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comment by alexgieg · 2021-09-01T20:11:59.909Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I have the impression you're confounding the terms "freedom" and "democracy", themselves quite broad. The contents of your post suggest what you're seeking is to live in a country that are representative liberal democracies, and whose electoral process results in specific representativeness quotients, as well as in other specific features. But that doesn't exactly overlap with any specific notion of "freedom", such as that of "true freedom", unless you also were to provide a specific definition of both.

I imagine you're going to find a better response if you were to taboo the words "democracy", "freedom", and "true freedom", so as to restate what you're seeking in more objective, concrete terms.

Replies from: mikkel-wilson
comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-01T21:02:45.778Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Not so much confounding, as conflating. But I agree conflating them without explicating why I believe they are correlated makes this post weaker, and it could be beneficial in the future to more explicitly make the case for my implicit position that more democratic and closely representative countries are also more free.

I agree that value can be had in playing Taboo with the words you list, though I do also feel that taking advantage of the existing connotations these words have is beneficial in using people's existing intuition about freedom and democracy to pump intuitions for why the systems I value are important and better than the system that currently exists in the US.

Thanks for the feedback!

comment by Viliam · 2021-09-03T12:15:44.404Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What is your opinion on Switzerland, the only country (as far as I know) where people can actually vote about important stuff (as opposed to merely chosing their masters who then make all the choices)?

Replies from: mikkel-wilson
comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-03T16:46:15.313Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Ballot initiatives are also a thing in California, and while they introduce an interesting and often beneficial aspect to our way of doing things, most laws are still made by the legislature, which makes the way the legislature is appointed very important. I'd have to do more research before I can comment on Switzerland.

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2021-09-04T12:47:17.841Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Not sure if you saw these LW articles about Switzerland: 1 [LW · GW], 2 [LW · GW], 3 [LW · GW].

comment by Dagon · 2021-09-04T17:03:18.225Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think you're underplaying the large hard-to-quantify "cultural differences" in what the people actually will.  The feelings and daily experience of living somewhere are FAR more influenced by human interactions and expectations than by government action (within limits).

This post far overgeneralizes the mechanisms, losing the specific differences that are pros/cons of specific living choices.

comment by Pattern · 2021-09-01T21:14:36.161Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I would say, however, the Danish system is better designed for that goal

What is the Danish system?


I want to live in the truly free world.

Is that just "New Zealand...Denmark...Ireland...Germany"?

Replies from: mikkel-wilson, mikkel-wilson
comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-01T21:51:34.079Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As Wikipedia's article on Folketinget (the Danish Parliament outlines, 77% (135 out of 175) of the seats elected by Denmark proper (i.e. excluding the 2 seats each elected by Greenland and the Faroe Islands) are elected regionally (there are 10 districts for an average of 13.5 seats per district), while the remaining 40 are appointed to make the results level out to be proportional to the national level of support for each party.

Party lists are used for both the regional and national levels, but since voters may identify a single member of the list that they feel should be given priority on the list, this means that individual candidates are incentivized to curry support among the electorate in order to be elected, since candidates who are not supported by the voters are unlikely to be appointed, even if they are high-ranking members of a popular party (I'm not sure if this last bit is also the case in Germany, but it definitely isn't in Israel, which uses closed lists that can't be influenced directly by the people).

Because Germany doesn't use a proportional method for the regional seats, there are often large discrepencies between the regional proportions and the federal proportions, which means a much larger number of politicians are elected on the national level as opposed to regionally, which makes them less directly accountable to the people, and (I think; I'm not sure yet if the math works out the way I think it does) the distortions introduced in the regional level are not perfectly corrected on the national level.

Replies from: ChristianKl
comment by ChristianKl · 2021-09-03T18:26:29.519Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Because Germany doesn't use a proportional method for the regional seats, there are often large discrepencies between the regional proportions and the federal proportions, which means a much larger number of politicians are elected on the national list as opposed to regionally

There is no such things as "the national list" in Germany. 

I have the impression that you are letting yourself be guided too much by thinking about concepts instead of how the system works in reality. 

Party lists are used for both the regional and national levels, but since voters may identify a single member of the list that they feel should be given priority on the list, this means that individual candidates are incentivized to curry support among the electorate in order to be elected

This basically means "individual candiates are incentivized to get campaign donations from lobbyists". I don't think it's a valuable feature of a democratic system.

Replies from: mikkel-wilson, mikkel-wilson
comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-04T05:29:01.976Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This basically means "individual candiates are incentivized to get campaign donations from lobbyists". I don't think it's a valuable feature of a democratic system.

I'll note that in Denmark, parties can choose between closed lists (i.e. the party decides who fills the seats) or open lists (as I described above), but all parties use open lists. I always assumed that this was the case because denizens see value in having open lists; in particular I don't see any incentives that would encourage parties to use open lists if they don't provide a better result for the denizens.

Do you have an explanation for why open lists are used if you don't think it's a valuable feature of the system?

comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-03T20:35:50.774Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There is no such things as "the national list" in Germany

This was a typo, it was supposed to be "the national level". Thanks for catching it.

comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2021-09-01T21:25:08.672Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

These four are not a complete list. I should compile a list of countries that follow the constitutional principles I am pointing to here (which, as alexgieg points out, is not neccessarily the same as "The Truly Free World"; I hope to better define The Truly Free World in follow-ups to this post), but I can list Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland as also fitting this description off the top of my head. I would not be inclined to list Australia, which uses IRV, though why I have that intuition, and whether that intuition is correct, is a subject for a later conversation.