That was a very different situation. The USSR was still catching up in industrialisation, and despite its huge losses still had vast reserves of labour in the countryside to tap. It was much more like the process of industrialisation in China that’s seen huge growth there over the last generation. Russia has already industrialised so it doesn’t have a catch-up growth opportunity in the same way. They are much more labour and resource constrained these days.
This labor was, pre-war, a bunch of poor, uneducated serfs (basically slaves). But leading up to WWII, they were transformed into educated, literate, laborers. Also the USSR had invested leading up to WW2 in agriculture outside Ukraine (since the Nazis controlled it).
So while there was less labor, they were far more productive labor thanks to post-revolution, post-WWI measures
> This labor was, pre-war, a bunch of poor, uneducated serfs (basically slaves).
This is incorrect. Serfdom in Russian empire was abolished in 1861, long before the revolution. Peasant literacy rates, while still poor, had been gradually improving after that.
> Also the USSR had invested leading up to WW2 in agriculture outside Ukraine (since the Nazis controlled it).
What? Not only Ukraine was controlled by Bolsheviks at the start of WW2 its territories have also been extended with parts of Poland and Romania annexed by Soviets between the start of WW2 and the so-called "Great Patriotic" phase of the war.
So one person says, USSR was still catching up in industrialisation, the other one says, they were far more productive... what is it? The whole argument still feels far-fetched at the very least.
The whole way the Judicial system in the US is beholden to politicians, and is thoroughly politicised looks completely horrific to me in the UK. Even the election officials responsible for overseeing voting are politicians.
Combined with this elected King George III presidential nonsense (not just king in general either, specifically the powers George III had in the 1780s) and I despair sometimes. Get yourselves a decent parliamentary system. If you avoid proportional representation it works fine. Unfortunately the US population is somehow convinced the current US system is modern and up to date. They'll probably still think that in another 200 years.
We can't "proportionally" represent a constituency which returns a single individual
So, if you want PR you have to either: Have two distinct classes of MP: Some were directly elected and represent an area, others are just to make the up proportions - but obviously these are just worse right? Second class MPs.
OR Abolish the constituencies entirely, now nobody represents your area and its particular concerns, or everybody does, which as we know amounts to the same thing because of how dilution works.
Unlike other electoral reforms a PR system has deeper implications far beyond the elections themselves. Historically the UK actually didn't have a single electoral system for every constituency, and that was fine†, indeed it works fine in the US today, the thing which needs to be coherent is what happens after the election and PR meddles with that.
† Well, not "fine", this is the era of the famous "Rotten Boroughs" but the fact that the system varies from one place to another wasn't key there.
It also means that people are voting for party lists, not individuals, and the lists are controlled by the parties. In a proper parliamentary system the parliamentarians directly represent their voters, and have a mandate from them. Parties do not have that, only MPs have that. By passing the mandate from the representative to the party, and the party having list control, that puts far too much power over parliamentarians in the hands of unelected party functionaries that draw up the lists and have no mandate themselves.
That's way less bad than it appears, because in a proportional system you will have more than 2 parties. In practice, every election is an election of those invisible bureaucratic hands, instead of some heads on display.
Party affiliation is already a problem, List systems make that worse.
Years ago two of my friends lived in Vauxhall in London. That spy building in central London where James Bond works? That's in Vauxhall (and it is really for spies, though real intelligence agents do not look like James Bond), they lived like 10 minutes walk from there.
Vauxhall is pretty far left even for a city borough, but they ended up with Kate Hoey as their Labour MP. Kate - despite being a representative of a left party was nevertheless pro gun rights, pro fox hunting, and pretty luke warm on LGBT issues, she was also, which led to her finally be thrown out by her local party, pro-Brexit.
But the people of Vauxhall weren't really voting for Kate Hoey the woman who likes fox hunting and isn't too bothered if they make abortion illegal again, and who is supporting Brexit even though they don't want it - they were voting for Labour, a centre left party and Kate had Labour's endorsement.
Maybe under PR Kate ends up finding a home in some party that more closely tracks her personal beliefs, but, equally maybe not. And so people end up voting for something they don't really want.
I think that given simply counting is apparently too untrustworthy in our post-truth world, we might as well do something more sophisticated like Instant Run-off or Approval, but I don't approve of Proportional as a goal.
The brain actually has specific neurological system that compartmentalise reasoning contexts in different social contexts, so we operate according to different sets of assumptions and rules of behaviour and reasoning in different kinds of situations.
The the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) both play roles in this. Not a neuroscientist, just going on my own reading.
True. I really don't know enough about it, but it may well be these functions are still there, after all I expect the relevant neurological systems are still there, but the impact on social cognition from autism render their effects basically irrelevant.
His father who oversaw his education and possibly both parents, and Bentham that played a role in his education as well, would have known either Greek, or Latin or both as they were considered essential to a rounded education at the time.
The problems are a product of the constitutional system. I think the main problem is the elected king presidential system nonsense. Parliamentary democracy is the way to go.
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