Just under 100,000 actually, but still absolutely insane! The downtown was completely abandoned with bridges closed and power turned off, it was like a post-apocalyptic wasteland!
It's okay, there's no shortage of people wanting to try to lead, and those would-be-leaders now have to tread more carefully around their exacting standards.
"In order to ensure our security, and continuing stability, the Kingdom has been reorganized into the First Vorticon Intellectuality!"
The problem with the protesters is that everyone has their desired leader but those are all different people. Muhummad was the leader supported by most of the population, that is, not even 50% No matter who gets in most of the country will hate them and they're not going to get much chance to change anything before people get mad and want them out. (And NO, that's NOT the same as in America, you don't know how good you have it!)
What you really need, not what you think you ought to want.
Levellass wrote:Muhummad was the leader supported by most of the population, that is, not even 50% No matter who gets in most of the country will hate them and they're not going to get much chance to change anything before people get mad and want them out. (And NO, that's NOT the same as in America, you don't know how good you have it!)
There are voting systems that measure broad acceptability:
First past the post is kinda a joke in this regard (and the reason the dual-party system has survived so long despite so much discontent - there's no other realistic choice to vote for), so America's not really much better off. It's just that, unlike the egyptians, we're far too lazy to actually protest anything.
"In order to ensure our security, and continuing stability, the Kingdom has been reorganized into the First Vorticon Intellectuality!"
You're forgetting the reason they don't have to listen to anyone else: even if their constituents are pissed off, they only really have the same two options to vote for (and the voter has already shown a preference, however begrudged, for the one of the two they're voting for). The voting systems I linked to would make the third option much more viable. Should the two main parties both become unpopular, they would face downward pressure as both their constituents also vote for the others. (In fact, they probably wouldn't have gotten to such a powerful state in the first place.)
The two-party system is more a long-term artifact of first-past-the-post voting systems, where these third parties are made unfeasible once any two popular ones get established.
"In order to ensure our security, and continuing stability, the Kingdom has been reorganized into the First Vorticon Intellectuality!"
Then mission fucl accomplished. But it's not a black-and-white issue. Even if a third party never sees significant gains, they'd at least see more gains than in this case, putting pressure on the dominant parties to not piss people off. Having more competition helps to keep you more honest, in short.
In reality, I'm not convinced that two parties would've gotten in such a dominant position in the first place. Whereas first-past-the-post ensures that, once two popular parties have been established, any voters for alternative parties would waste their votes, this disincentive would be much reduced (in the case of approval voting, eliminated entirely) with the other voting schemes.
"In order to ensure our security, and continuing stability, the Kingdom has been reorganized into the First Vorticon Intellectuality!"
