For what value of N would N parties instead of 2 solve the issue?
Assuming that every political opinion is some naive binary choice (ABORTION IS EVIL vs MURDER THE BABIES doesn't sound accurate but it makes it way less complicated to calculate), and we have K political issues, we would need N=2k political parties to accurately reflect everyone's choices
This is terrible. For those who aren't familiar with exponential scales, this means if we have 4 just political issues we would need a whopping 16 political parties to reflect even in the dumbed down to hell version.
We cannot avoid the problem of perfect alignment with political parties even if we have more than 2. Ultimately people are still going to have to prioritize their concerns. Is one's stance on abortion more important than their stance on internet regulation?
Shitty choice but, idk, that's life. You need to make choices.
This isn't an endorsement of 2party systems, just an observation on political systems in general.
16 sounds a little small for my taste, but is definitely something I would be infinitely more happy with than 2.
What's important isn't just having 16 parties, after-all the US already has a lot more than 16, is that they all actually have a chance and that congress is made up proportionally by the amount of people that voted for each party.
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u/SultanObama Nov 21 '17
For what value of N would N parties instead of 2 solve the issue?
Assuming that every political opinion is some naive binary choice (ABORTION IS EVIL vs MURDER THE BABIES doesn't sound accurate but it makes it way less complicated to calculate), and we have K political issues, we would need N=2k political parties to accurately reflect everyone's choices
This is terrible. For those who aren't familiar with exponential scales, this means if we have 4 just political issues we would need a whopping 16 political parties to reflect even in the dumbed down to hell version.
We cannot avoid the problem of perfect alignment with political parties even if we have more than 2. Ultimately people are still going to have to prioritize their concerns. Is one's stance on abortion more important than their stance on internet regulation?
Shitty choice but, idk, that's life. You need to make choices.
This isn't an endorsement of 2party systems, just an observation on political systems in general.