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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: 4, Insightful) by Virindi on Monday October 23 2017, @01:13AM (9 children)
That's exactly right, that's the balancing act I refer to. Human history shows that it is not possible to maintain a system where NOBODY has this type of control. If you try to do that, all you are doing is opening up an opportunity for someone else to impose it.
If you take that premise, then the question then becomes, how can such an entity be controlled by the population so that it does the least damage to society? The entity must be strong enough to protect itself to continue its own existence (and protect those it serves), but it must interfere with the population it serves as little as possible. Yes, these are opposite requirements. Thus, good government is a "hard problem".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:50AM (8 children)
That's not a matter of balance; that's a flatout contradiction.
Markets of voluntary exchange are the best tools with which to find the balance in extraordinarily complex systems of interaction.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @06:25AM (4 children)
A pity they don't exist globally and will never exist.
I don't know how you are going to demonstrate the absolute optimality (as in "the best tools") given such markets don't exclusively exist.
At the best, you'll need to make lots of assumption for a theoretical demonstration - nothing short of what are doing lots of "economic science" academics nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:34AM (3 children)
Evolution by variation and selection.
Variation: supplier competition.
Selection: consumer choice.
The more you fight this process, the less effective it is; the more you work with this process, the more effective it is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 23 2017, @11:53AM (2 children)
Prisoner's dilemma: when the risk of losing overweights the benefit of playing optimally.
The result: opportunists, playing might makes right, can't be avoided.
It will never happen, the same way communism can't happen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:25PM (1 child)
Try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:49PM
How about the exact same way libertarinism can't happen.
For fun, read some of the Anarchist philosophy. It basically matches your own. I wish I could enjoy riding the Unicorns in your world.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 23 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)
You must not be from Earth. Welcome to our world, stranger. Let me explain something. We never have had, and never will have that mythical "free market". Some very few civilizations in early history, or prehistory, may have enjoyed "free markets", but they are soon abandoned. People demand strong rulers, and said strong rulers subvert those mythical markets immediately, in order to raise money for things like armies, roads, ports, castles, mansions - the list goes on and on. With every addition to the list, someone else chimes in with yet another addition.
Mankind abhors a free market.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:28PM (1 child)
Here. [soylentnews.org]
You're fighting a straw man.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:06AM
Oh, yes, that is so INSIGHTFUL!! That's why Microsoft has cooperated so closely with hundreds of other companies, such as Digital Research.
Nothing was covered in that post, other than some propaganda that you hoped would confuse us.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.