[honestoHeminway]

Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour. Meaning, at some point of heated debate, those with no feelings involved take a step back, and find a middleground solution, a compromise with which both sides can live. And usually that boring compromise is accepted by the majority of the people.

The problem starts when the majority of the people are cut off from economic growth and participation. They can sense the world moving own, without needing them and rebell against that (for good reason- i presume that alot of HN readers would form similar rebelions, if the big Four would discard them all .

[mowenz]

>Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

We actually agree on that. My point was that it is my observation politics in general suffers from the above problem, not just Trump supporters.

[Buge]

> politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

Yes it should. But in highly politicized subreddits, left or right, it doesn't.

[boomboomsubban]

>Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

This isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Any compromise needs a supermajority of citizens in support of a majority of elected officials. With the two party system, often compromising can lead to an election loss even if the majority of voters were in favor of the end bill.

[huxley]

Sigh. It's a representative democracy and a republic. The terms aren't incompatible.

Just because the dichotomy was James Madison's hobby horse and he scribbled it down in Federalist No. 10, doesn't mean that it is gospel. The US has been referred to as a representative democracy since its founding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

[int_19h]

I think what he's trying to say is that a representative democracy with single-member districts (rather than any sort of party lists) and first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system, is inherently biased against political compromises and towards partisan polarization.

[dragonwriter]

> with single-member districts (rather than any sort of party lists)

Single-member, FPTP districts are the issue (or, rather, the lack of proportionality and meaningful choice that comes with that is the issue); the absence of party lists, OTOH, is irrelevant. There are solutions to the issues posed by single-member, FPTP districts that retain candidate-centered elections and do not use party lists. (STV in multimember—but not necessarily at-large—districts is one of them.)

[int_19h]

How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)? STV doesn't fix it - while it makes third party votes viable, it still means that third parties are going to win far fewer districts than the overall proportion of their vote across all districts.

[dragonwriter]

> How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)?

It's hard if you keep single-member districts, though there are possibilitie: (e.g., assign seats to parties based on share first-preference votes across all districts, with all the same handling of minimum thresholds, etc, you would apply in party list proportional, and then elect specific candidates from the by-district elections as follows:

- If a parties total number of allocated seats is equal to the number of candidates they have remaining in districts where no candidate has been elected, elect all of those candidates.

- Otherwise, elect the candidate from the party whose currently-elected # of candidates is the smallest fraction of their allocated seats (breaking ties in favor of the largest absolute deficit) who has the greatest share of the vote in the district in which they competed.

- Repeat until all allocated seats are filled.

Voilà: all the partisan proportionality of party-list proportional, with candidates elected from single-member districts, with candidate centered voting, and no party lists.

I think practically STV or a similar system in small multimember districts (about 5 members per district) is probably a better balance of proportionality and individual candidate accountability (and results in more people having a candidate that is both local and politically acceptable than most other systems), and STV of course can scale to any level of proportionality at the expense of greater number of candidates and larger districts.

Party lists provide an easy route to partisan proportionality but eliminate direct accountability to the general electorate of individual representatives. Ideally, I think, you want both proportionality and individual accountability to the general electorate.

[boomboomsubban]

This doesn't change anything I said beyond the first sentence. They described what should happen under a "democracy" and since our democratic system is unarguably a republic, things don't work that way.

Sorry I hit some strange political nerve. I remember the internet being full of the "ugh, were not a democracy" posts too, but I also swore some oath to the republic every day for a decade.

[eeZah7Ux]

> This isn't a democracy, it's a republic

Please stop spreading this false dichotomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

"""In American English, the definition of a republic can also refer specifically to a government in which elected individuals represent the citizen body, known elsewhere as a representative democracy (a democratic republic),[4] and exercise power according to the rule of law (a constitutional republic)."""

[boomboomsubban]

It is not a democracy in the form their example illustrated, it is a democratic republic. I didn't think that statement would be controversial as it is true for what I assumed was the definition of democracy used.