Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "TLDR News EU"
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@KyuQem "central witch just no longer exist"
That's just plain wrong, it's just ignorance on the TLDR teams side that leads to them using east and west for Europe without more nuance...
Scotland, the island of Man, all the Nordic countries and Estonia are neither Eastern nor Western but *Northern*.
Latvia and Lithuania could fall either into northern or eastern depending on how you look at them.
Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria etc are Central European and neither belongs in the east nor west, although Poland can be considered either Central European or Eastern European depending on how you look at it, same as Lithuania and Latvia can be seen as either Northern or Eastern.
Greece, Italy, the European parts of Turkey and the whole Iberian Peninsula is Southern European, not East or West.
Bulgaria, Serbia, Belarus, Romania etc are Eastern European.
There's more countries in Southern, Eastern and Central Europe then those that I just haven't labeled yet.
But you get the picture.
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@janl5879
Well, France and Germany combined have 177 of the total 720 seats in the EU parliament.
While definitely important nations they're not nearly strong enough to define EU politics alone anymore.
France and Germany combined have more seats then the smallest 16 countries combined out of 27 countries in the EU.
Given that the EU elections are proportional that means that those seats are never unified behind just one or two parties, but spread among multiple parties.
That in turn means that smaller nations easily can become king makers tripping the balance of power.
But other countries like Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands all have enough seats to significantly influence too.
Italy, Spain and Poland combined have more seats then Germany and France does combined.
And the Nordic countries are far from the countries with the fewest seats, Sweden have 21, that's nothing to sneeze at, and more then enough to have a significant influence on the EU.
And the Nordics combined have 51 seats right now.
That's almost as much as Polands 53.
And remember, Italy, Spain and Poland combined have more seats then Germany and France.
Meaning that the Nordics + Italy and Spain would have more seats combined then Germany and France combined.
In politics you need to find allies and cooperate with others to get results.
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@atm9862 pparently not, since they're not given citizenship without knowing the language.
And sure, learning the language is one thing.
You can enforce that by requiring companies to offer services in your language etc.
Giving people incentives to learn your language as it'll create job opportunities for them.
But banning people from education in their own native language or suppressing their culture just doesn't fly.
NATO is funded on a principle that their members are democratic.
If you don't give your minority rights, then that's essentially violating the terms under which we are required to offer you military aid in case of a attack on you.
Yes, Russia is our enemy, but Russians are not.
And I say that as someone from a country *bordering * them.
If this behavior continues I will call the representatives of the party I vote for and ask for them to request a Norwegian call for the expulsion of the Baltic countries from NATO.
I doubt that anything will come from it.
But still, that's my position.
I get that it's scary.
And you're well within your rights to require companies within your borders to know your language to operate.
If you want to offer scholarships abroad for Russian speakers and just in general encourage them to move to other European countries using the carrot that's definitely within your rights.
Indeed someone in my village of 1 200 people here in Norway are from Latvia I think, but from a Russian speaking family (one of her parents a ethnic Russian, the other a ethnic Ukrainian, both where invited to the country by the local government during the USSR because of their skills being useful to the local economy), she has now migrated here where she is *welcome*.
There are ways of encouraging changes that's kosher and that doesn't involve coercion.
Your current treatment of them is creating hostility and is actively discouraging integration in your society.
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@gameofender4463 ctually this is a symptom of you guys not having enough coalition governments.
Parties are too uses to getti their way and not having to make compromises, and so are the electorate.
If you guys switch to a electoral system that is less likely to unfairly favour bigger parties and you get more political parties with real political power you'll see that it's actually healthy.
Here in the Nordic countries we all have coalition governments every single time.
And because we're used to it that works great.
Indeed here in Norway our 169 seat parliament has 10 political parties represented right now for our 5,4 million population.
While your parliament that currently has 736 seats only have 5 political parties represented for a population of freaking 83,2 million people.
Only a single one of our 10 parties are down to a single seat.
Two have 3 seats, two have 8 seats, one has 13 seats, one 21, one 28, one 36 and finally the biggest has 48 seats in this term.
The current goverment is a minority coalition, but they could have formed a majority if they wished with one of the other parties.
But said party refused to join as long as companies are given new areas to search for oil (drilling in existing areas where fine, and we're not talking a permanent ban, just no searching during the term).
Since that concession wasn't made they choose to support the formation of the current government coalition but not take part in it as a member, so they're not obligated to support them in everything.
Meaning that they'll have to get a shifting majority on a case by case basis in the parliament.
We're used to that, so it's not a big deal.
We've even had cases of governments having to run a budget created by the opposition in the parliament since that had a larger share of the votes.
They'd of course still decide the details themselves, but that way we avoid a lot of problems.
If a coalition can't work something out then just leave it to the parliament to come to a solution.
Or use the coalition agreement as a starting point.
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@KrlKngMrtssn Speak for yourself.
I live in Norway and I find it offensive to be labeled as "western" rather then "northern".
The island of Man, Scotland, all the nordic countries and all the Baltic countries are not in either of the two categories of this video, but Northern Europe.
And Germany, Poland, Czechia, Switzerland and Austria and Lichtenstein doesn't belong in the two either, being Central European (there's more Central European countries, but those are the first that pops up in my mind when thinking of Central Europe).
Greece, Italy, the whole Iberian peninsula, Cyprus, Malta and the European part of Turkey isn't in either of the two categories but in Southern Europe.
The Balkans...
Is complicated...
Some of the countries there belongs in Central Europe, some in Southern Europe and some, like Serbia in Eastern Europe I feel.
I'd place Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus and Serbia in Eastern Europe myself.
That said I'm less familiar with the southeastern parts of the continent and might make different evaluations of countries there then someone local with more detailed knowlege about the regions in question.
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@Jonas_M_M In a proportional parliamentarian system large parties like that ends up split up, so people on the left in the far right block who would be able to work with the center right would probably be their own party, the center right would probably be multiple parties etc, etc.
And people would negotiate to find solutions.
Don't make calling a new election a easy way out where a party may hope to win because they hate the other guys more like in a first past the post system, instead other parties will gain on those new elections.
Allow laws to be passed and cabinets to come to power if there's no majority voting against them Instead of requiring a majority in favour, that way a party can still negotiate for favours in order to abstain from voting against a cabinet being formed but still flight them down the line on other issues allowing for lots of dynamic alliances where all political parties are potential allies etc.
After all, if the far right and far left wants the same thing for a change on something they don't have to vote for the others suggestions (something that voters might not like if they don't know the details) but they can refrain from voting against the other, likewise with the extremes vs the center etc.
It's a pretty decent system that we've used here in the nordic countries for a long time now.
About 2/3 of all cabinets in Norway since the war has involved the labour party, often because parties in the center has started out on the left then switched side, or at least refrained from voting against labour when the right didn't behave, in the middle of a term.
No new elections, just a change of prime minister midterm to that of the biggest political party, the labour party (they've been the biggest since the war) and no majority impact on your average citizen.
Honestly it's a good system giving all the parties power and a incentive towards cooperation as anyone may be a potential ally.
Even the extreme opposite side of the political spectrum could be a ally do you don't want to antagonize them too much.
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@no_rubbernecking Okey, so the problem with the rest of the system you have in mind is this.
By having a automatic system for how the cabinet is put together you end up with parties that don't have a incentive to work together in said cabinet.
It's better to have a system where parties don't vote for who should be a member of a coalition.
Instead you simply do what we do here in Europe, start with whoever has the biggeset party, ask them to come up with a proposal for a coalition, present that to the parliament, if they get a majority supporting that proposal or at least no majority against it (depending on the exact system) then great, that proposal ends up ruling, if that proposal fails then the second biggest party gets an attempt, then the third biggest etc all through the whole list of parties.
Since each party of course wants to lead they'll negotiate with other parties for them to either take part in the cabinet so party 1 might bring party 3, 4 and 5 with them along in the cabinete to try to form a majority, and then they might offer concessions to party 6 7 and 8 in order for those parties not to vote against the coalition proposal.
And in that way they manage to get a majority for the cabinet to be formed, but they don't have enough power with the parties actually in the cabinet to force through new laws, so you'll get ad hoc majorities for various different legislative proposals making democracy work way better.
Since you don't just have 2 big parties a single party using the whip to block members from voting in support of a bill doesn't really matter much as other combinations of parties will form that will support it in many cases.
The voters will ensure it.
The big parties will simply split up since there's no real incentives to keep them merged into big parties anymore.
So the christian democrats can have their own party all about conservative and/or religious values.
The nationalists will get their own party.
The liberitarian right will get their party.
The pro-business conservatives will get their party etc.
The same of course applies to the left wing.
With the different factions within the Republican and Democratic party forming their own parties that will be free to enter into coalitions with eachother or not as they please.
But also be free to ally on single issues when they're not a coalition member but perhaps supporting a coalition in return for concessions.
So perhaps the biggest left wing party will seek a centrist coalition with the former far left factions of the democratic party not being included in the coalition but giving support in return for certan concessions, but then the far left might ally with certain right wing parties to get a certain law through the legislative body since they as a non-coalition member will be free to do their own thing in parliament.
Get what I mean?
I consider that a good thing.
Also, the parties that's actually in the coalition has already agreed on how they want to rule the country together working out the worst issues ahead of time and negotiating what camels each party has to swallow in order to get eachothers support for the cabinet.
What positions should be held by what party, what to do in certain situations etc, etc, etc.
With your suggestion there's no reason why the biggest party actually have to do what the smaller parties wants, after all if those smaller parties don't get their policies through then another small party can just take over their spot and the big party will still be just fine.
Since the logic of your system is still that the cabinet is won based on how much voters each party has itself more then anything else...
Our system instead is all built around the concept of consensus.
In 2001 a party with 12,4% of the voters won the election in Norway because they where the only ones able to get enough support for their proposal.
Despite there being 4 parties bigger then them.
The way I see it that a victory for our system.
Because it means that the parties willing to cooperate ends up being rewarded with power, and the ones that don't end up without power, so you end up with a functioning goverment.
And the voters knew what cabinet proposals that would be likely to win depending on what parties they voted on.
So they did win the election fair and square.
But they didn't win the prime minister job based on their own voters alone.
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@rupplopp My own preferred party (MDG) is the party that struggles the most with the system we have.
The party I mentioned got 1 representative into our parliament with a total of 4908 votes in total behind that representative.
My own party increased its number of seats from 1 to 3 representatives.
Being below 4% we ended up with non of the 19 leveling seats.
As a result our 110.973 votes only gave us 3 representatives or 36.991 votes pr representative.
On average you need about 17 200 votes to get a representative in Norway.
My party is among the ones that suffers the most from our system since they tend to attract urban voters.
And my vote is among the ones that counts less because of our system, since I live in the third/fourth biggest city in Norway, Trondheim (the position depends on how you define what is or isn't included in the city).
However thing of it this way.
A city or urban area has a lot more people who have similar living experiences.
In 2014 we had a population of 182 035 here in Trondheim.
That's means that it's very likely that at least someone who knows how it is to live in Trondheim is represented in our parliament in any given year.
But if every vote is of equal value you end up with a very, very long time between each time any given location in rural area is represented in parliament.
Between every time someone who knows how it is to live there, what problems they face etc is represented.
By giving rural voters more weight in our system we ensure that someone from those areas are represented anyway.
But the overal composition of our parliament is still adjusted for the overall popularity of a party by our leveling seats.
With 110 973 votes my party would have had about 6 seats if we had one seat for every 17 200 votes (the average number of votes pr seat in our parliament)
So once we get past 4% of the total votes we're going to get a lot of leveling seats.
We had 3.9%
It sucks.
But it also means that our voters have more influence.
Since each and every one of our votes matters more when we're in the area of that 4% treshold.
It's a bit like how voters in the US matters more in swing states then in red or blue states.
Except for us it's on a pr party level and it's the 4% threshold that matters.
Having that 4% threshold for our leveling seats means that parties that does make it above 4% are ensured to have a real say in our political climate since they get enough seats to be relevant in our politics.
But since you can get seats even below 4% we also have the possibility to be relevant due to the possibility of ending up with the balance of power between two parties vying prime minister position even with a single seat if the parliamentary math between the rest of the political parties adds up just right.
And even when it doesn' you might end up with balance of power in individual law proposals or even make law proposals of your own with a single representative.
So if you have a issue that matters you can push it with our system if you can mobilize enough voters.
And it's proportional at every level.
The 3 seats we did get where the 3 seats we had earned through our proportional voter share in the electoral circles where we did manage to get enough votes compared to other parties to get at least one seat.
All our 19 electoral circles are multi-member districts and proportional, with the two smallest electoral circles (in terms of seats) still having 4 seats each.
And we have 5 electoral circles that has a two digit number of seats each.
So it's not really unfair towards smaller parties in that sense.
And big parties with a broad appeal among multiple electoral circles will be well represented anyway in the various electoral circles.
So the 19 leveling seats mainly benefits smaller parties that has a broad appeal.
Small parties that's mainly popular in certain areas will get direct representation from their respective electoral circle.
Big parties will get a lot of seats *everywhere*.
And parties with less then 4% of the votes will get represented if they are popular enough in a electoral circle to make it, regardless of how small their total number of votes is.
And with the 4% threshold the parties that makes it past that point gets extra "omph" compared to other smaller parties meaning that you can get something done.
So there's a motivation to try to work issues out instead of just split up parties the moment there is a issue due to the 4% rule, and there is a motivation for people to go out and vote for parties near that limit, people who might otherwise stay at home, or vote for a bigger party, since every single vote might count a lot when you're close to that point, increasing participation.
It does lead to a little bit of tactical voting, since members of bigger parties might win more representation for their coalition pr vote by voting for a small party near that limit then for their preferred option, but since the outcome is always proportional I don't really see that as a problem, they're not forced to do this, it's a option that they have and can make a informed decision to do, and there's no real penalty for not doing so.
Most voters don't do this after all.
Yes, it does mean less power when we're below the 4% limit.
In this case my party.
But we'll get more power when we get above while we're still represented, getting our politics heard, our proposals voted on, and our votes counted.
And all the other parties know that it's just a matter of time before we will end up above the 4% limit and some other parties ends up below, so just ignoring us or pissing us off isn't a good play either.
Our system encourages a consensus, and addressing the issues of everyone.
The bigger parties doesn't have to do exactly what the smaller parties wants, but in order to push us under the 4% limit where we're relatively speaking harmless they have to adopt at least some of the policies of the factions within their own parties that's aligned with us.
So in the case of MDG, the green movement within the bigger parties like the labour party or even the conservatives (movements also represented in other parties like the liberals on the political right and the socialist left party on the left, while we are in the center.)
So yeah, I'm pretty happy with our system.
It's not perfect.
But it's pretty good.
And I think well suited for Sweden.
Perhaps it could allow the center party in Sweden to split up and focus more on farmers making them more compatible with the political left, while the capitalists in the party could merge with another right wing party or form their own themselves since they'd have a real shot for power without a lower limit for representation.
Or any number of other possible changes.
Basically I think it would make Swedish poliltics more balanced.
As for the Sweden Democrats, perhaps the extremists would leave the party and form their own smaller party where they don't have to deal with the moderating forces.
While the leadership could afford to alinate some far right voters in order to actually become a real coalition option.
And so one and so forth...
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@lobaxx Hum, factions within that party could probably get more done by splitting off from the Swedish center party and merging with factions within other parties splitting off from theirs.
Agrarianism, subsidies, protectionism, pragmatism, this is all things that works well enough with the left.
As for the whole immigration thing.
Our center is anti-immigration in general, but that doesn't mean that they're opposed to seasonal work immigration.
It's more about nationalism and protecting our culture etc.
Their immigration policy is fairly pragmatic, they don't want a full stop in immigration because Norway needs to replace people due to our birth rate.
And farms etc does need workers.
But they want limited immigration rates, and immigrants that benefits us if you get my meaning.
And of course working with parties that wants more immigration they're of course willing to conceede accepting people on humanitarian grounds, as long as this is kept within "reasonable" levels.
In essence, on paper they're a "left wing" party, palatable enough to left wing voters to be acceptable coalition partners for the real left wing parties.
But they tend to be the party that holds back a lot of left wing values in the coalition negotiations in favour of their own interests.
Hence why our socialist left party actually decided to pull out of the coalition negotiations after our latest election, since the center party just drove too hard a bargain and wasn't willing to give in enough on enviromental issues...
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@jesseberg3271 That's kind of the point though.
A lot of people (potentially most people) in Europe want a close relationship with each other without being a federation.
In a confederation power comes from below, the participating components give power up but still have the final say, while in a federal entity power comes from above.
A federal approach helps reduce the risk of war as the members are in a close coalition that benefit from working together and the members while still feeling like they belong to their own component entity first still feel like they belong to the same bigger entity.
They can use that bigger entity when dealing with others around the world being close allies in trade negotiations and other forms of diplomacy and quite frankly also in war.
People living in different climates, terrains etc have different living conditions.
Germany and the Netherlands have a lot of urban areas well suited for privatized services like private trains and postal services for instance as the population density makes it easy to make those services profitable directly.
While countries like Norway is rural with lower economic potential for these services, as an example, meaning that these are things that we've traditionally handled as a society at large rather than individuals or corporations.
Our agriculture is less competitive with all our mountains, forests and just in general lack of suitable agricultural land, as well as our reduced growing season.
Meaning that we can't compete in volume with traditional farming, yet most of our "nature" is actually a cultural landscape shaped by agriculture, it has been a vital part of shaping our society where every fjord has its own culture and heritage.
Our farming has always been small scale and for the most part supplementary in nature with many farmers being both farmers and a secondary job like a fisherman.
Historically we have never truly been self sufficient with carbohydrates importing grain from other countries to supplement our own production in exchange for our own products of fish, wood, and various types of meat (both domesticated animals like goat, sheep, cow, reindeer etc) and wild animals.
And of course in later years other products like petroleum based ones.
So for instance when Denmark-Norway was attacked by the UK during the Napoleonic wars while we where still neutral and we ended up with our fleet captured or sunk in the great fleet robbery of Copenhagen (the Brits stole half our fleet) we ended up starving during the blockade of our coast, surviving on food smuggled in or taken by privateers attacking trade between the UK and countries around the Baltic sea.
Obviously we don't want to find ourselves starving again.
But if for whatever reason we can't import food anymore it helps to have some production ourselves.
So tariffs on those products helps in that regard, since we're still importing those products anyway.
That of course doesn't jam well with people living on the fertile plains of Europe.
All the lands between the Netherlands and some distance into Russia are well suited for agriculture, of course it's in their best interest to have good market conditions where they can compete on equal terms with others as they can be competitive, especially the Netherlands and Ukraine (I think?) produce quite a bit of food and are competitive exporting their food all over the world.
We of course welcome their food, but we'd like to keep some farmers ourselves, ideally without resorting to the factory farms found in more intensely farmed places.
Likewise we'd like to keep our fisheries going, and avoid the overfishing that the EU is doing and dealing with certain... Flaws... In the EU fishery policies.
This is of course important topics.
Still being a part of a larger entity can cancel out a lot of the drawbacks of being a small country.
And we benefit greatly from being a part of many of the multilateral agreements that are a part of the EU framework even as we remain outside the actual union itself.
All while also benefitting from advantages of being a small nation like a higher quality democracy (it's harder to make that work large scale), and greater agility in dealing with changes in external conditions.
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@gokulpayyanur1839 Ah, right...
You're Indian, right?
You guys have first past the post, just with so many electoral circles and so much ethnic diversity that you still end up with with some coalitions just like the UK...
What Europe does is having proportionality instead in the election, so instead of having a single representative pr electoral circle with whoever gets 1 vote more then anyone else ending up as the representative from that electoral seat and going to parliament we instead have electoral circles with multiple representativese and those being distributed proportionally, so instead of having 100 electoral circles with 1 representative each and the biggest party in each of those getting 100% of the representation we might have 10 electoral circles with 10 seats each, and a party that has 40% of the votes in one of those seats will get 40% of the seats (4 seats in that electoral circle)
And a party with 20% of the votes gets 20% of the seats.
So if you imagine that one of those 10 seats would have been 8 seats with victory for party 1 and 2 seats with victory for party 2 despite party 1 having 40% of the votes and party 2 having 20% of the votes overall in that area instead in the proportional system party 1 gets 4 seats, party 2 gets 2 seats, and party 3, 4, 5 etc gets the seats they deserve.
And that happens everywhere.
Leading to coalitions where people actually hold power based on how popular they are instead of how hated the opposition is.
It leads to less conflict since elections isn't a binary result anymore with you either winning or losing a electoral circle but instead it's about you increasing or decreasing your relative power in that electoral circle.
And having many other parties to deal with who all may both be an enemy and an ally depending on the situation.
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@RoninTF2011 It has nothing to do with laziness or their arrogance.
You don't learn a language if it's not useful to you.
By excluding Russian speakers you created that bubble.
Look at any country in the world with a ghetto.
And compare it to countries without ghettos.
You'll see that the difference is that the minority in question is subject to discrimination of some kind and does not feel respected by the majority population.
It leads to crime and alienation.
The ghettos in question often have their own dialects at a minimum if not full blown separate languages.
And it's a result of faulty goverment policies, not the minority population itself, be that former slaves, immigrants, or indigenous populations.
Anyone that's being excluded by society.
And it's not just laws, it's peoples behavior too.
Hostile language in the public debate, exclusionary behavior etc.
We've all made similar mistakes at some point or other.
And we're still paying for our actions.
Because repairing this kind of damage takes time.
As for throwing anyone out, trust me, if you do that you'll lose support in the west in moments.
We might still be legally required to answer in case you get invaded, but I'm fairly sure that we're not actually technically required to have troops stationed in your country.
If you want other countries to go past the bare minimum required like we have with Ukraine you need to actually stay sympathetic.
And trust me, this is not a good look to those of us outside your country...
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@hokton8555 H and FrP where in a coalition from 2013 to 2020.
V was a part of the coalition from 2018.
KrF from 2019, and FrP left the coalition last year.
The two centrist parties doesn't want to be in a coalition with FrP at all, H want all four of them.
FrP wants just H.
On the left wing side SP doesn't want R, SV or MDG, just Ap.
Ap wants SV and SP but not R or MDG.
SV wants AP, R and MDG but not SP.
MDG definitely does not want FrP, but the younger members also managed to push through a preference for the left wing in the party congress, so they want the same SV, R, Ap and MDG option that SV does.
V and KrF wants a H, V, KrF cabinet, but I think they're open for including MDG, not that it matters much.
SV, SP and AP looks like they're going to have enough seats themselves to get the cabinet.
But SV still would like to get MDG and R included to weaken the bargaining power of SP.
And both SV and SP knows that they'll need each other if they want a left wing cabinet.
Theoretically AP or SP could of course enter a coalition with H.
But a large part of the reason why SP has been growing is the centralization policies carried out by H.
So I doubt that SP would go that way, their voters wouldn't like that this election.
And AP would like to have the prime minister and to have the most power in a coalition as the biggest party in the country, and they're used to opposing H, so I doubt that they would accept a coalition with H.
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Right Wing Actually I think it might be important.
And some European nations *do*.
Look at Belgium, and indeed Switzerland.
There's other ways of ensuring such seats though then making it entierly race based if different ethnic groups tend to live in different areas you can use that to ensure that everyone is represented.
The thing about democracy is that an exact 1 to 1 seats to votes ratio isn't always desirable.
That's one of the few things the Americans actually got right.
I live in Norway.
Here the electoral circles gets representation not just based on population but also based on land area.
The effect of that is that urban areas, especially the capital gets less representation while rural areas, especially far north gets more representation.
That was a conscious choice made by our politicans when creating our electoral circle.
Yes, that means that my vote as a urban citizen is less valuable vote for vote then someone living further north.
But the thing is, us urban voters are going to dominate the parliament either way.
But it's there to represent all of us, and the more different views are represented and have real power to back up those views the better.
We in the cities don't know how it is to work as a farmer or fisherman in rural parts of Norway.
We don't know what it takes to make these rural industries work.
By giving them more of a voice we ensure that they can't just be ignored by the larger parties as they could if the system was fully representative.
In NZ the same is true for the Maori.
The Non-Maori population is going to dominate the parliament either way, but by ensuring a certain amount of representation for the Maori you ensure that their issues are given a fair shake.
That their traditions are valued and protected.
That their culture won't just die away.
Doesn't mean that they're suddenly going to run the country themselves.
They'll still need support from non-Maori representatives in order to form a goverment.
And their votes are outnumbered by the non-Maori population so in the end it's the non-Maori population that's going to end up deciding the balance of power anyway.
It's not in the majoritis best interest to always get a 1 - 1 ratio of seats to votes either.
So for instance back to Norways example.
We in the cities still need the rural areas resources in order to survive.
We need the grain, milk, meat, fish, wood etc, all of those rural resources.
If no one lives out there and makes use of the resources our country simply can't effectively make use of one of our advantages, the large amount of land and sea that we have compared to our population size.
So giving up some power to them is in our own best interest.
The same applies to supernational organizations like the EU.
People make such choices for a reason, giving up power in order to reach goals that are deemed desirable.
In Norways case that's keeping our rural areas alive ensuring better use of our resources by giving up some of our political power to those areas.
In New Zealand giving up power to a minority in order to keep them a proud culture that keeps existing into the future, and therefore can help for instance promote tourism through ensuring that New Zealand still have that side of itself remain unique in the world.
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@demoniack81 You're making several assumptions there that's just wrong.
The process of getting a nuclear power plant up and running involves a lot more than just building the plant itself.
You need a mine that's mining the fuel itself (unlike nuclear power plants these can't be made safe for the surrounding environment and the people there, so they've been closed down rapidly with the fall in demand and increasing hostility towards them, so supply isn't what it was in the eighties.
Even if you get a mine willing to sell to you there's the issue of transporting fuel into and waste out from the plant from the mine and to the disposal site.
That's a logistical nightmare that takes years to set up in a democracy because people there have a right to be involved in the process of what happens near them.
Then there's the complete lack of people willing to invest in or insure nuclear power plants.
As it turns out that when you factor in the costs of dealing with the waste products and decommissioning a nuclear power plant isn't profitable anymore as these easily outstrip the income generated in its lifetime, because nuclear waste while technically does become safe one day in practical terms never does so and remains a permanent cost from the day of their creation, long after the plant has shut down and no longer generate power.
In the eighties it was possible to get fuel and store waste and get financing where these concerns didn't need to be factored in as costs, in today's world companies and goverments are held responsible and that kind of behavior is no longer possible.
Getting past all of that and setting it all up as well as just training the engineers needed and qualified to run a power plant safely takes time.
The ones that used to run them have retired.
And while the fifties where seen as the age of nuclear power when a lot of people studied the field there's a shortage of qualified engineers now.
Training people in the field takes time.
Time we don't have.
Technically we're already too late to avoid irreparably damaging our planet and causing huge amounts of suffering.
It takes time for the damage we've already caused to move through the system of our Earth climate and even if we produced 0 new CO2 and even started removing was one from the atmosphere the effects of climate change would continue to get worse for many years to come, especially when you factor in feedback loops and Earth running out of one of the major stabilizing factors that held climate change from impacting us much in the nineties (the sea floor used to be full of alkaline substances that helped neutralize some of the acidity then, that's practically all gone now).
So, no, we don't have time for this.
Also the very concept of a base load that traditional power grids built on is a problem for renewables.
And sure, you can disconnect a powerplant from the grid, but all that does is making them even more uneconomical.
And they still need power for the cooling etc.
And nuclear fuel being radioactive can't just sit there unused without degrading in quality.
So nuclear power ends up always being a base power that other sources has to come on top off.
Works great with coal, gas etc that can be turned on and off as needed.
Works poorly with renewables that needs a system where power is distributed over much larger areas from much larger areas, where customers themselves will produce power at times completely and utterly outside the control of the electricity companies destroying the very concept of base load, where power production will exceed what's needed but actually be stored for sale when prices are higher (something that requires them to sometimes *get higher) again a base load is problematic.
And if you have the energy production of a powerplant it ensures a constant amount of power in the market that discourages investment in other power generation at a industrial scale (customers will still do it) meaning that power prices will be too low for building of large scale renewable power, and continued CO2 production from nuclear fuel mines, fuel and waste transportation etc.
All of this ignores nuclear accidents, terrorism, wars faught on ground powered by nuclear power like Ukraine right now.
Russian forces only recently retreated from around Chernobyl, and when they took the Chernobyland other nuclear sites they where shelling them.
You can't build a nuclear power plant immune to the ingenuity of humans that wants to cause damage.
They can be as smart or smarter then the engineers and others that got the powerplant and the surrounding systems (fuel mining and refining, waste management, transportation, security etc) up and running to begin with.
And there's always people who don't care about the suffering of others.
Putin being a example here...
Basically, we don't live in the eighties anymore.
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There's a couple of other details worth noting.
First of all, Denmark signed a international Treaty making Iceland a nonmilitarized zone before Iceland gained independence, while never signed by Iceland they've continued to honour it.
Another thing is.
Iceland was technically part of Norway for most of the time Denmark ruled on Iceland, basically in Norway we had our own laws, administration, succession laws etc, we just happened to end up with the same kings as Denmark for many, many years, leading to us being a junior partner in the union.
Iceland as a result had essentially been ruled by Norway for most of that period when Danish kings ruled.
Eventually Norway was legally integrated, but it took a long time to fully implement that with shared administration, laws etc.
When Norway was ceded to Sweden in 1814 Iceland really got integrated into Denmark.
Although as you mentioned, some self rule was given back again some years later...
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@valcarlin2537 Fighting alongside the Nazies in WW2 doesn't necessarily mean that you are one.
Just look at Finland for instance.
The USSR always tried to paint the opposition as being foreign influences or attached to their foreign enemies.
It gave them a pretext for persecution.
With such a hostile force as the Soviets and now Russia to deal with the enemy of my enemy ends up being my friend.
Finland faught to regain territory lost in the winter war as a co-belligerent but not a axis member (never signed the treaty).
And likewise when trying to achieve Ukrainian independence after having their language and culture suppressed as has happened many times since the Russians started treating "Rus" as being a single ethnicity instead of a collective term for all Slavic people as it used to be used as at the time of the principality of Moscow if I don't remember wrong, and started acting as if they where the rightful rulers of all Slavs.
Refusing to acknowledge that the Kievian Rus where not a single ethnic group but rather a state with many ethnicities, made up of many tribes that had faught each other in the past.
(Edit, okey, sorry about the long sentence, just too tired to fix it right now)
Yet now Moscow was supposed to rule over all the other Slavic peoples and only the culture of Moscow where to live on...
Obviously this didn't go down too well with peoples who didn't belong to their culture...
Who had their languages and cultures suppressed in attempts at Russification...
Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine used to be Ukrainian speaking, but isn't anymore.
Between settlement of Russians there and suppression of Ukrainian culture...
And indeed the intentional death of many Ukrainians...
Still every part of Ukraine, even Crimea voted to leave the USSR and had a majority in favour of independence, although it was awfully close in Crimea (54,19% in favour of independence in Crimea vs 90,13% in Kherson, 83,90% in Donetsk, 83,86% in Lugansk etc)
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@haidouk872 The problem with democracy is that once you try to govern too many people et once using the system you loose the benefit of most peoples experiences being somewhat represented by the political elite, of the country being governed by people who knows how it is to live the various lives that the citizens live.
I do not believe that a system where a majority makes decisions is a good democratic system et all.
You end up with cities holding all the power.
Yet it's also wrong to have low population areas making decisions that affects city dwellers too much without their say etc, so a senate like system or a veto based system is also flawed.
The only way to maintain a well functioning democracy (and I do not consider the US, UK, France, Australia, Russia, India or any other large "democracy" a "well functioning" democracy.
Indeed Canada is deeply flawed too, and only New Zealand is a anglophone country with a decent electoral system and a low enough population to have a more or less well functioning democracy.
The EU is far to big to ever have a well functioning democracy and should remain a supernational organization only without the power to enforce laws on member states without their consent or ability to modify.
As a result I believe that legally binding EU regulations should be abolished and replaced with directives only, and that if EU regulations is to be kept then member states should have the right to veto, remove or modify them at will.
Power should ultimately come from the bottom up, not the top down.
Because only at the bottom layer is real democracy even possible.
And once the population reaches 5 million people you're already approaching (if not exceeding) the limit of what can be a well functioning democracy.
Expecting someone from the Ruhr valley and voted in by their voters to know anything about the life in a small Norwegian fishing village or a Swiss mountain village unreasonable, and if they're given power over said areas they will make decisions harmful to those communities.
Likewise it's unreasonable for tiny villages of less then 1 000 people to make decisions about a valley with a population larger then the whole country of Norway, where business needs and lifestyles differ greatly from ours.
In both cases the best solution is independent decision making where anything affecting both communities should be mutually agreed upon.
And it should probably be a compromise solution neither side entirely likes but both can live with.
I do think that the EU has had a positive effect on Europe, helping us avoid any major wars since its formation.
But it shouldn't have legeslative powers that member states can't overrule, except possibly when it comes to enforcing a minimum level of democracy and rule of law in member states if democratic backsliding goes to far like in Poland and Hungary.
I might not like the homophobic laws of Poland, but it's not our place to force our laws and values on them.
So unless they start jailing or executing people for who they are (as opposed to their behaviour) we should not interfere.
The same applies to abortion, and anything else.
Especially if we keep the passport union.
As it would allow anyone who can't live with the current living conditions (most likely including me if I had to live in a Poland with such a conservative government) to leave the country with relative ease.
They have to work out the right course of action themselves instead of having it forced upon them externally.
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@fruhlingsrolle7303 I don't think that the problem back then was having too many political parties.
Rather I suspect it was that the big ones where too big and the small ones too small, if it makes sense?
So there wheren't enough possible ways to combine the parties to form a government coalition.
In our system in Norway 150 of the 169 seats have zero electoral threshold.
Only 19 seats are actually subject to a 4% threshold giving smaller parties a incentive to merge, as being in the region of 4% can be a force multiplier for smaller political parties in our country while your vote isn't wasted if you have less then 4%.
Does that make sense?
So in Norway in our last parliamentarian election we had 10 political parties making it into our parliament.
Red had 4,7% of the national votes and got 8 seats, the liberals had 4,6% and also 8 seats.
8 our of the 169 seats is about 4,7% of the seats.
My own preferred party the greens had 3,9% of the votes but got 3 seats, or about 1,7% of the seats, yet our smallest party had 0,2% of the national votes (41,6% of the votes in their home region where they're fighting for a hospital accessible even in bad weather, and 12,7% in their home constituency as a whole) and also got 1 seat, or 1,69% of the seats with 0,2% of the national votes.
So while parties above 4% is pretty damned close to the correct proportionality of seats given their percentage of the votes things gets weird below that since smaller parties rely on concentrated regional support to get seats, meaning that they can potentially get seats with very few voters if said voters are located in certain constituencies.
Or if their voters are very spread out like the greens are you might struggle if you fail to make the 4% threshold.
We'd probably have 6 seats if we had 0,1% more votes.
Or twice as much as we have now.
Something that mobilize our voters.
But falling below 4% hasn't penalized us to the point where we don't have representation, we just didn't end up with enough to be relevant for coalition discussions this time around.
Does that make sense?
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@fruhlingsrolle7303 Our system is one with 150 seats distributed among 19 constituencies based not just on population but also other factors like land area, ensuring representation from rural areas.
Like the first past the post part of your system is intended to do.
And seats are distributed based on the proportion of the votes in each constituency that said party gets.
Then there's one extra seat pr constituency (the last 19 making our parliament 169 seats) that's reserved for parties with more then 4% of the votes and that's distributed based on the proportion of the votes the parties get at the national level, taking i to account what they already have from each of the 19 constituencies already, so if you have way less seats then you should based on your percentage of the votes you'll get some of these seats, if you have slightly more or exactly what you are meant to have you'll get non.
And since there's a 4% threshold those 19 seats are enough to ensure a high degree of proportionality.
Does all of that make sense to you?
In a system with no thresholds at all you end up with votes being spoiled at parties too small to get even a single seat, what happened in the Weimar republic.
If you have a threshold for all the seats you end up with just big parties and any party just below the threshold has their votes essentially spoiled making it really hard to get in for new parties.
Our system makes it easy to get into our parliament and get some representation, and potentially the option of becoming a king maker if your seat is the one splitting the difference between two coalitions.
But parties above the 4% threshold for the last 19 seats has a advantage and are more likely to be relevant in coalition negotiations while the margins have to be narrow indeed for smaller parties to end up in that situation, still it can happen.
So a party with just 1 seat is still relevant, even if that's one seat represents 0,2% of the population.
Indeed that party of 0,2% of the population actually managed to make the difference giving the parliament enough votes for a new tax on salmon farming recently that they wouldn't have without said party.
The party that helped our government to get into power (it's a minority goverment) is more left wing and wanted far higher taxes (45%) on salmon, something that the industry though would be crippling, the other side wanted no taxes, but with just the right combination they managed a moderate tax (25%) that the industry says they can live with even if they're not happy with a new tax.
(We have a tradition of taxing use of any natural resources within our territory, but salmon farmers where previously exempted for some reason, now they're not anymore, but they're also getting a compromise solution instead of a far left high tax similar to what the oil industry had to deal with, a tax that the fish farmers unlike the oil industry couldn't have dealt with as it would have lead to investments moving to other countries)
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@night6724 Anyway, Norway has 19 electoral circles, corresponding to "fylker" (counties) we used to have.
Each gets a number of seats in our parliament, like your states gets seats in your congress, not just based on their population, but actually favouring lower population electoral circles a bit (or in your case states).
As a result the smallest political party in our parliament actually got into our parliament with 0,3% of the votes, or 4 908 votes, taking a seat from the second biggest party in one of our lowest population electoral circles, and a new party formed as a reaction to plans to close a hospital (they're all public).
Since that would leave half the electoral circle in question cut of from any hospital at all when the weather is too bad to cross the mountain between that half and the closest hospital on the other side this party was formed and won a seat on their first try, costing the former second place party their seat.
At the same time my own political party recieved 3 seats with 3,9% of the votes, on of the highest ratios of voters pr representative of any political parties.
Our biggest party had a bit over twentysix percent of the votes and about twenty eight percent of the seats.
There's no lower limit to how many votes you need to get i to our parliament, although 19 of the 169 seats are reserved to political parties with more than 4% of the total votes at a national level.
I can go into more details if you're interested.
But the main point is, we're a democracy.
Yes, we're a constitutional monarchy, but we elect people in a way that ensures that all viewpoints are represented fairly.
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@night6724 As for a prime minister being elected by parliament and not directly by the people, that's actually give the people more representation and power then voting for him directly.
The reason is that you essentially get a similar effect to swing states but with far more tipping points where just a few votes makes a difference.
It's far easier to punish a prime minister doia bad job in a election where you vote for those that elect him then if you vote for him directly.
Because our elections are not binary, you don't 100% win or 100% lose, you get degrees of power for your political party depending on how much voters you have.
In the US if you get 12% of the votes there and all other parties get 11% or less of the votes you'll get 100% of the representatives from that state to the congress or electoral college etc.
So as long as you aren't that one voters that's the tipping point between having more or less votes then another party you have no agency.
In our system we have a tipping point for every single representative for every single political party.
And winning or losing depends on the overall combination of parties that gets a majority of the seats or not.
Every single one of those parties can punish a prime minister that doesn't behave.
Also, prime ministers don't rule alone.
They run cabinets with representatives from multiple political parties in a coalition, each one of them usually voting on what to do rather than the prime minister having power of his own.
And our parliament can cast a vote of no confidence at any time removing the prime minister from power replacing him with someone else in the process.
So instead of situations like in the US where the congress makes it impossible for a president to get a budget through and then punishes him and complains about him as if that's his fault (regardless of party affiliation) we just leave that to the parliament.
Indeed we've had situations where our prime ministers has had to work with the budgets proposed by other parties.
There's no gridlock, no blaming our prime minister.
If we don't like his budget proposal and another party propose another budget with more support in the parliament then that ends up winning and is what the prime minister has to work with.
Done and dusted.
And it's parliaments job to balance those budgets.
(A few years ago the conservatives had the prime minister, labour won their budget proposal, so we ran with a labour budget, then the conservatives and their coalition cabinet members had to work out the details of how to use that.
So a liberal minister of something (say education as a example) would have x amount of money budgeted by the parliament, but would then make a education budget of their own with no interference from the parliament.
That amount of money for education might be more or less then the prime minister planned in her budget.
There's no we don't like your budget come up with another one.
Just okay, that budget is good, but this one is better, use it, done and dusted.
And like I said, our biggest political party had 28 out of 169 seats in the last election, so no one party can get a budget through that no other party likes.
And even a budget proposal from a tiny party like mine (3,9% in the last election) can win if they get more votes then any other proportional.
Parliament can give the prime minister instructions.
Failing to carry them out can lead to being replaced.
Essentially our prime minister and his or her cabinet works on behalf of our parliament to run the country.
Our system leads to everything being compromises between different people with different ideas about the best solutions to a problem.
With different alliances on a case by case basis.
For instance take the Christian peoples party.
They're socially conservative, so not all that keen on gay marriages, abortion, genetic manipulation etc...
But they also believe in helping your neighbour, taking care of Gods creation etc.
So while they'll vote with the conservatives on some matters they'll often vote with labour and the socialists on issues like helping the poor both at home and abroad, taking good care of refugees etc since it's in their view a god given duty to do so.
And they also vote in favour of taking care of the environment, since in their view we're gods stewards of creation.
Unlike labour however they want private schools.
Labour wants the egalitarian equality of public schools, the conservatives believe in privatization being more effective both economically but also in terms of quality.
And the Christian peoples party wants that freedom of private schools to have a separate christian curriculum on top of the enforced government ones to instill Christian values, the liberals also wants private schools.
So the compromise is that private schools are allowed but making a profit on them keeps being banned then mafe legal again then banned etc depending on who's currently holding the upper hand in our parliament.
And yes, the government pays for private education.
All of this ensures that we have educational freedom without being exploited by anyone trying to make a profit on us, and we have equal opportunities for education of equal roughly quality.
About the same amount of money is used on everyone, but private schools have the freedom to use it differently.
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@night6724 Again, a parliamentarian system is far more democratic.
The reason why there's such conflict between different candidates within the US political parties is because you only have two with realistic chances of representation.
By contrast under our system Hilary and Sanders would be in two completely different political parties to begin with.
And people would vote for them *directly*.
Any political party here can propose a prime minister candidate.
It's then their job to get enough voters and coalition partners (and votes for said coalition partners) to get a majority in the parliament for their proposal for a new cabinet.
You don't have to be one of the biggest parties to become prime minister, just have the most support in parliament.
And that support is created by our votes.
We use a party list proportional system where you can rearrange the order of representatives in the party list.
Even adding people from other parties onto your list if you wish, removing people that's there etc.
And seats in each electoral circle is given to each list proportionally to the number of votes they got in that electoral circle.
And remember, we have 19 of them with between 3 and 21 seats.
In every single one of those electoral circles a few votes can make the difference between a seat going to one list or another.
And if enough people change their list then depending on those changes the representative sent in may change, and indeed like I mentioned at least in theory even be from a different political party.
Or a candidate may in some cases be listed on two lists, potentially splitting the votes for them between those two lists, but also giving them two possible avenues to be elected as either list may win seats.
And such alternative lists often win in local and regional elections, although that one party with 0,3% of the votes is the first time in many years that it happened at a national level (a labour party representative was also listed in another list called patient focus, all about that hospital they where about to lose, forming that list essentially created a new political party that won what had been a conservative seat in their electoral circle, the labour party kept the same number of seats as normal there, if that party had been the swing vote in our parliament between two possible cabinets she would have had the ability to fight for her hospital by trading that hospital for cabinet support for instance, being a king maker)
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@night6724 As a example of that agency we have I used to vote for the socialist left party in Norway, they never join into coalitions with the conservatives, only labour or they fight as a opposition party in the parliament.
Last time they where in a cabinet with the labour party the labour party didn't make much concessions to their coalition partners, behaving like bullies.
So I switched to voting for the green party.
A lot of people voted for other parties then the socialist left party in the next election.
The greens where willing to cooperate with the conservatives.
And other voters switched to red, who campaigned on being in opposition and not selling out to the labour party.
In essence we indirectly gave power to the conservatives, without voting in conservative representatives.
Labour actually grew as a party with more representatives in parliament due to getting more voters.
After all, they achieved their politics.
But their coalition partners didn't, so they lost the election.
Green political parties where strong in the parliament and the conservative relied on three other political parties, the liberals and christian peoples party both green parties that wants us to take good care of the environment, and the "process party" that's as gray as they get. so we (the environmental movement) got more work done under the conservatives then under labour despite the conservative party itself being pretty gray.
They're just better at making compromises.
So despite being left leaning politically I'm very much in favour of a conservative prime minister, as long as they do not enter a coalition with the progress party and enter coalitions with plenty of greener parties.
The end result might not always be my preferred one, but the overall direction is likely to be better from my point of view.
Other parties on other political spectrums will have similar trade offs when picking a party to vote for.
But yeah, we very much vote for prime ministers, even if we don't do so directly.
For you guys it would mean that you could vote for someone other than Hilary or Trump.
And someone who genuinely has support in the population would win.
My guess would be a moderate right leaning person back then given the political climate in the US instead of Trump.
Since the person in question would have support from both the left and right, given that Hilary wasn't popular enough.
Trump and John McCain would probably be in different political parties.
And my guess is that McCain would have won that election with some support from the left, assuming that both Hilary and Sanders would probably fail to get enough support for their own candidacies in that election.
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@night6724 Right.
Norway uses a modified Sainte-Laguë method.
We used to have 19 "fylker" (regions), many of these have been merged recently, but the 19 electoral circles remains.
The first step is that each eligible voter and each square km of land in each electoral circle "votes" for that electoral circle using that method. (This is behind the scenes, we voters don't have to deal with this).
And the electoral circle with the most "votes" gets a seat, then in the next round they have to divide with a bigger number using the method described, so eventually seats starts being distributed to other electoral circles.
The circles with the fewest seats only have 4 seats each, the ones with the most has double digit number of seats out of the 150 available for this step.
I don't remember how much weight land has compared to people, but the idea is that any given rural town in a low population density area far away from the capital is less likely to be represented in our parliament any given year then a city with far more people is, so by distributing seats based on both land and people those low population density areas still has a reasonably high likelyhood of being represented any given year, meaning that there's someone in the parliament who knows how it is to live there and what problems they face, even if that means that areas with more people ends up with less representatives from their own area.
Once seats are distributed among the electoral circles the actual election can take place.
People vote for party lists.
Lists can overlap so someone can be in two lists at the same time.
And people can reorder people on the lists or add names from other lists.
But changes from the original list will only be counted if a significant number of them are changed.
Seats are distributed proportionally, again using the modified Sainte-Laguë method within these 19 electoral seats.
So if you get 25% of the votes in a 4 seat electoral circle you'll get 25% of the seats, aka 1.
If you have 10% of the votes there you'll get no seats, but in a circle with more seats you might get more representation.
Since seats are distributed according to both land and population the circles with a lot of land but few people will have more valuable votes in the sense that that you'll need fewer votes there then elsewhere to get a seat for any given party.
The smallest party represented in parliament this year had 0,2% of the total votes at a national level and still got a seat.
They where created to ensure that eastern Finnmark keeps a ER unit and a maternity ward, do people inna emergency or giving birth don't have to cross a mountain that often is unpassable in winter in order to get to a hospital with these facilities.
They managed to get enough local support to get 1 of the 5 seats in this electoral circle.
The conservatives lost theirs.
Of course this means that at this stage low population areas have more of a say in what parties are represented at this stage then higher population areas.
So each electoral circle also has a leveling seat.
But the leveling seats are not given bsed on the proportionality within each circle, but at a national level.
Since the parties already have seats awarded at the previous stage any party with more seats then they should have given their national popularity won't get leveling seats.
But parties who have fewer seats then they should given their number of voters st a national level will gain seats.
This is usually smaller parties that got close to getting a seat in the individual electoral circles, but didn't quite make it.
Although sometimes larger parties get some too.
Unlike the direct seats from the individual electoral circles these 19 leveling seats do have a electoral threshold of 4% of the total electorate voting for a party in order for it to be eligible for these 19 leveling seats.
Giving parties and their voters a incentive to reach that level.
This means that big parties can split if there's disagreements.
While smaller parties have a incentive to stay united.
And voters have a reason to make an effort to vote for the small parties even if they just have a few percent of the votes.
The communists had 1 seat last election, but got 5 this election, because they're above the 4% threshold.
My own party had 1 last year and got 3 this year with about 3,9% of the votes.
If we had over 4% we'd have at least one leveling seat awarded to us, possibly two.
My party had the fewest seats pr vote of any party represented in our parliament this year.
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@paul1979uk2000 The difference is that in Norway and Switzerland those EU directives are implement by our own laws and legal agreements and we have the right to end change or refrain from adopt them at will.
Yes, there would be consequences.
But the important thing to note here is that when it comes to the desire for freedom Norwegians and Switz people have more in common with the Afghans then the Germans despite being similar to Germans and Dutch people culturally.
Afganistan has been under many empires through the ages and would presumably have had a chance to get more infrastructure in those times, but self determination was more important.
The same is true for us.
We would prefer poverty to being ruled by outsiders.
We're also pragmatic and both can and will work with and cooperate with them, but only as independent entities.
I'm saying 200 years because that's 3-4 generations, and that should presumably be enough to change our culture.
But as long as our young people has a memory of our current culture, even if that's just as stories from grandparents, a federal or unitary union just won't work.
A confederal one would.
Our cooperation with the EU right now works well in part because it's relatively confederate at the moment, for instance with a lot of laws being goals that needs to be achieved with the local governments deciding on the details.
But a federal model is a stated goal for the union, and that's a big part of why we voted against joining *twice*.
We don't mind open borders, free trade, free movement of people, shared financial responsibility or any number of other values that the union wants us to adopt, most of these are shared values with us.
After all, Germanic speaking people with similar values are a big block within the union.
The problem is more one of principle of where the power originates.
And of how there's details about life in regions that central governments just never gets right.
Central governments are dominated by people from population centers, people from good farmlands, big cities, areas that's flat and "cultured".
These areas simple has a different history from us and different living conditions.
Privatized mail services or public transportation works well in areas with high population density allowing lowlanders to play with fancy theories about market economics and the principles of free markeds.
It's a bit harder to make that work in areas that has too low a population to make those things economically viable based on the realistic price of sale of these services.
There's no incentives left for quality of service, only for cost cuts at the expense of quality and finding loopholes in the various government schemes to finance the whole thing.
Fewer trains post delivered on fewer days etc.
But for the nation as a whole these services while not used enough to justify their cost as companies does make sense for a nation as a whole due to enabling extraction of resources that would otherwise be unavailable, and also services that would otherwise be unavailable.
Nordic countries work under the assumption that everyone should have certain services and quality of life that would not be see as making sense commercially.
Just look at what kind of service that's available in Nuuk, Tórshavn, Kautokeino/Guovdageaidnu and so one and so forth.
We value our rural areas, and we will intentionally run at a loss at times that wouldn't make sense in a EU context.
These things are a big part of why we despite our intense individualism and regionalism still have functional nations of the sizes that you see.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark and so one, even Iceland would otherwise have been split up into many different nations a long time ago.
Switzerland has similar issues but solve those in part through their Canton system.
In these regions the natural country size is basically equal to a Swizz Canton.
Or in Norways case one or a few valleys joining together into a nation, or possibly a fjord.
And the long fjords might even be split up since people at the coast near the mouth of the fjord probably live very different lives from those further inland and have different needs.
The oil money helps, but honestly that plays a minor role in everything.
It all only works because we have electoral systems where people in rural areas are about as common as people from more urban areas in our government and legislative body.
We're more likely to have a civil war over the topic then to join the EU.
We've already had several governments that has fallen because of the union.
And our elite has learned that you don't try to join the EU if you want to stay in power.
The EEA is a compromise solution that works for us
No one is happy with it of course like with all good compromises.
But it's preferable to total chaos.
Honestly we'd probably be better "EU citizens" outside the union then we'd ever be within.
Many of us want a shared army with the union (in addition to the separate ones), to counter threats like the Russians.
Many of us want free movement of goods, services, money and people, but it needs to be on our terms, with the local possible compromises.
Giving our urban population the goods and services while the rural people gets the protectionism needed for our farms that can't compete with the lowlands due to a shorter season and worse farmlands, our fishermen wants to sell to the union and are more open to it then our farmers but it's still easier to get a sustainable compromise within the country or in bilateral deals with the union then when it's done at a union wide basis where countries far away that wouldn't be severely affected by overfishing and where people are more desperate for a income are the voter wants higher quotas then the fish actually can sustain.
And where the laws only relatively recently closed loopholes that lead to the dumping of tons of fish into the sea with no consequences to the quota despite huge numbers of fish dying.
We still have lands radiated after Chernobyl.
Temperatures that doesn't exist in the mainland continent.
And mountains and fjords that makes infrastructure difficult and cultures distinct.
We'll join the EU in many projects out of our own free will, from outside the union.
But the only way we'll actually join the union itself permanently is either if the union changes and either become more confereralized or tiered with optional tiers of involvement for members.
Or if there's a huge shift in our culture, a type of cultural shift that just takes generations to happen.
If we somehow by a miracle managed to join the EU right now it would be a disaster making Brexit seem like peanuts.
Long term, as in 7-8 generations down the line I can absolutely see us as a EU member.
But not now...
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@paul1979uk2000 The cost is high, no doubt.
But lower then it would have been as an actual EU member, as scrapping them as a member would entail leaving the whole of the EU just like the UK just did, while scrapping laws currently can be done without breaking any agreements with Europe and has even been conceded as permittable by the EU.
The EU might not like it but they're required to accept our veto by the terms of the agreement.
And yes, there's a implied and unofficial agreement about us not using it.
But even the fact that it is our choice not to scrap said EU laws is more important then any involvement in making said laws ever can be.
It's all about self determination.
And yes, if we ever gets to a point where we scrap so many laws that the EU find themselves wanting to end the EEA agreements or if they want to punish us for our actions that's of course within their rights and would be a problem for us.
But still, us having that fundamental power to veto them and making our own laws is important to us.
More important then forming those EU laws in the first place.
And furthermore the EU laws we follow are still formally made legally valid through the power of our parliament not by the EU.
So a bottom up power structure.
We need to be a separate legal entity.
That's not going to change in many generations.
The actual laws we follow is less important then who sign them into law.
Yes, we're currently following EU law practically to the letter, but it is we who are choosing to do so, not Brussel, and that matters to us.
As long as the EU laws in question are not unreasonable that's a arrangement we can live with.
But there's a growing number of EU laws that has worked poorly for us and that is causing frustration here.
At some point things will have to change.
And that change will most likely come in the form of some new renegotiated deal with the EU where we'll give up something else and get something in return.
That's also going to be a compromise of some kind.
The Brexiters are unrealistic.
There is an unequal power balance at play.
And even if there wasn't there's always some given and take in interantional agreements, compromises.
Where neither side are entierly happy.
The same applies to us.
We're not going to get our freedom for free.
We'll have to make some sacrifices or other in order to get them.
But we also have some cards up our sleeves too that the EU wants.
So it won't be entierly one way either.
Like I said, it'll be some give and take.
And honestly I have faith in Norwegian negotiators.
We're not in a rush with changing the EEA.
I think we probably should start negotiations with the EU about a future deal to replace it together with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and the UK, although I don't know if including the EU in the final deal is a good idea or not as they want different things then us.
We'll have plenty of time.
We've had negotiations that took 50+ years with the Russians.
Negotiating with the EU for 50-60 years is perfectly fine, and we'll be happy with having the EEA agreements in the meantime.
And we'll integrate further with the EU too in other areas.
Our voluntary integration with the EU in a number of other areas is helping foster good will, that might help during those negotiations.
As for the current EEA agreement.
While we don't have voting rights in the EU we do have a right to be consulted with regards to EU laws that impact us if I don't remember wrong.
So it's not like we have zero impact on the laws.
The EU can of course still pass said laws after we express that a law is undesired by us, but at least the EU lawmakers have to be aware of our point of view when making said laws.
That's more then a lot of areas in Europe that's within the EU can say.
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@bobsmith5441 No, the middle of Europe is further north then you seem to think.
In my view the border of "north" goes between the Shetland and Orkneys that's within Northern Europe and Mainland Scotland, Southern Denmark, etc that's all in west or central Europe.
The traditional area of Slesvig might qualify as northern Europe.
Arguably parts or the whole of southern Slesvig could be considered either central or north European depending on how you look at it.
Frisians, Scots speakers, low German speakers are all speakers of a east Germanic language, and also have a different cultural and historical background then northern Europe.
They're all also geographically south of all of us.
Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, mainland Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales and Germany all belong outside northern Europe.
Estonia is northern European, but isn't really considered nordic by most.
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@castor3020 It's not unstable at all.
Sure, they can agree that they don't want the current goverment in power.
But force them to come up with a viable alternative before the old goverment is ousted (no new elections).
And also to avoid having a majority against you you'll need a supporting party that may not be a part of your goverment.
They'll vote alongside your goverment on some legislature, and keeps you in power in return for your support on some of their most important issues, but since they're not a part of your goverment they're also free to critizise you and vote against you in parliament on a individual case by case basis.
Let's say that you have 9 parties in goverment, 4 on one side, 4 on the other and 1 in the middle supporting one of the two sides after negotiations.
As long as you don't behave too badly and that party in the middle is getting more out of supporting you then deposing you then you'll stay in power.
And the only way you'll get ousted is by someone presenting a viable alternative that can take over right away anyway, something that requires negotiations.
Also, parties that keeps backstabbing eachother will find it harder to get support from other parties in parliament, so too much backstabbing is discouraged since you end up with less overall political power that way.
You also keep the same election results all the time, and have a smooth transition of power without much costs etc.
As for the elections themselves, since people are used to just changing goverment on the fly it's smooth, and the old goverement stays in power till a viable alternative can be made during the election too, so no instability during the negotiations either.
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@ollonet9965 You do know that American right wing media and youtube personalities are lying about Sweden feeding you half truths and full lies, taking information out of context to try to present a narrative that runs counter to the actual data in many cases, right?
Besides Americans have a tendency to think that things are black and white when they're usually way more nuanced...
Also, all of the nordic countries are provably better places to live then the US.
Both in the past and present.
We have more millionairs and billionairs pr capita then the US, more people achieve the "american dream" of improving their lives here then in the US, we live longer, are generally better educated, after health care expenses we pay about the same or less then them in total expenses etc, etc, etc...
(Not to mention what people who have lived in both regions says about their experiences there, just look them up, they're all over youtube)
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@F Youtube If you have a particular video you wish me to have a look at I'll do so.
But seriously, I'm not going to be following that youtube channel.
The wast majority of republican "influencers", youtube and otherwise video channels, twitter feeds +++ just keeps repeating eachothers arguments and using eachother as sources eventually going back to sources that was missunderstood by the original user of said sources...
It's just a few nuggets of truths mixed in with a ton of half truths and outright lies.
American deserves a real right wing instead of just... that...
I can respect not wanting immigration or lower taxes, or less centralized goverment, or less goverment in general, or more military spending or any number of Republican policies, but not the consistent use of lies, twisting of facts and history to try to argue for those points of view.
There's some real arguments for many of those poltical views and both the left and other right wing people would be more willing to actually listen to republicans if there was a bit more truth going around...
But with all the logical fallacies, assumtions, circle arguments, confirmation bias etc, etc, etc, it just doesn't work...
And since I only have a single life (no "afterlife" for me), I don't want to use that to listen to a channel I have no reason to trust due to generally bad experiences with sources of that nature in the past.
But if you can find a single video rather then a whole channel that you wish for me to have a look at then I will.
Oh, and regarding Americans...
My girlfriend is American and my sister and her husband live in America.
I'm just hoping to get my gf out of the country as soon as possible.
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(Solution to the Belgian problem follows after this preview, click the "..." to read more)
Regarding a video about proportional representation, yes please!
Also, let me know if you guys want a hand in researching the details of how that works in the nordic countries.
(I can help you with Iceland, the Faero islands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Åland.
As for how to fix the situation in Belgium...
Simplest solution:
Make it official that no cabinet can be replaced till an alternative is presented and that the parliament can present a alternative at any time.
That encourages cooperation.
Anyone who isn't cooperating ends up losing power to parties that do, and if no-one can then whoever could do so last time ends up in power.
Also, given the regional splits I suggest that any party that makes it into the federal parliament in the previous year should automatically be available on the ballots everywhere in the country, regardless with what culture and language they represents.
That gives the voters more choices and should with time discourage political splits between cultures in favor of actual policies.
How many seats each region is given can be balanced based on political, cultural and linguistic considerations (for instance a 50-50 split between the Flemish and Walloon areas and extra seats for areas like the German regions and possibly more or less for the Capital region depending on what's perceived as more fair.
Then just add leveling seats to each region that's not given based on the proportional popularity of a party in that region but in the nation as a whole but where the representatives are still from said region.
All of this would encourage fighting for seats everywhere instead of just in the areas dominated by your own culture and language.
If your region has a higher population then another region but less representatives then you can use that higher number of voters to get leveling seats either as a small or big party but you'd need your representatives to be local in those regions meaning that people from that area would be important to your party and its values, it's political appeal and the amount of power you'd get.
So say a Flemish based party would have Wallonian representatives to negotiate with their counterparts in the party with its power base in Wallonia, and as a result you wouldn't have to deal with those pesky a-holes of x or y ethnic group but instead would have someone with a shared cultural background but with differing political ideals actually discussing things together and relating to each-other.
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@리주민 What I describe has a completely different goal from what you're talking about.
The increased power to rural areas I'm talking about is there to ensure that if farmers make up 8% of the population they will have more then 8% of the seats in the parliament, not to compensate for some lower likelyhood of a farmer to get into parliament then their percentage of the population would indicate.
The idea here being that if one profession makes up 30% of the population they're already represented so you don't need more of them but can have less of them then what their percentage of the population actually is and still have their point of view being represented while also get more diversity.
For reference farmers and woodsmen (woodcutters etc) combined make up 2,7% of the population in Norway.
And in 2019 there was 11 048 fishermen in Norway out of a population of 5 million, these 11 k people as well as some fish farmers together bring in 21,6 billion NOK or about 2,4 billion USD pr year in revenue.
As you can imagine that's a profession well worth maintaining as far as our economy and food security is concerned.
Fishermen would according to these numbers make up about 0,2% of our population.
In the period 2013-2017 8 parliamentarians 5,4% of the parlimentarians in Norway where from a primary industry of some kind, so farming, fishing, cutting wood, mining etc, that is extracting resources and not refining them etc.
Looking at the numbers it looks like about 3% of the population is from primary industries (all of the ones I mentioned) in 2020 (a lot of people in the oil industry lost their jobs due to the fall in oil prices during the corona virus) I don't have any numbers from 2013-2017 for that.
But as you can see they are intentionally slightly overrepresentated.
The effect you're looking for of people from different professions having a chance to become parliamentarians that's equal to their professions share of the population comes naturally if you have a sufficiently egalitarian society.
But that's not our goal here.
Instead we're trying to increase the share of power of professions that are vital to the nation.
After all, 5,4% of parliamentarians in that period was still just 8 of them so it's not like there was one represented every single year.
Most professions won't be represented all years.
But these are important enough for us that we want them included in our political debate every year even if their share of the population on its own doesn't justify that.
You could theoretically do something like setting of a seat that will always go to a farmer for instance and get a similar result I guess...
But again that's not really the goal here.
The goal is for people who are too far away from the population centers to really interact with the part of the population that makes up the majority of it to get indirect power to have more of a say.
It wouldn't help much with a farmer who works right next to a major city to get in that way.
Those live under completely different terms and might be favored in local politics but not at a national level.
At a national level we're after the people further afield, both farmers and others.
Including for instance people employed by the state in rural areas and dealing with the logistical problems of rural areas for instance.
And so one and so forth.
A doctor in a rural hospital, a ferryman or farmer or fisherman or local route pilot of a small plane etc.
All of them.
Because living in a rural area is different from living somewhere urban.
So it's not about trying to correct flaws of the electoral system, it's intentionally ceding power to a different region in order to ensure that more different views are represented.
The only profession based thing that is similar that I can think about is when some countries require military officers to be a part of the goverment or parliament.
Something that might be "justified" due to a dangerous military status with a lot of enemies surrounding a country.
If farmers shrink in numbers in Norway they will lose relative power in our parliament, but it doesn't change that rural areas are overrepresented in our parliament.
One compensating feature we have for this kind of thing is leveling seats.
Where one representative from each electoral circle is distributed based on the overall popularity of the parties in the country so if one party should have gotten 30 seats based on their national population but only get 28 from the different electoral circles they might get 2 leveling seats or if they had 0 seats locally because they're just not poplare enough in any one place but are really populare overall just spread out they might get 2-3 leveling seats etc (although I can't really remember any leveling seats being allocated without a party having 3-4 seats already, in part due to the requirement of having 4% of the popular vote to qualify for leveling seats)
This effect means that the opinion of urban voters are not underrepresented, proportionally in the makeup of the parliament but more of the actual representatives are from rural areas.
So you might be from a rural area and join a political party and get elected into the parliament by voters in a urban area due to your party allegiance.
Although you're more likely to be put in there by rural voters if you're from a rural area.
Our electoral system does have some weird artifacts sometimes.
But on the whole it works well.
Now, in a different system where you are less likely to get political power if you're from a profession then what its share of the population would suggest for whatever reason then yes, I guess your system might make sense.
It's just that, honestly there's better ways of achieving that...
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@Showwieh No.
Not northwest, or northeast or anything, just *north*.
Countries like Scotland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Estonia shouldn't be grouped together with the likes of Germany or Spain.
Our climate is different, our culture is different and our history is different.
And as a result so is our values.
Don't get me wrong, we have a lot in common with Germany in the those of the nordic countries that has germanic languages.
But ultimately we've been both blessed and cursed with having a totally different geo-political climate to operate in.
Different challenges to face.
And while technically we do end up landing in the "west" when forced into a system that only divides into those two, east and west.
It's outright offensive to be labeled in the same group as the continentals.
The continentals can rely on food security due to the agriculture on the European plains and overland trade with nations on those planes.
Because of that food they have a history of empires with high enough populations to be capable of defending themselves in a way that north european nations could only dream of.
And a cultural unity that just doesn't exist here.
They had resources we couldn't muster.
Large cities.
Feudalism.
Professional armies.
All of those things.
It didn't really work the same way up here.
I mean, sure, Denmark and Sweden each tried to make empires at various times.
But neither ever had the populations to trully back up those attempts.
And we always where the underdogs vs our much larger neighbours.
Russia, England, the HRE and France.
Scotland, Norway and Sweden had rugged terrain that we used to our advantage in wars.
Norway, Sweden and Denmark all relied on our navies to try to hold our own.
In Denmarks case to land troops behind invading armies once those push too far north, cutting off supplies.
And all of us have tons and tons of islands to defend.
Parts of Scotland together with Iceland, the Faero islands, Finland and Estonia where essentially colonies of the nordic region for a long, long time and spent so much time under our rule that we left our mark there.
There's just so much...
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Proportional representation would help with this issue.
My suggestion is this.
Make the island ruled by a parliament elected through multiple multi member constituencies.
Distribute seats between the constituencies based on how many of each ethnic groups is there.
So donone round of granting seats based on the French population, one round for the Asian and Oceanian immigrant population and one round for the Native population.
Give the natives more seats to distribute this way, but don't make any of these seats exclusive to any ethnic group.
This way more people from areas with a large native population will be represented regardless of how many immigrants or French people might move in, and everyone of each group has a vote even if they might have less influence depending on where they live, if they live in a area with a native majority their vote is just as important as that of the natives.
Then add leveling seats for each constituency.
These helps correct the difference between how many seats a party gets from the various constituencies, how many votes a political party gets at a national level and how many sests rhey would have gotten at a national level.
Again this benefits the native population in the sense that they get more seats populated with their ethnic group, but it also makes the votes of the overall population matter more im terms of the balance between the political parties.
Remove the electoral threshold for the individual constituencies, but keep it for the leveling seats.
With multimember constituencies and proportional representation you also split up the voter blocks, making it less ethnicly focused.
As people voting for smaller parties either reprinting a ethnicity or just the population at large will get more representation, leaving the big ethnicity focused parties weaker, and giving more room for coalition negotiations across ethnic lines...
It gives both ethnic groups more room to get someone from the other ethnic groups over on their side in the parliament.
Pick a representative to the French parliament by making the local parliament elect them, meaning that even parties not big enough to get into the French parliament will be involved in picking who is sent.
And kick the can down the street when it comes to independence 40 years.
Add a renegotiation about the number of seats between the ethnic groups 20 years down the line within the Parliament, meaning that natives in theory can get more say in how they're distributed then.
And give everyone who has lived on the island for 10 years or more voting rights on the island, if they apply for it (think citizenship).
Then automatically from then on.
Gives more immigrants a say in matters too.
People will be able to move around to influence what constituency has the most seats and the ethnic makeup of the area.
And political parties can appeal to a certain ethnic group or to multiple ethnic groups or the whole population depending on what they wish to do.
But with the coalitions and cooperation of a parliamentarian system it should hopefully make peoples identity leas connected to voting patterns.
Oh, and in independence referendums and other referendums every vote is equal.
Make constitutional changes require a referendum.
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@hansheinrich958 A break up of the union into smaller pieces is perfectly fine.
As a liberitarian I don't believe that the end goal should be a fixed political status but rather a dynamic everchanging status with different paterns emerging as the needs of the region changes.
Yes, I want nations in the region in general to move in a more liberitarian direction on the whole with more freedom for the individuals and the societies.
But enforcing that would be wrong and counter to such liberitarian values.
If you truly believe in freedom and peoples right to self determination you need to value the freedom and right to self determination of those who don't like or want it too unfortunatly...
Be that economic freedom of social freedom.
The political freedom one is a bit tougher since removing it removes the dynamism and ability to increase freedom that we value...
But Eastern Europe must want said freedom themselves, we can't force it on them.
Get my meaning?
So back to the union.
If the eastern nation want trade without other aspects of the union we should respect that.
The region has been subject to a lot of warfare through the ages, and there's been a need for a centralized political structure to ensure that nations in the area wasn't swallowed by nearby powers.
While we in the west for the most part had at least some natural barriers defending us.
Germany was a bit of an exception, but having the Holy Roman Empire protecting the member states the smaller member nations ended up having quite a bit of freedom that nations further east just didn't have the luxury of.
Likewise mountain nations had to deal with hard conditions with little interaction with the outside world, be that outside rulers or trade or anything else, encouraging self reliance and people helping eachother by sharing resources and treating eachothers as equals, because quite frankly any of us could end up subject to a avalanch or rock slide or flood or storm at sea or whatever and might need shelter and food and help from eachother...
The whole strong leader thing just didn't hold water in such conditions.
The viking era kings didn't even have a single capital in Norway, they literally had to travel along the coast from royal farm to royal farm to hear cases because expecting people to travel to some kind of capital was just downright insane and you needed to be local in some way to have any kind of power locally.
The Swiz and us both followed the old germanic traditions of having local councils where people could bring up issues, create laws etc.
And even when we here in Norway had kings those where elected in such councils on a region by region basis and said councils remained important even under the kings, retaining a lot of power.
Kings where developed from kind of "chiefs" I guess...
Kind of hard to explain this in English...
The Norwegian word is "høvding".
But basically the germanic tradition was someone being first among equals.
The warriors choosing one among them to lead the tribe who wasn't some "God anointed supreme being" but rather just a regular warrior that just happened to be respected enough to be in charge for the time being for whatever task was at hand.
If they no longer did a good job someone else would be choosen.
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@hansheinrich958 My point is, we can only grow together if we allow people to choose not to do so.
With a really, really decentralized approach like a confederate structure we here in Norway may one day join the EU, but we'll never feel comfortable with staying and it's always going to be a lot of backwards and forwards on that topic.
The only way we'll ever be able to join is if A the power comes from the bottom up meaning from the states rather then from a central entity, said central entity can be given power from a local level but said power needs to be revokable and the powers needs to be opt-in.
And B we need a way out, or we'll never want to join to begin with.
We are not the same peoples as the Germans, related language or not.
You guys are used to completely different conditions, you're used to having to band together against external enemies due to living on the flatlands and living conditions where relatively speaking easier in Germany then in mountain nations like Norway or Switzerland since you actually have proper farmlands in most of your territory.
Your main enemies where other people.
Ours where nature itself and the changing conditions that kept popping up.
We barely consider people in a different valley the same people as ourselves and certainly are not going to let those outsiders of the different valleys dictate how we live our lives, so how on earth would we ever be able to settle down and let people who don't even live in mountains rule over us?
Germans have also been exposed to centralized goverment since the time of the Romans since you bordered them, you had the Frankish empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
For you the idea of somehow having the same goverment as someone who you can't go and face on a daily basis doesn't seem as batshit crazy as it does to us.
And similar cultural differences exists all over the continent.
Trying to shoehorn everyone into the same exact goverment just does not work.
And trying will not lead to peace.
The main reason that the EU has managed to promote peace so far is exactly because it isn't unified in that way, because it is fairly bottom up in its power structure still.
Although I would argue that it isn't bottom up enough and is becomming more and more top heavy...
There's a lot of people who want more cooperation, including me.
But more cooperation will only happen in a framework where people make the choice to take part in said cooperation at a local level.
And have the option to opt in and out at *will*.
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