Hlysnan wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2010 at 6:41pm:



I'm surprised that you call it any sort of success to have your friends ruin the political career of the only politician brave enough to expose the other parties for what they are, and trying to represent her electors honestly. The only Hanson policies other parties adopted later were ones that it suited them to adopt anyway; other Hanson policies  that Australian electors wanted were buried somewhere in the hills around Canberra, never to be heard of again.

You claim to be noting the success of individuals in changing the law, but I'm not impressed by what you regard as "success" so far.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2010 at 8:52pm:


No, it's fiddling at the edges.  There are plenty who say we would have been better off without the stimulus package you know... we still have to repay, somehow, all that money spent (wasted in some cases) on stimulus. Thieving a percentage of everybody's savings through interest rate rises and inflation is what we now face as a result of the stimulus.

And while your heroes have been fiddling at the edges they have done nothing about introducing the many things the people have long wanted, such as:

ending the immoral war on drugs
allowing the terminally ill a choice of dying by painless, voluntary  euthanasia; you yourself might want it one day
introducing some form of direct democracy; with that, we should be able to sort out the rest for ourselves.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:

Yes, that's all we can ever expect when our votes go mainly to a representative of a party.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:

Sorry, I thought they might have been, the way you were holding them up as examples of success.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:


It would be lovely if that were true, but in truth it's one of the powerful misconceptions upon which our representative democracy is based. Firstly, the people who want to legalise drugs might not be the most intelligent and skillful of debaters in a political setting. If you  make them compete (even if fairly) in a setting that does not suit their strengths wouldn't you expect them to fail and keep failing forever, even if they outnumbered their opponents by a significant margin?

There is also the problem that for most people, drugs are just one of a million other things they need to deal with in their lives; to expect them to congregate spontaneously to fix the government's stupid laws is hoping for too much.  More likely they will be intimidated, fined, and gaoled individually in numbers too small to provoke them into collective action.

Furthermore, we are led to think that if 51% of voters support a proposition they deserve to win and enforce their collective will on the remaining 49% of the population. That is a terrible formula for finding the best outcome for the population as a whole, guaranteed to leave almost half the population dissatisfied. That dissatisfaction can be minor in some cases, and life-ruining in others, depending on the matters involved. Because of this, good, harmless people languish in our gaols whilst others blithely go about assuming they deserve to be there for "holding themselves above the law".

There must be better ways of protecting the lives of those doomed to lose in political votes.  It would be better, for example, if the government was not able to do anything without an overwhelming winning vote, more like 90% than 51%.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:


Plenty maybe, but not so many that would want to waste their time bogged down in our political process.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:

Any sensible person would, after discovering how it worked.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:

What I proposed would not restrict the government to no action at all.  It would just require them to design their legislation more carefully, so that 90% of the population would see that the legislation would benefit them, resulting in 90% support. The government would soon discover that no amount of rewording could ever make some of its proposals attractive of course, and would have to undergo a lengthy learning period whilst it learned to deal with that.