politics.md

• Spewing bullshit requires less energy to debunk it. See Brandolini's law.
• "People like to write about facism and communism as if they are opposite ends of some spectrum, but that's not really true in the most important sense. Fascism blatantly, and communism accidentally but consistently, leads to authoritarianism. And authoritarianism is the problem." - openwarr, on open source
• Singapore routinely spends more defence budget than other nations in the region to protect the small city-state against invasion. It can barely grow its own food.
• Conservatives are pretty good at that, "let me tell you the truth in your area of expertise" thing.
• The US provided textbooks for the Taliban, full of jihad propaganda inside. The Taliban was originally instructed to chase the Soviets (whom are obviously not muslims) out of their country, hence the jihad. Of course it backfired during the period of US occupation, when the Taliban chased them out in the name of jihad.
• Because people in power tend to retain power through corruption, factions, and oligarchy, officials can be elected through sortition (basically, drawing random people through lotteries) to prevent that. The biggest problem with sortition is that the person we select isn't necessarily the best person for the job, and because of that, others might not view the elected official as legitimate.
• Prof. Rutger Claassen said in a class that democracy is a form of political equality, and a country that is economically inequal will often see its citizens use their wealth to gain political power. So sustained democracy requires its people to be more or less equal in many ways.
• Capitalism is slavery with a twist: you are not directly enslaved... and your minimum living conditions are often guaranteed by the government. But wait, that's socialism.
• Voters delegate their power to a representative. If that representative doesn't do as the voters say, they haven't voted for anyone in a meaningful way; democracy does not work.
• Fair politics: the voters select the representatives. Gerrymandering: by grouping voters in... creative ways, representatives select the voters.
• Instant runoff is the same as ranked choice voting: each person ranks all candidates. Since first-past-the-post heavily favours a two-party system, we want voters to express their intentinos honestly instead of strategically.
• Ranked choice voting might eliminate moderate (centrist) parties first. See centre-squeeze. This might be why the liberals never approve ranked choice voting.
• Approval voting (the most approved candidate wins) generates the most representative candidate, but voters can strategically disapprove a nearby candidate in order to get their first choice. See chicken dilemma.
• Peace through strength basically means you can attain peace if you have a big enough army, which might be true as long as the military does not turn against you.
• Iron law of oligarchy: any democratic organisation eventually becomes an oligarchy because of the way power is delegated. Labour unions, student unions, political parties... all end up having a small group of leaders whose powers are effectively unchecked.
• Socialism is not purely an economic policy. "If everyone has money, no one has money" is true, but it also relies on its people thinking they are fine without money. "I don't need a lot of money because the government provides everything I need", so to speak.
• Regardless of philosophy, the government of a country should answer to its people, and no longer be its people's government if it does not, since the government exists by "the consent of the governed.", said Rousseau.
• "The world will enter into the stage of a world of two worlds" - a man who knew a lot about geopolitics, but not much about the English language
• Lebanon was in a garbage explosion months before their ammonium nitrate storage also exploded.
• China models itself after the Singaporean political model. The difference between the two, however, is that Singapore allows different parties to win. "... China sees what it wants to see in Singapore, making the "lessons" learned more caricature than reality." (Journal of Democracy)
• Laissez-faire means "Let (people) do (as they choose)", or the government having the minimal amount of interference in esp. economic affairs.
• "Disbanding the police force" can either mean having no police at all (and money goes to community support), or not having a police force of their own, by having an even bigger police force policing the same place joined by nearby counties/cities/towns.
• A "regime" is a systematic way of doing things imposed onto you. It can also be understood as authoritarianism. "Authoritarian regime" is a form of tautology.
• Authoritarianism is little to no political freedom. Fascism is a hard form of authoritarianism and nationalism that has a dictator, suppresses the opposition, and strict control of the society/economy.
• Fascism is: totalitarian, almost always one party, usually one leader, often racist.
• This also means there can be a totalitarian democracy, a state where you can vote but your votes do nothing, and a civilian dictatorship, a state where people just follow a leader without the leader exercising military takeover.
• Prorogation is the process with which the prime minister can ask the monarch to override the parliament. If the parliament won't cooperate with (say, brexit), then the monarch may choose to suspend the parliament, which means the parliament cannot block a (say, a no-deal brexit) until the parliament is resumed. It is very, very rarely used because it is messed up: "In the 21st century, UK politics has been pushed so far (back) that we're resorting back to good old-fashioned monarchism. You don't be pro- or anti-No Deal to agree that, when the political fate of the country rests in the Queen's discretion, something has gone wrong."
• China's constitution states that it "is a socialist state ("社会主义国家") under the people's democratic dictatorship ("人民民主专政") led by the working class ("工人阶级领导的") and based on the alliance of workers and peasants ("以工农联盟为基础的")" and that the state organs "apply the principle of democratic centralism ("民主集中制"). "Dictatorial control by the party is necessary to prevent the government from collapsing into a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" ("资产阶级专政" / "财阀政治"), a liberal democracy ("自由民主制"), which, it is feared, would mean politicians acting in the interest of the bourgeoisie." Source So it all goes down to Marxism and Leninism ("liberal democracy had simply been used to give an illusion of democracy while maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie").
• What is "people's democratic dictatorship" then? Chairman Mao said that it is "对占全国人口绝大多数的人民实行民主，对极少数敌对分子实施专政", which means the government will serve the majority, but oppress the minority (in the traditional sense, this referred to the bourgeoisie rather than the Uyghurs, if the Uyghurs are currently oppressed.)
• Democracy is when the people elect other people to represent them. Populism is when the people don't think these "other people" are representing them. If the horseshoe theory holds true, I hypothesise that both far-right Republicans and far-left Democrats can be government-fearing conspiracy nutjobs.
• Pretty sure Democrats and Republicans cannot split into two countries because the boundaries are hard to draw. Asymmetric polarisation was quantified by how they vote (basically how often a party would vote for an opposing party). The short answer of the current situation is: they never switch sides, even if the other outcome sucks.
• In perfect communism, the government owns all companies. In socialism, this is not necessarily the case.
• Fillibustering, i.e. wasting time in meetings (actually, wasting time to delay a decision on some legislation), is also called 拉布.
• Riots and social unrests are tied to high global prices.