[rebeccaskinner]

> Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.

Although I think there might be some benefits to this style of government, I also think people over-index on it. One way or another these groups end up forming coalitions and making compromises in order to govern. In one case it happens before the election, and mostly behind the scenes with some influence from the primary process. In the other case, it happens after the election when the parties are figure out how to form a majority after the representatives have been selected. One advantage to the former is that at least you know who what other policies your special interest are going to align you with ahead of time, rather than finding out after the fact that your vote brought along more baggage than you bargained for.

> You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues.

But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real, have a right to exist, deserve health care, etc. then it doesn't matter if they agree on 9/10 other issues. Same with abortion. If one person in a discussion believes in the value of rational evidence based decision making, and the other believes in woke 5g space lasers, there's simply no foundation on which to build a shared understanding upon which to base a conversation.

Many of the central arguments that are causing polarization in politics today are due to fundamental incompatibilities in values- the kind that no amount of agreement on other matters of policy

> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.

There absolutely is. There's no perfect candidate, but there's still going to be a better choice. You pick what matters most to you, and how many things you are willing to compromise for those things, make the best choice available, and work to push the discussion of one party or the other closer toward your views in the areas you don't like.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don’t think God is real but it doesn’t stop me from talking to Christians about other topics.

[shiroiushi]

Do those Christians advocate burning unbelievers at the stake?

Luckily, these days, you'd have a very, very hard time finding any Christian who publicly advocates this, but centuries ago it was rather common.

[Swizec]

> But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real ...

Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.

It's possible I'm the weirdo here because the American obsession with identity never quite clicked for me. We once did a "What are your identities" team building exercise and the question felt so nonsensical that I couldn't complete the exercise.

(for the record I am pro-trans, at worst indifferent and think it's none of my business)

[rebeccaskinner]

> Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.

Imagine you have cancer, and thankfully there’s a medication that you can take that keeps your cancer in remission. You’ve been taking it for 15 years, and you’ve been living a pretty good life. Lately though, a bunch of people have been claiming cancer doesn’t exist, and if it does, your form of cancer definitely doesn’t. They’ve already made it illegal for kids to get treated for this cancer in several states, and as you’d expect a lot of kids are dying. Some states are trying to make it illegal for anyone to get treated for their cancer. Companies that used to sell merchandise to raise awareness during cancer awareness month. Oh, and you can’t get a drivers license anymore because your cancer suddenly means that you are “biologically dead”. A major political organization has a policy platform that would make it illegal for anyone with cancer to go into public, because they claim it’s contagious and kids might catch it, and later in that same document they say anyone who risks kids catching a disease should be put to death. One of the major political parties has essentially adopted this platform, and several states have started rolling out parts of the plan.

Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.

Can you really have a polite with them? If so, then I guess we are just of very different dispositions, because I absolutely could not.

[Swizec]

> Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.

See that's what I mean. There is (from what I remember) less of this in Europe because the kill-cancer-kids party is different than the curb-setbacks-party. You can even vote for saving kids and curb setbacks!

So basically the cancer thing doesn't come up while you're discussing curb setbacks. Because they're separate issues whose venn diagrams don't overlap. You could even go decades without ever realizing your neighbor doesn't believe in cancer.

[rebeccaskinner]

My (probably somewhat incorrect) understanding of most European governments was that you might end up in a situation where you vote in the curb setbacks party and then afterwards they decide to form a coalition with the kill cancer kids party because they see it as the most expedient means to get a majority that can increase curb setbacks. Now you have a real problem because maybe you really do care about curb setbacks but not to the point of wanting kids killed.

My understanding is that’s more or less what recently happened in France.

It might make it easier to talk to your neighbor, who can more plausibly say “don’t look at me, I just voted for curb setbacks”, but it does come with some substantial downsides too, and in the end you still have broad multi-interest umbrella coalitions.

[Swizec]

Yep that does happen and ultimately the goal of all this is that some sort of concensus is reached.

The benefit is that you get a few seats representing curb setbacks and a few seats representing cancer kids and they both have to work together to make anything happen. As opposed to USA where voting for curb setbacks means the cancer kids get no seats.

I think an important feature is that (as far as I understand) politicians in EU vote based on their issue whereas politicians in USA vote based on their party regardless of issue. And in Europe there's lots of referendums for when the politicians can't agree on something. The big stuff is often decided via direct instead of representative democracy.

So in your example of cancer kids, the party would probably make a big ruckus, then run a few polls to force a referendum, then a few months later everyone would directly have to vote yes/no on the issue. Obviously the parties would run voter campaigns to convince you to vote the way they'd like, but at least they don't get to just decide these things based on whom 50.5% of the country voted for a few years ago.

It's also, I think, a lot easier in [most of?] Europe to refresh the government. I can't even remember the last time a parliament in my home country managed to last a full 4 years without someone forcing an election. The UK in 2022 famously had a prime minister that lasted just 44 days.

We change our politicians like underwear. They're there to do a job not to build empires.