No election process represents all of the players. Voting processes usually entail the winner being represented and the losers not being represented.
If you want universal representation voting is not going to achieve that…ever.
Yes, of course. And the reason for this is obvious. The NS entities are comprised of players who often share similar or over-arching goals. They are also organized into large (relative to HS) groups.
In this setting such groups are always going to have the advantage. The seminal work on this was Mancur Olson who wrote The Logic of Collective Action.
The old/common view is the following:
That with a group of people that have a common interest they will all vote to further that interest.
With voting we have to worry about the tyranny of the majority.
The problem with this argument is that for 1, each member of a group will have an incentive to free ride. That is, I’ll let others do the research and thinking about each candidates platform and vote while I’ll avoid that costly process and simply reap the benefits. Since this is true for everyone the idea that a majority with a shared interest will not necessarily carry the day. Basically, organizing and motivating a large group to vote on a topic is costly, and since few will bear that cost the majority group will actually be under-represented.
Now for a sub-group of voters if they are highly organzied then they can use that organization to ensure members vote. In this way the sub-group can be over-represented even if they are a small sub-group of the total voting population.
These conclusions are further reinforced when it is the case that the minority sub group can obtain concentrated benefits. That is, if the outcome ensures the minority group obtains benefits the larger group will not benefit from.
A simple example:
We have a voting population of 1,000. In that population is a group, 100 people, who all share a common goal (say a subsidy of some sort). Organizing those 100 people to get that subsidy is far easier than organizing the 900 or even 501 of the remaining 900 to oppose the subsidy. Especially if the total value of the subsidy is say $1,000. Each member of the minority 100 will get $10, whereas the cost to each member is only $1. Organizing to oppose that $1 cost/tax will be far more difficult than organizing to obtain the $10 benefit.
Why there is so much romanticism around voting is really bizarre to me.
Because it’s better than the alternatives (the best of a bad lot) & people prefer to think they’ve done a good thing rather than merely done the least bad thing, speaks to our self image.
So the “romanticism” is simply the aggregate effect of all those individuals trying to paint themselves in the best possible light.
Being better than the alternatives? Sure if you want to force everything into a collective choice frame work. Maybe we should refrain from doing that because even the best choice really kinda sucks.
Ramanticism about voting means that people give it some sort of special status…that it can do things that it really can’t.
Voting, generally speaking, sucks. Voting is a game (as in game theory) and games, generally speaking, do not have anything to ensure a good outcome. Some of the world’s worst outcomes are the result of voting.
Your link goes to a wikipedia page titled: Adolph Hitler’s rise to power.
In one sense a poor example to demonstrate the validity of your position, as your prime example of what’s wrong with voting you choose to pick a vote that led to a situation where no one could vote… its almost like secretly you really like voting… a bit conflicted perhaps?
You don’t see that this is a fail argument for why voting is bad? that saying the reason it’s bad is by using it you might lose it?
If voting is bad then losing it should be a good thing which makes using this argument to support the assertion voting is bad… well, odd to say the least
Hi friend I am a not-goon like yourself traveling through highsec with a huge haul that I got from stealing from goons actually lmbo. Have you heard of our lord and saviour the Niarja gate? It saves much time! I love using it every day while carrying 10x my ships worth in loot while piloting a ship designed to be able to be interdicted. HAHA THE GONS WILL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE!!!
I’ve found a bug that makes your ship invisible to all Goons, you should try it before it gets listed as an exploit, so soon, there isn’t much time left before the devs spot it.
Change your ships name to “Goons are Pathetic Losers”… you also have to fill all your low slots with cargo expanders, carry more than 10 billion in cargo & you can’t fit any shield expanders or the bug won’t work
There are instances where we should turn to voting as it is, as you put it, the least crappy alternative. But we should not romanticize voting and turn to it anymore than we should. We want voting as one of our institutions, but it is one of many institutions that we can use to solve various problems. When we use terms like “Will of the people…” it is highly misleading as “the people” do not have a will. There is no such thing as “the people” in the sense of “the people” making a decision like a single individual. So that kind of thinking is not only misleading it can lead us into thinking certain results have some sort of special status when in fact they may not.
As noted, voting is a game (as in game theory) and one thing about games is that there there is nothing inherent in games to ensure a “desirable” or “good” outcome. In fact, we even have trouble with what is a “good” outcome. Consider that in simple majority rule 50% + 1 vote is needed to win. That means 50% -1 vote will lose…and for the losers that outcome is clearly not their preferred outcome. And even if you are in the winning coalition the winning outcome might be preferred to the alternative, yet your most preferred outcome did not make it on the ballot.
Turning to some sort of voting is often a first response for many people when confronted with a problem. But voting also entails force and coercion. Why not consider alternatives to voting? The work of people like Elinor & Vincent Ostrom that examine how collective action problems get solved without voting. Or the work of James Buchanan that looks at how constraints on voting can improve outcomes. Take the U.S. situation. There are a fair number of institutions to prevent the “tyranny of the majority”, but there is not much in the way to curb the perverse effects of special interest politics (well, anymore).
I finished my editing on the page long before this appeared? the post as is up there is a little different now, but only for tone not content, I thought as was it sounded a bit confrontational
Consider this a place holder for my real reply off for a shower & the shops so I’ll read yours later o7
NS SOV battles can’t be called ‘politics’ – they are just logistic and military manipulations and operations mostly. The problem is that many players and people really don’t see the ‘line’ between scamming and politics. Scamming can happen on very low levels between few players at Jita or elsewhere. Big groups of players are in another league, where typical scamming will not work anymore without serious consequences. Don’t point me to that EVE: Causality trailer. The trailer creators never played this game on high level for years, looks like. Between big groups of peoples only political and law rules should work and any form of ‘scam’ should have respective high level but not a market cardsharper level. Sadly, in this game aren’t respective tools and mechanic to support high political levels.
The gigX case is a true NS political EVEnt. He became a political figure, being in front of 4000 people. Trying to perform low level scam manipulations vs him will escalate the conflict. Nobody among officials want to discuss and solve the problem. The known betrayal did a huge damage to CSM in game institute, based on what talking about it half of alliance leaders and behind them are like 50% of in game population.
If gigX wished to be heard – everyone heard him. This is a true NS politic.
You used one of a democratic modern tool to twist people’s mind – fake news. Similar to the ‘fake news’ you made a fake post by positioning Manwithdog’s ‘Rules’ post as my own.
You know, to make a democracy work well it’s required very high levels of intellect and mentality from every member of the society to check everything what was said. Otherwise the democracy will become a hell on earth, much worst that any dictatorship, despotism or imperialism.
which makes using this argument to support the assertion voting is bad… well, odd 
to say the least 
the post as is up there is a little different now, but only for tone not content, I thought as was it sounded a bit confrontational 
off for a shower & the shops so I’ll read yours later o7
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