I was listening to the "Talking Politics" podcast yesterday, every now and then they do a theme monologue in which the presenter and politics boffin David Runciman takes a Long View at political problems, gets the telescope out instead of the microscope. This week, he had a crack at a macro view of the tinkering you could do to make democratic govt better responsive to the needs of citizens. To view the link you have to Register or Login
He posits that, if you wanted to make one big change, the most interesting one would be to extend suffrage downwards in age (to six year olds, in fact!). Election results are slanting towards what old people want, and it's inefficient, as elections determine the future, not the past - they are serving a vanishingly small number of remaining-human-years and not delivering what the people who are actually going to be around want. I reckon with fixed term Parliaments, it's pretty easy to argue that the vote should be given to anyone who's going to be eighteeen within the next five years. I wonder if you could also weight votes so that votes were worth less according to how far the voter is from average mortality age.
Wonder what the BBS thinks? - here's a poll to help us decide.
He posits that, if you wanted to make one big change, the most interesting one would be to extend suffrage downwards in age (to six year olds, in fact!). Election results are slanting towards what old people want, and it's inefficient, as elections determine the future, not the past - they are serving a vanishingly small number of remaining-human-years and not delivering what the people who are actually going to be around want. I reckon with fixed term Parliaments, it's pretty easy to argue that the vote should be given to anyone who's going to be eighteeen within the next five years. I wonder if you could also weight votes so that votes were worth less according to how far the voter is from average mortality age.
Wonder what the BBS thinks? - here's a poll to help us decide.
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