Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Idiot Savant,
they are infrequent
The Tory rebellion (over tax and Ireland) lasted from 1909 to 1914, and was only truncated by the King threatening to create Liberal peers and (in the case of Ulster, where the revolt took military form) by the outbreak of WW1. It's a little known piece of history, largely because it conflicts so starkly with the narrative of democratic evolution. I recommend Dangerfield as an excellent introduction to this time.
Skipping to today, you have the CERA law as an example of the abuses *our* system allows. In the US, such legislation would be completely unconstitutional.
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Hard News: On Telly, Telly Off, in reply to Danielle,
I, personally, never watch broadcast TV and therefore it has no value and should DIAF
I was never really arguing that.
When broadcast TV was instigated, there was no way to implement television other than by putting antenna on various hilltops and allocating maybe 20MHz of bandwidth to three or four channels. That was pretty expensive, and restricted viewing to those channels, for which the selection of programmes became a matter of national import.
Now we have the technology to offer an infinite amount of choice cheaply - the only constraint is the content's creation and availability.
Why will we keep the old system - unless it's to keep a large number of people thinking the same way as a result of having common social stimuli for a large chunk of the day?
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I'm not convinced about the "cultural" part. There have been numerous constitutional crises in Westminster model states, from the Tory rebellion over Lloyd George's budgets through to whatever happened in Canada a couple of years ago.
Should the government somehow lose its majority, I'd be disappointed if Labour and the Greens weren't straight in there with a motion of no confidence at the first opportunity. That is their job.
It's simply that the US constitution was designed for eighteenth century circumstances and never really reviewed.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to izogi,
I think they are held by the states. The US is presumably also paying all the people that ensure the military get pay, food and fuel - or soon it'll be like the collapse of the Soviet Union* with the military begging for food.
* Or the Thirty Years War.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
The BRD has a system much more like ours than the US. The Chancellor (Frau Merkel) is elected by the Bundestag and hence has an intrinsic majority, just like the NZ PM (only without all the smoke and mirrors of an unwritten constitution).
The Bundespräsident is indirectly elected and has similar powers to the Governor General here.
EDIT; you may have been thinking of France. They have an executive President, but the budget is under control of the Prime Minister who must have the support of parliament (although appointed by the President - a bit like 19th century Britain). Apart from that, there are no large developed democracies with a presidential system, unless you count Russia/Mexico/Brazil.
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The 'left' plays rigorously to the book while the 'right' doesn't.
Obama could, for instance, issue the trillion dollar coin, which would end-run Congress. He could start bringing US troops home from overseas and scuttle the fleet, cutting a huge item out of the federal budget
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the implications for the entire world economy are potentially disastrous
Depends on how we deal with it.
The immediate effect of a US default would be that all the banks that rely on US treasuries as assets fail. You'd expect that basically, the interbank payment systems would stop and within a few days, Eftpos and cash machines would be gone.
There are two ways to deal with that:
- the one that governments like ours will try and foist on us, based on taking money from ordinary people to pay off the wealthy- an alternative, where the banking system is reconstructed in community hands and we move onto a current payment basis, with debt balances frozen. At the same time, we trigger a general constitutional reconstruction, like the one they tried and failed to have in Iceland, that cuts the megarich out of power permanently
That would be no bad thing
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I'm wondering how long broadcasting a few dozen pre-chosen sets of non-interactive programming using expensive wireless bandwidth will continue. The bandwidth/quality/availability thing is fast dying out - look at the technical quality of some Youtube videos today.
I reckon 10 years and TV will be a bit retro, 20 and we'll wonder what those strange towers on hillsides were ever for. Maybe they'll make the one on Mt Vic into some sort of museum. They could even have a goggle-eyed prole in a glass box, glued to a TV set showing repeats through the ages on an endless loop.
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That's also my understanding. You can look at MMP scenarios with this very useful calculator: http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/mmp-seat-allocation-calculator
MMP has an "unofficial affiliate" feature: if a seat is held by a local party that isn't officially affiliated to the national one, then it doesn't count against their list. So if National (or Labour's) electorate MPs were to leave the party and run as "independents", the party would still get its list seats plus the overhang.
Single voting (where one's party vote was assigned to the party of the chosen electorate candidate) would fix this.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Dancing Fool, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Intermusicality is pretty prevalent, and often it's unintentional as in these two: