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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30160 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Which is an argument against universal suffrage. And indeed, most people are against universal suffrage (10 year olds often don’t get to vote).

Of course there are no perfect solutions.

Yeah. In theory stuff like poll taxes or literacy tests for voting might be good ideas; however, it is possible to abuse the living shit out of these and rig the hell out of the system. I am somewhat partial to Heinlein's service-guarantees-citizenship idea; IIRC, physical disability was not a barrier for service and anyone that was able to understand the oath of enlistment was eligible to serve. Which is in my eyes rather admirable in a modern society: why should some dude who's born without functioning legs not be able to vote?

I unironically think land-owning was actually a pretty good Schelling Point, at least for state-level elections. The people who own land in a state have skin in the game and have demonstrated at least some level of competence and future orientation.

Since non-landowners "don't have skin in the game", are they exempt from laws?

Anyone who can be arrested, or have to pay taxes, or who needs the government's permission to do something, has skin in the game. Back when the franchise was restricted to landowners, the government was much smaller; there were fewer laws, few taxes, and certainly few regulations.

Back when the franchise was restricted to landowners, the government was much smaller; there were fewer laws, few taxes, and certainly few regulations.

Sounds good to me.

Okay then, get that first, and then go talking about people who "don't have skin in the game". In this world, everyone has skin in the game.

Smaller government is a feature not a bug

Unironically, I think returning to male only suffrage is a good idea even if it will never happen. Not because of the original reasons from the anti suffragettes, although all of those are perfectly valid, but because the average difference in neuroticism has too much influence in our politics.

I do also think property requirements are a good idea because they tend to demonstrate future orientation.

I don't know about that; I think it would have some pretty large knock-on effects and I am not sure how desirable these things would be in a modern, Western society. I would guess that you could just find a different proxy for neuroticism or something like that.

Maybe you could just use the Hock, but explicitly allow people to pay or have substitutes.

What knock-on-effects? You’d see a more politically conservative electorate, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think the idea of “Voting Gangs” by Moldbug largely accomplishes something similar without explicitly being gendered.

The idea is that your vote, like a share in a company, is 100% your property and completely transferable. So people would naturally transfer their voting power to interested parties they feel aligned with.

The simplest example is my wife simply allowing me to add her vote to mine in the interest of time since I follow politics more closely than her and she trusts my judgement and ability to represent her.

And if I have friends or family who trust my judgement or vice versa I could sign my vote off to them, or them to me, etc etc.

This would also allow households to vote together, one good thing from a pro-natalist perspective would be to give children the vote but in the stewardship of their legal guardian until they come of age. If a household had two adults and two children they would have four votes in total.

I suppose the effect over time is that it concentrates political power in those interested in wielding it in a transparent, traceable way. Many people want their interests protected but find politics incredibly dull or simply unfathomable. Some dude wants to sell me his vote for an ice cream? That’s fine, he clearly wasn’t interested in it, and I am.

This creates a natural, scalable democracy with basically infinite parties joined together.

It sounds like a radical pipe dream but I’m becoming less convinced it’s unrealistic over time, and I’m becoming more convinced it’s the natural evolution of a liberal democracy if it seeks to survive and overcome it’s obvious deficits.

Some dude wants to sell me his vote for an ice cream? That’s fine, he clearly wasn’t interested in it, and I am.

Laws affect third parties. Having the guy sell you his vote instead of not voting or voting randomly dilutes the vote of third parties. The third parties may be interested.

Also, poor people would end up all selling their votes and the resulting government would be bad for poor people.

Also, poor people would end up all selling their votes and the resulting government would be bad for poor people.

In less developed countries, this tends to happen anyway, so it misses the point.

I debated including that bit for this very reason, there’s a bog standard response that relies on a bunch of assumptions that don’t stand up to much scritiny.

Poor people already vote at much lower rates than members of other classes, and I don’t imagine a single vote would be worth very much at all.

When I was poor, and I my case was rather typical, the thing I lacked more than money was time and energy. Politics requires quite a bit of both. Lots of my poor brethren had the instinct that they didn’t have the time, inclination or knowledge base to make a very informed decision at the ballot box, and so would forgo the whole process. There’s certainly something to that instinct, people want to use their power responsibly.

But even very poor people generally have someone they can trust in their lives, someone who is either more informed or more inclined towards political action.

I honestly think the ability to vote by proxy would rather increase turnout among the poor, especially for local politics. From personal experience when I was poor and living somewhere where I was unfamiliar with the local political scene I would have gladly gave my vote to a trusted friend who is similar politically to me and has my interest at heart.

Now that I’m financially stable and more informed I vote more regularly. And members of my social circle are also more interested in asking about my politics.

And for those people who will likely never be interested in politics for one reason or another, they still have the ability to directly benefit from their voting privileges as a citizen.

What about employers who tell people to sell their vote to their employer or they are fired? Middle class employees won't stand for this, but people with few skills who are qualified for few jobs, .ay have a problem.

And for those people who will likely never be interested in politics for one reason or another, they still have the ability to directly benefit from their voting privileges as a citizen.

What do you about the fact that you being able to buy unused votes dilutes third parties' votes? Aside from forcing the third party to bid against you for the votes just so that he's no worse off than he is today.

Employers already have minimal ability, inclination and interest in dictating how their employees vote or use their private property, why would that suddenly change?

Not only that, it’s often illegal and/or incredibly taboo to do so.

Most people aren’t using using their voting privileges on a consistent basis already, thus artificially inflating the importance of the people who do vote. Once again, disproportionately the middle class and wealthy.

If anything, this would have the opposite effect of lessening disenfranchisement by making it easier to actually use your voting privileges by introducing a proxy mechanism.

It’s not some utopian vision though, some constant of people will never be interested or can’t be bothered to vote, or even transfer their voting power to someone else.

Employers already have minimal ability, inclination and interest in dictating how their employees vote or use their private property, why would that suddenly change?

The "minimal ability" is the key phrase here. As long as the ballot is really secret, the employer can't verify that you've voted in a particular manner, so he can't buy your vote.

Not only that, it’s often illegal and/or incredibly taboo to do so.

In a hypothetical where votes could be transferred, the employer could legally do the equivalent of buying your vote by paying you to transfer or threatening you with job loss if you don't transfer.

Most people aren’t using using their voting privileges on a consistent basis already, thus artificially inflating the importance of the people who do vote.

If someone just doesn't use his vote, it inflates the votes of everyone equally, so third parties are not put at a relative disadvantage. If he transfers the vote to you, on the other hand, it dilutes the vote of third parties.

The arguments of the anti suffragists are actually quite complex. One interesting thing is that it turned women’s activities into political instead of apolitical.

I’d be open to a return to that as well. Landowning with kids might be my ideal

What should be the cutoff point? One acre? One square foot?

See "swamp men" of 19th century Norway.

When there was land ownership qualification for the right to vote, local labor party bought worthless swamp lands and distributed them among voters. Hail to new land owners!

Free and clear estate worth ten times the average GDP per capita in the year of the election.

I'd worry about games being played with the valuation. You could base it off of estate tax so that high valuations are expensive and reasonably consistent/objective. Still, giving the government the power to decide who votes just seems inherently risky. When only landowners were enfranchised the idea of the government interfering to the extent it does now was unthinkable.

Dunno — presumably a lot large enough for a small house.

Under the International Zoning Code, that would be 6,000 square feet (0.14 acre, 560 square meters; a 78-foot (24-meter) square).

LOL, given the number of houses sitting on 50x100 and even 25x100 lots, the International Zoning Code is a bit aspirational.

Yes, zoning codes often are devised without regard to existing "grandfathered" practices. And I see that New York City allows single-family lots as small as 2,850 square feet (0.066 acre, 270 square meters; a 54-foot (17-meter) square). But the IZC is the closest thing to an authoritative zoning code of which I am aware.

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