Pirate Party Gaining Strength In Germany 242
bs0d3 writes "For the third consecutive regional election, The German Pirate Party has breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote in state of Schleswig-Holstein. From the article: 'The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.'"
Arrg-tung! (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone explain to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Informative)
Ten minutes and Google would have given you all the info you needed [lmgtfy.com].
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Informative)
They don't seem to have an overt foreign policy platform; but I'm going to take the wild guess that they aren't particularly hawkish.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understood, the German PP tries to advocate the original direct democracy over the current representative democracy by utilizing social networking as a forum for collecting votes on each issue within the party. The problem with system itself originally was scaling, it simply didn't scale well beyond small city-state sized community and only now do we have realistic technological means to try to make it actually work on larger scale.
There are some issues with this approach, but it's certainly far more democratic then various representative democratic systems we currently have in the West.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, direct democracy doesn't scale very well above a village level population, let alone a small city. The problem is that the issues quickly become complex enough and numerous enough that keeping abreast of them is a full time job. Yes, it is useful to get everyone's input for some major piece of infrastructure. But for direct democracy to really work you have to find a way to get the population just as engaged with reviewing the sanitary regulations.
What you quickly get is a small class of 'professional' politicians who guide and control the general votes. But since it theoretically remains a direct democracy you get none of the necessary controls and safeguards intentionally built into any sane representative democracy. And since the full time politicians don't enjoy the same official position that they would in a representative democracy they typically find less official ways to compensate themselves.
I'll take a well designed representative democracy built around proportional representation or preferential voting (or some mix of the two) any day over the nasty mess of a large scale direct democracy.
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Hybridization? (Score:4, Interesting)
You raise a good point, but it seems equally apparent that representative democracies pretty much universally fall prey to corruption. I don't know the details of how Germany's government works, but in a US context where our congressional branch is split into a Senate that represents each state equally and a House of Representatives that represents each state based on population, I've often thought that the latter might be profitably replaced with a direct democracy. Or perhaps a third "House of Commons" branch could be added with any two branches being able to override the third. Or maybe just give the Commons the ability to veto and repeal laws unilaterally to keep the career folks in line.
There's lots of different ways it could be implemented, and I think now that the technology has made it possible it would be good for governments to start exploring ways in which direct democracy could be integrated into the system. Probably not replacing the existing structure, as you point out you'll have trouble getting the populace interested in a lot of the menial details of governing, but it seems like some measure of direct voice would help to counteract the creeping spread of corruption and cronyism. Even if it's largely advisorial to start with - if politicians had a central source where they could get direct information as to the leanings of their constituents who care enough to take part, perhaps even draw upon them for suggestions - I imagine something like an "Ask Slashdot" about how a bill under consideration could be improved. And I do think veto power would be a good thing, even if the bar is set pretty high to start with - say you need 60-70% of participants to vote against it, with some minimum quorum of citizens participating. Basically a leash to keep the representatives in check on specific issues rather than being limited to replacing them entirely.
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First-past-post systems like the US or UK tend to be worse than proportional representation so they don't give a completely fair view of representative democracies. When you basically just have to buy two candidates to win each election corruption becomes very cheap. Proportional systems are slightly less susceptible as the population has a chance to get someone who represents them into power and the corruption tends to take a while.
The Swiss system where a number of citizens can call a vote on an issue see
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I'll give you the first-past-the-post criticism, I'd *love* to have a proportional system in the US, but as you said it only slows down the spread of corruption, we still need to find weapons to actually fight back with, and I think direct democracy (preferably the kind that doesn't involve violent revolution) is probably the only one with a real chance of success. Politicians will likely always be for sale*, whether they're bought with campaign contributions before they're elected, cushy jobs after their
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Have you ever heard a politician speak? I'm quite sure they can make you think they said something without saying nothing even remotely connected. So lie detectors would only work if you could also force them to answer direct questions.
An argument for direct democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Your critique of naive direct democracy - that leaders arise, but are informal and therefore not subject to safeguards - is an excellent one. But it's not enough.
Consider that the United States today suffers under exactly this scenario. Informal unelected elites have captured the levers of power to the point where the U.S. is not looking much like a democracy any more. This was accomplished despite the excellence of the design of the American system the strength of democratic principles among the American people - a citizenry still fairly engaged, and which was formerly also relatively well educated and informed.
Democracy is often present as the mechanism through which individuals, born citizens with their own preferences and interests, express and negotiate those preferences and interests, ideally with an eye to the common good. According to many advocates of direct democracy, this is wrong. We are not born citizens. It is not citizens who create democracy: rather it is the practice of democracy that creates citizens. We do not come to politics as individuals with already developed preferences and interests. It is by engaging with others in public discourse and debate that we learn to be citizens, to reason, to participate in public discourse, and through this process we discover and develop our preferences and interests. Democracy is thus a process of education. One of the great failings of representative democracy is that instead of treating us as active and evolving partners, it relegates us to the role of disengaged consumers who occasionally choose one option over another.
Yet realistically, even if we were to provide the perfect mechanism for people to participate, most of us, lacking interest and starved of time, wouldn't: with results like those you describe. One intriguing alternative draws on the jury system and the elections of ancient Athens. Decisions would be made not by professional politicians, but by randomly-selected groups of citizens with their range of private expertise. Such groups would be charged with investigating a particular issue for a period of time, after which they would disband.
I realize juries (chosen by counsel more for ignorance than independent thought) are typically reported as dysfunctional, and I don't doubt that this is so. Yet it only confirms that we do not know how to be citizens: and when it is demanded of us, we fail. Through failure, though, we can learn, and teach others. Forming a jury today, when virtually no one has substantial experience, amounts to throwing together a bunch of greenhorns and expecting them to spontaneously become experts.
For an idealized view of how a jury can teach its participants to be jurors, I suggest the film 12 Angry Men. I admit am not convinced of the wisdom of such a system. But if I was forced to choose, I would place my fate in the hands of a court rather than a politician. I would trust a random selection of my fellow citizens over a self-selected professional of politics. For with the crises we face today, our common fate is indeed the question.
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I disagree. It's a trivial one, and it doesn't address the basic improvement to "direct democracy" that has been with it from the start: lotteries. (Al least you do).
Excellence? By their fruits ye shall know them. The framers of the US constitution had many objectives, but all of them want
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That was invented 2500 years ago, it's a shame that you haven't heard about it: Sortition, or selection by lot.
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There's a middle ground here, realistically there's 7 parties in our parliament so my vote amounts to <3 bits of information every four years, maybe 5 bits on the outside if you include every party. Make that ~1 bit in the US. You're right I don't want to read the thousands of pages from every committee and proposal at work in the political system and manage every line item in the budget, but I don't have to be involved at every step of the way. If I got to vote on say 20-50 major changes each years for
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Make that ~1 bit in the US
In C, ~ is the bit inverse (or "not") operator.
"Not one bit of information."
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I agree with your critique but there's plenty of ways of addressing it. To pick one, everybody gets to vote on any issue or grant their vote to a proxy. That would lead to popular proxies getting many votes and so effectively create a different sort of politician.
I'm not saying my suggestion is perfect - for instance knowing your support can vanish in a flash is likely to lead to extremely cautious decision making (fear of rocking the boat). I just wanted to point out that the direct democracy strawman h
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Do the current politicians inform themselves about the issues, or do they mostly just care about what their party is saying vs. what their opposition is saying? How many of them even read the laws they are voting on?
Professional politicians would make sense if they studied the issues. But most of them are too busy playing games with their opponents to do much more then rubber stamp anything their lobbyists put before them.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I call BS! I am a Swiss and we have direct democracy and it works well, THANK-YOU!
The idea that issues become too complex is another pile of BS! Issues are not complex, issues are simple. What is complex is when you tie somebody's "emotion". A representative democracy IMO is the BS because what it does is give certain people power above everybody else. Do things move faster in a direct democracy? No, it takes time, but that is good because I hate the knee jerk gotta do this now or the world will end type reactions given by politicians.
The way Swiss direct democracy works is that the government are careholders and they carry out the day to day functions. It is the people who make the choices of what goes forward. This means that even though we have to ability to decide the sanitary regulations we usually don't. Our democracy does not run amoke because unlike a representative democracy, each person in parliament will not play party politics. For they know if they act like partisan eff heads then the vote will go to the people. And once it goes to the people it is out of their control!
Case in point the 2 billion CHF fighter jets. The SVP wants it badly, and they want the extra monies. The other parties have said, "try it, and we will put it to the vote of the people." Then the SVP said, ok no extra money, but the departments will have to cut their expenses. Again the other parties said, "try it, we will put it to the vote of the people." The SVP completely backed down, and now is cutting their own expenses and saving the monies so that in 20 years they can buy the jets. In other countries like the US, what is Romney saying? Oh yeah cut everything, but don't touch the military! ssheeshhh...
What I really dislike about representative democracies is that they are run by minorities. They are run by people who demonstrate enough, who protest enough, or who scream enough. Notice how in Switzerland there are so few protests? Answer, because the people know that if they don't like something and want it changed they just need to put it to the vote of the people. As a result many of the things that people in representative democracies scream about are not voted on because they would never reach majority...
BUT the biggest and best thing I like about our democracy is that we like to keep our money. If something costs more money we don't vote it in because we know we have to pay for it with more taxes. We don't vote rich people tax breaks, but we also don't rip them apart either.
So if you counter argument is California on how not to do direct democracies, I say, wait be careful. While California has its issues, it is also a place where people want to be. So in that vein California is not that bad. The difference between California and Switzerland is that California people like to spend, we don't...
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Just to make our anglo-saxon friends heads asplode:
The government is formed by 5 parties. That's right. FIVE. There is the occasional drama(just remember when Blocher wasn't elected in 2007...it was beautiful to behold...) but nothing lasting. Or sinister.
Also the amazing thing is their take on direct democracy. A couple of weeks ago the population voted AGAINST 2 additional weeks of vacation. While some say that the mainly the pensioneers
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
For direct democracy to work you dont have to give up representative democracy, you can make direct democracy optional, like in switzerland, so that if enough people _want_ to vote on a topic they perceive important, they can.
At the current representative level, we're basically not allowed to vote on copyright, becaue our "representatives" dont like the probable outcome of the vote. So they simply enforce their policy against the "will of the people", leaving us with a de facto dictatorship with respect to copyright. We cant vote on it, and those we voted in wont do as we want, leading to a situation where the law whether something is legal or illegal absolutely does not represent the public opinion whether something actually is right or wrong.
In switzerland, representative democracy works as usual, but if enough people collect signatures, they have a way to vote to override politician's decisions. They can stop unpopular laws. In Germany, we cant. If our goverment decides to crack down on filesharing, we cant stop them. If our goverment decides to go to war against iran because of some "NATO obligations", we cant stop them. All we can do is wait for 4 years and then vote in somebody else and pray that he wont do the same, because we cant stop him either. The whole problem originates in the fact that our politicians, once they're in after making false promises, they _know_ that they're literally unstoppable and behave accordingly.
What Pirates want for Germany and what the Swiss already have in Switzerland, is to make politicians stoppable and their decisions reversible, immediately by popular vote, not by waiting 4 years and then hoping their successors are going to reverse it like they "promised".
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I don't know about your country, but in mine (as well as in most of Europe) this path doesn't work.
You can collect signatures and get 100% of the voters to sign it, all that accomplishes is that the parliament has to DISCUSS it. They don't even have to vote on the matter, let alone vote FOR it.
Direct democracy without restraints is dangerous, no doubt about that. But the current form of "we pander to you every 4 years and the rest of the time you shut the hell up" isn't much better either. It's more Judy an
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More democratic, yes, but democratic isn't a synonym for good.
Representative governments (huge caveat: when working properly) are superior to direct democracy because the average voter doesn't have enough time to become informed on every issue. Instead, they find someone they trust, and give that person a full time job investigating issues and voting appropriately. It's a great system, except that in practice whoever we hire ends up getting bought off. The way to fix it is through draconian regulations o
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I call BS, BS, BS... As I commented in a previous post about direct democracy...
You say representative democracy is better because the average voter does not have the time. Oh really? You mean the country they live in does not deserve a few moments of their day? After all it is not that important right? This is the attitude that I DETEST! Your country is your country because you can vote and live in it, and like a garden it requires care. Sure you can hire a gardener, but unless you are willing to look at the work done by the gardener your garden will look like crap!
This is what has gone wrong. Citizens in a representative democracy have hired gardeners, pay them, but complain if a bleeding branch is in front of their window. The garden can go to heck in a hand basket, but heaven forbid a branch clutters their window. The only way to fix government is to have people vote on the issue when necessary...
THis is an open source forum, and last I heard open source is good because there are more eyeballs looking at the issue and hence less bugs. Can this not be said about direct democracy as well? Sure not everybody votes on all issues, but you will have enough people looking and asking questions that if anything were bad it would be raised very quickly.
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There are some issues with this approach, but it's certainly far more democratic then various representative democratic systems we currently have in the West.
The question, of course, is whether we really want a true democracy.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Winston Churchill
If you could have an idealised system where (a) anyone who cared enough to get properly informed on an issue and develop a considered opinion had earned the right to vote on that issue, (b) any time an issue required significant debate there was magically a freely available forum to host that debate, and (c) enough money grew on t
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The question, of course, is whether we really want a true democracy.
Absolutely, unequivocally, no.
Direct democracies can be beneficial to a point, but it's harder to create a tyranny of the majority if there is a systematic framework in place which makes changing certain aspects of governmental operation incredibly difficult. All one need do is look at any number of societies in existence now and in the past, where support for incredibly horrible practices was near-universal, to understand why completely un
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> Absolutely, unequivocally, no.
Well, maybe you dont, but I do.
> create a tyranny of the majority
Can you give me an example of a direct democracy gone wrong? You probably cant, because the only direct democracy existing is Switzerland, and it works perfectly fine. I, on the other hand, can give you a long list of the supposedly better representative democracies gone wrong. Nazi Germany grew out of a representative democracy, for example. Hitler was an cleanly elected "representative". And because thei
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You think so?
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."
Goering said that during the trials. I feel kinda odd quoting him, but sadly, he is right. You can get everyone to vote for something or follow your actions if you grab him at his honor or instill fear in him, depending on the predisposition of the people. That works in democracies as well as it did in dictatorships. Actually, a lot of dictatorships had their roots in democracies where people were brainwashed into believing they are being under attack or some other doom will come down on them i
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It's a bit sad how this myth continues to spread, with no one lo
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> The problem with system itself originally was scaling, it simply didn't scale well beyond small city-state sized community
So if real democracy is impossible above a certain size, does that mean that getting (or staying) above a certain size is a method to circumvent real democracy?
If Germany is too big for direct democracy, then split it up in chunks small enough for direct democracy to work.
I think that they're attempting a similar coup with the EU: First get big enough for representative democracy to
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Correct, they're more parrotish.
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The type of person? Mostly the 20-30 something, never really worked and did 6 years of French or 4 of Maths.
They dream of publishing a book or making a movie or some open source project. Drive a very expensive Euro car, enjoy blogging about distilled beverages, wealthy parents look after them.
i.e. lost in post-colleg
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Give me some more descriptions of what you imagine your political opponents to be like!
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So basically, Apple users?
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:4, Informative)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/wiki/images/0/03/Parteiprogramm-englisch.pdf [piratenpartei.de]
This is the manifesto in english. The changes to this manifesto need 2/3 of votes on a party conference.
The statues are not available in english, so I'll post the translated German version:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&twu=1&q=piratenpartei+grundsatzprogramm?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A//wiki.piratenpartei.de/Bundessatzung%0A [google.com]
As for the rest (positions, election program) please try to find it yourself or ask.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite interesting here in Germany - they've definitely got my vote, mainly because they've more or less stated, "We don't know everything about every issue, and are unwilling to voice statements or views on these issues until we've had time to look at them."
Compared to other politicians and parties, who will just start blowing hot air in order to save face, that's very refreshing. They don't seem to be quite sure where they're going, but at least they have the balls to admit it. Basic direction is on their website though (just run it through Google Translate).
Oh, and they seem to be kicking out anyone who's ever had anything at all to do with the modern Nazi parties, which is always a good thing.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Interesting)
In the meantime they refreshingly don't have a stance on everything since they don't need a party line for each issue. That's what their members got their own minds for.
They do fill the hole the FDP(liberal party) left when they jettisoned their social-liberal wing and became a pure party for tax exemptions for their voters.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger gets kicked out of government for resisting implementation of EU snooping laws then I do hope she finds a home with PP. A politician with a nearly flawless track record is a very rare thing.
Being a liberal party they have their own problems how to deal with members who have a crap, neo-Nazi past. Which got blown way out of proportion by their political rivals, I may add. The past 5 years most parties had their own problems with extremist idiots.
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Let me see if I have this right - they have your vote because they admit they can't be bothered to keep up to date on the issues?
Oh, the Pirate Party is blowing hot air too - you just refuse to realize it.
Re:Can someone explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me give you an example how this not having a stance on everything manifests itsself.
In Germany a very popular question to ask a politician is his opinion on Israel. That's a political minefield. Anything you say will be used against you.
Some media bozo asked the new head honcho of the PP. His reply was that they didn't need to have an opinion on Israel and that the voters wouldn't punish that. Shimon Stein(former ambassador for Israel in Berlin) went on record that this is potentially the right way to start a constructive public discussion in Germany and Schlömer does deserve credits for his authentic and and honest answer instead of giving the usual knee-jerk formulaic answer any hardened politician would give. Which would have been that safety of Isreal is important as is the end to the Israel/Palestinian conflict.
Stein's original opinion piece(German): http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,830968,00.html [spiegel.de] Honesty is a forgotten virtue in politics. It's nice if established politicians notice that. I wouldn't mind if this were common place.
This weekend was a major election weekend throughout Europe. Of course there were lots and lots of political talkshows featuring the usual talking heads. One of those had Jo Ponader from the PP in it. He spent most of his time twittering and listening. The most noteworthy thing he said was that he only had to sit there and smile since the representatives of the other parties did all his campaigning and called them a garrulous lot.
At the moment the PP gathers the votes of the disappointed and propably is a protest party. But over the past few months they have gained much substance and have the potential to become more than an experiment. At the moment they have a couple of teething problems. But the next few years will show what becomes of them.
I'm willing to vote for the experiment. Any party you vote for potentially fails you, so I willingly went with the experiment. It does help that they lean into the social-liberal direction I prefer and interestingly there is no party in Germany that fits into that political spectrum. This has a lot of potential.
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But over the past few months they have gained much substance and have the potential to become more than an experiment. At the moment they have a couple of teething problems. But the next few years will show what becomes of them.
In 2009 when they got 2% in the national election they were an experiment, getting 8% of the votes is something that's already resonated with a large part of the population. Most parties go make-or-break on the minimum limit that is 5% in Germany I believe, either you get above it and become established or you fall below it and fizzle. Berlin, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and in a week Nordrhein-Westfalen they're now passing and not with 5.1% but way past. Unless they screw this up themselves, I think the P
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But yes, the PP is leaving the experimental phase. Which is why I think their current teething problems are so severe and loud at the moment.
But please remember that they had to scramble in Saarland so they could participate in the election. IIRC the had to build a campaign, a party manifesto and a list of candidates within only 5 weeks. What's so astonishing is that they m
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Whether the PP stays or folds depends IMO on two issues now, just like it did when the Greens started to emerge in the 80s.
What allowed to Greens to stay was on one hand their uniting nucleus that held them together when a few fringe groups and radicals tried to tear the party towards different directions, and on the other hand the utter ignorance of the other parties who ignored the environment issue long enough to allow the Greens to take roots in the parliament.
The same applies now. If they manage to sta
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I think they are wrong. Until half a year ago I didn't take them seriously. They seemed to be a rag-tag lot with not much in common. No clear manifesto, nothing to identify with. Clearly a joke.
Then I read whatever manifestos they improvised or copy&pasted from other parties. Then it stroke me. The
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It's not only the votes of the disappointed. Less Germans are voting overall, and this has been a trend for years, but while the established parties are all losing votes and pretty much only gain percentage points when they just don't lose as much as the others, the Pirate Party has been gaining votes, including from people who had previously decided not to vote in past elections. Their success is not only an expression of disappointment, it's also an expression of renewed hope and belief in the democratic
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No, they have my vote because they are honest. Instead of blabbering meaningless gibberish trying to mask that they don't know what the fuck is going on (as the average politician does), they simply go and admit that they don't have a position on that matter yet, or that he, this very politician, isn't informed in this matter and that the matter might be better answered by another party member that has the information or that has dug into the matter.
Why can't politicians say "I don't know"? Why do we keep p
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Apart from that they are very libertarian. They want to keep religion out of policy making. They reject GM crops on basis of the patent burden since they don't think organisms should be patenable. While they think that kindergarden is a very important thing it's up to the parent
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Then PLEASE support Stephen Dion as he wants to change the Canadian voting system where it is part "first through the gate", and part proportional representation. I think New Zealand has the same system... But yeah I agree with you the Canadian system SUCKS!!!
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Wow then you really have not been reading the news have you now... Germany does pass policies, and things do get done. What definitely does not happen in the same extreme is the demonizing that goes on in America. Taxes? No no more taxes! Never, never... An American said to me that he wishes a monarchy would come to America. The reason being is that people vote on emotional issues, not on actual problems. He himself is a conservative and very religious and hates the "if Jesus were here" type of rhetoric...
Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dodging the man is fun and all, and certainly can beat the alternatives; but playing cat-and-mouse with state power can be a poor long term strategy. You have to get away with it every time. They only have to catch you once...
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It's called "independent" and it's the only party that should be allowed in a representative democracy anyway.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor is there any real substantial access to matching Federal funds available to any 3rd Party candidate. If you're not a Republicrat (and I use that word to mean both wings of the Party, Democrat and Republican, it's all the same anymore except for transient soundbyte generating fluff disguised as Vital Issues), you're pretty much out of the consideration, especially when the Party keeps saying 'If you vote 3rd party, you're wasting your vote!! Vote for us instead!'
With zero options, and the Party finally being upfront about it, the 88% just doesn't vote anymore, they're smart enough to know there are no real choices, just different sets of meat puppets with the same set of hands up their asses.
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Turnout in Germany is always fantastically high compared to the UK and US. Clearly we are doing something wrong. I think it might have to do with the German system being much more fair and allowing smaller parties like the Pirate Party to get some power, so people feel it is worth voting for them. When you have a choice of only A or B and you don't like either there isn't much motivation to vote.
How about (Score:2)
The People's Party. Their platform could be focused on government transparency and accountability, some candidates might even incorporate certain aspects of direct democracy to guide their voting on issues not related to their platform.
Yeah, sounds rather similar to another party with the same initials but as you say it's all in the name.
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There is a reason why Francisco Ibanez uses a swooping vulture when he depicts their party emblem.
And that's only ONE People's Party for
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
legalize all non-commercial file sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think it's the most important IP issue we have, since, if we're shutting down websites for copyright infringement, we are shutting down websites. And thence, we cannot discuss anything freely.
Re:legalize all non-commercial file sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly I think that may be going too far - there are good reasons for copyright even if it's gotten out of control in the last half-century. However there's a difference between supporting copyright and supporting draconian enforcement policies. And yeah, I think we need to simply accept that realistically there's no way to enforce it without trampling all over privacy and free speech.
Still, if we gave copyright a realistic duration (Maybe 5-10 years? I'm betting the majority of profit has been made by that point) and made violation a strictly civil offense so copyright holders could hunt down and sue individual infringers if they were so inclined, but law enforcement wouldn't get involved, I think that would be enough to keep honest people honest. If you illegally host a lot of copyrighted data on your web server expect to be shut down and fined - AFTER a trial. But in an environment where it's understood that there's lots of alternate sources for that data I don't think they can make any sort of argument that you should be shut down prior to the trial to prevent ongoing damages.
There are some issues there with unenforced laws degrading the respect for all laws, but that's an endemic problem hardly restricted to copyright. You don't see SWAT teams hunting down jay-walkers and litterbugs, but likewise you (hopefully) don't see a lot of folks flaunting those laws directly in front of an officer. In such a way does society declare a code of acceptable behavior and punish the worst offenders so that the code is obeyed by most of the people, most of the time, which is all any law will ever accomplish.
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True, the pirates have always represented a radical position in the matter, but with the demands of the copyright industry radicalizing even more, many people view them as a lesser evil. And if I have to choose, I would sacrifice rather the music industry than the internet and free speech.
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Honestly I think that may be going too far - there are good reasons for copyright even if it's gotten out of control in the last half-century.
I'd say it's gotten out of control in the last few centuries. Copyright used to say "if you bring a book through our port we will copy it." Now it creates an unnatural monopoly.
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The former head of the Green party Angelika Beer joined Die Piratenpartei. The German Greens are not a crackpot party and Angelika was a member of the German parliament for over 10 years. After that she was a member of the European parliament for 5 years. So she also is an established parliamentarian. And she left the Greens after she became disenfranchised with how housebroken they were.
The German Pirate Party has quite
Why Schleswig-Holstein? (Score:2)
What's there that's not in other parts of the country?
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yesterday? elections
The 16 federal states of germany have their elections on different dates in a 5 year cycle. The next one is next sunday in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The PP won seats in all of the last 3 elections and is prognosed to do the same next sunday. The next federal election is fall next year but that is to far ahaed to give any credible prognosis for this small, new, sometimes chaotic party.
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Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd mod you flamebait but instead....
All this shit that's happened is because a handful of uber rich fucks are in bed with a handful of uber powerful fucks. The pirate party is for exposing that and being more open. Why do we have dinosaur-lifespan copyright? Because Disney is in bed with the US congress. And every other country is in bed with US Congress, at least when it comes to copyright.
So let's shine a light on what's going on between the sheets.
Shine a light ... like this ... maplight.org ...? (Score:5, Interesting)
maplight.org matches how politicians get paid by donors with how they vote and displays the correlations as nice graphics.
Cool ... Lessig thinks so too.
How to deal with this corruption?
Lawrence Lessig has a good idea about this:
search for his talk titled "How money corrupts Congress and a plan to stop it" on fora.tv and other sites.
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Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
And so was I. Look at the big winners in the housing market bubble. Who came out on top, and who lost? This was possibly the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the uber wealthy in modern history. How many of the uber rich have lost everything? How many middle class people have?
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People should have really listened to the lecturers in Economics 101.
It doesn't make sense to own your own home. Period. Why pretty much every government is advocating home ownership is beyond me (Granted, it used to be wealth that was relatively hard to tap into, thus forcing medium income peeps to save up, but nowadays even that's not true). There are only a few cases where home ownership makes sense; First, if it is a really truly unique home that simply is not available on the rental market (Not many of
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't make sense to own your own home. Period.
It (usually) doesn't make sense to own your own home as an investment. Otherwise, the above sentence is completely moronic, as most absolute blanket statements tend to be.
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It doesn't make sense to own your own home. Period.
It (usually) doesn't make sense to own your own home as an investment.
If so, it is a mightily awkward one. Especially if purchased using leverage. In the latter case, your landlord merely happens to be your banker. You're additionally saddled with an illiquid asset that might prevent you from moving then and there should an opportunity arise. And whatever inflation-adjusted net profit you might eventually make would demonstrably have been better invested in growing your business or in liquid assets.
Some of the consistently profitable businesses during the gold rush sold shove
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In most markets (reasonable markets...not the fantasy markets that are sucking right now) the cost of a home closely tracks the cost of an apartment of similar size.
The buy needs to pick and choose tradeoffs. If you don't want the hassle of the landscaping and other maintenance, then an apartment works out.
If you want space that is your own, then owning a home makes sense as long as you are willing to put up with the hassle. Many people (including me) enjoy the "hassle".
But my home is not an investment in
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I did some experimental runs with a real estate administration software which was the main result of a project I worked with and I compared it with alternate investments or none at all for different income, taxation and interest levels.
There was a clear picture: A very narrow band of income actually profits from investing in a house, because they can then save on rent, and the savings on rent and the investment in real estate in sum trumped the possible income of paying rent and investing the surplus into m
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The way I see it is that by owning my own house I'm cutting out the middle man, thus reducing the total cost.
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Well. someone has to own the house.
Yes, but as they say here: You don't need to buy a cow if you want milk.
And I especially talked about buying a house on loan and then paying it off for the next quarter of a century. Imagine 25 years of interest on your investment money, even if it's only $100 per month you are saving!
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The major difference between your house and an apartment is that in 30 years you pay the same amount in rent on an apartment, but once you pay off the loan, you own the house. It's actually yours. And even when the bank owns most of it, it still counts are *your* asset. Your credit is better, you get tax writeoffs and you can even take out loans against it. If you are old, you can then turn it into a reverse mortgage to help your living expenses going forward.
Sure, there are expenses, and so there is a
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All the Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he said a lot of problems are caused by rich and powerful corrupting the political process, and then gave an example using copyright law.
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
(Also, in the context of a parliamentary system, it is much more usual to have assorted issue-focused parties that don't need to have an opinion on all matters because their expected outcome is to end up as part of a coalition government with one or more other parties that bring other positions to the table. Given voter inertia, it is as illogical as it is unproductive to form a new party with too significant an overlap with an existing one, so you expect upstart parties to be mainly focused on some issue they feel to have been previously unaddressed or mis-handled, with the assumption that whatever coalition they end up in will take care of issues on which they don't differ significantly from the mainstream.)
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Interesting)
Specific links:
Media lives on copyright and money infusions from its owners.
Corrupt politicians live on media support.
Extremely rich own the media.
Politicians extent copyright granting media unprecedented ability to control information through legal means. Media pays back by not reporting on major issues that are harmful to political system that births such politicians (aka voluntary self-sensorship such as lack of coverage of occupy protests in USA causing a historic collapse on the reporters without borders media freedom chart).
And with extremely rich controlling both politicians and media they can ensure that laws that transfer wealth from poor and middle class to them are written and enacted while media keeps telling you that it's fair to have such laws.
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright issues is what made the pirates realize where _many_ problems, including copyright, originate: rich and powerful people (aka money) circumventing democracy.
The copyright issue crystalized that even though the majority of people opposes today's copyright, there is no way to change it, because political parties are so much in bed with IP stakeholders (which in the US for example, openly make threats "touch this protection law with a pole, motherfucker, and I wont finance your next campaign."), that they make laws _against_ the population, for the benefit of the influential stakeholders. It is a sick, dangerous symbiosis, which shouldnt be allowed to exist. They effectively shield off copyright policy from _ever_ being voted on, because they know what the result of a popular vote would be.
The pirates started out with copyright, then realized "oh fuck, this is just the tip of the iceberg" and are now mainly advocating total transparency, separation of money and state, and basic, direct democracy. If we the people have the means to vote on single issue, then we _should_ be able to directly vote on it, and not be forced delegate the vote to a "representative", whom we cant force to vote to our benefit.
The representative system has a fatal bug: a representative can make promises, get votes first, win seats, then get money, and then vote for the money wants, not for what the voters wanted when they voted for him. The only thing we supposedly can "do" about this is to not vote for the same representative again, but we cant change his once made decision. But the representative we vote in next is still subject to the same exploitability that corrupted the first one, and there is no way for the electorate to do anything to stop this bug in the system to get constantly exploited by money. The only way, and this is what the pirates are actually attempting, is to fix this fundamental bug in the system by letting voters override policitician's decisions, switzerland style. Direct democracy.
The copyright law nightmare is just a symptom of the fact that we cant directly vote on copyright law, while money can. Money gets what it wants and we dont. We can only vote on _who_ makes decisions, but money can vote on _what_ decisions he will make. So money already has a kind of direct democracy, and we dont. The goal is for us to get direct democracy, and to decrease the influence money has.
Re:All the Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
They also host Wikileaks. They have a broader view of internet freedom than merely downloading in violation of copyright.
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That could be said about the people who are doing shit like taking down websites (like Megaupload) which allow people to download copyrighted material. They're addressing extremely insignificant issues, wasting taxpayer money, hurting innocents, and enabling censoring (hurting innocents).
so they can download shit for free
They already can. Some people just want it to be legal. But you should have no complaints, right? That's the most peaceful way to go about it.
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Saving money is one of todays big challenges for states.
Stop waisting money on "intellectual property" seems like an excellent plan to me.
Given the colleteral damage of limiting free speech, dangers of abuse and censorship, it is more than just wanting to download for free.
Another criticism is the one issue character of the pirate party. I fail to see what is wrong with that. In a democracy, if an issue is being ignored by established parties for a period of time, it is only right to start a party to change
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Somebody on the internet did it, somebody actually finally did it. It's too common to mix up 'you're' and 'your'. You went and mixed up 'waist' and 'waste'. Well done Sir.
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"Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
It's a funny quote from a movie, but it has some truth to it: I find their beliefs beyond despicable, but at least they have some, unlike the current governments who seem to believe in getting the most to their corporate friends. Is it any wonder that they are growing in popularity? (Not only in Greece, but also in France and elsewhere)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party [wikipedia.org]
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This.
The problem with trying to fix the system from the inside is, once you're inside, you have a vest
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Just stumbled upon a great document that addresses that very topic. It's on market economies and the rule of law [oycf.org]. Worth the ~20 minutes to read.
Here's a particularly relevant excerpt:
The second economic function of the rule of law is for the state to enforce laws and contracts in an impartial way. This can be achieved only after the government distances itself from microeconomic decisions. Defining property rights, preserving fair competition, fighting monopoly and enforcing contracts are all essential to economic development because they are necessary for establishing credible commitments among economic agents. Without the enforcement of contracts, economic agents cannot become motivated because they will always worry about opportunistic behavior of the other parties to the transaction. But how can we establish an orderly market environment? The enforcement of contracts and preservation of competition should rest on the rule of law instead of the government's discretion. For example, the government should not be in a position to define arbitrarily what unfair competition is, or what business activities need to be regulated.
It is by no means an easy task for the government to act as a impartial arbitrator. For example, errors could occur during the enforcement of law, either unintentionally or intentionally such as when induced by vested interests. Therefore, under the rule of law, it is essential that individuals and business enterprises are empowered to challenge the government on laws, regulations and judgements and to sue the government if necessary. The Administrative Procedure Law and Administrative Redress Law that we have enacted is a promising start, but we still have a long way to go.
Another substantial barrier to the effective enforcement of law is the judicial corruption. Obviously, a corrupt judiciary, which gives rise to insecure property rights and ineffective contract enforcement, forces business enterprises to resort to the traditional way of making back-door deals instead of using legal methods when there is a dispute. This is one of the factors that suffocate economic activities. A better way to tackle the problem of judicial corruption is to create better institutions rather than relying on political campaigns.
In summary, the second economic function of the rule of law is fundamentally about how the government acts as an impartial "third-party" in economic transactions.
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true democracy
Define it with something other than "true." Using that word in that manner is only objectively correct if you mean completely unfettered direct democracy, with no restrictions on vote topic, wherein a simple majority may command anything including servitude or death to the minority on a whim. Since you go on to talk about banning PACs, lobbying, etc, all of which would be completely allowable in a direct democracy, I'm going to assume that is not, in fact, what you actually meant. If that's no
Re:Why Not Support the Remaining 99% to Also Steal (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be noted that the German Pirate Party has strayed a little from its root of copyright criticism. It's pretty much a left-wing liberal party now that has some ideas concerning copyright and privacy, but also advocates other concepts such as free education, a citizen's income, deregulation in certain areas, voting rights for foreign citizens, sustainable energy sources, and so on.
Even in traditionally tech-savvy Germany, a party that only focuses on copyright and patents can't get 8% in parliamentary elections. An important factor in the Pirate Party's success in Germany is that it's very easy for anyone to participate in the political discourse within the party, but after 6 years and with 30k members now, that was bound to produce something more than just "copyright law is broken".
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In this case over Berlin, Kiel and Sarrebruck, in all three state parliaments, the Pirates gained between 8 and 9% of the vote. The latest win were the six seats in the Schleswig-Holstein State Parliament in Kiel.
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Some of it will be protest, but the German Pirate Party is also consistently getting votes from people who had previously stopped voting. Maybe going to vote again is protest for you too, but in Germany's on-going trend of sinking participation in elections, the Pirate Party is the only political party that is gaining votes in absolute numbers.
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It also allows extremist and single-issue parties to use the balance of power as a bargaining chip to gain disproportionate influence to favour their pet projects. Conversely it can lead to paralysis & indecision on important & difficult issues.
PR isn't the universal panacea some people make it out to be.
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They are a very social-liberal in their beliefs. They don't want a nanny state, but they want state services to families and the poor to stay intact. They want the rights of migrants to be strengthened(right to vote, right to stay, right to work) while they don't think the law should enforce a quota for women in corporate decision