On 09/12/2013 07:08 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Warning: long!
I didn't read it in detail because it was so long, but the impression I
got from the first part, and forgive me if this sounds like a twisted
caricature, was something that would sound like this if applied to the
two-party system:
"The people could change the two-party system if they desired to do so
and voted accordingly. They don't, so clearly they are in favor of the
two-party system."
But barriers don't have to be absolute, and to change the two-party
system requires great coordination. (One could even argue that the
parties will place themselves just on the inside - be just ever so
slightly better than trying to upset the system - so that no such plan
of upset gains sufficient force.)
Similarly, to say that "if people don't take the risk of expressing
their views even when there's a bias against them, then they weren't
dedicated enough" is risky because it's not verifiable. It makes a
judgement on what "dedicated enough" means, and seems to me to say that
the existence of barriers is not such a problem because the truly
dedicated will ignore them anyway.
Sure. Given enough bad treatment, even people of a dictatorship will
unite in revolution. But the system of dictatorship can do a lot of
damage before that happens: the barrier to participation, though not
absolute (as revolutions have shown) deters change very effectively up
until it breaks.
Of course, I also know that to go to the other extreme will produce an
absurdity. If you were to say that people are being excluded because the
political process doesn't pluck their thoughts directly from their
minds, you'd invite ridicule. But the problem is that a response of the
type "X chose not to challenge the barriers because he wasn't dedicated
enough" says nothing about whether the barriers are a good thing. It
says nothing about whether X should just be more brave or whether small
towns can degenerate into, to crib a term, a "dictatorship of the
sociable"[1].
And now that I think about it, there's a similar problem with the idea
that low turnout is a good thing[2]. Obviously one can make ballot
access easier, or get out the vote, or any number of similar things to
raise turnout. But if turnout is a matter of people expressing their
utility, then making voting too easy will dilute that utility
information - in the extreme, making voting mandatory would remove it
altogether. But then the question is: what is the optimal level of
difficulty? We can't know, from the argument itself, whether the optimal
level would be near-mandatory voting or if it would be having the
polling places pretty much inaccessible so that only the truly dedicated
can influence the election. It could be anywhere between those points,
and without further information, we have no way of knowing when we've
gone too far. The picture becomes even more murky once we remember that
voting is instrumentally (game-theoretically) pointless.
Also, I've been very busy and probably will be, too, so it may be some
time before I reply again.
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[1] As a Scandinavian, I could point at Jante, and more specifically at
the "rural beast" (bygdedyret). Other nations have their own concepts:
tall poppy syndrome, crab-bucket syndrome, deru kugi wa utareru, etc.
Though less specific than the rural beast, all of these suggest that it
is possible for a small town to become collectively oppressive. But I
have indirectly raised that concern in the past, and I think you replied
by saying that if the town truly is that poisoned, there's nothing else
that can be done but getting out. I suspect going to transparency at all
costs will make collective oppression easier, however.
[2] As it happens, I'm not all that hostile to the idea, particularly
not regarding runoffs. But the argument shares the weakness I have
mentioned.
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