
Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/pwa/#https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-a-land-of-vikings-braces-for-a-pirate-party-takeover/2016/10/23/f1bfe992-9540-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html
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aedron
This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party
system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to
prevent alternatives to the established parties.

I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the
American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue
for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. This
acts as a vent when the people are fed up to their neck with the powers that
be - they don't have to storm the palaces and chop off heads but can engage in
political activity. Unless the political system in the U.S. changes, how long
before Americans will have to resort to this?

~~~
mseebach
> In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent
> alternatives to the established parties.

But the difference is that the parties in the US and the UK aren't very
powerful in their own regard. Trump wasn't even a member of the republican
party until very recently, and he won the nomination -- and Sanders forced
Clinton very far to the left before dropping out.

On the other hand, the leaders of european parties are mostly selected through
opaque backroom deals and yet are very powerful (through "party discipline",
another throughly undemocratic concept, all but unheard of in UK/US parties).
Policy is made by these leaders (or their appointed nominees) meeting each
other and negotiating a compromise, and then (except in very rare cases)
_every_ MP of the parties in this negotiation defends in the media it as a
solid and credible response to the issues faced by the country (despite, often
to great hilarity, the compromise being orthogonal to several very firm
positions and red lines drawn by that very same politician just days before)
and then votes for it.

The mechanism for this power is that few individual MP carry their own seat,
they're assigned proportionally, according to the national share of votes won
by the party. Party leadership wields significant influence over who runs
where (especially who runs in "safe" seats), and thus who gets in. MPs who
cause too much trouble will find themselves campaigning in a difficult
district, or next to a more popular/well-known candidate.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why is party discipline undemocratic?

If you want to get the benefit of the support and branding of a political
party it seems reasonable that you should have to follow their rules. The
discipline only extends so far as removing that support. That seems fair to
me. Does it not to you?

~~~
tremon
_Why is party discipline undemocratic? Why is party discipline undemocratic?_

Can you explain why you think it's not? I think party discipline is simply
autoritarianism applied within a political party. If anything, it advertises
to me that said party doesn't really believe in democratic principles.

~~~
tdb7893
You can still pick which parties to support or even create a new party and
that choice seems to me to be the foundation of representative democracy.

~~~
tremon
The "foundation of representative democracy" is to have a representative in
the decision making process (-cracy) for every part of the populace (demos).
Political parties are not essential to that premise. Representatives that can
have their voice heard are.

~~~
tdb7893
Sorry for being unclear, but it's having a choice that is essential, not
parties themselves. It is a representative democracy, you just choose a party
instead of a person but it's the exact same concept.

------
ajmurmann
_It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home._

I love Iceland. I truly do. My wife and I visited twice last year. I think it
would be a wonderful place to live. Given a choice between Russia and Iceland
I would pick Iceland without hesitation (although I have to admit that I have
never been to Russia). However, I do not believe that they would be able to
protect Snowden from the CIA. I hope Snowden sees this the same way and stays
safe in Russia.

~~~
poshli
The PP is a fringe radical party that if they somehow become the majority
party in Iceland, they're not going to retain it for very long. I would not
recommend that famous dissidents like Snowden move there immediately.

I like visiting Iceland too, the few Icelanders I know can't wait to move
though. The winter weather and high price of everything is a bit of a drag.

I am not an expert on Iceland but I have read that it's really controlled by
interests behind the two main industries of fishing and smelting. Iceland is
really pushing tourism these days, since flights to Iceland are incredibly
cheap.

I recommend reading The Grapevine

[http://grapevine.is/](http://grapevine.is/)

~~~
dagurp
There's a lot of negativity among young adults here in Iceland. I can
understand them to some extent because housing has become insanely expensive
because of inflation, lack of new housing and airbnb companies. What I don't
undestand is the "everything is terrible" attitude that's been so poisonous in
recent year. Yes, we have bad weather and most of our politicians are hopeless
but it's always been like that. The grass isn't greener on the other side.

The grapevine is great but often let themselves down with clickbait and
hyperbole.

~~~
avar
As an Icelander living abroad for almost a decade now, if you think the grass
isn't greener or the other side how do you explain the rapid increase in
Icelanders who are expats over the last decade? Are all these people just
wrong in thinking they've found a better live abroad?

~~~
dagurp
Plenty of people have left and found a better life, I'm not trying to say
otherwise. I just hate it when people use the weather and the government as
reasons to move because every country has its problems. A large number of
Icelanders move to another country sometime during their lifetimes but a large
percentage of them move back at some point. That tells me that maybe things
aren't so bad over here.

~~~
avar
For plenty of people something like the weather or the government really is
the reason they moved.

The government was a major reason for my move. I moved after the collapse,
which was entirely caused by Iceland's dysfunctional government policies (none
of which have really changed), and the measures put into place post-collapse
largely benefited homeowners at the expense of the rest of us.

I didn't want to spend the next decade paying for other people's bad financial
decisions at the cost of the currency & my purchasing power having fallen
around 1/2.

Similarly people move from say the UK to Spain for the weather. As I'm sure
you know Iceland doesn't just have "bad" weather, it's on a whole different
level where working around the weather often becomes a major logistical
difficulty. Whole towns often become snowed in during the winter.

So it's hardly a surprise that someone would move just to be rid of that.

------
nomercy400
"They know what they’re against. But it’s difficult to find out what they’re
really for."

Well, reading what the Pirate Party wants to be, it makes sense they don't
have things to be 'for'. They want to give the people more room to decide. The
pirates just want to give the people that space. They don't care about all the
topics traditional politics discuss and promote. They just want the people
have have more of a say in it, instead of a once-in-four-year vote.

The political party shouldn't decide on the largest decisions, the people
should make that decision (through matters as referendum).

With current technology, the people could even represent themselves. "We need
your decision on this political matter: swipe left for yes, right for no."

~~~
mattferderer
The more I've tried to learn about issues, the more I've learned that they are
often very complicated & require a lot of research. I feel this is to hard &
time consuming for the average citizen. Electing people to represent your
interests makes more & more sense to me every day.

I do wish they were more open & transparent though in an easy to understand &
honest method. Unfortunately it seems that is very difficult for them to do.

~~~
belorn
Representative democracy would work much better without lobbyist that, for
reason that should be discussed, are represented much more than voters. Like
the Utopian dream of communism, Representative democracy that actually
represent their citizens seems to be one of those government types that people
talk about but never actually achieve.

Take copyright law (since this is about the pirate party). were your interest
represented when the elected people let Disney lobbyist buy a law that
extended copyright? Somehow, a company that "give" millions to a political
party is not a bribing and completely not doing so with any expectation of
returns. One could ask why they spend those money, or why historically it is
so effective to spend so much totally-not-a-bribe money.

From the representative politician view, issues are often very complicated &
require a lot of research, which is too hard and time consuming. Easier to
just choose the highest paying lobbyist and have them decide for you. That
way, you picked the politician, and they picked the lobbyist, and the lobbyist
decide the law.

------
tananaev
It's nice to see that libertarian ideas are winning at least in some counties
when in most of the world governments get more and more control over people's
lives.

~~~
tracker1
I wish that Johnson had been better prepped for some of his interviews. I
really don't like where the democons are headed in this country.

~~~
HillRat
No amount of prep was going to help that train wreck -- Johnson never had a
reputation as a particularly _smart_ politician (he was rather proud of his
ignorance, actually), but he showed less knowledge of world affairs than the
average evening news viewer. And he's still the most credible candidate the
Libertarian party has posted!

If you want libertarian views to gain political credibility, you'd probably be
better advised to try to start within the GOP, especially given the state of
factional conflict likely to follow Election Day. Libertarian, moderate and
the few remaining Rockefeller-style Republicans are the only ones who have
kept their hands clean when it comes to Trump, and who have an arguable basis
for reconstructing the party -- though it would be a long slog to do so.

~~~
hood_syntax
The GOP has made it clear they don't want a libertarian a la the Pauls. I
don't think it can happen with the hard push to the social right they've made
in the past 8 years.

------
macspoofing
Very cool experiment. It's easy being the opposition. Governing is hard. Let's
see how they handle it.

------
q-base
There are some very interesting discussions on government and electorial
constructs(for lack of better word) in different countries and pros and cons
of these, in the comments here.

Can anyone point to any good documentaries, books or other reading digging a
bit deeper into this subject? Given the focus on the US election at the moment
and a lot of people seeing it as two bad options, then why is the US system
like that and in for instance Denmark where I'm from we have multiple choices.
What's the history behind each, pros and cons etc.

------
nols
I'm really curious about a lot of the more nuts and bolts of their government.
Things like the economic policy. As a small nation that relies heavily on
importing they are particularly susceptible to changes in the exchange rate,
and they are all aware of this because of their financial crisis. But this
party is focused on technology, which is wonderful unless there's no bread on
the shelves.

------
jaza
Could Iceland become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin (or an
alternative crypto) as its national currency? If the Pirate Party wins, this
could be one of the numerous cool experiments in government to take place.

~~~
nols
Bitcoin can't handle the number of transactions required. It's simply not
technically possible for the blockchain to be used as a country's (or medium
sized city's) primary currency.

~~~
creepy_driver
Really? I always thought it was very powerful. Any place to read up more about
this?

~~~
nols
You can read up on bitcoin scalability here:

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability)

------
HalfwayToDice
The Pirate Party are not going to win the election. They are radical
extremists.

Well this is just my opinion, but lets check back next week after the vote.

~~~
throwaway7767
What is your definition of 'win'? They're currently polling at around 20-25%.
The traditional conservative party is polling at similar numbers and other
parties have less.

Obviously no party will take the majority of the vote. So what is your
criteria for winning or losing? Even if the pirates election results were
5-10% less than the polling numbers they'd still have 'won' by some
measurements since they'd have more seats in parliament than they did last
time.

~~~
HalfwayToDice
They got 15%, it was an easily predictable failure.

