#73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 03:00:00 -0700

Want to make everyone under 30 extremely angry? Tell them you don't like proportional representation. Tell them proportional representation sucks, just like recycling. In this episode, we continue to improve your popularity at parties by diving into Sir Karl's theory of democracy, and his arguments for why the first-past-the-post electoral system is superior to proportional representation systems. And if you find anyone left at the party who still wants to talk to you, we also cover Chapter 13 of Beginning of Infinity, where Deutsch builds upon Popper's theory. And always remember,

First-Past-The-Post: If it's good enough for the horses, it's good enough for us.

We discuss

Why democracy should be about the removal of bad leaders
How Popper's conception of democracy differs from the usual conception
Why Popper supports first-past-the-post (FPP) over proportional representation (PR)
How PR encourages backroom dealing and magnifies the influence of unpopular leaders
The sensitivity of FPP to changes to popular will
How FPP makes it easier to obtain majorities
How majorities make it easier to trace the consequences of policies
Deutsch and his criticism of compromise-policies.

References

Popper on democracy (economist piece).
Vaden's blog post
Chapter 13: Choices of The Beginning of Infinity

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#73 - The Unfairness of Proportional Representation