[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.