I suspect they won’t go for voluntary voting because the hard heads (are there machine men in the Liberals?) will know that in the absence of mass parties, getting out the vote will be tremendously expensive and who really knows whether it would advantage the Coalition as common wisdom has it…
The total disgrace is the changes to enrolment and the closing of the rolls when the poll’s called. There’s no justification for this as far as I can see whatever other than partisan advantage by effectively disenfranchising citizens who might not vote Liberal.
I might have a look at the report when it comes out to see how they justify it.
I’m also opposed to 4 year terms - who wants to insulate the bastards from their occasional accountability moments longer than necessary!
Agreed Mark, although I might trade off a 4-year term for fixing the election date. But have they got a nerve bidding for more security for themselves at the moment or what? I mean, how stupid do they think the electorate is? As the High Court might say, there is no need to answer that question.
This whole referendum proposal pisses me off no end. I voted on this once 17 years ago, and it was rejected. So why do we need to be asked again (and, if it gets rejected, probably again in a few more years). We’re told by The Australian today that it was only rejected because it was linked to fixed terms and changes to the Senate. Who says? How the bloody hell would they know? (That certainly wasn’t why I voted against it).
It’s the same with Daylight Saving (and the Republic question) - if we don’t like the answer from the people, we’ll just keep asking until we get the answer we want, and then it’s off the agenda.
GO AWAY - it was REJECTED. We’ve managed for 100 years with 3 year terms, and have one of the strongest & most enduring democracies in the world. Get to work on something that matters.
The move to close rolls is a blatant attempt at disenfranchising those who vote against the conservatives, with an estimated two-party effect of 0.3% I read somewhere. Voluntary voting though, would give a two-party effect of a shift of approximately 5% toward the Coalition, which would be a dramatic realignment of the two-party system propelling the Liberals as the natural party of government for many decades.
The only motivation behind these moves is to cement the Tories in power by electoral manipulation, like what other dictators in a myriad of constituencies throughout the planet have done. They fear the wrath of the demographics of the nation so they try to bend it. Another shining example of the universal and invariable pathetic cowardice and gutlessness of the Right.
Tony I dont think thats a very good attitude. People change their minds, the culture of society shifts - and it can shift a hell of a lot in 17 years.
Suppose a ban on something like gay marriage was built into the constitution back in 1901. A refferendum may have been called 17 years ago, but of course there would not have been enough support to change it. 5 years from now there may well be enough support, but because it was thrown out 22 years ago no refferendum should not be called - the people have spoken already, GO AWAY.
Do you see the utter stupidity of your position now?
One trial balloon I recently saw being floated by a Government guy was voluntary voting. Is this part of the package under discussion? I think this would go a long way to giving us back some of our freedoms. Why because people ought have the right not to vote. Over the last few years I would not have voted for any party given a choice. However I don’t have that choice or I will be fined. Great.
No Joe. Wrong. You only have to go to the booth. Thousands of Australians vote informal. You too can be free. Congratulations. Where would you be without me? Next problem?
How is that free, CS, when I am compelled to go to a booth under threat of a fine or jail if I refuse to pay? This makes me free? What if I don’t like any of the parties? I am still forced to attend the bloody booth.
This makes it easier for the big parties. Freeing up voting means they would have to also think about what they are selling to the voting public that would entice people to attend the booth in the fist place. It also weeds out people who have no interest the poliitical process and would/ should not vote anyway. I don’t see how we are free to vote informal, as you say.
Over the last few years I would not have voted for any party given a choice. However I don’t have that choice or I will be fined.
I have explained why this is false, for you need not vote for any party. OK, so let’s move the old goal posts, in the great if you’re losing tradition. Your fresh complaint is:
I am still forced to attend the bloody booth.
Sucks, huh? Good. Lazy bludger. Do you have medical insurance? You never know. paper cuts can be deadly.
CS
Ok, CS, let’s agree I moved the goal posts, although it is only a question of semantics.
as you said does not exactly fit the definition of the word, free. does it? Compelling the voting population to attend a booth is more coercion than “free”. No?
So I may have moved the goal post as you say but it does not avoid the complaint. We aren’t free if we have to go and stand in a booth so that we don’t vote. I’d rather stay home. That would be free.
Thanks for acknowledging the change of focus Joe. Are we not merely talking about fulfilling the most rudimentary of the duties of citizenship, the smallest price of enjoying the the most common privilege of living in a democracy? There is no compulsion to vote for a party, but in Australia this must be a positive position. No bludgers. This is not a democracy, take it or leave it mate, notwithstanding how often I also feel like the latter.
For every citizen who votes informal and is so diddums as to resent even fulfilling this most fleeting of physical democratic duties, surely it is of value for the ‘we the people’ show to know this was a considered objection, not because some merely prefer to freeload. More centrally, the booth-attendence obligation creates an onus throughout the nation to ensure everyone who wishes to participate as a citizen can. In contrast to your negative conception, this is a positive (liberal and social democratic) sense of being ‘free’.
On the other hand, perhaps you have a disability to admit, which might allow for special treatment? Or are you sort of complaining like a child might, who doesn’t want to go to bed early?
I actually don’t feel liberated by being forced to go to a booth, social democracy or no. I agree with your example of the child forced to bed early, funnily enough. only thing is unfortunately I am an adult and want to be treated as such. Maybe the political process ought to treat me like a grown up and accept that it is my right whether I choose to attend a booth. I find your child example also quite interesting from the perspective that the process treats me like a child: forcing me to go to bed but disregarding the fact that I am over 18 years of age. Using the term social democracy has no real bearing on the subject, as it does not describe our system of governance.
Don‚Äôt you think that voluntary voting would add a little more flavour to our political process? Rather than enjoying a “captive audience” at the booth, political parties would also have to consider the need to actually make policy that would attract voters to the booth to vote for them.
I don’t believe coercion is a way of ensuring I participate in the political system. Enticement is: attarcting me to the booth with good policies, not by force. Yes, it is a racket, a racket supportedb y both political parties.
What surprises me is why conservatives would support this law. If the US is anything to by, the lower socio-economic groups are the ones who vote least. No wonder it is sometimes referred to as the stupid party: the Liberals.
Whatever Joe. I can tell the tide’s going out real fast here. The bottom line is that the law puts the onus on the state to clear the way for every citizen to vote who wants to, with an informal option. As a citizen, sir, you are a lemming.
I don’t think citizenship is determined by being forced to attend a political rally.. in a voting booth. It is far more than that. In reality the political process has nothing to do with being a good citizen. Obeying the law, respect for other people’s property as well as their and having a appreciation of the cultural folds of the nation make me a citizen. Not being forced to vote.
Rather than having a postive affect, it pisses me off as the law treats us like kids.
We should have the right to vote, not the responsibility to vote.
The differentiation between the right to not vote and the right to not go to the polling booth is a pathetic semantics game. Similar to the old anti-VSU argument that it wasn’t compulsory to join the union (just compulsory to pay the union fee!) Every reasonable person understands what is being discussed.
Just because this isn’t an Orwelian disaster doesn’t make it good policy.
Speaking of Orwell — the idea of calling an obligation to stand at a polling booth being “free” shows the absolute bastardisation of that word.
The differentiation between the right to not vote and the right to not go to the polling booth is a pathetic semantics game.
This is a pyramid of piffle. If you know anything about the US, you’ll also know that this is a semantic game alright, being played your way. Register in advance, vote on a Tuesday (a working day), stand in a queue for hours before or after work near your home (try that when you have to commute to a big US metropolis and thus can’t get back near home to vote at lunchtime), etc, etc (I’ve barely started on the hurdles you have to jump over there). The practical beauty of the Australian system is that it switches the onus, with the state having to make it dead easy for everyone to exercise their right to vote (while not making it compulsory to do so with respect to any party). Dismount from phoney high horses, please.
What cs said (in fact, everything in the above that cs said).
…and I can’t believe I’m saying that either, Doc, you old democrat!
And, Nic, yes, you are correct, I was being too extreme in my disgust - there are undoubtably issues that should be retested over time. But does anyone think that 4 year terms is among them? That there’s this massive groundswell of popular opinion, a seismic cutural shift, that demands that governments get longer terms? Hmmm? I must have missed it….
Considering the number of countries where getting shot or bombed when voting is a possiblity, I don’t mind walking a peaceful suburban street. I also remember 18 year olds who couldn’t vote being sent to another war we were lied about.
CS: You say that there are hassles in voting in America. Fine. So what? That is not an argument to make voting compulsory. It is perfectly reasonable to expect (1) the government to make it easy to vote; and (2) the government not to punish you if you don’t vote. My high horse is quite real.
Peter Kemp: Sure, you can put in a postal vote — but that’s not the point. You all know perfectly well what the complaint is, and the only purspose of these sidetracks is to increase the noise-to-substance ratio.
Naomi: I am not arguing against the right to vote (indeed, strictly speaking I’m the one supporting it… you all support a responsibility to vote). As for cherished traditions… so was the white australia policy until it was changed. Sorry Naomi, but I’m not a conservative so I don’t accept appeals to history as justifications for policy. And finally, are you implying that men or women are disadvantages in nearly every other democracy on earth?
You say: we bloody need to be able to vote
Of course. Nobody is arguing against that. There is a big difference between being able to vote, and being fined or jailed because you made the choice to not be involved in voting.
CS: You say that there are hassles in voting in America. Fine. So what? That is not an argument to make voting compulsory. It is perfectly reasonable to expect (1) the government to make it easy to vote; and (2) the government not to punish you if you don’t vote. My high horse is quite real.
This is an inverted pyramid of piffle. You have to focus on the practicalities to understand why. The government doesn’t punish you if you don’t vote, only if you don’t go to the booth or are so slack that you can’t even organise a postal form, and don’t have even a half-baked excuse. The only real serious point here, hopefully for the last time, is that making it compulsory to go through the motions decisively shifts the onus onto the state to make it easy for citizens to vote. The example of the US shows a little of what can happen if this is reversed. Of course, as anyone who has followed the fiascos known as US presidential elections over recent years knows, the reality in the absence of compulsory voting facilitation is far far worse than I’ve suggested. More than all the practical voting benefits, compulsory facilitation embeds the very idea of voting in the democracy. Whereas a myriad subtle pressures are exerted against voting in the US, in Australia one hears the wonderful phrase ‘have you voted yet?’ all voting day long. Objectors to making voting facilitation compulsory have nought but a phoney childish semantic theoretical extremist point to dress themselves with on their side of this argument; supporters have major demonstrable practical democratic effects, adverse in the absence and beneficial in the presence of making it compulsory for the state to make it dead easy for each and every citizen to exercise their right to vote.
CS:
There is no such thing as “a US voting system”. It doesn’t exist. States decide what system they have. The Feds have very little to do with it. Tuesday was the day set by the constitution when everyday other than Sunday was essentially the same as the US was an agrarian society. Anyhow, Tuesday is practically a vaction day anyway. Employers must allow their workers time to vote. It’s the law.
Anyhow problems with a voting system have really nothing to do with whether voting ought to be made “free”.
Yes it does punish you if you don’t attend the booth or arrange a postal vote.
How about if I said I couldn’t vote because I didn’t like any of the parties. What are the chances or not getting slugged with fine? I consider that anwswer to be a very good reason not to vote.
Well, what if I said “the voting system in the US”? Dere.
Incidentally, you also happen to be wrong on every other technical count. Only some states have legislated to allow workers time off to vote (and in those states the law works poorly). And there is a very specific reason for the date of the US election. I can’t explain everything to you all the time, so suffice to say that, when this was instituted, it specifically aimed at enabling everyone to vote - and now it works in the reverse. Talk about a disfunctional democracy, in desperate need of a law compelling vote facilitation.
Actually, I’m now starting to agree with you that it would be best for everyone concerned if you didn’t vote joe. Perhaps we can propose the ‘cambria amendment’.
CS:
Us constitution only requires that election be held on the same day for the US presidential elections. According to Wiki the rest detailed below. So the Congress enacted the law to enable Catholics to vote, it seems.
Dysfunctional? Really?
When people like you CS are surprised that a “dunce” like Bush is elected President of the US, you may want remember these recent survey results.
Washington Post Columnist EJ Dionne reported on a survey:
T]he party’s problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.
A Liberal in the US sense is not a leftist as such. If you take these poll results in mind it really means that the vast majority of the American electorate is to the right of the Democratic Party. So I think you will be thinking it is as dysfunctional system for a long time.
cs — you seem to be intentionally obscuring the issue. And stop saying “piffle”.
You ask me to focus on practicalities. Nearly every other democracy has voluntary voting, so it seems practical enough.
You once again go on your irrelevant “you don’t have to vote” side-track. This is pedantic. You either know what we mean, or wouldn’t have the mental resources to turn on your computer… so lets stop the semantics games. Just to clarify, I am referring to having to participate in the voting process. I may occasionally refer to this as “voting” simply because it’s shorter to type and every reasonable person knows what I mean.
You say your serious point is that having compulsory voting puts an onus on the government to make it easy to vote. Well, no. Having democracy puts on the onus on the government to make it easy to vote. It is perfectly possible for the government to make it easy to vote and for voting to be voluntary. Somehow New Zealand (not to mention pretty much the rest of the world) seems to be holding up in the face of the “dangers” of voluntary voting.
Your hollow abuse adds nothing. There is nothing childish or extreme about advocating voluntary voting. My argument is very clear and sensible. That argument is that not voting is a victimless “crime” and should therefore not be a crime. The burden of proof should rest on those wanting to introduce/maintain a non-voting penalty… and so far there is no evidence that compulsory voting leads to any better outcomes. Indeed, there is a reasonable argument that compulsory voting creates safe seats and therefore undermines the effectiveness of democracy in many HoR seats… and it also allows political parties to ignore their own supporters.
You finish by saying that there are benefits of having easy access to democracy. Agreed. But not relevant.
You seem to be misunderstanding my point. It is not that I don’t want to vote. It’s more along the line that I may choose not to vote and should not be fined if I so decide.
Seeing you bring up the US.
The one big fear that plague’s the two big US parties is that voters may stay home on Tuesday because they simply don’t like what is being dished up. We don’t have this choice in Australia: sure we can roll up to the booth and vote informal but the vast majority of voters don’t this. Consequently the big parties here don’t have an incentive to really dish up policies that attract their voting base. Hence the blandness of both parties as both simply drive the ball right down the middle. In a way we can’t blame them for behaving this way, after all the compulsory voting system is what forces them to do this.
.
Look, at this point gentlemen, it is best to shake hands in the knowledge that liberal and, especially, social democrats appreciate the strengths of making it compulsory for the state to faciliate the exercising of the cherished (thanks Naomi) democratic right to vote, and libertarian extremists and lazy bastards don’t. Fair enough. I think there is always a place for weirdos to challenge the prevailing substantive practical democratic wisdom at the trivial abstract theoretical margins. Pip! Pip!
To reiterate: piffle piffle and more piffle. Australia has a brilliant, simple and hassle-free (unless you’re so pathetically lazy as to refuse partake of a postal vote) eminently practical and sensible democratic electoral system that is, and bloody well should be the envy of the democratic world: voting on a weekend, no hanging chads or unaccountable voting machines, central non -partisan oversight of all voting booths and a uniform system of voting and ballot marking using that high tech wonder, the lead pencil.
Make all the principled stands for your freedom not to vote you can splurt; you suckaz are spoilt for choice and accessibilty when it comes to voting and you don’t have any goddamn excuse - this pathetic anti-voting stand is an outright insult to everything we’ve established and stood for as a nation. Naomi put in plain simple terms that shoulda shamed the lot of you:
AUSTRALIANS FOUGHT LONG AND HARD SO THAT ALL WOMEN AND MEN, REGARDLESS OF INCOME OR CIRCUMSTANCE, WOULD BE ABLE TO VOTE.
CS
I was kinda hoping someone would see the circular reeasoning. It always gets back to he same complaint, which is , “what the hell am I doing in this booth when I don’t like any of them”, or “why am I forced to spend 50c on a stamp”. Funny that, hey.
cs — you seem to be actively discouraging intellegent debate. Having failed to address my actual argument, you now just call me names: “weirdo”, “extreme” or “lazy”. Most reasonable people would interpret that as an admission that you cannot actually respond to my points.
Once again you argue that the state should facilitate the democratic process. Agreed. And still irrelevant.
Leinard… being lazy shouldn’t be a crime. Simple. If you think it should be a crime, you should come up with a good reason… not just repeat “piffle” and make simple logical errors.
Compulsory voting is not the envy of the world.
I agree that chads are a bad way of running elections. Once again — this is not relevant to voluntary voting. I agree central non-partisan oversight of all voting booths is good. Once again — this is not reelvant to voluntary voting. Same with all your other points. Nothing you said was an argument for making laziness (or not voting for whatever reason) a crime.
But to compensate for your lack of arugment… you call my position “pathetic”. Very mature.
You endorse Naomi’s comments — but ignore the fact that I’ve already responded to them. Naomi said it is good that we are able to vote. I agree. Nobody is suggesting that people shouldn’t be able to vote. I’m just suggesting that it should not be a crime to ignore an election.
I understand your point John. It has been argued periodically since I can ever remember, and I think it’s trivial in its own terms (piffle, if you will), and bunkum when you really think about it. So, yes, this is merely spirited, good humoured, polemical jousting to my settled mind. I will endeavour to refrain from futher heckling.
The truth is, push come to shove, that I actually think Australia’s demonstrably marvellous capacity to organise itself like this, without fuss or bother from anyone bar a few harmless whingers, is something of a social wonder to behold and experience - a part of what it means to be an Australian.
I think Mark said right up in the first comment. The hard heads in both major parties won’t want to spend money on getting people to the polls. Also, it is a whole other thing for them to organise.
But in principle, I think if you want to be a citizen you have an obligation to vote. Naomi said most of what I would want to say, except that the whole business of getting the vote out would create a different dynamic around an election, a dynamic that doesn’t contribute to democratic decision making IMHO.
Yep, the small loss of freedom not to vote is more than compensated for, many times over, by all the benefits ennumerated by my learned friends above.
John Humphreys, your position is logically correct and coherent of course but it places far too much weight upon one aspect of living in society. The right do as you bloody well please. Every day I wake up thinking, to day I’m just gonna please myself. A Me day. It’s never happened yet.
If voting is irksome to you just see it as similar to when you had to dry the dishes as a kid.
Speaking of the chains of living in a tribe, voting will never approach the level of burden upon my liberty that complying with bylaws regarding the disposal of hardwaste in The People’s Watermelon Republik of Yarra! This weekend was shot.
WBB
It’s not the burden so much, as people don’t seem to understand. It’s the capriciousness of lawmakers thinking they know what is best for us (along with people who should know better). There isn’t a party I support that I would be happy to hand over my vote. Rather than fight for it as they ought to, the major parties make me roll up to a booth in the hope I will turn over my vote.
This isn’t democracy in action as some suggest. IT’s a racket run by lawmkers to support their existence with the minimum effort.
Naomi:
I’m beg to disagree. Small parties exist and thrive in countries that maintain optional voting. If a party of any size needs a law to survive that forces people to vote that means they don’t deserve to survive in then market place of ideas, which what politics is really all about.
“Ahem, like it or not, the reason we appoint lawmakers is to decide what‚Äôs best for us”.
I am not sure I agree with you on that one. That’s why I would prefer not to vote as I believe I am best able to choose what’s best for me on nearly all things except defense and the like. Not some quack sitting in Canberra.
It suits all parties to focus election work on the day of the election, rather than on working to get the voters there in the first place.
Sure I suits all parties to maintain the current racket. I agree. Isn’t it a little ironic that you don’t think they ought to be working hard to get people out to vote? Isn’t that what they are supposed to do?
Hmm. How about this for a solution? We set aside a few hundred square miles of the country somewhere for all the people who don’t want to vote and don’t much want law-makers deciding what’s best for them and leave them to get on with things. We’d need to put a bloody high wall around this privileged little spot, of course, to keep whatever they were getting on with safely contained when they get out of hand and the price of fava bean and chianti futures goes through the roof.
There isn’t a party I support that I would be happy to hand over my vote.
Do you have any arguments that are based on something more than “I don’t like it”?
Like, how democracy would be improved, or how society would benefit?
Or how voluntary voting would suddenly lead to the creation of a party to whom you would give a vote.
Or how not voting and getting a Government anyway is a good thing.
Because at the moment, your argument is basically that making you do something twice every three or four years is unacceptable, regardless of what it does to benefit society, in all the ways Naomi has spelt out.
Amanda:
To be perfectly honest as a conservative with a libertarian bent, I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation why I don’t want to vote. In fact, I really don’t understand what you mean that my vote and this law benefits society. Wasn’t it Maggie Thatcher who said the concept of society does not exist? My argument doesn’t just explain that I don’t like the current system. It explains that this law takes away my freedom. And freedom is pretty important, right?
I really don’t care if people don’t think it would be an improvement to the current system. That’s not waht I want to judge. I simply want to right to vote to become an option.
I can’t handle libertarism by itself because to be a libertarian means essentially that you can’t have an opinion in a lot of areas: that’s not human.
Thatcher did not say that in reference to the economy. She was referring to people who mischaracterize the term “society”. Like her, whenever I see that term I always think two things are gunna happen. Either my freedoms will be curtailed in some fashion or my pocket is gunna get picked. I am not often wrong.
People co-operate not because of some pie-in-sky belief they are doing so to help others. We co-operate because in a way we are helping ourselves. I let the baker bake my bread because he is better at it. I let a doctor check me out because he or she spent some time training in a field that requires a very high IQ. We don’t co-operate because we love each, we do so because it is very much in our interests.
That’s exactly what I am saying only you put it better than I could hope to.
I really think you are looking at this backwards. Market Capitalism, which is mischaractorized by the left as the law of the jungle is nonsense quite frankly. Market Capitalism could not exist without the rule of law. It would be impossible.
The term “social contract” is a socialist concept that has nothing to do with market capitalism. In fact it is its enemy.
I keep reading a recurring theme in this thread, which goes something like this: what’s it matter donating a little bit of freedom for the greater good, such as, compulsary voting if it means smaller parties can breathe in the open.
Well, I’ll tell you what happens. What happens is that we end up with laws Bracks introduced attempting to stamp out racial prejudice: Racial Villification laws.
I recently read a piece in the Melbourne Age defending those laws. And what do you think was the theme: what’s giving up a little freedom speech if we can all live in Utopian freedom of racial harmony.
I only wish Bracks and Co. could leglislate to make uus all billionaires.
People co-operate not because of some pie-in-sky belief they are doing so to help others. We co-operate because in a way we are helping ourselves.
joe, I think that says it all. You are essentially saying that when we appear to cooperate we are really exploiting other people. Some people like cooperating and get satisfaction from seeing others achieve.
I think people who exploit others for there own satisfaction are best left in their own company.
Brian:
it’s not exploitation to appreciate that a baker makes better bread than I do. Or that a film maker makes better movies than I could imagine. My point was that we co-operate by offering a service or making goods we do well. This doesn’t exploit anybody, does it?
The problem we have is that most of us don’t understand the level of co-operation because of the veil of money. In a barter type economy the baker co-operates with the candlestick maker by creating a surplus of bread that he can barter with the candlestick maker. These exchange could be explained as exploitation.
I wouldn’t want to live away from others because I value what they do for me in terms of making my life better, which I pay for. Similarly I do the same back.
Bad news Joe, as compulsory voting illustrates, we’re evolving so as to distinguish the unselfish co-operators - those who have a sense of justice, or a sense of gratitude, or feel bound by loyalty to their partners, associates and fellow citizens - from calculating co-operators such as yourself, who co-operate only because they see it as in their own selfish interest. The good news for us is that, as more of us form co-operative relationships only with the unselfish co-operators, then unselfish co-operators will do better than the remaining throwbacks to calculating co-operation, and social evolution will naturally lead to the survival of the most co-operative. We’re on your case pal.
Actually, that’s one of the few sensible things Latho said - when he looked at research done post the election it was only Labor voters who cited any reasons for their vote having to do with the community or others. Liberals all cited “keep me safe”, “keep my mortgage down”, etc.
You’re just trying to get me back for that town hall clock I stuck you with. Here, take a towel too and dry yourself off - concentrating on those green bits behind your ears.
I think that Tim Lambert vs. trolls thing has killed the atmosphere of the blog. It injected a nasty note into the stoushes, people on both sides got antsy, EP went away (as I tried to point out before - he actually played a really useful role in spurring people to argue), Mark got pissed off with Rob (largely understandably in my view), the anti-Tim Lambert mob took up residence (but they’re no fun), hesitant commenters stopped commenting, Liam took a break, and now it’s just a few of the regulars saying anything, and some random RWBDs of the second division.
I suppose we’ll have to thank the blogging gods for Jack Strocchi soon.
CS
Kindly explain to me how your system would work. This co-operative system of yours.
Kim:
Lambert’s view of a troll is anyone who disagrees with his far left, never been outside of a campus ideology, along with samckings of Latham’s neurosis.
Anthony:
If it’s in the Guardian, it’s gtta be true, right?
Hey Joe (good name for a song), knock yourself out here (for starters). If you can show some comprehension, I’ll consider throwing more light your way - socialists believe in education.
I think one has to look at the systemic effects of voluntary vs compulsory voting - Joe’s emotivist arguments won’t do.Let’s take a public choice economics perspective on this. Think of the political market the same way you would a normal market with the basic function of capturing individual preferences and maximising the sum of preference satisfaction. On the one hand it could be argued that compulsory voting is likely to reduce the quality of policies that political parties adopt because by forcing people who have no interest in voting or public policy to vote it must design policies that appeal to people who have not made much of an investment in informing themselves about the packages on offer. It would be a bit like a normal market where the consumer isn’t well informed so you would expect the quality of the product on offer to be low. On the other hand, with voluntary voting there is no guarantee that politicians will have incentives to design better policies either - rather those least interested in politics might be those representing the median of opinion and by definition their preferences are probably represent a high percentage of the populations’ and therefore should be weighted higher than they would in a system of voluntary voting where the most strongly motivated to mobilise themselves wouild be the extremes of opinion - in other words, politicians might not offer packages that weight preference appropriately under a voluntary voting system because the outliers are weighted more heavily.
“Anthony:
If it‚Äôs in the Guardian, it‚Äôs gtta be true, right”
Joe
The George Mason University Economics dept which is responsible for that neuroeconomics research is well known for its explicitly libertarian Austrian economics slant
Jason:
When I grow up I want to be just like you. Smart, able to recite every philosopher during the last 200 years but with the added advantage that I will, unlike you, not just rote learn to recite it. I will try to understand it.
Mark, asked that all refrain from bringing past hatreds over to his blog. I do suggest yopu follow his advice.
Look at the treads I have spoken on at this site. Not one could be even remotely classed as abusive.
So I suggest again, that if you want to attack me, go over to Lambert’s paradise and ask him for a special spot. I’m sure the old dog would be willing to.
what on earth are you on joe? i wrote a long, fairly esoteric response about how to better analyse voluntary vs compulsory voting from a public choice perspective? where have i been abusive aside from calling your argument emotivist and correcting you about George Mason University? you’re the one lacking an argument
Naomi:
I commend you on your altruistic efforts. I honestly do. The world is made better by people like you and if there is a God, you ought to be at the head of the line for entry through the pearly gates. Not enough of what you do is recognized. Please accept these commens in the sipirt intended.
My comments in no way implied that efforts like yours should go unoticed or reduced. You seem a good person and there ough to be more like you.
“can you hook us up with a snort of what joe‚Äôs having?”
I think I should hook him up with a snort of what I’m having (Jameson with a teensy dash of soda.)
Once Joe moved on from his Tim Lambert obession he actually settled down to some informed and thoughtful interchanges earlier on this thread, along with an OK futon joke.
I think he just gets a bit excitable when the numbers on the screen are flowing against him, or when the ex emails him about the alimony, and likes to lash out a bit.
Also I think the demographics of LP are getting to him. He’s probably more used to angry white men snapping at eachother over statisitical minutea. I think the combination of fashion conscious socialists, smart and pushy women, clever Asian-Australians, serious young insects with a bit of nous, film loving RWDBs and smartarse old bohos is throwing him a bit.
I suspect they won’t go for voluntary voting because the hard heads (are there machine men in the Liberals?) will know that in the absence of mass parties, getting out the vote will be tremendously expensive and who really knows whether it would advantage the Coalition as common wisdom has it…
The total disgrace is the changes to enrolment and the closing of the rolls when the poll’s called. There’s no justification for this as far as I can see whatever other than partisan advantage by effectively disenfranchising citizens who might not vote Liberal.
I might have a look at the report when it comes out to see how they justify it.
I’m also opposed to 4 year terms - who wants to insulate the bastards from their occasional accountability moments longer than necessary!
Agreed Mark, although I might trade off a 4-year term for fixing the election date. But have they got a nerve bidding for more security for themselves at the moment or what? I mean, how stupid do they think the electorate is? As the High Court might say, there is no need to answer that question.
Chris, I think the High Court’s new response to any challenge to the Commonwealth would be more eloquently expressed in the words of Francis Urquhart:
You may well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
F.U. Now there was a ruthless right wing PM with class.
This whole referendum proposal pisses me off no end. I voted on this once 17 years ago, and it was rejected. So why do we need to be asked again (and, if it gets rejected, probably again in a few more years). We’re told by The Australian today that it was only rejected because it was linked to fixed terms and changes to the Senate. Who says? How the bloody hell would they know? (That certainly wasn’t why I voted against it).
It’s the same with Daylight Saving (and the Republic question) - if we don’t like the answer from the people, we’ll just keep asking until we get the answer we want, and then it’s off the agenda.
GO AWAY - it was REJECTED. We’ve managed for 100 years with 3 year terms, and have one of the strongest & most enduring democracies in the world. Get to work on something that matters.
The move to close rolls is a blatant attempt at disenfranchising those who vote against the conservatives, with an estimated two-party effect of 0.3% I read somewhere. Voluntary voting though, would give a two-party effect of a shift of approximately 5% toward the Coalition, which would be a dramatic realignment of the two-party system propelling the Liberals as the natural party of government for many decades.
The only motivation behind these moves is to cement the Tories in power by electoral manipulation, like what other dictators in a myriad of constituencies throughout the planet have done. They fear the wrath of the demographics of the nation so they try to bend it. Another shining example of the universal and invariable pathetic cowardice and gutlessness of the Right.
Tony I dont think thats a very good attitude. People change their minds, the culture of society shifts - and it can shift a hell of a lot in 17 years.
Suppose a ban on something like gay marriage was built into the constitution back in 1901. A refferendum may have been called 17 years ago, but of course there would not have been enough support to change it. 5 years from now there may well be enough support, but because it was thrown out 22 years ago no refferendum should not be called - the people have spoken already, GO AWAY.
Do you see the utter stupidity of your position now?
Whatever Nic, but what Tony said.
One trial balloon I recently saw being floated by a Government guy was voluntary voting. Is this part of the package under discussion? I think this would go a long way to giving us back some of our freedoms. Why because people ought have the right not to vote. Over the last few years I would not have voted for any party given a choice. However I don’t have that choice or I will be fined. Great.
No Joe. Wrong. You only have to go to the booth. Thousands of Australians vote informal. You too can be free. Congratulations. Where would you be without me? Next problem?
If certain Liberal party branches get their way, it’s going to be very hard to get away with even thinking about sacking the Gummint.
CS
How is that free, CS, when I am compelled to go to a booth under threat of a fine or jail if I refuse to pay? This makes me free? What if I don’t like any of the parties? I am still forced to attend the bloody booth.
This makes it easier for the big parties. Freeing up voting means they would have to also think about what they are selling to the voting public that would entice people to attend the booth in the fist place. It also weeds out people who have no interest the poliitical process and would/ should not vote anyway. I don’t see how we are free to vote informal, as you say.
Dear Joe,
Your original complaint was:
Over the last few years I would not have voted for any party given a choice. However I don’t have that choice or I will be fined.
I have explained why this is false, for you need not vote for any party. OK, so let’s move the old goal posts, in the great if you’re losing tradition. Your fresh complaint is:
I am still forced to attend the bloody booth.
Sucks, huh? Good. Lazy bludger. Do you have medical insurance? You never know. paper cuts can be deadly.
CS
Ok, CS, let’s agree I moved the goal posts, although it is only a question of semantics.
as you said does not exactly fit the definition of the word, free. does it? Compelling the voting population to attend a booth is more coercion than “free”. No?
So I may have moved the goal post as you say but it does not avoid the complaint. We aren’t free if we have to go and stand in a booth so that we don’t vote. I’d rather stay home. That would be free.
Yeah what a rort, having to go to a polling booth and get your name signed off! Orwell warned about this…
I’d rather stay home.
Thanks for acknowledging the change of focus Joe. Are we not merely talking about fulfilling the most rudimentary of the duties of citizenship, the smallest price of enjoying the the most common privilege of living in a democracy? There is no compulsion to vote for a party, but in Australia this must be a positive position. No bludgers. This is not a democracy, take it or leave it mate, notwithstanding how often I also feel like the latter.
For every citizen who votes informal and is so diddums as to resent even fulfilling this most fleeting of physical democratic duties, surely it is of value for the ‘we the people’ show to know this was a considered objection, not because some merely prefer to freeload. More centrally, the booth-attendence obligation creates an onus throughout the nation to ensure everyone who wishes to participate as a citizen can. In contrast to your negative conception, this is a positive (liberal and social democratic) sense of being ‘free’.
On the other hand, perhaps you have a disability to admit, which might allow for special treatment? Or are you sort of complaining like a child might, who doesn’t want to go to bed early?
CS
I actually don’t feel liberated by being forced to go to a booth, social democracy or no. I agree with your example of the child forced to bed early, funnily enough. only thing is unfortunately I am an adult and want to be treated as such. Maybe the political process ought to treat me like a grown up and accept that it is my right whether I choose to attend a booth. I find your child example also quite interesting from the perspective that the process treats me like a child: forcing me to go to bed but disregarding the fact that I am over 18 years of age. Using the term social democracy has no real bearing on the subject, as it does not describe our system of governance.
Don‚Äôt you think that voluntary voting would add a little more flavour to our political process? Rather than enjoying a “captive audience” at the booth, political parties would also have to consider the need to actually make policy that would attract voters to the booth to vote for them.
I don’t believe coercion is a way of ensuring I participate in the political system. Enticement is: attarcting me to the booth with good policies, not by force. Yes, it is a racket, a racket supportedb y both political parties.
What surprises me is why conservatives would support this law. If the US is anything to by, the lower socio-economic groups are the ones who vote least. No wonder it is sometimes referred to as the stupid party: the Liberals.
Whatever Joe. I can tell the tide’s going out real fast here. The bottom line is that the law puts the onus on the state to clear the way for every citizen to vote who wants to, with an informal option. As a citizen, sir, you are a lemming.
I don’t think citizenship is determined by being forced to attend a political rally.. in a voting booth. It is far more than that. In reality the political process has nothing to do with being a good citizen. Obeying the law, respect for other people’s property as well as their and having a appreciation of the cultural folds of the nation make me a citizen. Not being forced to vote.
Rather than having a postive affect, it pisses me off as the law treats us like kids.
Im for a president for life arrangement; and 5-year preventative detention of anyone who looks funny.
You and yer namby-pamby voting rights. There’s a WAR on!
We should have the right to vote, not the responsibility to vote.
The differentiation between the right to not vote and the right to not go to the polling booth is a pathetic semantics game. Similar to the old anti-VSU argument that it wasn’t compulsory to join the union (just compulsory to pay the union fee!) Every reasonable person understands what is being discussed.
Just because this isn’t an Orwelian disaster doesn’t make it good policy.
Speaking of Orwell — the idea of calling an obligation to stand at a polling booth being “free” shows the absolute bastardisation of that word.
The differentiation between the right to not vote and the right to not go to the polling booth is a pathetic semantics game.
This is a pyramid of piffle. If you know anything about the US, you’ll also know that this is a semantic game alright, being played your way. Register in advance, vote on a Tuesday (a working day), stand in a queue for hours before or after work near your home (try that when you have to commute to a big US metropolis and thus can’t get back near home to vote at lunchtime), etc, etc (I’ve barely started on the hurdles you have to jump over there). The practical beauty of the Australian system is that it switches the onus, with the state having to make it dead easy for everyone to exercise their right to vote (while not making it compulsory to do so with respect to any party). Dismount from phoney high horses, please.
What cs said (in fact, everything in the above that cs said).
…and I can’t believe I’m saying that either, Doc, you old democrat!
And, Nic, yes, you are correct, I was being too extreme in my disgust - there are undoubtably issues that should be retested over time. But does anyone think that 4 year terms is among them? That there’s this massive groundswell of popular opinion, a seismic cutural shift, that demands that governments get longer terms? Hmmm? I must have missed it….
What’s this about being forced to attend a polling booth.
Since when has the option of a postal vote been cancelled?
Considering the number of countries where getting shot or bombed when voting is a possiblity, I don’t mind walking a peaceful suburban street. I also remember 18 year olds who couldn’t vote being sent to another war we were lied about.
Belgium also has compulsory voting, and that’s good enough for me.
CS: You say that there are hassles in voting in America. Fine. So what? That is not an argument to make voting compulsory. It is perfectly reasonable to expect (1) the government to make it easy to vote; and (2) the government not to punish you if you don’t vote. My high horse is quite real.
Peter Kemp: Sure, you can put in a postal vote — but that’s not the point. You all know perfectly well what the complaint is, and the only purspose of these sidetracks is to increase the noise-to-substance ratio.
Naomi: I am not arguing against the right to vote (indeed, strictly speaking I’m the one supporting it… you all support a responsibility to vote). As for cherished traditions… so was the white australia policy until it was changed. Sorry Naomi, but I’m not a conservative so I don’t accept appeals to history as justifications for policy. And finally, are you implying that men or women are disadvantages in nearly every other democracy on earth?
You say: we bloody need to be able to vote
Of course. Nobody is arguing against that. There is a big difference between being able to vote, and being fined or jailed because you made the choice to not be involved in voting.
CS: You say that there are hassles in voting in America. Fine. So what? That is not an argument to make voting compulsory. It is perfectly reasonable to expect (1) the government to make it easy to vote; and (2) the government not to punish you if you don’t vote. My high horse is quite real.
This is an inverted pyramid of piffle. You have to focus on the practicalities to understand why. The government doesn’t punish you if you don’t vote, only if you don’t go to the booth or are so slack that you can’t even organise a postal form, and don’t have even a half-baked excuse. The only real serious point here, hopefully for the last time, is that making it compulsory to go through the motions decisively shifts the onus onto the state to make it easy for citizens to vote. The example of the US shows a little of what can happen if this is reversed. Of course, as anyone who has followed the fiascos known as US presidential elections over recent years knows, the reality in the absence of compulsory voting facilitation is far far worse than I’ve suggested. More than all the practical voting benefits, compulsory facilitation embeds the very idea of voting in the democracy. Whereas a myriad subtle pressures are exerted against voting in the US, in Australia one hears the wonderful phrase ‘have you voted yet?’ all voting day long. Objectors to making voting facilitation compulsory have nought but a phoney childish semantic theoretical extremist point to dress themselves with on their side of this argument; supporters have major demonstrable practical democratic effects, adverse in the absence and beneficial in the presence of making it compulsory for the state to make it dead easy for each and every citizen to exercise their right to vote.
CS:
There is no such thing as “a US voting system”. It doesn’t exist. States decide what system they have. The Feds have very little to do with it. Tuesday was the day set by the constitution when everyday other than Sunday was essentially the same as the US was an agrarian society. Anyhow, Tuesday is practically a vaction day anyway. Employers must allow their workers time to vote. It’s the law.
Anyhow problems with a voting system have really nothing to do with whether voting ought to be made “free”.
Yes it does punish you if you don’t attend the booth or arrange a postal vote.
How about if I said I couldn’t vote because I didn’t like any of the parties. What are the chances or not getting slugged with fine? I consider that anwswer to be a very good reason not to vote.
Vapid piffle.
There is no such thing as “a US voting system”.
Well, what if I said “the voting system in the US”? Dere.
Incidentally, you also happen to be wrong on every other technical count. Only some states have legislated to allow workers time off to vote (and in those states the law works poorly). And there is a very specific reason for the date of the US election. I can’t explain everything to you all the time, so suffice to say that, when this was instituted, it specifically aimed at enabling everyone to vote - and now it works in the reverse. Talk about a disfunctional democracy, in desperate need of a law compelling vote facilitation.
Actually, I’m now starting to agree with you that it would be best for everyone concerned if you didn’t vote joe. Perhaps we can propose the ‘cambria amendment’.
CS:
Us constitution only requires that election be held on the same day for the US presidential elections. According to Wiki the rest detailed below. So the Congress enacted the law to enable Catholics to vote, it seems.
Dysfunctional? Really?
When people like you CS are surprised that a “dunce” like Bush is elected President of the US, you may want remember these recent survey results.
Washington Post Columnist EJ Dionne reported on a survey:
T]he party’s problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.
A Liberal in the US sense is not a leftist as such. If you take these poll results in mind it really means that the vast majority of the American electorate is to the right of the Democratic Party. So I think you will be thinking it is as dysfunctional system for a long time.
cs — you seem to be intentionally obscuring the issue. And stop saying “piffle”.
You ask me to focus on practicalities. Nearly every other democracy has voluntary voting, so it seems practical enough.
You once again go on your irrelevant “you don’t have to vote” side-track. This is pedantic. You either know what we mean, or wouldn’t have the mental resources to turn on your computer… so lets stop the semantics games. Just to clarify, I am referring to having to participate in the voting process. I may occasionally refer to this as “voting” simply because it’s shorter to type and every reasonable person knows what I mean.
You say your serious point is that having compulsory voting puts an onus on the government to make it easy to vote. Well, no. Having democracy puts on the onus on the government to make it easy to vote. It is perfectly possible for the government to make it easy to vote and for voting to be voluntary. Somehow New Zealand (not to mention pretty much the rest of the world) seems to be holding up in the face of the “dangers” of voluntary voting.
Your hollow abuse adds nothing. There is nothing childish or extreme about advocating voluntary voting. My argument is very clear and sensible. That argument is that not voting is a victimless “crime” and should therefore not be a crime. The burden of proof should rest on those wanting to introduce/maintain a non-voting penalty… and so far there is no evidence that compulsory voting leads to any better outcomes. Indeed, there is a reasonable argument that compulsory voting creates safe seats and therefore undermines the effectiveness of democracy in many HoR seats… and it also allows political parties to ignore their own supporters.
You finish by saying that there are benefits of having easy access to democracy. Agreed. But not relevant.
CS
.
You seem to be misunderstanding my point. It is not that I don’t want to vote. It’s more along the line that I may choose not to vote and should not be fined if I so decide.
Seeing you bring up the US.
The one big fear that plague’s the two big US parties is that voters may stay home on Tuesday because they simply don’t like what is being dished up. We don’t have this choice in Australia: sure we can roll up to the booth and vote informal but the vast majority of voters don’t this. Consequently the big parties here don’t have an incentive to really dish up policies that attract their voting base. Hence the blandness of both parties as both simply drive the ball right down the middle. In a way we can’t blame them for behaving this way, after all the compulsory voting system is what forces them to do this.
.
Piffle upon piffle.
Look, at this point gentlemen, it is best to shake hands in the knowledge that liberal and, especially, social democrats appreciate the strengths of making it compulsory for the state to faciliate the exercising of the cherished (thanks Naomi) democratic right to vote, and libertarian extremists and lazy bastards don’t. Fair enough. I think there is always a place for weirdos to challenge the prevailing substantive practical democratic wisdom at the trivial abstract theoretical margins. Pip! Pip!
Ease the squeeze boys!
As an old commo once told me: vote early , and vote often.
To reiterate: piffle piffle and more piffle. Australia has a brilliant, simple and hassle-free (unless you’re so pathetically lazy as to refuse partake of a postal vote) eminently practical and sensible democratic electoral system that is, and bloody well should be the envy of the democratic world: voting on a weekend, no hanging chads or unaccountable voting machines, central non -partisan oversight of all voting booths and a uniform system of voting and ballot marking using that high tech wonder, the lead pencil.
Make all the principled stands for your freedom not to vote you can splurt; you suckaz are spoilt for choice and accessibilty when it comes to voting and you don’t have any goddamn excuse - this pathetic anti-voting stand is an outright insult to everything we’ve established and stood for as a nation. Naomi put in plain simple terms that shoulda shamed the lot of you:
AUSTRALIANS FOUGHT LONG AND HARD SO THAT ALL WOMEN AND MEN, REGARDLESS OF INCOME OR CIRCUMSTANCE, WOULD BE ABLE TO VOTE.
Leinad:
Tell me, if don’t you like any of the political parties, what do you do? Just interested in knowing.
Now, now Joe. That’s naughty. We have already covered that question. Circular piffle.
Actually, as well as the informal option, I think there may be a case for optional preferential, but that’s another topic.
CS
I was kinda hoping someone would see the circular reeasoning. It always gets back to he same complaint, which is , “what the hell am I doing in this booth when I don’t like any of them”, or “why am I forced to spend 50c on a stamp”. Funny that, hey.
You’ve already had more than your 50 cents worth complaining about it, joe. Tell me, do you find people avoiding you at parties?
You and your piffles.
cs — you seem to be actively discouraging intellegent debate. Having failed to address my actual argument, you now just call me names: “weirdo”, “extreme” or “lazy”. Most reasonable people would interpret that as an admission that you cannot actually respond to my points.
Once again you argue that the state should facilitate the democratic process. Agreed. And still irrelevant.
Leinard… being lazy shouldn’t be a crime. Simple. If you think it should be a crime, you should come up with a good reason… not just repeat “piffle” and make simple logical errors.
Compulsory voting is not the envy of the world.
I agree that chads are a bad way of running elections. Once again — this is not relevant to voluntary voting. I agree central non-partisan oversight of all voting booths is good. Once again — this is not reelvant to voluntary voting. Same with all your other points. Nothing you said was an argument for making laziness (or not voting for whatever reason) a crime.
But to compensate for your lack of arugment… you call my position “pathetic”. Very mature.
You endorse Naomi’s comments — but ignore the fact that I’ve already responded to them. Naomi said it is good that we are able to vote. I agree. Nobody is suggesting that people shouldn’t be able to vote. I’m just suggesting that it should not be a crime to ignore an election.
I understand your point John. It has been argued periodically since I can ever remember, and I think it’s trivial in its own terms (piffle, if you will), and bunkum when you really think about it. So, yes, this is merely spirited, good humoured, polemical jousting to my settled mind. I will endeavour to refrain from futher heckling.
The truth is, push come to shove, that I actually think Australia’s demonstrably marvellous capacity to organise itself like this, without fuss or bother from anyone bar a few harmless whingers, is something of a social wonder to behold and experience - a part of what it means to be an Australian.
I think Mark said right up in the first comment. The hard heads in both major parties won’t want to spend money on getting people to the polls. Also, it is a whole other thing for them to organise.
But in principle, I think if you want to be a citizen you have an obligation to vote. Naomi said most of what I would want to say, except that the whole business of getting the vote out would create a different dynamic around an election, a dynamic that doesn’t contribute to democratic decision making IMHO.
Yep, the small loss of freedom not to vote is more than compensated for, many times over, by all the benefits ennumerated by my learned friends above.
John Humphreys, your position is logically correct and coherent of course but it places far too much weight upon one aspect of living in society. The right do as you bloody well please. Every day I wake up thinking, to day I’m just gonna please myself. A Me day. It’s never happened yet.
If voting is irksome to you just see it as similar to when you had to dry the dishes as a kid.
Speaking of the chains of living in a tribe, voting will never approach the level of burden upon my liberty that complying with bylaws regarding the disposal of hardwaste in The People’s Watermelon Republik of Yarra! This weekend was shot.
WBB
It’s not the burden so much, as people don’t seem to understand. It’s the capriciousness of lawmakers thinking they know what is best for us (along with people who should know better). There isn’t a party I support that I would be happy to hand over my vote. Rather than fight for it as they ought to, the major parties make me roll up to a booth in the hope I will turn over my vote.
This isn’t democracy in action as some suggest. IT’s a racket run by lawmkers to support their existence with the minimum effort.
Naomi:
I’m beg to disagree. Small parties exist and thrive in countries that maintain optional voting. If a party of any size needs a law to survive that forces people to vote that means they don’t deserve to survive in then market place of ideas, which what politics is really all about.
“Ahem, like it or not, the reason we appoint lawmakers is to decide what‚Äôs best for us”.
I am not sure I agree with you on that one. That’s why I would prefer not to vote as I believe I am best able to choose what’s best for me on nearly all things except defense and the like. Not some quack sitting in Canberra.
It suits all parties to focus election work on the day of the election, rather than on working to get the voters there in the first place.
Sure I suits all parties to maintain the current racket. I agree. Isn’t it a little ironic that you don’t think they ought to be working hard to get people out to vote? Isn’t that what they are supposed to do?
Hmm. How about this for a solution? We set aside a few hundred square miles of the country somewhere for all the people who don’t want to vote and don’t much want law-makers deciding what’s best for them and leave them to get on with things. We’d need to put a bloody high wall around this privileged little spot, of course, to keep whatever they were getting on with safely contained when they get out of hand and the price of fava bean and chianti futures goes through the roof.
There isn’t a party I support that I would be happy to hand over my vote.
Do you have any arguments that are based on something more than “I don’t like it”?
Like, how democracy would be improved, or how society would benefit?
Or how voluntary voting would suddenly lead to the creation of a party to whom you would give a vote.
Or how not voting and getting a Government anyway is a good thing.
Because at the moment, your argument is basically that making you do something twice every three or four years is unacceptable, regardless of what it does to benefit society, in all the ways Naomi has spelt out.
Amanda:
To be perfectly honest as a conservative with a libertarian bent, I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation why I don’t want to vote. In fact, I really don’t understand what you mean that my vote and this law benefits society. Wasn’t it Maggie Thatcher who said the concept of society does not exist? My argument doesn’t just explain that I don’t like the current system. It explains that this law takes away my freedom. And freedom is pretty important, right?
I really don’t care if people don’t think it would be an improvement to the current system. That’s not waht I want to judge. I simply want to right to vote to become an option.
Naomi;
I can’t handle libertarism by itself because to be a libertarian means essentially that you can’t have an opinion in a lot of areas: that’s not human.
Thatcher did not say that in reference to the economy. She was referring to people who mischaracterize the term “society”. Like her, whenever I see that term I always think two things are gunna happen. Either my freedoms will be curtailed in some fashion or my pocket is gunna get picked. I am not often wrong.
People co-operate not because of some pie-in-sky belief they are doing so to help others. We co-operate because in a way we are helping ourselves. I let the baker bake my bread because he is better at it. I let a doctor check me out because he or she spent some time training in a field that requires a very high IQ. We don’t co-operate because we love each, we do so because it is very much in our interests.
That’s exactly what I am saying only you put it better than I could hope to.
I really think you are looking at this backwards. Market Capitalism, which is mischaractorized by the left as the law of the jungle is nonsense quite frankly. Market Capitalism could not exist without the rule of law. It would be impossible.
The term “social contract” is a socialist concept that has nothing to do with market capitalism. In fact it is its enemy.
I keep reading a recurring theme in this thread, which goes something like this: what’s it matter donating a little bit of freedom for the greater good, such as, compulsary voting if it means smaller parties can breathe in the open.
Well, I’ll tell you what happens. What happens is that we end up with laws Bracks introduced attempting to stamp out racial prejudice: Racial Villification laws.
I recently read a piece in the Melbourne Age defending those laws. And what do you think was the theme: what’s giving up a little freedom speech if we can all live in Utopian freedom of racial harmony.
I only wish Bracks and Co. could leglislate to make uus all billionaires.
Keep a close eye on what’s under your bed, joe. You never know.
CS
I bought a futon to stop them and it did. But they made a life for themselves on the web.
joe, I think that says it all. You are essentially saying that when we appear to cooperate we are really exploiting other people. Some people like cooperating and get satisfaction from seeing others achieve.
I think people who exploit others for there own satisfaction are best left in their own company.
Someone wake Rosseau up and tell him he’s a socialist. And responsible for Victoria’s vilification laws.
Brian:
it’s not exploitation to appreciate that a baker makes better bread than I do. Or that a film maker makes better movies than I could imagine. My point was that we co-operate by offering a service or making goods we do well. This doesn’t exploit anybody, does it?
The problem we have is that most of us don’t understand the level of co-operation because of the veil of money. In a barter type economy the baker co-operates with the candlestick maker by creating a surplus of bread that he can barter with the candlestick maker. These exchange could be explained as exploitation.
I wouldn’t want to live away from others because I value what they do for me in terms of making my life better, which I pay for. Similarly I do the same back.
Uh? Yes you read some Adam Smith, joe. What did that little summary have to do with compulsory voting?
Bad news Joe, as compulsory voting illustrates, we’re evolving so as to distinguish the unselfish co-operators - those who have a sense of justice, or a sense of gratitude, or feel bound by loyalty to their partners, associates and fellow citizens - from calculating co-operators such as yourself, who co-operate only because they see it as in their own selfish interest. The good news for us is that, as more of us form co-operative relationships only with the unselfish co-operators, then unselfish co-operators will do better than the remaining throwbacks to calculating co-operation, and social evolution will naturally lead to the survival of the most co-operative. We’re on your case pal.
Actually, that’s one of the few sensible things Latho said - when he looked at research done post the election it was only Labor voters who cited any reasons for their vote having to do with the community or others. Liberals all cited “keep me safe”, “keep my mortgage down”, etc.
CS
And I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. It’s real neat and shiny too.
You’re just trying to get me back for that town hall clock I stuck you with. Here, take a towel too and dry yourself off - concentrating on those green bits behind your ears.
The old RWDBs were more funny.
And cs and I are seemingly the only Lefties stoushing at the moment. There’s only so much we can do.
Just lamentin…
I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation why I don’t want to vote.
Then don’t expect to persuade anyone, joe.
Your style of argument bears a striking similarity to my three year old’s. Really. Sometimes he doesn’t want apple juice, it has to be orange juice.
And Kim - they were funnier, and it was often on purpose. *sighs*
Cough
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1583365,00.html
Cough
I think that Tim Lambert vs. trolls thing has killed the atmosphere of the blog. It injected a nasty note into the stoushes, people on both sides got antsy, EP went away (as I tried to point out before - he actually played a really useful role in spurring people to argue), Mark got pissed off with Rob (largely understandably in my view), the anti-Tim Lambert mob took up residence (but they’re no fun), hesitant commenters stopped commenting, Liam took a break, and now it’s just a few of the regulars saying anything, and some random RWBDs of the second division.
I suppose we’ll have to thank the blogging gods for Jack Strocchi soon.
I hope we can get our mojo back.
Signified by my gravvy turning grey.
*Sob*
CS
Kindly explain to me how your system would work. This co-operative system of yours.
Kim:
Lambert’s view of a troll is anyone who disagrees with his far left, never been outside of a campus ideology, along with samckings of Latham’s neurosis.
Anthony:
If it’s in the Guardian, it’s gtta be true, right?
Hey Joe (good name for a song), knock yourself out here (for starters). If you can show some comprehension, I’ll consider throwing more light your way - socialists believe in education.
I think one has to look at the systemic effects of voluntary vs compulsory voting - Joe’s emotivist arguments won’t do.Let’s take a public choice economics perspective on this. Think of the political market the same way you would a normal market with the basic function of capturing individual preferences and maximising the sum of preference satisfaction. On the one hand it could be argued that compulsory voting is likely to reduce the quality of policies that political parties adopt because by forcing people who have no interest in voting or public policy to vote it must design policies that appeal to people who have not made much of an investment in informing themselves about the packages on offer. It would be a bit like a normal market where the consumer isn’t well informed so you would expect the quality of the product on offer to be low. On the other hand, with voluntary voting there is no guarantee that politicians will have incentives to design better policies either - rather those least interested in politics might be those representing the median of opinion and by definition their preferences are probably represent a high percentage of the populations’ and therefore should be weighted higher than they would in a system of voluntary voting where the most strongly motivated to mobilise themselves wouild be the extremes of opinion - in other words, politicians might not offer packages that weight preference appropriately under a voluntary voting system because the outliers are weighted more heavily.
Nats have come out against it, according to the Fin.
I don’t mind the idea of simplifying bloc voting and preferences for the Senate though.
Strangely, in my reading of Latho’s Diaries, I didn’t notice anything that would correspond to:
Does this refer to an “enemy” named Sam C. King?
A slang term for neural pathways connected with Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
Just stoushin…
“Anthony:
If it‚Äôs in the Guardian, it‚Äôs gtta be true, right”
Joe
The George Mason University Economics dept which is responsible for that neuroeconomics research is well known for its explicitly libertarian Austrian economics slant
I miss EP.
Indeed. Those Anti-Lambertists were a most tedious and regrettable interlude.
I can honestly say Ive never enjoyed blogging less than when they issuing their tiresome and repetitive rants.
Jason:
When I grow up I want to be just like you. Smart, able to recite every philosopher during the last 200 years but with the added advantage that I will, unlike you, not just rote learn to recite it. I will try to understand it.
Mark, asked that all refrain from bringing past hatreds over to his blog. I do suggest yopu follow his advice.
Look at the treads I have spoken on at this site. Not one could be even remotely classed as abusive.
So I suggest again, that if you want to attack me, go over to Lambert’s paradise and ask him for a special spot. I’m sure the old dog would be willing to.
what on earth are you on joe? i wrote a long, fairly esoteric response about how to better analyse voluntary vs compulsory voting from a public choice perspective? where have i been abusive aside from calling your argument emotivist and correcting you about George Mason University? you’re the one lacking an argument
Joe, you may not be abusive, but you are boring and repetitive.
At least Evil was entertaining and repetitive.
Naomi:
I commend you on your altruistic efforts. I honestly do. The world is made better by people like you and if there is a God, you ought to be at the head of the line for entry through the pearly gates. Not enough of what you do is recognized. Please accept these commens in the sipirt intended.
My comments in no way implied that efforts like yours should go unoticed or reduced. You seem a good person and there ough to be more like you.
hey nabs
can you hook us up with a snort of what joe’s having?
I have no idea why Joe thought that Jason’s comment was offensive or reflecting past hatreds or something.
Unless it’s a general reflection on public choice theory
Hey, Zoe, there’s a really good sperm theft incident in an early episode of The L Word.
What did Jason do wrong? I’m afraid Joe’s lost it.
“can you hook us up with a snort of what joe‚Äôs having?”
I think I should hook him up with a snort of what I’m having (Jameson with a teensy dash of soda.)
Once Joe moved on from his Tim Lambert obession he actually settled down to some informed and thoughtful interchanges earlier on this thread, along with an OK futon joke.
I think he just gets a bit excitable when the numbers on the screen are flowing against him, or when the ex emails him about the alimony, and likes to lash out a bit.
Also I think the demographics of LP are getting to him. He’s probably more used to angry white men snapping at eachother over statisitical minutea. I think the combination of fashion conscious socialists, smart and pushy women, clever Asian-Australians, serious young insects with a bit of nous, film loving RWDBs and smartarse old bohos is throwing him a bit.
Have another whiskey Joe. It me for works.