--- On Fri, 13/2/09, Michael Allan <m...@zelea.com> replied to Fred Gohlke:
> T(p) Practical: What is the practice? > In principle, is it feasible? > > T(q) Probable: What is the method of > transformation? Is it likely, > in fact, to happen? > > T(m) Moral: What are the expected > consequences? What good? What > evil? > T0 is the null transformation (status quo). > If your argument of T0(m=parties,evil) > is valid, then > it follows that the moral question > T(m) is not essential to a > successful transformation. In other > words, even if we have the > technology to transform society, we > have no guarantee that the result > will be an improvement. We may > succeed in doing harm. > After all, the introduction of the > party system was arguably the most > recent major transformation (T0). > You focus on T0(m), but what of > T0(q)? The parties somehow > transformed the workings of our > institutions, without transforming > their structure. How did they do > that? Can the trick be repeated? One approach to modelling the transition is to assume that the change to a party based system consisted of two transitions, Tx and Ty. The (exaggerated) equations could look like... Tx(q = possible, m = good individuals) Ty(q = probable, m = bad parties) Tx eventually happened, maybe after a long struggle. Ty followed easily as the next natural step. The idea is that there is a chain of transitions where the last state is the most stable state. A transition to an idealistic system may lead to transitions towards some more pragmatic and often even more corrupted systems where the value of m gets lower. Also many stable states are vulnerable in the sense that one has to be active in order not to let the system slip into a bad transition (that is possible and probable without continuous monitoring). Juho P.S. One more approach to modelling the transitions is to separate interests among different interest groups. One could e.g. say that (exaggerating again) for lobbyists and politicians corruption is a temptation but for regular citizens it is a problem. That may lead to an interest of the citizens to build systems that forbid such corruption and that also enforce that stated interest. Transitions with sufficient interest are the probable (q) ones. In this case the problems may also materialize when the citizens give the power to their representatives that do have somewhat different interests. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info