• Poitics, or lack of same

    From john larkin@21:1/5 to All on Thu Dec 5 06:46:08 2024
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/europe/france-political-mire-macron-kicking-himself-analysis-intl/index.html

    Parlimentary systems seem chaotic to me. In the USA, we schedule such
    trauma to happen every four years. In europe, the chaos is high rate
    random time sampled.

    I guess there worse things than having no government. No running water
    or no beer maybe.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Bill Sloman@21:1/5 to john larkin on Fri Dec 6 14:30:53 2024
    On 6/12/2024 1:46 am, john larkin wrote:
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/europe/france-political-mire-macron-kicking-himself-analysis-intl/index.html

    Parlimentary systems seem chaotic to me. In the USA, we schedule such
    trauma to happen every four years. In europe, the chaos is high rate
    random time sampled.

    That's not the right way to look at it. The US lacks an orderly
    mechanism to get rid of an incompetent administration rapidly.

    Donald Trump served out his first term as president, despite his
    incompetence leading to a lot of extra American deaths from Covid-19,
    and has a fair chance of getting all the way through his second term
    despite being older and even sillier now.

    I guess there worse things than having no government. No running water
    or no beer maybe.

    Running water depends on local government - it's one of those natural monopolies. The lunatic privatisation freaks would like to turn it into
    a closely regulated private enterprise - ENRON showed the folly of that approach, but lunatics don't learn from experience.

    --
    Bill Sloman, Sydney

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  • From Martin Brown@21:1/5 to john larkin on Fri Dec 6 09:15:40 2024
    On 05/12/2024 14:46, john larkin wrote:
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/europe/france-political-mire-macron-kicking-himself-analysis-intl/index.html

    Parlimentary systems seem chaotic to me. In the USA, we schedule such
    trauma to happen every four years. In europe, the chaos is high rate
    random time sampled.

    We have multiple actual opposition parties in Europe covering the entire political spectrum. Sometimes they even get a turn in government.

    At least one typically provides the piggy in the middle balancing act
    and can form a coalition with either of the main parties to make a
    viable government. They do sometimes get shafted as a result.

    What happened in France was that the ultra right and the ultra left
    ganged up to take out the unpopular centrist Prime Minister who was
    basically just trying to balance the books with a budget.

    Politicians over estimate their own importance. Belgium survived OK for
    over 650 days without a government - breaking their own previous world
    record!

    https://caw.ceu.edu/other-activities/academic-blog/politics/how-did-belgium-manage-to-survive-without-having-agovernment

    TBH I'm more worried about Korea declaring martial law. That could
    invite very big trouble and there are plenty of US bases there.

    I guess there worse things than having no government. No running water
    or no beer maybe.

    Lack of running water is inconvenient, lack of potable water is much
    more serious. You die of dehydration a lot faster (days) than starvation (weeks).

    Beer has the big advantage that in dodgy third world regions it is
    usually safe to drink even when the water isn't.

    --
    Martin Brown

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From john larkin@21:1/5 to '''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk on Fri Dec 6 06:28:36 2024
    On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 09:15:40 +0000, Martin Brown
    <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

    On 05/12/2024 14:46, john larkin wrote:
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/europe/france-political-mire-macron-kicking-himself-analysis-intl/index.html

    Parlimentary systems seem chaotic to me. In the USA, we schedule such
    trauma to happen every four years. In europe, the chaos is high rate
    random time sampled.

    We have multiple actual opposition parties in Europe covering the entire >political spectrum. Sometimes they even get a turn in government.

    At least one typically provides the piggy in the middle balancing act
    and can form a coalition with either of the main parties to make a
    viable government. They do sometimes get shafted as a result.

    What happened in France was that the ultra right and the ultra left
    ganged up to take out the unpopular centrist Prime Minister who was
    basically just trying to balance the books with a budget.

    Politicians over estimate their own importance. Belgium survived OK for
    over 650 days without a government - breaking their own previous world >record!

    https://caw.ceu.edu/other-activities/academic-blog/politics/how-did-belgium-manage-to-survive-without-having-agovernment

    Sounds good to me.


    TBH I'm more worried about Korea declaring martial law. That could
    invite very big trouble and there are plenty of US bases there.

    I guess there worse things than having no government. No running water
    or no beer maybe.

    Lack of running water is inconvenient, lack of potable water is much
    more serious. You die of dehydration a lot faster (days) than starvation >(weeks).

    Beer has the big advantage that in dodgy third world regions it is
    usually safe to drink even when the water isn't.

    Beer is surely an important component of human evolution. I suspect
    it's related to the grandparent effect.

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