[extropy-chat] 2-party-system = 1-dimensional politics (was polls again)

[The Avantguardian]

--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have to take issue with most of what you said,
> Stuart. I think that
> the current two party system is the result not so
> much of
> one-dimensional thinking, or other causes you
> mention.

That's ok. If my post got you to delurk, it did its
job. ;) 

> It is better
> explained by economies of scale in a form of
> marketing that strongly
> relies on our tribal tendencies.

The problem with economies of scale is that they tend
toward monopolies and collusive duopolies quite
frequently. Monopoly in turn reduces competition which
reduces innovation and exchanges the free-market for
the "mega-market".

> Both parties have
> marketed themselves
> as champions of the poor, pacifists, hawks,
> small(er) government
> advocates, champions of progress and defenders of
> the faith,
> frequently at the same time.

Yes, which just goes to show that they embrace no true
lasting vision, principle, or philosophy and instead
just seek to maintain their duopolistic grip on the
American people.

> I fail to see any
> substantive
> differences between the major parties on important
> issues, if averaged
> over periods of twenty years or more. And, of
> course, there are
> economies of scale in selling ideology: a large
> organization trying to
> maximize their appeal has an advantage over smaller
> sellers of exactly
> the same ideology. That's why there is only one
> party per large niche:
> there is no small Democratic party, since this large
> supplier
> outcompetes any comers.

Yes and also serverely limits the available types of
idealogy on the market. The point of espousing an
idealogy at all is that it should promote ones
biological and economic survival. 

> 
> Now this leads to the second element: tribalism. The
> most important
> predictor of voting Rep vs. Dem is what your parents
> used to vote.

That is not a very rational reason to vote for a
particular party. I can see why people do it because
it exploits the in-born tendency to mimic ones parents
as a model of successful survival behavior.
But the ground in politics shifts so quickly compared
to the natural environment, it is hardly an adaptive
behavior to run a 21st century nation.

Throwing stones at tigers may have been a great
suvival tactic back in the days of my glorious
ancestor Og, but it isn't a very adaptive behavior in
the modern age when there is a speeding bus barreling
down upon you.   

> This imposes seemingly
> impossible demands
> on political parties: being different while staying
> the same.
>The
> young Republican cubs want to be Republican like
> daddy but they want
> to be a different shade of Republican. Very
> importantly, for a tribe
> to exist, there has to be at least one out-group to
> identify yourself
> against. Without the outsider to rally against, the
> tribe is likely to
> splinter on its own, making outsiders out of its own
> flesh.

Hmm. This is a better point. But I am worried that the
homogeneity we both observe of the two parties is the
result of the development of a homogenous "political
class" that merely tries to maintain the illusion of
an "outgroup" for the sake of maintaining the illusion
that they are being elected democratically.

The republocrats seem to just recycle old rhetoric,
without meaning a word of it, in order to line the
pockets of their bed-fellows from the ranks of special
interest.  

I can however see how having multiple parties may
contribute to greater factionalization of society than
exists now.
Then again a viable third party may be able to operate
as to consolidate all of the minor-third parties. Thus
leading to more societal cohesion by mopping up the
misfits so to speak.  
 
> Now combine the strictures of mass marketing in a
> democratic system
> that existed for a few generations with tribalism,
> and you get a
> solution: at least two, but not more than three
> major parties, that
> differ in minor details and shift their image over
> periods of twenty
> years or more.

 There are some countries with dozens
> of parties: this
> is where tribal affiliation goes not to the party of
> your parents, but
> to the extended family or clan.

This seems to be a good solution for America. America
seems less a "melting pot" than a "pot of stew" with
all manner of tribes bound together loosely by the
broth of freedom. Freedom, which need I remind you, we
are losing because my hypothesized collusion of the
duopolistic republocrats. 

> There are some
> countries with only one
> party but they are less likely to be true
> democracies. The two party
> system seems to be a common outcome in stable
> democracies due at least
> in part to the mechanisms that I described.

And in part perhaps to the mechanisms that I
described. They are hardly mutually exclusives and the
actions of individual players in key positions can
hijack so called market forces for their own benefit. 
 
> Now, I admit that this is a rather boring
> explanation: there are no
> cliques scheming to keep new political vendors out,

Admittedly I may have made it sound like the biggest
conspiracy since the cyanobacteria tried to poison
their neighbors with oxygen, but it need not be
orchestrated by a handful of masterminds in order to
have evolved.

> there is no
> connection between the two-party system and the
> fictional "decline of
> the middle class" (which actually enjoyed the
> largest ever increase in
> numbers and in political power in the last century),
> no relation to
> the "growing inequality" 

Well I make it a point not to believe everything I
read, but I can see it on the streets as well. Check
out:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/29/news/economy/wealth_gap/index.htm

Do you have contradictory statistics you would like to
offer?

> There is no master plan by power
> wielders to destroy the
> middle class and support the poor (in fact, no
> serious democratic
> politician ever cares about the poor, because hardly
> any voters care
> about the poor,

Don't the poor voters care about the poor? Of course
they do, which is why you have to use sheriff officers
to keep them away from the ballot boxes. 


 and of course the middle class that
> votes does not
> want to destroy themselves either).

Yet surprisingly, if it came out as a ballot measure
here in Taxifornia, it might actually pass:
Proposition 99: Ban H2O- people drown in it you know.

> It's the outcome
> of hundreds of
> millions of people making decisions, embedded in
> institutionalized
> tradition and guided by various inborn propensities.

It is the reduction of a vast human mind generated by
billions of neurons down to a single bit of
information: Blue or Red.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."- Siddhartha Guatama aka Buddha.


 
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