An alternative to political parties? A new democracy?

[Grummgug]

I'm having a bit of late night thinking after having played a lot of the new Civilization: Beyond Erath game and I've been considering how flawed the political system is because of political parties and how they work. Or rather, how they don't work.
We all know that prime example that is the United States and how the two polarized parties have often come to such terrible conflicts that the entire country had to stop because of it.
All of us can probably make examples similar to that from our own countries and we often see how this political system becomes much more of a problem than a system that should be working for the betterment and progress of our peoples. We see how ideology divides us, makes some richer, most poorer. We see division and this division causes strife, conflict and chaos.

Perhaps the problem lies in ideology? That the division of thought ideology creates is also what holds us back the most? Does sentimental, illogical and often purely emotional thoughts stop us from actual progress?

What could there be, to replace a political party system? Do you believe that there might soon be a great new revelation in politics that might change things?

My head is so full of questions and thoughts that I can't put into words!

You cannot eliminate political parties unless you eliminate the freedom to assembly. As long as people are allowed to organize and form groups, political parties WILL form. People LOVE to groupthink and form alliances.

Maybe outlaw all political parties except one. If you do that tho, that one political party quickly develops a "tin ear" and stops listening to the people, because you have no other option but to vote for that party. Power basically gets transferred to the party. Like if we outlawed the republican party and only the democrat party could hold office, elections would be meaningless because only democrats could hold office. All REAL power would be transferred to the either the Democratic National Committee or the Chair of the Democrat Party (both unelected positions) & they would probably wind up serving life terms and dictate what the government should do. Government would collapse into a dictatorship.

All the options are far worse than what we currently have.

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Replace Representative Democracy with Direct Democracy.

Direct democracy doesn't work long term because people will just vote themselves money from the public treasury. Its like those experiments where they put a rat in a cage with two buttons. Push one button and the rat gets food. Push the other button and it stimulates the pleasure center of the brain. What happens is the rat just keeps pushing the pleasure button constantly until it starves to death. That's what direct democracy is like. Give everyone a direct vote on everything and they will lose all self-control, vote themselves everything, and wreck the country. They'll probably vote themselves $5000 every week and spend it on hookers and blow.

The Founding Fathers solution to prevent the above scenario was a republic (a representative democracy) where you vote for someone to represent your interests in government. Also, it was a requirement to own land. Owning land was a fair measure of self-control. Only people who demonstrate self-control should vote. Unfortunately, we've somehow decided its a virtue that everyone should vote (its not). That's causing problems.

[Crissi]

The way I see it, if Washington couldnt get people to not form parties (one of the few universally beloved American figures), then NO ONE is going to get people to abandon parties.

[Xarkan]

I'm having a bit of late night thinking after having played a lot of the new Civilization: Beyond Erath game and I've been considering how flawed the political system is because of political parties and how they work. Or rather, how they don't work.
We all know that prime example that is the United States and how the two polarized parties have often come to such terrible conflicts that the entire country had to stop because of it.
All of us can probably make examples similar to that from our own countries and we often see how this political system becomes much more of a problem than a system that should be working for the betterment and progress of our peoples. We see how ideology divides us, makes some richer, most poorer. We see division and this division causes strife, conflict and chaos.

Perhaps the problem lies in ideology? That the division of thought ideology creates is also what holds us back the most? Does sentimental, illogical and oftne purely emotional thoughts stop us from actual progress?

What could there be, to replace a political party system? Do you believe that there might soon be a great new revelation in politics that might change things?

My head is so full of questions and thoughts that I can't put into words!

I think the problem lies in the medias need to push the idea of conflict and the political parties need to actually get media attention in order to get elected causing rational thought and compromise to be a loosing path

You can have an ideology and still compromise to get as much of your ideology promoted as you can. The issue then is again that the media presents such compromise not as the party working for its ideology but as if it was a betrayal of the ideology.

Granted the bigger issue is that the population in general is eating it up, accepting that the democratic process is made impossible.

Or that is my general thinking

Removing parties would not solve the media issue, a lack of political parties would just mean that people of like minds would band together in what was essentially parties (unless media started to micro manage their nonsense making every vote impossible)

[Sledfang]

The problem is that the people who "rule" and decide for all the rest have no humanity left.

Oh please. The people that rule are indeed often selfish, but this idea that the rich or politically powerful have no humanity or that they are an evil that needs to be overcome is fighting ignorance with ignorance. People who are born poor think they are virtuous and selfless, but really they would be no different then the people they hate, if they were born rich.

[Grummgug]

Oh please. The people that rule are indeed often selfish, but this idea that the rich or politically powerful have no humanity or that they are an evil that needs to be overcome is fighting ignorance with ignorance. People who are born poor think they are virtuous and selfless, but really they would be no different if born rich.

Actually one of the most famous social experiments of all time explored his assertion that rulers lose their "humanity".

Its called the "Stanford Prison Experiment". The experiment was conceived to try to understand how Nazi death camp guards could possibly be so brutal in WW2. They assigned 75 student volunteers the role of prisoner or guard and ran a "fake" prison in basement of one of the campus buildings. It was originally planned to run for 7-14 days. The experiment had to be stopped after only 6 days because the guards were really beginning to internalize their roles and becoming increasingly savage and brutal. 6 days. Imagine what years were like to the Nazi guards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

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You might also like the third wave experiment to see how easily people turn into monsters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave

The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during the first week of April 1967.[1] Jones, finding himself unable to explain to his students how the German population could have claimed ignorance of the extermination of the Jewish people, decided to demonstrate it to them instead.[3] Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and told his students that the movement aimed to eliminate democracy.[1] The idea that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride."

First day[edit]
Jones writes that he started the first day of the experiment with simple things such as proper seating and extensively drilling the students.[3] He then proceeded to enforce strict classroom discipline by emerging as an authoritarian figure and dramatically improving the efficiency of the class.

The first day's session was closed with only a few rules, intending to be a one day experiment. Students had to be sitting at attention before the second bell, had to stand up to ask or answer questions and had to do it in three words or fewer, and were required to preface each remark with "Mr. Jones".[3]

Second day[edit]
On the second day, he managed to meld his history class into a group with a supreme sense of discipline and community.[3] Jones based the name of his movement, "The Third Wave", on the supposed fact that the third in a series of waves is the strongest, an erroneous version of an actual sailing tradition that every ninth wave is the largest.[3][6] Jones made up a salute resembling that of the Nazi regime[1] and ordered class members to salute each other even outside the class. They all complied with this command.[3]

Third day[edit]
The experiment took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in: on the third day, the class expanded from initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card, and each of them received a special assignment, like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, or the like. Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants.[3] Jones was surprised that some of the students started reporting to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules.[3]

Fourth day[edit]
On Thursday, the fourth day of the experiment, Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was slipping out of his control. The students became increasingly involved in the project and their discipline and loyalty to the project was outstanding. He announced to the participants that this movement was a part of a nationwide movement and that on the next day a presidential candidate of the Third Wave would publicly announce its existence. Jones ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement.[3]

Fifth and last day[edit]
Instead of a televised address of their leader, the students were presented with an empty channel. After a few minutes of waiting, Jones announced that they had been a part of an experiment in fascism and that they all willingly created a sense of superiority like German citizens had in the period of Nazi Germany. He then played them a film about the Nazi regime to conclude the experiment.[3]

[Sledfang]

Actually one of the most famous social experiments of all time explored his assertion that rulers lose their "humanity".

Its called the "Stanford Prison Experiment". The experiment was conceived to try to understand how Nazi death camp guards could possibly be so brutal in WW2. They assigned 75 student volunteers the role of prisoner or guard and ran a "fake" prison in basement of one of the campus buildings. It was originally planned to run for 7-14 days. The experiment had to be stopped after only 6 days because the guards were really beginning to internalize their roles and becoming increasingly savage and brutal. 6 days. Imagine what years were like to the Nazi guards.

That really doesn't prove anything. A prison guard does not truly have that much power, they certainly are not "rulers". That's like saying cops or infantry are "rulers". They are not, they are just grunts. They have to do exactly what they are told by the real rulers and If they get out of line they get canned. Even if your job includes doing something "evil", not doing it and getting fired then having your family starve to death can also be seen as "evil". Which really means these folks were not being evil, they just did what they had to get by.

[Chain Chungus]

Direct democracy doesn't work long term because people will just vote themselves money from the public treasury. Its like those experiments where they put a rat in a cage with two buttons. Push one button and the rat gets food. Push the other button and it stimulates the pleasure center of the brain. What happens is the rat just keeps pushing the pleasure button constantly until it starves to death. That's what direct democracy is like. Give everyone a direct vote on everything and they will lose all self-control, vote themselves everything, and wreck the country. They'll probably vote themselves $5000 every week and spend it on hookers and blow.

The Founding Fathers solution to prevent the above scenario was a republic (a representative democracy) where you vote for someone to represent your interests in government. Also, it was a requirement to own land. Owning land was a fair measure of self-control. Only people who demonstrate self-control should vote. Unfortunately, we've somehow decided its a virtue that everyone should vote (its not). That's causing problems.

Are you for real?

This is exactly what your representatives do. They legislate everything for them and their lobbyist friends. They only pretend to have populist interests where it is politically expedient. Giving that same power to everyone equally is the only way forward.

The founding fathers only cared about protecting their personal interests and didn't like the idea of poor people being able to tell the wealthy landowners like themselves what the law should be.

You sound like some Ayn Randian type that loves when the elite oligarchy gets to have all the power like some feudal lordship.

P.S. Switzerland has a direct democracy and it functions 1000% better than this corrupt representation nonsense we have in the states.

[Grummgug]

Are you for real?

This is exactly what your representatives do. They legislate everything for them and their lobbyist friends. They only pretend to have populist interests where it is politically expedient. Giving that same power to everyone equally is the only way forward.

The founding fathers only cared about protecting their personal interests and didn't like the idea of poor people being able to tell the wealthy landowners like themselves what the law should be.

You sound like some Ayn Randian type that loves when the elite oligarchy gets to have all the power like some feudal lordship.

P.S. Switzerland has a direct democracy and it functions 1000% better than this corrupt representation nonsense we have in the states.

There are problems with representative democracy as you have well detailed. But you are missing the point - direct democracy is WORSE. Representative democracy is the best we can do.

[Grimbold21]

Democracy is overrated. A not always informed and sometimes uneducated majority puts a certain party in power.

[Revi]

As long as you have democracy you'll have parties, there's no way around it. Other forms of governing do work without parties though like monarchy, autocracy, potentially technocracy etc.

[Kujako]

The country was founded by people who where against political parties. As Jefferson said "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all". Right up until there was a divisive policy, the founding of the federal bank, then everyone split into two groups and started fighting. And thus was born the American two party political system.

[Aeno]

The country was founded by people who where against political parties. As Jefferson said "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all". Right up until there was a divisive policy, the founding of the federal bank, then everyone split into two groups and started fighting. And thus was born the American two party political system.

Except that Jefferson pretty much led his Jeffersonian Democrats. Against Hamiltonian Federalists. (Edited because I was a stupid stupid )

George Washington was vehemently against parties, even said it in his farewell speech.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Direct democracy doesn't work long term because people will just vote themselves money from the public treasury.

That's already happening in our representative democracy. It's just that groups WITH money have a louder voice and more votes now because of citizens united.

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Also, I went to go download Civ: BE cause I didn't even realize it existed, then remembered that a new civ game means I won't get anything productive done for the next week, and I'd spend the rest of my vacation in my hotel room.

[Elegiac]

Except that Jefferson pretty much led his Jeffersonian Democrats. Against Madisonian Republicans.

George Washington was vehemently against parties, even said it in his farewell speech.

Yes, too bad he was a better general than political scientist.

Parties, formal or no, are an inevitability in any representative institution simply because the strength of being part of a group scales exponentially.

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Are you for real?

This is exactly what your representatives do. They legislate everything for them and their lobbyist friends. They only pretend to have populist interests where it is politically expedient. Giving that same power to everyone equally is the only way forward.

By and large, this is false.

The vast majority of expenditure legislation and earmarking is for local projects; American politicians are extremely attentive to their own constituency - hence the very high reelection rates in both House and Senate. The issue is that they look out for local interests at the expense of general social interests - they behave too much like delegates and not enough like trustees.

The founding fathers only cared about protecting their personal interests and didn't like the idea of poor people being able to tell the wealthy landowners like themselves what the law should be.

Ideally neither should be doing as such - it should be people educated in fields pertinent to the legislation.

P.S. Switzerland has a direct democracy and it functions 1000% better than this corrupt representation nonsense we have in the states.

Switzerland also has a population of only eight million.

[apepi]

Switzerland also has a population of only eight million.

Perfect Idea! lets separate each 8 million people into their own country!

[Kujako]

Perfect Idea! lets separate each 8 million people into their own country!

Oh the wars we could have!

[Daethz]

America will never leave the two party system.
The two parties are the only ones who can disband the two party system, and the two party's have no desire to disband themselves.

The real problem in America is, well, two things, two party system & money in politics.
Any time you have corporations or even extremely wealthy people donating massive amounts of money to politicians, well, that is just corruption, and it is rampant in America. All of our presidents, congressmen and even governors are bought and sold, they are a commodity.