[extropy-chat] If the nonUS citizens voted in Nov 2 elections...

[Brian Lee]

I think the UN accomplishes what the 10 foreign seats in the US House would 
accomplish. It just violates the sense of sovereignty. Should New York 
citizens have 2 respresentatives in the NJ/Delaware/CT/etc houses and 
senates?

A society should elect its own representatives, not representatives for 
other societies.

As for the ill-will toward the US. I think that the US will be hated no 
matter what it does because it is the lone superpower and there is no threat 
to make other countries cleave to us. Wait 50 years and then everyone will 
hate China for being the lone superpower.

BAL

>From: Eliezer Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com>
>To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] If the nonUS citizens voted in Nov 2 
>elections...
>Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 16:03:10 -0400
>
>Brian Lee wrote:
>>I think one of the important priciples of democracy is that only members 
>>of a given set vote as they have a vested interest. It's rather foolish to 
>>allow non-citizens to vote as their concerns are unlikely to coincide with 
>>the concerns of the society holding the vote.
>>
>>We'd get all sorts of wackiness like landslide elections that redistribute 
>>all wealth away from US/Europe into poorer countries, etc.
>>
>>BAL
>
>Would it be so terribly dreadful if the rest of the planet got 10 seats in 
>the House of Representatives?  It might go a long, long way toward easing 
>anti-American resentment, and maybe even bringing a faint tinge of sanity 
>to this country's foreign policy.  I think at least 30% of the hatred out 
>there is due to America's - no, Dubya's, let's give credit where it's due - 
>way of appearing to just *completely not care* what the rest of the world 
>thinks.
>
>--
>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
>Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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