alt Hacker News> People vote for brands.
Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes.
Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.
Replies
Xirdus • yesterday at 7:00 PM
In practice, multi-party systems rotate their brands in and out with much higher frequency than two-party systems.
Branding effects are not the core problem, they just make the core problems worse.
CORE PROBLEMS:
A system that continually converges down to only two viable parties, rewards divisive candidates and handicaps broadly-liked third or fourth party candidates.
A system that allows one party to capture all three branches of government. Incentivizing extreme power plays/centralization in and between parties. (Usually starts within a party.)
A system that lets parties integrate at Federal and State levels, suppressing or eliminating the otherwise strong benefits of Federal/State government decentralization. Creates massive incentives for out-of-state capture of state politics.
A permissive system for players to cache out as system-undermining lobbyists after a tour of "service".
CORE SOLUTIONS:
Maximum seat-run limits for parties, forces cross-partisanship and coalitions as some level. Any is better than none.
Separation of parties at Federal and State levels. And/or limits on numbers of states a party can operate in. Use the Federalized system of decentralizing Federal/State government to achieve parallel decentralization of parties.
Take money out of politics. Hard to do perfectly, but any limits make a big difference. Brands operate on pervasive non-rational visibility and repetition, i.e. money.
Voting systems that give wide-appeal candidates an advantage.
Voluntary acceptance of a post-tour lobbying bans, as a requirement for political and policy appointments. Remove that pervasive conflict of interest machine. Disincentivize game players from public "service".