What is my "political orientation," am I right or left wing?

The problem is that democracy grants the power to vote away the rights of an individual and in the UK there is very little written limit to how far this can go. Voters are reactionary, rights and freedoms are forfeited on the slightest whim in the name of security. Politicians vote away rights of access to markets and siphon money from the tax payer to enormous corporations.

All politicians are authoritarians, however they derive their right to tyranny from a perceived majority vote in the name of their constituents. Political apathy is rife and yet politicians still have the cheek to claim they act on behalf of the people when really they owe their power to a voting minority.

Parliament merely represents the views of wealthy lobbies and the ideology of a political elite who are churned out of our academic institutions. The voting man is seen merely as a hindrances in their silly little games in whitehall.

I'm unclear on what precisely your objection is. Is it that:

1. Voters want authoritarian policies, and the system enables politicians to give them what they want.

2. Voters do not want authoritarian policies, but due to apathy among opponents of authoritarianism, politicians who favour authoritarian policies are elected anyway. (why would that be the fault of the electoral system, rather than those apathetic voters?)

3. Voters do not want authoritarian policies and try to vote for politicians who do not support authoritarian policies, but because disproportionate power is in the hands of an authoritarian political and financial elite, parliament votes for authoritarian policies anyway.

or

4. Something else?

Reply 61

Keckers

15

Original post by Observatory

I'm unclear on what precisely your objection is. Is it that:

1. Voters want authoritarian policies, and the system enables politicians to give them what they want.

2. Voters do not want authoritarian policies, but due to apathy among opponents of authoritarianism, politicians who favour authoritarian policies are elected anyway. (why would that be the fault of the electoral system, rather than those apathetic voters?)

3. Voters do not want authoritarian policies and try to vote for politicians who do not support authoritarian policies, but because disproportionate power is in the hands of an authoritarian political and financial elite, parliament votes for authoritarian policies anyway.

or

4. Something else?

Policies are almost uniquely authoritarian by nature. Voters may or may not want them, it doesn't matter since they happen anyway; policy is the main product of government. Policy is guided by the hands of vocal minorities with vested interests, and by wealthy minorities with vested interests.

Policy is often of poor quality and has many unintended consequences.

The quality control of policy is largely in the hands of the public. It is not in the individuals interest to invest their time into assessing the quality of passed policy, because ultimately their vote means so very little their assessment is not valued. Political apathy is actually the rational position to take in this situation when looking at the issue from the stand point of public choice theory. This partly ties into the ease special interest groups have with lobbying, it's easy to mobilise a small number of people on a specific specialist subject.

My objection is that government policy is of poor quality. There is very little incentive for the average Joe to care about making government better at producing good policies, thus government policy does not improve. Nothing is done to curb government policy making.