Do you really think you should be limited to the choice of choosing a Republican or Democrat when voting? You probably have had times where you didn’t agree with either candidate but had to make a decision.
In my previous post I posted a video of CGP Grey talking about the first-past-the-post voting system. This leads to a variety of problems in the government and politics. One major problem I want to discuss is the two-party system.
First, one of the major problems that I’ve found a two-party system leads to is stagnation. Let me explain what I mean by that… I’m going to represent Republicans and Democrats by a gorilla and a lion like in the video (it doesn’t matter who the gorilla and lion represent, it is just to explain the system) So let’s say that Gorilla is doing something to get elected, he has a certain stance that a good amount of people like. Lion also has a certain stance that is different from Gorilla that gets her voted into office a good amount of the time. They are going to keep pushing their values and stressing only those values to get reelected. They are not going to change their policies very easily because, well, why would they? With only two parties there is very little competition. Low competition leads to less need for innovation because there is only the need to beat out one, not even two or a dozen other. If Lion only has to beat out Gorilla and not four other animals, she is not going to need to be very innovative. Now let this happen election cycle after election cycle; there is going to be little innovation over time relative to society, and therefore stagnation.
Another major problem is that these parties are actually very, very similar. As much as Republicans and Democrats stress their differences and try to distance themselves from each other, there really isn’t much variety. Republicans are generally for growing business and corporations, while Democrats are generally for growing government. Do you think we need to keep growing these controlling entities? I find it really hard to believe we need more growth and control from either the government or businesses. Why is there not a party that is for the maintenance of the society we have today, instead of promoting growth. Many parties do support this, but there is little chance of them making it big. This is getting off topic, but I’m just trying to point out that Republicans and Democrats are both for growth, there only difference is who gets the growth and control.
I am going to wrap it up, I wanted to keep this pretty short, but there are many problems associated with the two party system and I just quickly outlined two of them here. There needs to be a system that will promote more than two parties. If we want a better future, we need to have different parties. That lies with the voter. That is you. Yes, it will be extremely hard to promote a third party to the level of Republicans or Democrats. But with time and enough educated voters we can start to chisel away at the way the system is set up. This goes for anything. Understanding the system and how it works helps in the fight against it. This only works if enough people work together to fight the problem.
