Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: The price is that they get to…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Heh. There is an actual character limit here, though, seriously? I've hit it several times. By design?
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Hard News: The price is that they get to…, in reply to James Butler,
This from a software developer who specialises in machine learning and genetic algorithms. Not quite sure what to say to that.
A girl after my own heart. I'm no Twitter lover, and had pretty much the same specialization as her.
I guess if she's a fan, she's objecting to being forced to use a technological choice of yours to get what she was getting before perfectly adequately. It's similar to being annoyed at people who refuse to take phone calls, insisting you use Skype if you want to go voice. So they have to go into their office, find their head set, download and install Skype, send you a contact request, wait for the acceptance, then wait until they see you online, then have the conversation sitting in their office. This in preference to using the perfectly reliable POTS device that they have multiple instances of in many convenient locations around the house.
I probably use Facebook more than Twitter, although I don't use either one very much - I thought I would, but find that I can't think of anything I'd want to write in there, and find the brief summary of people's daily communications in FB easier to use than scrolling through endless decontextualized tweets involving people having a private joking sessions about some snippet of news I've missed. I'll make comments on other people's posts, but practically the only thing I write in FB is amusing news about my kids, typically funny things they say.
Neither site conduces to long form discussion, which is the kind of thing I actually want to engage in with most of the followers and friends I have, since a great many of them came from here. I don't have anything against all the chit-chat, but it's not for me. I see it as roughly as dangerous as getting deeply involved in another computer game, something that could eat up my life to no practical purpose, and quite possibly no net enjoyment either - this has happened before, and I'm like a reformed drunk - very wary of themselves around alcohol.
Indeed, I often feel this way about my engagement here too. The place is addictive to me in the same way that most addictive things are addictive to their addicts. My only excuse to myself is that I've got a long-game going on, that I'm cultivating the art of expressing myself. That I have actually learned a great many things, and met good people, was an unexpected bonus. But the time spent has certainly been to the detriment of some other aspects of my life.
However, it's an opt-in, just like the social media are, so I have no one to blame but myself if I become trapped in bad habits on the thing. Oh, and Russell, for having the gall to make something that I really like. I have similar feelings towards Zuckerberg - if you don't like his shit, don't use it - it really is that simple. It's popular because it provides something that countless millions of people want. It's always been fast and loose with privacy - that was actually a big part of the reason it took off - people found that social interaction was preferable to strong security settings, that their trivial details actually aren't that important to protect, compared to the chances of them having a good time with their mates. There was something that deeply clicked with the student population it was born into about how privacy violations can actually have really enjoyable outcomes for the violated, that hiding in a box and controlling everything about your life wasn't what they wanted after all. It was actually cool to have people randomly trying to hook up with you, on account of them discovering something that they liked about you that they perhaps shouldn't have.
In a cross thread metaphor, I think Facebook felt like breaking the condom. You shouldn't like it, that's wrong and naughty and bad. But you fucking well do.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to izogi,
On the flip-side, however, I still think there's lots of value in ensuring that there's at least one MP in our House of Representatives who's systematically obliged to go and mix with each geographic community, get a feel for the effects of nationwide government policies and decisions on local people throughout the entire country, and be aware of all that stuff when taking part in government.
Which is precisely why the parties would do it anyway, if they had the resources to. It could be their internal policy because it works, not because the system forces them to do it. It's highly appropriate for Labour and National. For the Greens, not so much, there's just not enough of them to be out pressing the flesh in every electorate.
Furthermore, there would probably be no reason to have 60 MPs inaccessible to casual public inquiries. They're representatives, after all, and they come from all over the place. Surely they could have an office near to where they live, by which they can avoid the problem of getting out of touch with ... well whoever it is that wants to see them - I expect it's simultaneously a lot of people, and also a very small fraction of their voters.
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Cometh the hour, cometh the man (leave it alone).
And within the hour, cometh the woman fivefold, and the groin straineth (couldn't leave it)
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Paul Williams,
Ben, do you not accept that the majority of public services are experienced within a particular geographic area which is likely to be smaller than an electorate?
No, I don't accept that. Certainly not in a city electorate they aren't. There's no hospital in my electorate. There's a number of schools near here, some in, some out, and I could send my kids further away if I had a reason. All of my facilities rely on massive infrastructure mostly outside of the electorate. Most of my shopping is done outside it. Most of my friends live outside it. All of my family do.
Furthermore, I'm atypical, a home-worker. Most working people commute to work, outside of their electorate, spending around 40 hours of their productive lives every week using infrastructure outside of their electorate, and possibly a further 5-10 on commuter infrastructure that spans the distance.
I'm curious, where did you rank the postcode? For me, it's just above race/sex/class, which are all at the bottom of the list. Urban/rural is just above it. I care more about whether they're city or country folk than exactly which bit of city or country.
ETA: Anyways, folks, it's just a thought. Neva gonna happen. Wrong thread for it, should be on Graham's. It's a sidetrack and I'm tapped out.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Fair enough, but I do see value in having people elected to represent specific geographical communities at the national level rather than local communities having to rely on the generosity and benevolence of the parties to send representatives their way.
If having a local representative was actually something people would vote for because they wanted to, rather than because that's built in, then it wouldn't require generosity or benevolence. The parties would do it to get votes.
However, I have a funny feeling that it wouldn't be anywhere near such an important issue that the party has someone in my neighborhood. We can't know, because we've rated that at the most important issue our system deals with, accounting for half of our elected representatives. This is built in. It's so axiomatic to us that we find it hard to question.
I'm pretty sure there's an awful lot of people who would be satisfied that their kind of person was represented by the party of their choice, by a bunch of people who don't live anywhere near them, but share their views, or appeal to them in some other way. I'd say this is by far the most common way that people vote.
Seriously, when someone is considering a candidate, rank the following qualities (listed in no particular order) they look at in order of influence.
- Race
- Sex
- Class
- Qualifications/achievements
- Party they are in
- Professed views on your pet subject
- History/character
- Attractiveness/charisma
- Age
- Postcode
-Urban/ruralDid you rank postcode as #1? Why not? Apparently it's deathly important, so much so that you get a whole separate vote column, in which a selection of candidates from your postcode are allotted to you. Then you can decide amongst them using the other criteria and any others you like. Postcode was already selected for you and ruled out 59/60ths of the people you could have voted for.
I fear this "solution" is unecessary as regional issues are matters for regional bodies.
There's no need for fear, it's never going to happen. The electorate MPs are a sufficiently large voting bloc (50%) that it could never come up for consideration, even long after all the people who wistfully remember just how representative and accountable FPP was are dead.
And yes, regional issues are adequately handled by regional bodies, so it's not like the electorate MPs can actually drop an important ball.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Chris Waugh,
If the issue is one of weighting, fine, but I have to ask how do you cut that weighting down to an appropriate size while keeping the electorates to a reasonably coherent geographical area?
We could do away with electorates altogether. And all MPs could be available to all comers. The big parties would probably put their offices conveniently spread out. The small parties could spread them out, but probably not have anywhere near so many. Then, if I wanted to talk to an MP, I could take my pick.
These people form our parliament, making decisions at a national level. They can make decisions at a local level too, there's nothing to stop that, but I still can't see a reason to build it into the system, other than to make it less representative. In fact, I think that's exactly why it's there, it was FPPs last throw, to insist on a high threshold and electorates as the workaround. It gave National and Labour the power to make or break the small parties. I've disliked this side of it since I first heard of MMP but was prepared to wear it because it's at least a lot better than FPP.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Because although some people don't feel any particular bond to a local community that can be defined, even if somewhat imprecisely, by lines on a map, many others do.
It's one of many dimensions of human bonding. I think it gets undue weight in deciding who represents us at a national level.
ETA: That's a reply to Chris, btw, not Russell.
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In my experience, they don't. They have the advantage of office, resources and detailed knowledge. That's about it.
In my experience, living in Mt Albert, my local MP held supreme executive power.
But you're misunderstanding me. What about providing this service of being a free advocate (if they feel like it) gives them the right to be in the clique of the most powerful people in this country? What's the connection? In voting for Richard Prebble, my Mum helped put someone in power who did a lot to wreck this country. She didn't have the choice to vote for someone else from Labour, unless she moved her residence. I don't really think that's justified just by virtue of the fact that he had an office and she could have approached him for help if she ever needed it. Some tiny contribution to social justice (in the big scheme of the provision of this right, which is mostly done by legions of civil servants) does not seem to justify the colossal impact on the way the country is run that these people have. Yes, with MMP, you don't have to vote for the candidate any more. But you do have to vote for one of the candidates and the winner will be in parliament, and they will have enormous influence, way, way out of proportion to the social good they provide locally.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Paul Williams,
If you've not experience of this, why so cynical?
I'm not cynical. I'm sure they mean well, but it strikes me as a totally ineffective way to handle social justice, that people have to petition an extremely scarce resource, with undefined powers and responsibilities, and a political agenda to boot. Aren't these people almost always simply going to be put in contact with whoever it is that actually deals with their problem, with the added weight of "because <name MP> says so"? I'm presuming Craig didn't go around and sort the abusive ex out himself. That's a matter for the police, courts, lawyers, and various other agencies.
I expect what they do in these offices is mostly righteous. What I'm confused about is why these people have to have so much political power. On the one hand they're kissing babies and saying "Hey, bro" to Russell, and putting abuse victims in contact with help, and saving schools. On the other, they're passing fire-at-will laws, selling off our railways, passing surveillance laws, privatizing education, cutting social welfare funding etc. I think that's a high price to pay just for a very small chance of getting their help personally, or a casual handshake, and then solely on the grounds of where you happen to live, and whether they happen to have sympathy for your cause.
All of those good purposes of their offices could exist, without them having this incredible power to transform society to their will. Indeed, a great many alternatives exist and these are the first places people try - for a reason. I've lived in electorates where the only interaction I'd want to have with the MP there is to cross to the other side of the road if I saw them coming, in case I accidentally blurted out that I thought they were a fuckwit as they passed me.
I'm happy to stop discussing the very existence of local MPs - it's academic anyway - none of the alternative electoral systems proposed dispense with them. They seem like an archaic throwback, but actually, most of our political system seems that way to me. We still have a monarch, and to get rid of that is beyond any party to even dare to suggest putting to a vote.
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