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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: 3, Interesting) by idiot_king on Monday October 23 2017, @12:51AM (3 children)
I feel that this spells out the subtext for anything that could be said about it, anyway. If politics is war, why bother with votes over just outright bullets and munitions? Who cares about gerrymandering, in that case? There's a reason why people are restless these days. Philosophers and political thinkers who say votes are worth a damn when a population is unhappy haven't been paying attention to what has happened in history, espeically in 18th, 19th, and 20th century Europe.
TLDR: There's a valid reason for young people to where Che shirts these days.
(Score: 3, Informative) by qzm on Monday October 23 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
>>TLDR: There's a valid reason for young people to where Che shirts these days.
I can only assume your valid reason is 'because they have a complete lack of understanding of both history and relativity (not the Einstein type..).
After all, wearing a che shirt as a political statement is basically saying 'I support the system of rule that has resulted in more an order of magnitude more avoidable human deaths than any other'
With a little 'I support the idea of a minority using force and oppressive/voilent punishment to gain power for themselves'
Is that the particular type of Che you are referring to? because that is the historical facts.
Of course pretty much zero of the Che shirt wearers would have the least clue as to that, because they are mostly intentionally self-uneducated in such things.
TLDR: Socialism/Communism has produced by far the worst human atrocities in history, bar none (only holy wars come close..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @06:33AM
Socialism itself is not a problem[1]. The problem is most proponents (including the Engels, Marx and the Che supporters) of Communism etc suggest or even recommend violence as part of the implementation plans.
When leaders are chosen with violence instead of votes, don't be surprised that leaders with the most violence win. And once they do, it's a lot harder to get rid of them, most won't step down peacefully when they are no longer wanted... And it's not surprising those leaders still tend to use violence to achieve their goals... :)
Make it the standard to choose your leaders with votes. You may still get crap leaders but at least they will be leaders a larger proportion of the people deserve. And when enough people don't want them you get a peaceful revolution because the new leaders have more votes, instead of waiting for new leaders to have more violence than the old leaders. Or for the old leaders to miraculously step down or for you to get lucky with a more benevolent successor...
[1] Seems to work ok in Scandinavian countries- they overdid it at certain periods but they seem to have a decent balance now (which might be upset if they take too many immigrants for them to assimilate and "brainwash" to accept the "Nordic ways").
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday October 23 2017, @06:02PM
It's similar attitudes to politics in the UK; I suspect it has to do with the FPTP voting system, which is adversarial, and where if you want to join a coalition you're seen as "surrendering" somehow.