Debian votes on init systems
Debian votes on init systems
Posted Dec 6, 2019 13:29 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)In reply to: Debian votes on init systems by marcH
Parent article: Debian votes on init systems
I consider this a bug, not a feature. In very large organisations if there isn't an obvious consensus then "do nothing"/"further discussion" can legitimately be the best option. NL for example has never had a single party majority since the rise of parties (~1850) and it leads to a culture of robust debate about everything at basically every level.
Returning to Debian, having robust debates is a good thing and if "further discussion" wins then that's not a bad thing. Organisations like Debian can only survive if people keep talking to each other. Sometimes people feel that things would work better if there was a single dictator that simply decided everything but that makes it much harder to keep everyone happy (people love dictators as long as they agree with them).
Posted Dec 6, 2019 17:43 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
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You want proportionality to bring more nuances, great intention. But you missed my entire point: a voting system should not be "Proportional or not?". Those are two extremes too.
From the other answer:
"or-whatever"... ouch.
Quantitative is dead. People today don't want numbers, game over. They want simple, partisan, yes/no answers. "How much" doesn't make a fierce TV news or fakebook debate.
Sample ridiculous yes/no debates: - Fossil fuel or not? - Obamacare or not? - Tariffs or not? - Diversity or not? Reform or not? systemd or not? Just browse any news and see how the world is actively avoiding numbers.
Not knowing anything about it I was curious about "busing". I made the mistake to listen to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/podcasts/the-daily/bus...
You may think there's at least one specific type of numbers people still care about: money, and to some extend you'd be right. Yet I was yesterday listening to some radio show on a (non-English) station that tends to pride itself on having an audience more educated than the average. They had invited some world class economist and were discussing some progressive tax. At some point the journalist complained, literally: "oooh you lost me, that's a lot of numbers". The economist had just enumerated the tax rates of... _three_ bands! That journalist is very smart, from her acting tone I suspect she was just trying to please her audience.
Many shrewd politicians exploit this and use "erosion": very gradual, bit by bit reforms easily and successfully avoiding any attention. To be on the safe side just say something vaguely outrageous while doing it.
Debian votes on init systems
> A 5%-or-whatever minimum still allows for a 19-party parliament (in theory) and is no guarantee of stability.
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A very promising title: "The myth that busing failed" - this one has to be full of various metrics! Not a single number in 30 minutes, amazing. If only news were just "biased", but no, it's much worse: they're content free.