Ubuntu & the underdeveloped world

[Eric Dunbar]

LET'S MOVE THIS TO SOUNDER at LISTS.UBUNTU.COM ONLY.

> This 'hate Americans' thing is kind of odd. I know a large number of
> people who work in organisations working desperately to fight the
> influence of the US corporatocracy and war machine, yet haven't yet met
> anyone who claims to even dislike, let alone hate, Americans as such. On
> the contrary, there are Americans amongst their number.

As far as I can tell, 'hate Americans' is an (stereo-typical) American
notion that exists within SOME groups within the country, and not
outside.

> It's a pretty obvious distinction to make between a country's policies
> and population, especially where so-called 'democracies' allow the
> largest minority to have all the political power (and the richest to own
> all the real power).

That is the tragedy of the archaic first-past-the-post electoral
systems that are operating in English/French speaking North America.
In _principle_ I really like the US system of government -- separation
of the three branches of government. In practice it is corrupted
because of an electoral system which (among other things) rewards the
person with plurality support & encourages said person to depress the
votes of others (i.e. attack ads), corporate money (& some union but
that is DWARFED by corporate), and so-called "safe seats".

Only *three* major democracies in the world still use FPTP and two of
them are actively working on modifying that system to become more
democratic and representative of the electorate's will. You can see
this in voter participation rates of Europe vs. Canada vs. US. In
Europe, participation rates often exceed 80%, in Canada they're
usually >60%, in the US they're <%50.

It essentially boils down to whether you feel your voice will be heard
-- with "winner take all" (aka first-past-the-post; used in Canada, US
and UK... maybe Australia)?)) anyone who doesn't vote for the winning
candidate has essentially wasted their vote. There's an interesting
experiment underway in Calif. right now, and British Columbia (a
Canadian province for those of you unfamiliar with NA geography) is
embarking on a switch away from FPTP.

A glowing indictment of how broken the American electoral system is,
is that _no_ new democracy of note has adopted the US-style elections
process -- it is one that is fundamentally undemocratic and unfair.

Anyhow, the cold is wonderful.

Eric.