
Germany's Pirate Party Looks to Win More Seats - ytNumbers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18017064
======
muuh-gnu
In other news, former German president Roman Herzog, member of the (for now)
largest party, the Christian Democratical Union CDU, suggested that having new
parties like the Pirates entering parliaments is bad for overall democracy
because it is increasing political diversity, and should be combated by again
increasing the election threshold, which is now at 5%. According to the
interview he gave recently, increasing political diversity in the parliament
decreases support of a goverment and the chancellor, which could destabilize a
country, meaning less dissent in the parliament, more stable country.

The two big parties are basically getting threatened by the internet and are
obviously ready to go nuclear by threatening to simply team up, get
supermajority required for a constitutional change, and "optimize" the
political diversity down to 2 or 3, US style, maybe even 1, by simply throwing
the annoying emerging competition out of the parliaments.

~~~
jacquesm
More parties being bad for democracy is extremely funny.

It would be nice to see a total abolition of parties, in fact in most
democratic constitutions the word 'party' is never mentioned.

People should vote for other people, not for parties.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> It would be nice to see a total abolition of parties

Abolishing the formal definition of parties wouldnt help, because like-minded
people would still team up and form de facto parties, so nothing substantial
would change.

> People should vote for other people, not for parties.

In Germany, you have both. There are two votes, the first one is for people,
the "direct candidates". The second is for the whole party, which again is
represented by a list of candidates determined by in-party elections.

~~~
zanny
In the US, party affiliation is listed on ballots. Removing that affiliation
might start subconsciously breaking people off from thinking every member of
the DNC and RNC are running on some unchanging monolith platform of the party.

------
rowla
I voted for the Pirate party here in Berlin, and occasionally it seems their
success surprised them more than anyone else.

Right now, both the established political parties and the voters are
fascinated by the Pirates. From nowhere to 8 % - that's quite a feat in our
slow-moving political landscape. It also means that both the party and those
rooting for them are a mix of young people, disappointed voters from both ends
of the political spectrum, libertarians and many other factions.

Many Germans are fed up by what is often called a One Party system in
disguise, where labeling decisions as "without any alternative" has become
Chancellor Merkel's favorite move. There were several large-scale attempts at
Internet censorship / filtering (it used to be child pornography yesterday,
it's terrorism and copyright violations today, and it'll be something else
tomorrow), and more and more people see through the whole theatre.

However, I'm afraid that everyone and their grandmother will project their
hopes on a very young and very heterogenous party. There will inevitably be
some disappointment.

But then, to quote Groundhog Day: "Something is... different. Anything
different is good."

~~~
gurkendoktor
> From nowhere to 8 % - that's quite a feat in our slow-moving political
> landscape.

I actually feel that the slow-moving days are over. The recent rise and fall
of the FDP was spectacularly fast too, without anything happening, or the FDP
even changing their opinion _at all_. (The FDP is a libertarian/neocon party
with some interest in civil liberties.)

------
biafra
'They call it "Liquid Democracy" and it involves members making suggestions
online which then get bounced around through chat rooms, which they call
Pirate Pads, before emerging from cyberspace into the real world as policy.'

Liquid Feedback is a server software (implementing LD for an organization)
that allows proxy representation. If I think person X can vote for me on topic
Y, I can say so by using LF. And I can change my mind from one minute to
another not only every 4 years. Here is a longer explanation:

<http://communitywiki.org/LiquidDemocracy>

Pirate pads are not chat rooms but Etherpads to work collaboratively on
documents (that happen to have also a chat function).

~~~
rmoriz
Everyone should check out the source code of Liquid Feedback (LQFB). It's
really a mess of pg pl/sql and lua. Zero! tests.

<http://www.public-software-group.org/liquid_feedback_core>

[http://www.public-software-
group.org/liquid_feedback_fronten...](http://www.public-software-
group.org/liquid_feedback_frontend)

------
10dpd
I've always been intreagued by the notion of democracy and allowing people to
choose their leadership. All political systems sound good on paper.

But my point is this. At a psychological level people are driven by emotion
rather than logic. Most of the general public do not understand or are
interested in politics. They do not have the indepth knowledge required to
make a good decision. Rather they rely on the media to tell them who to vote
for. Depending on the economic circumstances at the time, the ordinary person
will vote for the person who promises to overcome their short-term pain, while
ignoring the consequences for the long term. The most recent example is
Greece, where the people have voted for a government that is threatening to
wreck all progress to date on solving their financials issues for the sake of
easing austerity.

Thoughts?

~~~
jellicle
Yes, democracy is the worst system of governance we have, except for all the
others.

In Greece, voters punished the two main parties who colluded to fuck them over
so badly, by voting for other parties. In fact, almost 20% of the parliament
is now composed of members of brand new parties - brand new because many
voters don't feel their interests are being represented by the older parties.
Isn't this result exactly what we would want and hope for in a system of
governance?

> is threatening to wreck all progress to date on solving their financials
> issues for the sake of easing austerity.

Oh my.

~~~
jacquesm
I think the Greek situation is rather more complex than that it can be summed
up by two parties fucking over the voters.

Greece (and a whole bunch of other European countries) has a system of
governance and a corruption level that is very different from other EU
countries, and as such probably should not have been part of the EU to begin
with.

Now that they're in Greece is in a position to reap the benefits of that fact
but the countries that have for many years (Germany foremost) kept the weaker
countries afloat are now themselves getting into trouble. This upset a lot of
apple-carts and now we are at a very difficult moment for the union and for
Greece.

As it is there are no real good solutions. Greece leaving the euro zone or
being forced out will have big consequences for all parties involved and
likely the end result of that route would be _much_ worse for the general
Greek population than any level of austerity that is currently in effect.

Greece staying in the eurozone will require a lot of very unpopular sacrifices
in many places, the end result of which will be a much weaker euro.

There are no winners in any of these scenarios, only losers and it will take a
long time (decades?) to fix this problem properly.

What you are seeing here is the result of the EU growing too fast in order to
win the pissing match about which economic block is the largest on the world
stage. If the forging of the monetary union would have been done in a more
restrained fashion a lot of this misery could have been avoided.

Cowboy politics a decade ago are what caused this, emotional reactions to the
problem at hand certainly won't repair it overnight. It will get worse before
it can begin to get better.

~~~
VinceGuillardi
>the end result of which will be a much weaker euro. There are no winners in
any of these scenarios, only losers

Germany is the winner in this scenario. Having the Euro as a currency is a
great boon to their national economy. They were at a trade deficit when they
used the DM, but ever since the inception of the Euro, they have been
cleaning-up export wise.

Germany benefits from the Eurozone as consumers from EU nation-members can buy
German products with no trade impediments. Germany benefits even more from a
weak Euro as it makes their products very attractive for purchase from non-
Euro countries.

~~~
soc88
> They were at a trade deficit when they used the DM

Not in the last ... 30 years.
<http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/balance-of-trade>

~~~
barrkel
It's true that they didn't have significant trade deficits, but the current
trend of trade surplus date pretty much from the Euro - look at the full trend
of data from the source you link to, from 1971 to today. It stands out quite
clearly.

------
forgetmyid
"The reason for their quick growth is that they are new and that's enough at
the moment. But not in the long run." Gero Neugebauer Political scientist,
Free University Berlin

So what? To paraphrase Keynes, in the long run we are all dead.

I really dislike such dismissal without some sort of context such as whether a
short term gain might or might not have any effect and why. But then again the
journalist only wanted a contrary quote for 'balance'.

~~~
soc88
The fun thing is that “they are new” now lasts for almost 6 years. How long
will we have to wait for the “long run” now, considering that exactly the same
thing was said 6 years ago? :-)

~~~
netrus
They ride the "we are new" horse themselves, to explain their lack of
expertise and knowledge in many pressing political issues. They are a new
party, so people will look over some gaps, but this cannot last forever (maybe
not even until the federal election next year).

------
mburshteyn
There's a new California Pirate Party springing up too:
<http://www.calpirateparty.org/>

------
spoiledtechie
I love this so much. I am an American. I wish the American Republic was the
same as the German Democracy. Such an idea will only take time to take shape.

I salute Germany and the Pirate Party for taking a such aggressive stance
towards true democracy.

------
jacquesm
The pirate party will continue to win seats until the larger and more
traditional parties will need them for a swing vote.

The election after that one the pirate party main points will be part and
parcel of the established parties' programmes.

~~~
Riesling
> The election after that one the pirate party main points will be part and
> parcel of the established parties' programmes.

I doubt that. One of the main points of the pirate party is to take power away
from the politicians and give it back to the people (via direct democracy and
member votes). The existing politicians would need to change things massively
to their own disadvantage.

~~~
VMG
Or they could just use buzzwords and meaningless gestures to mislead the
public, like they do now.

------
diminish
pirate parties are simple revelations of the internet revolution. ultimately
knowledge society needs its own political forces and conflicts.

------
xtiy
The power of the people shall be heard.

