Conditional Suffrage?

[tylerdurden]

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Ah. So because person A commits a crime, he should be imprisoned

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fyp

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Drug dealers commit illegal acts, which is not the same as committing crimes. Do you see the difference?

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None of your post does anything to show that non-violent drug offenders are not political prisoners

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And none of your posts do anything to show that they are.

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(which of course they are)

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If by "of course they are" you mean "I believe they are, but I haven't proven so," then yes - I agree completely.

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The act they are imprisoned for - trading some chemicals or some plants for some money - is a voluntary exchange of private property between two consenting adults. What could possibly be criminal about that? The only reason it's illegal is because imprisoning these people achieves some political goal.


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Candidate A says drugs should be legal, but that everything else should be completely opposite to what you, Borodog, believe it should be.

Candidate B says drugs should stay illegal, but everything else should be exactly as you, Borodog, believe it should be.

Do you really think this person, who is ignorantly voting for someone for one reason alone, particularly the fact that he likes breaking the law, and ignoring everything else that is far more important, is making an informed decision?

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Thank you for pointing out one of the big problems in our particular implementation of representative democracy. You can replace drug legalization for any "swing issue" and see why this system produces consistently crappy results.

[elwoodblues]

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Drug dealers commit illegal acts, which is not the same as committing crimes. Do you see the difference?


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No.

[tylerdurden]

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Drug dealers commit illegal acts, which is not the same as committing crimes. Do you see the difference?


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No.

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Do you think slavery is not a crime if some random person in a far away city says it's legal?

[elwoodblues]

In that city it is, definitionally, not a crime.

[Warik]

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Drug dealers commit illegal acts, which is not the same as committing crimes. Do you see the difference?

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No.

Neither does Webster: an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law

What's the difference?

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The act they are imprisoned for - trading some chemicals or some plants for some money - is a voluntary exchange of private property between two consenting adults. What could possibly be criminal about that? The only reason it's illegal is because imprisoning these people achieves some political goal.

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So is a terrorist buying a privately owned nuclear bomb from an insane dictator.

Or a 19 year-old kid buying some grenades and an assault rifle from some dude in a dark alley.

"What could possibly be criminal about that? The only reason it's illegal is because imprisoning these people achieves some political goal." It's not like they're hurting anybody.

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Thank you for pointing out one of the big problems in our particular implementation of representative democracy. You can replace drug legalization for any "swing issue" and see why this system produces consistently crappy results.

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Perhaps if our representatives were selected by more competent individuals, we could take a big step towards improving our system of representative democracy.

Taking the sheep out of the equation would also take the dominance of the two party system out of the equation and give us better choices for representatives, governors, presidents, etc...

[Ed Miller]

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Taking the sheep out of the equation would also take the dominance of the two party system out of the equation and give us better choices for representatives, governors, presidents, etc...

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We don't have a two party system because stupid people vote. We have a two party system because of the winner-take-all mechanism by which we elect our officials.

EDIT: This idea is known as Duverger's law.

[BluffTHIS!]

Obviously since we extol winner-take-all in poker (other than those hi/lo heathens), then it can't be bad for elections. Proportional representation systems just insure gridlock and instability. A look at the number of times the Italian governing coalition has fallen since WWII illustrates this point nicely. And what happens in those situations is that the effective power of unelected bureaucrats is magnified.

[tylerdurden]

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Obviously since we extol winner-take-all in poker

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Not in (most) tournaments. And in cash games, the next game is only minutes (not years) away, and the "winner" doesn't win "all", he only wins all of the pot. Big difference.

[elwoodblues]

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Obviously since we extol winner-take-all in poker (other than those hi/lo heathens), then it can't be bad for elections.

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If it's good for poker, it must be good for elections??? Brilliant.

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Taking the sheep out of the equation would also take the dominance of the two party system out of the equation and give us better choices for representatives, governors, presidents, etc...

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We don't have a two party system because stupid people vote. We have a two party system because of the winner-take-all mechanism by which we elect our officials.

EDIT: This idea is known as Duverger's law.

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Takes me back to my poli sci classes and the discussion of SMDP (single member district plurality) vs. MMPR (multi-member proportional representations) systems. I am astonished it's not better known, as it's not really all that hard to explain.