
German Pirate Party overtakes Greens on latest poll - mariorz
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-276991-german-pirate-party-overtakes-greens-survey-by-forsa-shows.html
======
philippK
I'm from germany, and have voted for the pirate party in recent local
elections.

I'd like to add a few things: 1\. The german system of government is very much
different from the US. In the US you have by-and-large a "winner takes it all"
voting system. In germany, by contrast, we have a system of proportional
representation. That means, winning 10% of the popular vote nets you 10% of
the seats that are on the line in your voting district. That's why we
currently have 6 parties in our federal parliament ("Bundestag") - where you
have only 2 parties in congress.

2\. Although this is "just" a poll it isn't meaningless. The pirate party has
been steadily building up momentum in the last 2 years. They now are the 5th
largest party by member count in germany. They have also scored surprisingly
high wins in two recent regional elections, and are set to repeat those gains
in the two upcoming elections.

3\. The pirate party runs on a platform of systemic reform. They want
copyright reformed to be more compatible with the 21st century. They want a
reformed educational sector with more use of modern technology in the
classroom, as well as improved structures (i.e. more freedom to pursue
different educational models). They also want to reform the political system
at large, by having more citizen participation in political decisions. They
want more public votes on specific issues, as well as more transparency (For
example: ACTA was negotiated in secret and only announced to the german public
once the details were finished. They pirates strongly oppose such
intransparency.)

This helped them to capture the votes of young, highly educated people. Many,
but by no means all, from the "informatics" sector. They have also mobilized
many first time voters, and re-energized many people who had formerly
abandoned voting.

4\. What's currently also helping them is the bad state of our government (the
governing coalition is in disarray), their inability to answer to the
challenges shaping our future, their corruption (our head of state recently
had to resign in shame), their detachedness from concerns of everyday people.
This greatly helps them to get the vote of people who are disaffected with the
"established" parties and who are ready to give those "political youngsters" a
chance.

It's by no means guaranteed, but they seem to be on the way of becoming a
serious political force in germany.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
I have a lot of respect for the Pirate Party and I wish they'd put up some
candidates where I could vote for them, but I have one question: how will they
do "more citizen participation in political decisions" and avoid policy being
set by tabloid headlines, and conservative populism. The basic problems of mob
rule.

~~~
philippK
Well that is a good question.

The pirate party wants several steps in enabling more citizen participation.

First, they want to make government more transparent so that the people
actually have all the information needed to make informed decisions on their
hands. No longer do they want to accept that crucial legislation is often
negotiated behind closed doors and only announced once everything is already
sewn up. Also the contracts the government has with the private sector need to
be made transparent. We need proper open data portals. There's a lot of things
do to in this area alone.

Second, they want more votes on specific political issues on the regional,
state and federal level. Those are currently only possible in very limited
form (they are non binding for the government in most cases), and not at all
possible at the federal level.

Third, their longterm vision includes a concept called "Liquid democracy"
where basically everyone has the opportunity to have a voice in the political
process. This will be facilitated using digital means. Specifically software
called "adhocracy" / "liquid feedback" is being developed for this. The pirate
party in germany already uses this system for their internal decision making.

It's a carefully balanced system comprised of direct voting on issues, and
delegating voting power to representatives.

See here for more info on this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_Democracy>

<http://liqd.net/en/>

So i don't see the danger of inviting mob rule with the pirate party. As i see
it, they want to open up the political system to more direct participation
while keeping it stable enough to guarantee basic democratic freedoms (like
minority protections)

~~~
nickik
"Second, they want more votes on specific political issues on the regional,
state and federal level. Those are currently only possible in very limited
form (they are non binding for the government in most cases), and not at all
possible at the federal level."

The should really be looking at switzerland for some of this stuff. I think we
handle this pretty nicly.

~~~
morsch
E.g. banning building mosques with minarets, while building Christian temples
with bell towers is still allowed? Thanks, I'll pass.

~~~
nickik
Well yes this slipped threw because of the massive advertisment and fear
politics. Its a flaw in the system, laws should first be checked on human
rights and then blocked. I never said the swiss system is perfect.

I think if you look at the amount of bad laws produced this way compaird to
how much bad laws most governments creat with there exlusion from the people
its pretty clear witch fails more often.

In generall the "tyranny of the masses" is a problem in every democracy. I
would trie to solve it with a very strong civil liberty laws and a court that
can block laws that go against them, like they did in germany with the "Hacker
tools" and Communication Storages Laws.

~~~
r00fus
No, this kind of thing should be thwarted by supreme laws, ie, a Constitution,
which require a super-majority to change. "Religious Freedom" could be such a
constitutional right, which would make such "tyranny of the majority" more
difficult (but not impossible).

~~~
nickik
Agree thats what I said (or at least meant)

------
ch0wn
Politics in Germany are really interesting these days. Even if the Pirate
Party should fail in the end, the discussion it brought up is already very
beneficial.

~~~
woodpanel
High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel

I welcome the German pirates for several reasons:

\- "the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial."

\- they have a high turn out of former non-voters

\- "harmless stupidity": The German pirates seem to be ambivalent as of now.
For instance, they are the only left-wing party that's not in favor of female
employee quotas (an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia
entry <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenquote>). If they dig deeper into
this populist lefty anti-authoritarian theme (as it seems to be the case) the
first thing they will achieve is less votes for the other left-wing parties.

And personally, I think this would be a good thing (see "female employee
quotas").

~~~
ZeroGravitas
How is Frauenquote different from Affirmitive Action?
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action>)

~~~
philippK
Reading the entry - it isn't. It's basically the same thing.

What is different in germany, though, is that the discussion here revolves
around forcing private sector enterprises to have specific (government set)
quota of women in their leadership (or else be punished by the law).

Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively
discriminating against women when making hiring decisions, but not forcing
government set quotas on companies.

I can't quite imagine the US government interfering with private enterprise in
this way.

~~~
roel_v
"Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively
discriminating against women when making hiring decisions,"

Affirmative action is when two people are equally suited for a
job/position/benefit, the one from the disadvantaged group (based on sex,
ethnic/socioeconomic background, physical impairment, ...) gets it. In more
extreme varieties, it means that the one from the disadvantaged group has less
strict requirements to fulfill. In a way, a women's quota is a species of the
genus affirmative action.

------
viandante
This is good news. But I am not sure yet if I would vote for them (usually I
do not vote). Their economic policy seems not mature enough or too much
towards an even more socialist State. This is what is now failing us in most
of the western Europe.

I would really like to see some groups against copyright/patent madness AND
against public spending/over taxation madness we have been struggling with for
the last decades. Unfortunately, it seems that in Europe those ideas tend to
polarize between 2 'very' different groups such as left (and not even all) for
the copyright thing and right (and not even all) for the taxes thing. And
that's why I do not vote.

~~~
nickik
Fuck I just wrote a juge text but the link expired and I lost it.

Heres the short version:

Generally I agree and I would like to see that too.

About PP:

1\. Basic Income (BGE) is a very liberal socal policy(something I could see
Friedman or Hayek support). It rases the amount of GDP on the government side
but takes away a lot of the controll and bureaucracy that is there now.

2\. The want to take away alot of state power too, specially in police and
military. Think about what massiv change there drug policy would make.

3\. The are the only ones that I could ever see attacking finance. Because (a)
the are young (b) not infiltrated by lobbiests (yet) (c) currage to trie
something diffrent (think out of the box) (d) efficent use of tools and
communication (work on the buget like a opensource project would be something
worth trying)

Rather have liberal statist with a social side then conservativ statist with
love for police (CUD) or hardcore statist like (SPD).

~~~
roel_v
"Basic Income (BGE) is a very liberal socal policy(something I could see
Friedman or Hayek support)."

Actually Friedman (I assume you're talking about Milton Friedman here, since
there are several prominent economists named 'Friedman' nowadays) advocated
just that in 1962 in 'Capitalism and Freedom', albeit in the form of a
negative income tax.

~~~
mjn
I believe Friedman supported it sort of half-heartedly, because he thought the
population wouldn't stand for not having a social safety net at all, and if
there was to be one, the negative income tax was less distorting and less
bureaucratic than the usual mixture of rent control, food stamps, and
unemployment benefits.

Hayek did support it on more philosophical grounds, because he thought it
would increase individual freedom. Almost the exact opposite reasoning as some
libertarians, actually. It's common for libertarians to argue that social
programs should be handled by private charity, but Hayek worried that doing so
leads to collectivism, because people feel bound to social cliques that
provide social safety for their members (ethnic groups, churches, etc.), and
fear leaving the groups lest they lose their insurance. So he would prefer
there be a society-wide safety net not tied to these cliques.

I kept forgetting where he had written that, so I excerpted a quote in my
mini-scrapbook here: <http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/hayek79_minimumincome.html>

------
brico
This has nothing to do with their politics, it is simply the fact that they
offer an alternative, people will vote for them because they don't feel
represented by the other parties.

They are new, they are cool, they have an "anti-authoritarian" vibe, they will
achieve nothing and be forgotten in a couple of years.

The funny thing is, the "Greens" are considered old, they have achieved
nothing (there's still a massive oil dependency, there are still nuclear
reactors, ...) and now they panic :)

Edit: the Pirates can gain traction by promising people "if we only had the
power, we could do this or that" and they can increase their popularity by
simply critisizing the current parties in power ("we would have it done some
other way, we would have [insert popular opinion]") but in the end they will
change nothing, just read up on the history of the Greens and just replace the
name with Pirates

~~~
philippK
I disagree that greens did not achieve much. They have completely changed the
political discourse in germany.

After 30 years of the greens being in the Bundestag, we now have the largest
percentage of renewable energy in europe (>20% of our energy already comes
from it), even the most conservative of parties now subscribe to quitting
nuclear energy altogether (7 reactors have been shut down already, the rest is
to follow until 2021) , we have the strictest environmental laws in europe,
and on and on.

I would say the greens have been very successful by any measure.

~~~
insn
> [...] we now have the largest percentage of renewable energy in europe [...]

Source?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Europe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_European_Union)
contradicts this

~~~
philippK
Well it is certainly true that there are countries in europe that have even
more renewable energy than we have.

The other countries in europe that have more renewables than we have are
mostly smaller countries that don't have the population or industrial output
that germany has.

The numbers in the article you cite are also terribly outdated. Some more up
to date numbers can be found here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany#St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany#Statistics)

As you can see there germany has made BIG advances in the amount of renewable
energy produced, as well as its overall share of energy consumed.

My point was: * Germany was 20years ago pretty conservative about energy,
relying mainly on coal, gas and nuclear.

Then the green party came into the political landscape and now * We are on the
forefront of converting our highly industrous economy completely to renewable
energies. No other country in europe has increased the amount of renewabled
energy produced by 5x in the last 10 years alone. At this rate, we will be
overtaking even the smaller countries that may have more renewables than we
have now. * We are the only country of this size and economic gravitas that is
fully committed to quiting nuclear. * We have very strict environmental
protection laws, with environmental protection even enshrined in the national
constitution , more so than in other industrous european countries (yes
there's always switzerland or other small countries that are nominally
"better" at this but you can not compare their impact or structure with large
countries such as germany) See also:
<http://www.goethe.de/ges/umw/ein/en5099932.htm> * Gas is more expensive in
germany than elsewhere in europe (again there might be exceptions) because of
"ecological taxing" that was proposed by the green party

So, in all what i wanted to say was: Germany has changed a great deal due to
the green party in the last decades. Where once we were very conservative
about ecological ideas, we are now at the forefront, if not the sole leader,
in many of these areas. And that is,to a large degree, thanks to the greens
because they have put those issues on the agenda again and again - and that
way changed the political discourse at large.

------
jpdus
Quite interesting is also their approach to finding positions via voting on an
open online platform (which is open sourced by the way: <http://www.public-
software-group.org/liquid_feedback> ) where each member can vote itself and
also delegate its vote for different topics to other members.

~~~
mtrimpe
I didn't know that. I was dreaming of a party that voted like this based on
the input of all it's constituents since ten years or so. Maybe I should move
to Berlin after all!

------
Falkvinge
Also worth noting: the Austrian pirate party entered the polls at 7% with a
sonic boom on April 7.

------
yaix
I really wish I was in Europe now to participate more in this. If you ever
wanted to get info politics (even only a little bit), now is the perfect time.
Next elections into the Bundestag and four years later into the gov't. And in
ten years the European commissioner for IT things will be a Pirate, harrr
harrr!

~~~
maebert
When following politics I sometimes secretly wish I didn't move from Germany
to Spain, where the political scenery is a tad more... predictable.

That being said, I see absolutely no reason why the Pirates should be part of
the government. Germany has had almost 20 years of policy blocking and
mindlessly bullying oppositions (from both sides of the political spectrum),
but maybe this can actually change with the Pirates - an opposition that has
no problem in granting the governing parties their successes.

~~~
yaix
Or the junior partner of a gov't coalition that actually gets things done.

How's Spain more predictable? I am sure they could use some Pirates too.

~~~
maebert
They could (well, there is an Pirate party, and it may even get above the
magic 0.01% threshold...), but the major political players don't change much,
and definitely not as rapidly as in Germany.

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sasvari
just for remembrance (don't read the title misleadingly): this ist _just_ a
poll!

edit: some more information:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,826540,00...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,826540,00.html)

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Falkvinge
I wonder why the photo says "Nerz Attends". His name is Sebastian Nerz. My
guess is that somebody chose the first two words from a random sentence (i.e.
"Nerz attends the general assembly") and tagged the photo with that as a name.

