stuck with 3 terrible parties that have an eternal triopoly on power.

I was hoping that all the major parties would lose. But the outcome I wanted didn't come true. I might have voted for the Freedom Party, as I did in the past, but they weren't running in my riding. Thanks First-Past-the-Post system. Might have voted for the Green Party, especially since they finally want to abolish the Catholic School system, but their complete opposition to nuclear power is retarded. Considered libertarian, but I don't really agree strongly enough with them on anything. So I ended up spoiling my ballot. None of the major parties deserve it. That said, out of the 3 leaders, Wynne was probably the most competent. At least she admits when her party makes mistakes.

... Thanks for degrading the work of tutors...

Cause those 'refugees' are battle-hardened hunter-gatherers that hate / want-to-kill the night's watch and include giants.

But Canada and Eastern Russia contain mostly boreal forests and frozen tundra. Not much of the land is viable for agriculture. Furthermore, Canada has only been colonized by people with agriculture for a few hundred years. In comparison, Westeros' climate is much warmer and much more suitable for agriculture than Canada or Russia. The tree line extends well beyond the wall, and the climate at the wall is more similar to that of Norway due to proximity to the ocean than the Continental climates of Canada or Eastern Russia. Then you have fertile places like the reach, which has a climate similar to France, King's Landing, which someone resembles Rome in terms of it's climate, and then the Mediterranean/Arid climate of Dorne. We see agriculture everywhere in Westeros from Dorne all the way up to the North. Then finally, Westeros has been supposedly populated for 12,000 years and the first men that came were already in the Bronze age and had agriculture. Since we are talking about a Medeival society with a climate resembling Western Europe, especially after a long summer, the Malthusian Theory of Population should be roughly accurate (especially given that we know the rate of technological progress is slow) and the population should be roughly at the carrying capacity of the land. As a result, the population density simple does not make sense. I'll give you some numbers for comparison: Let's say we go with the upper-ish bound of 40 million people spread over 4 million square miles. That is approximately 10 people per square mile. By comparison, Medieval England had approximately 4 million people spread over 50,000 square miles, or 80 people per square mile. And England had a relatively low population density at the time compared to places like France, Germany or Italy. A factor of 8 is too large to explain by other factors. And even a population of 40 million does seem to be on the high end.

Even when you take into account the useability of the land, the population density is still unrealistically low. Look in some causes the author has described Westeros to be the size of South America. However, omitting this then it is still well known that the wall is 300 miles long. This means that westeros is approximately 1,000 miles by 4,000 miles, or about 1/2 the size of South America. However, there are some even lower 'estimates' that try to omit information about the length of the wall that claim that Westeros is about the size of Western Europe. http://thewertzone.blogspot.ca/2010/11/mapping-seven-kingdoms.html For the population, there have been a variety of different estimates. Some use urbanization rates and the populations of known cities (King's Landing, Old Town, Lannisport, White Harbor, etc.). Some use army sizes to estimate the size of the population based upon army size to population ratios of medieval societies. There are other methods as well. I would say that the most reasonable population estimates put the population between 20 million and 40 million. But even then, there is a huge disconnect between the size of Westeros and it's population because it yields a ridiculously low population density. Perhaps if the entire population were a hunter gather society. But the population is mostly an agrarian society and its population density doesn't come close to that of medieval societies on earth, even if you acknowledge that Westeros' population density should be lower due to warfare, climate and useable land. Most likely, the author severely miscalculated land size needed for the population.

Is this supposed to be a refutation to my earlier post? Or are you just informing me of what I already know?

This idea is about as viable as coating our roads with magic pixie dust and unicorn tears. Anyone that bought into this nonsense, especially the individuals that donated over ~2,000,000 dollars to this 'cause', should feel immense shame. Thunderf00t recently did a video series to explain why this is stupid. Enjoy:

I'll correct myself. After looking at more evidence, the population of Westeros is at least 20 million. However, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between the population of Westeros and the size of Westeros. The population density seems unrealistically low even after making for various considerations (such as different climate, level of warfare, etc.).

I thought the 100,000 includes women, children and basically the entire wildling population north of the wall since they are fleeing the white walkers. If you consider 100,000 to be basically the entire population (or even half the population) it isn't unreasonable given the population figures of other parts of westeros. The 7 kingdoms appear to have armies of the size of about 20,000 each, indicating that they probably have populations on the order of hundreds of thousands. King's Landing has a population of half a million, etc. This would probably mean that Westeros has a population of a few million people.

Most boring episode in the series. Entire episode took place in 1 location (the wall) and overall very little occured in terms of the plot. At the beginning the night's watch have the wall and there is a 100,000 army outside, at the end it is exactly the same. Apart from mance getting captured and a few minor characters dying, not much happened. Blackwater Bay fight was much more interesting. Edit: I think the episode would have been a bit better if they had a scene or two with Stannis halfway through. Isn't stannis planning to aid the wall? How is he getting there? Isn't he planning to buy mercenaries using the loan from the bank of braavos?

In that case, can't you just watch every other show, since you don't like non-cookie cutter plotlines? I find it very entertaining because it is different.

That is called the gambler's fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy That's sort of the point. People keep expecting some divine justice or karma to balance things out, but it simply does not exist. Do you remember the story last episode about tyrion's cousin that killed beetles? He tried desperately to find a deeper meaning or purpose behind the smashing of the beetles but there was none. Sometimes people get unlucky.

You know, you never did respond to my post regarding jetstreams and Rossby waves. I was hoping that we would come to an understanding about the physical mechanism and the expected effects.

Isn't this a bit of a guilt by association argument? Some scientists make bad predictions, so we should not take any predictions seriously? Why not value each prediction based upon its merits? To be fair, it will accelerate and we should have something between 0.4 m and 1.0 m by 2100. So more than a foot.