Why is it that in a democracy, the elected leaders are not required to do what the people wants?
There is no penalty whatsoever for lying your ass off in the election and then doing whatever you want after you get elected.
Sure, you MAY not get re-elected, but thats not a big deal because your political carrer isnt over. You still remain as a senator or MP or whatever you were doing before the election.
>>67498284
Yeah, we should have punishments for not reaching goals, or going against stated goals, like them losing their career or something.
Politicians who use their position to advance their own interests or those of foreigners over their constituents should be sent to the gallows
>>67499148
>hire someone to build you a house
>he later admits he cant do it
>you cant sue him or anything
Guess what would happen?
>>67498284
>democracy
>having elected leaders
no. lrn2politik.
this is representative democracy. you vote for the nigger you least dislike. tony abbott proved that all that is required to win is to simply say nothing at all.
here is a picture of our former robot overlord malfunctioning.
>>67499426
Cankles?
>>67499751
seppo scum?
It's a Shitposter thread
>>67498284
OP, every politician is going to claim that he IS doing what people want.
>>67499148
If you punish someone for failure then they become less likely to even try the next time.
/pol/, I thought you were smarter than this.
>>67499681
Why not vote for the person you actually like?
>>67500242
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
>>67500208
>OP, every politician is going to claim that he IS doing what people want.
But can they prove it?
Let's say you are a marketing manager for a company. You tell your boss that the market wants a certain type of product. They are going to want to see some evidence to back up this claim instead of simply going off your word.
>>67500208
>If you punish someone for failure then they become less likely to even try the next time.
Except that every boss is going to punish you for failure...whether it be passing you up for promotion or eventually firing you for doing nothing.
Even in school your teacher will punish you for failing to hand in your homework.
>>67500338
I think that is a bad analogy. How does one show evidence that they are doing what the people want or the reverse? Look at presidential approval ratings in America for the last 50 years. It can fluctuate vastly throughout the term from 20% to 90% but it almost always averages out to somewhere around 50%. Is that president doing what the people want?
>>67501009
How does a marketing manager show evidence that they are producing a product that the market wants? Its very similar. There are plenty of ways...surveys, polls, etc...they at least provide some evidence to backup your claims rather than "You just have to believe me!".
>>67500439
The only person that stops you from completing your schoolwork is you and at work I have only ever been punished for failing to accomplish something I had every reason to succeed at. Politics is different. Sometimes a politician wants to do something that is unlikely to succeed. The OP's suggestion would mean that a politician is punished for just trying something new. Not to mention that sometimes the people appreciate just the attempt, even if it fails. After all, the Republican party in the US has tried and failed to repeal obamacare 60 times. Should they be punished for those failures, even if it is impossible as long as obama is president?
>>67498284
Because outside factors might stop them doing it, even if they had the best of intentions.
Because most of the time the individual MPs are subservient to a party machine anyway.
Because (and we don't say this often, but it's true) the people don't always want the right things. (This is also a tacit argument for FPTP, or representative democracy in general - though representative democracy with a PR system also has the kinder sounding justification that direct-democracy is something of a time-waster on boring issues nobody actually cares about.)
Also, sometimes implementation is subjective. Say I promise a new railway to "Improve" the local economy. The railway is built, at great expense, and the local economy does slightly improve (above the regular growth rate) but not enough to recoup the costs of the railway (or alternatively, the growth is possibly not connected to the railway and purely coincidental.) - Election time comes, did I keep my promise? A railway was built (50% of promise achieved) but it either wasted money while causing slight improvements, or caused no improvement at all (though proving this might be arduous and mistakes are inevitable.)
In the end, in a situation like the above, you end up putting power into the hands of judges or courts, i.e. the judiciary, altering the balance of power in the country. By nitpicking manifestos enough, you could probably have every sitting MP found ineligible if you were dedicated enough. (An incredibly contrived and hyperbolic situation in a modern democracy, but even still the theoretical possibility of such interference increases the 'soft' power of the judiciary.)
>>67502137
Failing and not trying is one thing. Lets say a politican gets elected because he campaigned hard on a promise to improve infrastructure and generate jobs.
After election he decides not to do that and cant come up with a valid excuse as to why. Then yes, he should get punished.
In Australia we have this country wide project to improve internet infrastructure, except that its a total cluster fuck because we were originally going to give all homes fiber internet, then we did a 180 and decided that was "too expensive" so we are now using something caled "fiber to the node".
Except that it is still expensive as fuck, is out-dated tech that other countries were using a decade ago and the project is hitting delay after delay because contractors are not legally obligated to fulfill their contracts (WTF???).
Friend of mine had this wifi tower setup near his place for the NBN project, they had it hooked up to auxillary power generators, turned on and everything...but the contractor who was supposed to connect it to the main power infrastructure (so it could run without generators) refused to do it for some reason and half a year later STILL wouldn't come to connect the power.
So yea thats a good example of where politicans should be getting punished for hoodwinking the people.
>>67501978
>surveys, polls, etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
>>67502574
>Because (and we don't say this often, but it's true) the people don't always want the right things. (This is also a tacit argument for FPTP, or representative democracy in general - though representative democracy with a PR system also has the kinder sounding justification that direct-democracy is something of a time-waster on boring issues nobody actually cares about.)
Like what?
What do people want that's not right?
>>67498284
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustee_model_of_representation
It's actually the grand conservative who is at fault for this. Anglos yet again underestimate the bad nature of humans.
>>67498284
>democracy
lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
>>67501978
>How does a marketing manager show evidence that they are producing a product that the market wants?
You mean prior to producing the product? By showing similar or related markets and making an estimate based on that. At least that is what they do on Dragons' Den in the UK. Afterwards they can tell how right they are by how much money they are making.
>There are plenty of ways...surveys, polls, etc
So just polls then. And as I tried to demonstrate with the example in the post you replied to, the result of the survey will fluctuate depending on when it is taken. A sudden event can change the result drastically.
>>67502574
Well in the railway example, the politican should explain to the people that building the railway turned out to not be feasible, and provide evidence to backup that claim.
Instead politicans simply refuse to talk about promises that they have broken, so it looks like they have something to hide.
>>67502785
I think it would become a clusterfuck of everyone trying to assign responsibility for the failure to someone else. And I still think it would just mean that no politician ever promises to improve the internet infrastructure (any other big project) in the first place because they are afraid to be punished if they fail. Or they campaign on the promise of TRYING to something, instead of promising to succeed.
And then you run into the problem of whether or not the people believe the politician should be punished. After all, it IS a supposed to be democracy. Should a politician be punished blatant lying even if his voters don't think he should be punished?
>>67502873
>What do people want that's not right?
That's a much trickier question than you'd expect.
'Right' varies from case to case, sometimes it's rather objective (People falling for simple platitudes over what the evidence supports, quite easy where individuals get their information from media companies with concerns other than objective reporting) while other times it's completely subjective (Yes Minister is rather good for demonstrating the latter comically.)
Since 'wrong' is so hard to put objectively, it's hard to provide an example that won't devolve into an argument about the merits of the example itself instead of the guiding principle. The simplest summary is probably still people getting their information from media companies instead of research sources or original documents, so you end up with a skewed public perception of policies and their results.
To oversimplify things:
The government proposes good-policy-X
The press oppose policy-X
People see news in the press, but do not read draft legislation. They oppose policy-X.
In a direct democracy, policy-X is never implemented.
In a representative one, it's implemented and the press (generally) get over themselves and accept bureaucratic inertia means it's stuck even if the government changes.
People soon forget about policy-X as other issues come along (some that they have a 'genuine' stake in, and others press driven nonsense.)
I emphasise again that the press is just one example, and 'solutions' to the example problem like press regulation just push the problem around (Abuse of regulation to hide that bad-policy-Y was a horrible failure until after an election, for example.) so things aren't that black and white.
>>67503644
>politicans simply refuse to talk about promises that they have broken, so it looks like they have something to hide.
There's something of a problem with going and doing that though, it throws you onto the defensive.
Say he's explaining that the railway was a failure, his opponent, who was previously a nobody but is now the opposition candidate at the next election can campaign on how he knew from the start the railway was a dead-end project, how you can trust him (even though he's completely unproven) because he's still better than the railway guy (proven to have failed at least once)
You almost end up amplifying your opponents message when you admit you're not perfect in any sort of honest way. (Opponent: "The railway sucked, vote for me I always hated it!", Candidate: "Look, the railway sucked but it seemed like a good idea at the time...")
While it's much less trustworthy for him to spin it and go "The railway is fine [maybe with further deflection like "passenger numbers will still improve", "there's more to be done when i'm re-elected, etc.], my opponent's party's policy on [unrelated thing] is a joke..." and deflect the issue, to a very passive observer it appears as two alternative arguments (Railway bad, Railway fine.) instead of an unproven view and an obfuscated one. Seemingly this is an acceptable tradeoff. (Until people get sick of it and vote for a candidate who'll take strong positions on any issue, even if they're unorthodox, largely because he acts like an actual human being)
