
American Spring - randomname2
http://startupboy.com/2016/01/15/american-spring/
======
bhauer
The continued struggle of third parties traces to our use of the "one-vote"
model of plurality voting. As long as each citizen can only cast a single
vote, their opinion is reduced to favor _one selection_ at the consequence of
all other options. It is impossible to declare support (either equal or
varied) for multiple candidates.

It remains a surprise to me that third parties do not raise the adoption of
either score voting [1] or approval voting as their pinnacle issue. Until it
is plausible to cast a vote for third-party candidates without "splitting the
vote," third parties will remain far distant stars that exert the smallest of
gravitational pulls on the two dominant parties.

The curiosity in all of this is that approval voting (effectively a binary-
scale score voting) is the _natural_ behavior of group decision making. Even
children use approval voting.

    
    
        "What movie do you want to see?"
        "Well, I'd see A, B, or C.  You?"  
        "I like C, D, or E."
        "Great, we'll see C."
    

[1] [http://electology.org/score-voting](http://electology.org/score-voting)

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jccalhoun
It is still super early to be proclaiming a change in how politics are
conducted in the USA. We haven't even had a single caucus or primary. Trump
could end up like Snakes on a Plane: talked about tons before it came out but
tanked at the box office.

As long as gerrymandering and laws that make it harder for third party
candidates to even get on ballots exist (here's the first article about it
that I found:
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-07-0...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-07-08/third-
party-ballot-access/56098480/1) ) then I will be skeptical about a real change
in the political process in the USA.

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throwaway13337
It's a wonderful sentiment but I don't think it's quite true.

Mass media still plays a large part in most people's decisions - especially
the elderly who tend to vote more.

I stand in Lessig's camp that the profound change must come from campaign
finance reform. Good luck there.

The internet does play an interesting new role that no one has quite figured
out but it is more of a mob mentality. Debatable whether that better than the
status quo. The arab spring certainly didn't make things better for the
regions it affected.

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vinceguidry
He's right in spirit but wrong on particulars. It's hard to gauge exactly how
much influence money has on politics. Certainly being able to buy ads has some
impact.

But people consistently make the mistake that established money and influence
can buy you control. It does not. It will get you a seat at the table, make it
so they can't ignore you. But it cannot and never could actually give you the
ability to, among other things, change the political narrative unilaterally.

First off, there are too many other people out there with wealth and influence
that will move to counter you. No one controls everything in America.
Otherwise-smart people think nothing of invoking "the elites" like they're all
one big, shadowy Illuminati-type construct. But nothing could be farther from
the truth.

Second, the masses form a giant bloc of influence that can just completely
overwhelm attempts to co-opt the narrative. It's really, really easy to throw
millions of dollars at a campaign and still bomb at the polls. Candidates have
to play ball with this, and it's not always pretty.

As an example, George W. Bush's image has been carefully crafted to give off
that folksy vibe, because Americans simply do not respond to intellectuals.
(until they do, Obama changed all that.) Bush Jr. is much much smarter than
anyone gives him credit for. He went to Harvard _and_ Yale. He did not just
sit on a barstool in the National Guard, he _flew fighter jets_. People with
stories of meeting or serving with him that underestimate him consistently
report that he just totally schools them.

He did not hide these things out of some duplicitous agenda, it was simply to
fit America's ideas of what it's presidential candidates should be. His
biggest failing was that he did not exercise his judgment and intelligence
enough, and allowed the neo-cons to set his policy agenda, not that he didn't
have any.

~~~
tamana
Bush is a smart fellow, but he went to Harvard and Yale because his last name
is Bush, not because he is an intellectual. He didn't engage in any academic
activities while he was there, he engaged inn upper ass social clubs. He has a
high emotional intelligence and athletic intelligence.

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unclebucknasty
Great ideal but the evidence hardly merits the conclusions. Ultimately, the
same power is co-opting the technical mechanisms that are claimed to be
democratizing.

One sign that we are at least on the way is that we wouldn't be declaring
victory because candidates can raise billions from the masses. We would
instead be celebrating that it doesn't take bilions to run.

As long as it does, then the "elite" will always have the advantage.

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iambateman
Look up "Florida Man" on Twitter and then tell me if you want a direct
democracy.

Sure, plenty of corruption exists and the election cycles are psychologically
brutal (why does it take 18 months to pick someone??). But I don't share the
same optimism about people being driven by social media.

Because in that case, a few loud voices with incendiary positions can ruin the
chance for any real debate. Donald Trump scares me.

~~~
tamana
Look up "Congressman" and then tell me if you want a representative democracy.

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fnord124124123
Sorry, but the claim that the people (non-"Elites", for some ill-defined set
of "Elites") are now free agents and "going from a republic of elites to a
direct democracy" doesn't hold up. It's tragic, but the introduction of social
media, pervasive exposure to propaganda through smartphones and television,
and the gradual improvement of computer algorithms (and deep pockets) designed
to outsmart peoples' ability to filter bullshit has done us in.

From TFA:

> YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook let one human broadcast to billions, without
> permission, without censors, without delay. Social media makes mass
> organization and resistance possible.

There is plenty of censorship on all of the above media. For an overview,
Wikipedia yields:

"YouTube blocking occurs for a variety of reasons including:[2]

    
    
        Limiting public exposure to content that may ignite social or political unrest;
        Preventing criticism of a ruler, government, government officials, religion, or religious leaders;
        Violations of national laws, including:
            Copyright and intellectual property protection laws;
            Violations of hate speech, ethics, or morality-based laws; and
            National security legislation.
        Preventing access to videos judged to be inappropriate for youth;
        Reducing distractions at work or school; and
        Reducing the amount of network bandwidth used.

"

> Social and alternative media dominates and disintermediates mass media.

Mass media _became_ social and alternative media. On steroids.

>YouTube killed TV and Twitter ate the news.

TV became YouTube, and the news became Twitter. On steroids.

> [...] the elites have lost control.

The same elites that own Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.?

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crusso
Since Sanders still doesn't seem to have much of a chance of beating Clinton
on the Democratic side, I'll confine my comments to Trump:

Trump hasn't said a single thing that would lead me to believe that he will
disrupt the establishment elites. He doesn't talk about the ethics of the
elite and how they need to be opposed. Effectively he says, "Give me the
Presidency and I'll do their job better than they do." Trump is an elite, he
just hasn't been in elected office previously. He will use and increase the
levers of power as best he is able.

The article is an interesting concept to ponder and I'll definitely be looking
out for some type of critical mass where the power of the Internet and
democracy have overcome the entrenched inevitability of the elites... but for
now it's jumping the gun.

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dawnbreez
It starts out promising, but as the author speaks on Obama the bias becomes
clear. Yes, there is a kind of accidental conspiracy--people deciding in their
best interest and the best interest of their own children, rather than the
best interest of the people as a whole. Yes, we have become so focused on the
D and the R that no real choice happens, and the way we present the election
has a lot to do with it.

Barack is not a magic bullet. Neither is Cruz, nor Trump, not even Sanders. It
isn't just the players, it is the game itself, for the game's rules are what
the players make decisions by.

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such_a_casual
Needs references.

~~~
keithrl
Here is the same sort of thing, but in long, academic, information model form:

[http://associatesmind.com/2016/01/15/amorphous-
dispersal/](http://associatesmind.com/2016/01/15/amorphous-dispersal/)

~~~
such_a_casual
While that article has some links, it still fails to properly cite its
information.

------
heurist
Yet these social networks are still corporate entities. It's only a matter of
time until powerful groups learn how to bend and twist them to suit their
goals, if they haven't already.

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Kinnard
Beautiful.

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Gravityloss
What social media did to mass psychology and politics will probably be a lot
clearer in ten years, looking back.

~~~
namenotrequired
While I agree, it's not too early to start talking about it - if only because
we've already had social media for over 10 years, and the blog does refer how
Obama used this for the first time starting ~8 years ago.

