Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts

Friday, 17 June 2011

Moral Roots: Lib Con

This diverse talk by Jonathan Haidt explores the evolutionary benefits of morality and compares liberal moral roots of harm and fairness with conservative ones of harm, fairness, purity, in-group loyalty and authority. I think his insight is an argument for creating a democratic system that enhances the quality of debate in order to achieve moral diversity and counter group think. Interactive Democracy could do this.
"If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease."
Sant-tsian, c700CE.

Monday, 24 January 2011

Going for Bust


Despite their being no guillotine (time limit for debates) in the House of Lords, it seems that the Labour Peers are intent on filibustering the electoral reform bill. Their monotone may yet succeed in lulling the House to sleep.
While Labour support AV they don't want the electoral boundaries tampered with as they suspect the coalition of gerrymandering. Yet, according to the above graph, both the Conservatives and the LibDems won fewer seats, in proportion to their votes, than Labour, which seems to hint that the latter are more concerned with protecting their own bias than establishing a fair "one vote equals another" system. Do politicians always favour power over fairness?
Fairness and transparency are essential elements of Interactive Democracy.
This post on automatically morphing electoral boundaries suggests how technology could be applied to make drawing boundaries fair and unbiased.
More from the Guardian on-line, here.