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Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.
Imagine fighting a war on 10 battlefields. You and your opponent each have 200 soldiers, and your aim is to win as many battles as possible. How would you deploy your troops? If you spread them out evenly, sending 20 to each battlefield, your opponent could concentrate their own troops and easily win a majority of the fights. You could try to overwhelm several locations yourself, but there's no guarantee you'll win, and you'll leave the remaining battlefields poorly defended. Devising a winning strategy isn't easy, but as long as neither side knows the other's plan in advance, it's a fair fight.
Now imagine your opponent has the power to deploy your troops as well as their own. Even if you get more troops, you can't win.
In the war of politics, this power to deploy forces comes from gerrymandering, the age-old practice of manipulating voting districts for partisan gain. By determining who votes where, politicians can tilt the odds in their favor and defeat their opponents before the battle even begins.
Anyone for a game of RISK?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:01AM (3 children)
then you get beautiful examples of nations like Somalia. No government coercion. Your example of panacea?
You seem to forget that for "free market" to function, you need to have,
1. order - someone has to impose order
2. low barrier of entry - someone needs to maintain this low barrier of entry into the market.
For order, you need to have rules and someone that keeps these rules. And low barrier of entry require rules on current business. All of these you call "coercion".
So, I'll just label you as naive, at best. You should read on history of companies like Standard Oil, monopolies, and general economic problems that happens when you either don't have a government, don't have a stable government or don't have free market *rules* that "coerce" the market into a free market. Because free market is NOT something normal, something that "springs" out of the blue.
You also seem to forget one thing -- unhindered capitalism always leads to total monopoly. Therefore you need a monopoly (whose goals are to maintain order and free market) to impose a such a free market - we call this a capitalist, lase-faire democracy ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:49AM (2 children)
Do you even history, bro?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:39PM
Do you even grammar, bro?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @06:58PM
Sweet jesus you're dumb!
Or a very dedicated troll. Wait, those aren't mutually exclusive! You're a dumb troll!