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How to Fix Democracy (AC Grayling Interview)
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- čas přidán 14. 08. 2024
- --AC Grayling, Professor of Philosophy and Master of New College of the Humanities, London, and author of the book "The Good State: On the Principles of Democracy," joins David to discuss how an ideal democratic system would be set up. Get the book: amzn.to/2XzASph
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Broadcast on April 14, 2020
#davidpakmanshow #democracy #2020election
What a brilliant Guest...And what a truthful and insightful POV...Thank you David and Prof Grayling.
"puts pinky ion mouth" yesssss truely insightful!
We in Germany have not just one vote on the ballot paper in parliamentary elections, but two. The first vote corresponds to elections in America and the UK: the candidate who receives the most votes in a constituency represents the constituency in parliament. But the second vote is the more important one. This counts independently of the first vote, is valid nationwide and the result determines the distribution of seats of the parties in parliament. A simplified example:
Three parties run for election. Parliament has 100 seats because there are 50 constituencies.
Party A wins 31 constituencies with the first vote, Party B wins 19 and Party C none.
The result of the second vote is: Party A gets 40% of the votes, Party B gets 35% and Party C gets 25%.
This results in the following distribution of seats in parliament: Party A gets 40 seats, Party B 35 and Party C 25.
Although Party A won a clear majority of the constituencies, it did not achieve a majority in parliament because of the second vote - two parties must form a coalition.
In addition to the 31 constituency winners, Party A got 9 more seats via the second vote. In addition to the 19 constituency winners, Party B got 16 more seats by the second vote. And although Party C could not win a constituency, it is represented in parliament with 25 seats thanks to the second vote.
Even though this system is not perfect either, I find that it is much more democratic and fair than that in the US or the UK, because the second vote takes into account not only the will of the voters of the constituency winners, but the will of virtually all voters.
@Juanito G If you are referring to the *federal* government, to my knowledge there have never been major issues in forming a government since the founding of the state in 1949 🤔 *except* after the last election in September 2017, yes 😑 Here, several factors came together that made coalition building difficult. Let me try to explain the most important:
1) Since December 2013, a coalition of the two largest parties in Germany up to that point has ruled: the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU; actually two parties) and the Social Democrats (SPD). Both parties lost more and more popular support in polls, which is why the SPD announced before the parliamentary elections in 2017 that it did not want to continue the coalition with the CDU/CSU. (The CSU is only active in Bavaria, the CDU in the rest of Germany. In federal parliament, they traditionally form a common faction.)
2) The result of the 2017 parliamentary elections showed that none of the traditional coalitions achieved a majority - with the exception of a coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD. The CDU/CSU again received the most second votes. As already mentioned, the SPD refused to continue the current coalition but could not form another coalition due to the result.
3) It is also worth mentioning that previously there were only four parties represented in parliament, but now there are six. The economic liberals (FDP), who had left the last time, made it back into parliament, and a new extreme right-wing party (AfD) entered parliament for the first time.
4) All parties already excluded any cooperation with the AfD before the election. And the Christian Democrats also excluded any cooperation with the party Die Linke (The Left). This left only one possibility for forming a coalition: an unprecedented coalition at the federal level between the CDU/CSU, the FDP and Die Grünen (The Greens). After weeks of hard negotiations, however, the FDP broke off the talks. The formation of a coalition had failed.
5) Since no government could be formed, this would have meant new elections. However, this was actually in nobody's interest, as it was feared that new elections would only strengthen the right-wing extremists (AfD; which had already now become the third strongest party in parliament), which in turn would not make it easier to form a coalition.
6) After the mediation of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and a member vote in the SPD (January 2018), the SPD finally entered into a coalition with the CDU/CSU and Angela Merkel was reelected as Chancellor (March 2018). Btw: Another reason why the SPD had refused for so long was in fact that it wanted to prevent the AfD from becoming the opposition leader in parliament. That could then no longer be prevented.
@Juanito G Your "example" makes little sense and actually only shows that you have not understood the system. But it's ok. You don't know it.
Here in Germany, there are about the same number of people in each constituency. (In the UK not?) So each constituency winner (first vote) represents about as many people as any other constituency winner.
For example, Berlin is not just one constituency, it is divided into 12 constituencies. So there are 12 Members of the federal parliament, each representing one Berlin constituency.
At the same time, the 33 times larger federal state of Brandenburg, which encloses Berlin completely, is only divided into 10 constituencies. This is because there are about 3.6 million people living in Berlin, but only about 2.5 million in Brandenburg.
The MPs elected to parliament by the second vote do not represent any constituency at all. They represent, as it were, all the voters of all the constituencies that have elected their party. But it is only through these MPs that it can be said that Parliament actually reflects the totality of (almost) all voters in all constituencies. By the second vote, the German system ensures, so to speak, that the constituencies are not just for themselves, but part of the whole.
By contrast, the UK system sh*ts on the will of a large proportion of the electorate because they are clearly under-represented. The UK system is basically pretending that there is no whole, but only constituencies - Why do you call your country "United" Kingdom again? 🤔
@Juanito G I wonder whether it is possible to make a British person, who, as we know, loves the monarchy and is constantly blaming others for his own failures (see: Brexit), understand that coalitions are not at all as bad as the British sole rulers? 🤔😉
Fun fact: It is *not* true that Germany was once ruled by only a single party with a parliamentary majority. As already explained, the CDU/CSU consists of *two* parties. The CSU is only running in Bavaria, the CDU in the rest of Germany. Together they form the CDU/CSU faction in the federal parliament. Without the seats of the CSU, the CDU would not have had a majority in parliament after the 1957 election. (Your quote can actually only refer to that)
Assuming that the CDU/CSU is just one party: Despite its majority, the CDU/CSU did not rule alone in 1957, but formed a coalition with the national conservative DP (Deutsche Partei; German Party). But in July 1960 the two ministers of the DP left their party and became members of the CDU. Strictly speaking, yes, from that moment on the CDU/CSU ruled alone until November 1961, so for about 500 days.
Very interesting interview . Thank you.
It was great hearing from Professor Grayling. Have him back again. His knowledge and understanding of political science and philosophy make him a valuable educator and it's nice to hear from someone who can articulate things so well. I think he's right. I think we as progressives should target some of the low hanging fruit in the area of electoral reform. Some of these thing cross party lines so they'll build rapport with the other side and serve our goals at the same time. And since they're less partisan they'll be easier to pass. Which will help in future political fights with the right. We might be able to chalk up some wins and build trust with the electorate. We can show them that we'll actually do what we say we will. Which will help us win in future elections.
What I can foresee is that there would be backlash against electoral reform, in the form of programmes like Fox News calling it an "attack to our democracy" etc.
@@El3ctr0Lun4 We could make potato salad and burgers for the homeless and give it away for free and Fox would claim we were recruiting for a communist terror cell or something. I don't really think it matters what we do. Fox is gonna go mental either way. That's what they do. It's their entire purpose for being.
@@spaghettimonstersjudgingyo504 Exactly. The most bewildering moment for me was when Tucker Carlson had a segment against "the tyranny of the metric system".
@@El3ctr0Lun4 😂 🤣😂 🤣
@@El3ctr0Lun4 Republicans really do celebrate their ignorance don't they. Anything to keep their fragile egos nourished and secure.
I searched for that Tucker segment after you mentioned it. It's hilarious. Direct quote:
Tuckers Guest: "I'm joining you tonight as an anti metrite. I'm takin a stand against the metric system. The original system of global revolution and new world order's."
Tucker: "God bless you, and that's exactly what it is. Esperanto died but the metric system continued, this weird, utopian, inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted. How long can we hold out against it would you say? "
The guest goes on to link the French revolution to the metric system and suggests it's the system of socialists and tyrants. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
There are not enough facepalms in the entire world for Fox.
WTF...just WTF. It's like standing on a soap box in the middle of Time Square and shouting through a bullhorn, I'm a complete fucking moron and I'm damn proud of it. These are the same type of people who led to the collapse of Islam's Golden age. Religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists and just plain old, yet still exceptionally stupid people seeking to exchange our enlightenment values of science, reason and learning coupled with liberal societies with a rigid authoritarianism steeped in theocratic values and ethnic purity. As if ethnic purity is even possible in a place like America. We are all mutts. Almost nobody in America is 100 or even 90% some specific ethnic or racial group. We all intermarry. Jews and asians, Germans and hispanics, the religious and not. These people are going to be our downfall and they're going to celebrate the collapse.
On a side note a friend and I have been learning Esperanto. It's actually a really great language. It's simplicity makes it very easy to learn.
AC Grayling is a great thinker and commentator. I’m very glad to find him contributing here. Grayling mentions the UK’s tabloid press. Piers Morgan was a writer and editor for several tabloid papers, including The Sun, News of the World, and the Daily Mirror. In 1994, aged 29, he was appointed editor of the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch.
Very thought provoking.
Democracy is already fixed, if you know what I mean.
"Government for politicians" certainly appears that way, "definitely not for the people".....
You know this trend of democratic backsliding is disturbing and it's a worldwide trend. In Poland they've already LITERALLY packed the courts and are now trying to force through an election in the middle of a PANDEMIC: czcams.com/video/wl9uuBdKvwA/video.html You think we're headed in this direction?
@@simbamartens7192 we already are past there
This guy kicked that derpy Dinesh D'Souza's ass in a debate.
having the right to vote doesn't mean you have the knowledge to vote
Very enlightening and refreshing perceptive, especially pertaining to the notion of super minorities
This is the David Pakman Show at its best!
holy crap...he really tells it like it is -- no spin. brilliant! exceptional explanation about the nuances of the systems and amazing analysis of why/how the events occurred and how the systems contributed or even were appropriated by the parties to accomplish their goals. can we get him to the usa and elect him? yes, gotta get his book.
He is so right. The countries whit the first past the post system is the ones who are breaking down, time to adopt a European system and become democratic for real. But Sweden have more then 10 million today (recent development) so sorry Grayling you gott something wrong ;P
I'm from the Netherlands and I'm honestly proud of the way our government works. It's very far from perfect and there are definitely things I would like different, but I do think we have one of the best democratic systems in the world. I hope more countries follow so that we can get better together.
AC Grayling changed my perspective on life. Bertrand Russell changed my life.
David can you do a video on Sweden’s strategy of “herd immunity” to fight COVID? Also can you debunk this notion by right-wingers that COVID deaths are being inflated purposefully by hospitals, especially in light of NYT’s misleadingly titles article about how CDC guidelines are asking for deaths assumed to be contributed to covid. Also explaining how people die from diseases? In that if your poor respiratory issues are triggered by covid, why that’s a death attributable to covid? Please! PLEASE! It’s frustrating.
1. to be fair, you could explain that yourself. just get a document full of things you could copy and paste in.
2. you really think that they will listen to david?
rank-choice!
Loved Grayling's The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism. I will have to order Democracy and its Crisis.
Step 1: End capitalism.
End of process.
Because we will all be dead.
A man so cool they call him A.c.
Unfortunately, a more proportional representation necessarily goes along with a pretty big election reform - that's not really a gradual thing. However, you might try to look into something similar to the German system.
Basically, the idea - at least in federal elections - is that you elect two halves of the representatives (the _Bundestag)_ with two different methods. There is one side you elect with first-past-the-post like in the US (so, familiar), and the other half gets elected in a pretty much purely proportional vote: you vote for the party, which publishes a list. Essentially, you then pick people from the list until - _together with the directly elöected people_ - you get the proportions from the proportional part of the vote. There are a number of complications that are not all that relevant to the big picture, except for one: a party needs to get _at least 5%_ of the vote to be able to get any seats from the proportional vote (they might still have direct candidates). It is common for candidates to stand for both a district and a place on the list; obviously, the place on the list only takes effect when they lose the direct vote.
For more background:
The other chamber (the analog to the senate (the _Bundesrat),_ to represent the states) isn't elected at all. Instead, the members are the state governments, given a number of votes that depends on the population, but still has only small differences between smallest (3) and largest (6).
The constitution spells out exactly what gets decided by the _Bundestag,_ what by the states, and where the _Bundestag_ has to agree with the _Bundesrat_ (and there's a specific committee with members from both (the _Vermittlungsausschuss)_ whose job it is to figure out acceptable compromises).
Oh, and the chief-of-government (the _Kanzler)_ gets elected by the representatives (the _Bundestag),_ not the population at large, which means that coalitions essentially have to happen before that vote (but after the vote to the _Bundestag,_ since you need to know how many votes every party has). And the way to get rid of them is to simply elect someone else, which you can do anytime you want, no long-drawn-out court-like process is necessary.
Also, it's much easier to change the constitution, so that isn't a rare event. Well, not as rare as in the US. And the supreme court and the pretty much powerless federal president (whose election, consequently, is effectively a circus) have term limits, whereas the rest of the politicians don't. This has so far worked out pretty well.
Very interesting.
Democracy:
1) Media provides the facts and supports the public discussion
2) Educated people come to an opinion and vote
3) The political representation reflects the voter's will
So, who dares to call the US a democracy?
My question as a topic for debate would be; would a direct democracy ever work? This is where instead of voting for politicians to represent you, you vote on the issues directly, by putting them forward to a ballot every year, and civil servants are responsible for enacting the outcome into a law that is enforceable or putting in place the necessary resources to make it happen (for things like UBI or recycling or green energy)
You would need a population more well-educated in civics. I for example, while highly educated in a STEM field, would not want to always have to inform myself about all these political debates, policies, potential consequences and so on, so I do not think I and others like me should be able to directly vote on such political issues. That's why we have people who specialize in these things, so that we can appoint them to make good decisions for us.
Before I watch the video here’s some ideas I have to protect our democracy
1. Abolish the electoral college or at the absolute minimum abolish the winner take all method, and don’t allow faithless electors
2 Rank choice voting from your local city election all the way up to the president election
3 Either normalize early voting methods or make Election Day a national holiday
4 Either get rid of ID laws or make it possible for the poor and homeless to easily get said IDs
5 Make laws like those that made it harder for American Indians to vote unconstitutional
6 rearrange the state primary voting order every election cycle . Iowa and New Hampshire shouldn’t always get to start
7 Term limits in the legislative branch of government. ( a politician could be both a representative and then a senator and vice verse but, no one should spend 40-50 years in such a powerful position. That breeds corruption)
8 Limit the amount of money any one candidate can spend on an election campaign. The way it is now rich people have too much of an unfair advantage.
Just some ideas I’ve had for a while. I remember my friend being happy back in 2016 that Trump won in a undemocratic way, because it didn’t matter to him that Trump got less votes he still won. It was from that moment I realized we weren’t nearly as democratic as we praised ourselves for being, and that I wanted things to change.
"America is not a democracy, it's a constitutional republic"
i think the voting age should be 16 and every 6 months should be a vote for the various policies in the jurisdiction.
Trump knew Melania wasn't voting for him 😂😂😂
Your guests are different and hugely interesting David👍. You should be getting better and better guests.
David can you make a video giving your take on the Horowitz report? My Trumpian friend is all excited about it but anything coming from AG Barr seems like pure Trump propaganda to me. Always like to hear your view thanks.
You have a trump friend, cool.
We have FPTP in Canada too with an even more undemocratic Senate as our Senators are appointed, not elected.
What’s more is that in that last Canadian Federal election the Liberals won the most seats and formed government despite the Conservatives winning the popular vote. Not to mention the NDP winning some 16% of the popular vote but only getting 24 seats and the Bloc winning a mere 7.7% of the popular vote but 32 seats in parliament.
I can’t believe it isn’t talked about more, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Backwards results.
newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/results/
So true, why can't people let the conservatives win one, so sad.
In the thumbnail Trump is looking over at Melanie's ballot to see how to make an X.
Step 1: get money out of politics.
Step 2: Repeat Step 1.
Kurt will fix it
Notice how professor Grayling CORRECTLY refers to the country by it's OFFICIAL name of United States of America and NOT AMERICA. It is the United States of America on the continent of America. The continent of America is split in two, North America and South America. The United States of America is a county on the continent of North America, just like Canada, Greenland and Mexico who can all effectively claim to be in America. The president is the President of the United States of America, anyone holding citizenship in the United States of America are US citizens NOT American citizens. Anyone in possession of a US passport will have US citizen NOT American citizen. The USA is represented throughout the world by Ambassadors to the United States of America. The armed forces are the United States of America not American, as in the US Air Force, US Army, US Marines, even the US Coast guard. Border control is the US Borderforce and US Immigration. The US Supreme Court, the US Senate, etc, etc, etc.
Why has the United States of America hijacked the term AMERICA. I find it totally repugnant and it's gone too far.
It's the United States of America or just plain USA.
Enough with this crap 😡
looks like we are doomed.
>united kingdom is one of the three great democracies
gonna be a yikes from me dawg
First of all you need the workers control the majority of the means of production privately and collectively so you don't have the powerfull using there huge income to buy government one way or another, regarding the media you need to have honest media with journalists being transparent about there epistemologies , moral beliefs and desires that they base there journalism or political commentary and citizens waching the ones that better conform with there epistemology and morality, being neutral and pretending to being above everyone is impossible cuz even if you do not do political commentary at all you still chose what to report, CNN is a bad media organization as it pretends to be above evryone while still being the Washington Overton window media (look how they have treated progressives the last decade)! And finaly to the actual electoral system, you nead to make it very very simple for peaple to express there opinion regarding policy but i won't go into spesiphics here
Brexit may be the best thing that ever happened to Britain since the end of WW II.
A C Wailing can't stop complaining about Brexit. He needs to learn to accept most British people don't share his view on the EU.
Does the EU being extremely _undemocratic_ enter into the equation?
Please explain?
@@johnmuthan286 I'll preface this by saying I think it's more positive than negative and I was mostly trying to be a contrarian dick lol _but_ there are legitimate concerns to the level of bureaucracy and capitulation to a ruling class (effectively the same issues we have in the US). The various copyright nonsense passed in direct opposition to popular sentiment is a pretty good example of this. If we zoom out however, we can probably identify the _real_ culprit of all of these issues which is capitalism's fundamental disparity of class power. Here's a visual flowchart of how democracy gets filtered, or to editorialize, how the ruling class has various checks to ensure their ultimate hegemony (much in the same way Hamilton sought out in the US...the people were a "great beast" according to him...great guy lol...):
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Organs_of_the_European_Union.svg/780px-Organs_of_the_European_Union.svg.png
@@johnmuthan286 Oh another sort of predicament I forgot to mention that occured recently is Viktor Orban in Hungary declaring himself de facto dictator and the lack of any effective counter mechanism to this (like the federal government might in the US if states were to, say, try to implement segregation or something).
@@Bisquick this part (capitalism as it is performed nowadays) I can agree with, but saying EU is undemocratic where they have all been elected directly or indirectly by the population I don't agree. Now don't forget it is a coalition of countries working in a common economical goal of the EU single market. Therefore you will always get minorities (in the occurrence of the EU this means countries with different fiscal rules) not agreeing with the majority. That is why we hear complaints about this. UK and the brexit story for instance was all of a scam which started when a majority of EU countries decided in 2015 to pass a law to prevent taxe evasion schemes, such law to be voted in 2016 and to be implemented in 2 stages first one in January 2019 and full enforcement by July 2020. (you start to see a time line here). Don't forget 60+% of Uqk gdp is done by financial services and that UK has the biggest nb of taxe heaven territories...
@@Bisquick that's up to each countries to deal with internal affairs (borders, fiscal, social..etc)and the EU (a economic common territory club) has no governance upon countries. EU is the equivalent of the NAFTA or god knows how you call it now, it is not a federal government.