Is this a UK based website?

[Tiberius]

Don't care about the Kardashians? Filter it out. Don't care about the royal family? Filter it out.

Easily done.

I was about to go into a long rant about how the two are entirely different, but Brian37 summed it up pretty well.

I bet you wouldn't be so intent on filtering the Kardashians out if their entire family were elected politicians, would you?

[Minimalist]

The Brits can do what they wish. What I don't understand is the apparent fascination of the American media with these parasitical fucks.

We have far more important things to worry about than the Royal Rug Rat.

[Red Celt]

Don't care about the Kardashians? Filter it out. Don't care about the royal family? Filter it out.

Easily done.

I was about to go into a long rant about how the two are entirely different, but Brian37 summed it up pretty well.

I bet you wouldn't be so intent on filtering the Kardashians out if their entire family were elected politicians, would you?

If a libertarian feels the need to go on a long rant over something I've said, I know that my position is justified.

---

I'm neither a monarchist nor a republican. I'm neither besotted with the system that the UK has, nor dementedly insisting that it change. And this is why:-

In the USA, you have a 2-party system. There are occasional independents, but they are always "also rans" rather than a real opportunity for something different. Of the 2 parties, take a look on a political spectrum indicator as to just how close both parties are. They are shoulder-to-shoulder on everything (with minimal differences), yet are painted as extremes with Obama seen as a communist because he is every so slightly to the left of Romney.

So, as a representative democracy, there is very little difference in the way of representation.

Not only that, but the presidency is a game of millionaires. The cost of running for election is obscene. Individuals contribute to that expense, but the bulk of it comes from very rich business people who gain significant influence over the candidate. Even once a winning candidate is in power, they are always mindful of the next election 4 years later. They are working on the short term, never the long term.

Compare that to the UK. I don't care how wealthy the royals are. Hell, give them more money. They can never be purchased. Their will isn't up for sale. And, even if it was, so what? Their power amounts to nothing, as the will of the people will never allow un-elected people to inflict their power as we'd very quickly become a republic if they did.

Meanwhile, we have a prime minister who doesn't have the power to do anything without (figuratively) running it past the monarch - who owns the military.

It's antiquated, a little bit silly, but it works. It certainly works better than the USA model.

[DeistPaladin]

It certainly works better than the USA model.

Give us the parliamentary system and we'd have a new prime minister every two years. We'd give the Italians a run for their money as to how many governments we could collapse in a single decade.

Seriously, every sitting president since WWII with the exception of W Bush loses control of Congress just two years into his first term. The only reason W escaped that pattern is he benefited from 9/11. Reagan lost control of Congress after his mid-term. Then he won re-election in the biggest landslide in our history. Then he lost control of Congress two years later. Clinton lost control of Congress after his first mid-term. Then he won re-election in a landslide. Then he was handed a defeat in the following mid-term (if memory serves, I may be wrong about that one). We are just so bi-polar as a nation. It was really a good idea our founders had to create a government designed to put the breaks artificially on changes.

If we just changed two things, our system would work much better:

1. Ban all paid political advertisement. Get money out of politics. As it stands now, money talks, the individual voter walks.
   
2. Way past time to jettison the Electoral College. It made sense in the day of messages carried by horses. In the days of fiberoptics, not so much.
   

By the way, it's our Electoral College and the winner-take-all in each state that is part of what shuts out 3rd parties. Progressive Americans have no representation in our government. The best we can do is vote for the lesser evil: moderate conservatives like Obama.

[Tiberius]

If a libertarian feels the need to go on a long rant over something I've said, I know that my position is justified.

Pretty shitty reason to think your position is justified. Screw logic; if someone with a different political outlook to me disagrees, I must be right!

In the USA, you have a 2-party system. There are occasional independents, but they are always "also rans" rather than a real opportunity for something different. Of the 2 parties, take a look on a political spectrum indicator as to just how close both parties are. They are shoulder-to-shoulder on everything (with minimal differences), yet are painted as extremes with Obama seen as a communist because he is every so slightly to the left of Romney.

Erm, yeah. Have you seen the election results from the UK in recent years? The Liberal Democrats are holding on by a thread. UKIP made some interesting advances in recent years, but they still don't have an elected MP. The vast majority of MPs come from one of two parties, which are actually pretty close on the political spectrum as well (check out the distances here).

So, as a representative democracy, there is very little difference in the way of representation.

This can be said of pretty much any representative democracy. Even if there were a lot of diversity in the American political parties, you still have the underlying problem: there are 315 million people in the US, and there are 435 representatives in congress. Do some basic math: that's one representative for every 724,000 people. In the UK, it's a lot better, but it's still not a very fair representation (1 MP for every 97,000 people).

Not only that, but the presidency is a game of millionaires.

I can't find any information at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Obama wasn't a millionaire before he ran for president.

The cost of running for election is obscene.

Hence, one of the main reasons political parties are good ideas. Candidates can get support from the party even if they aren't rich, because the party can handle all the finances.

Individuals contribute to that expense, but the bulk of it comes from very rich business people who gain significant influence over the candidate. Even once a winning candidate is in power, they are always mindful of the next election 4 years later. They are working on the short term, never the long term.

I don't see how this is any different to MPs in the UK.

Compare that to the UK. I don't care how wealthy the royals are. Hell, give them more money. They can never be purchased.

Erm, yes they can. You honestly think people like Prince Charles aren't paid for their endorsements?

Their will isn't up for sale. And, even if it was, so what? Their power amounts to nothing, as the will of the people will never allow un-elected people to inflict their power as we'd very quickly become a republic if they did.

Their power amounts to quite a bit. Remember, the monarch controls both the parliament and the armed forces. She could, if she wanted, abolish parliament and declare martial law.

She actually uses her powers (in secret) quite often: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/...77422.html

Meanwhile, we have a prime minister who doesn't have the power to do anything without (figuratively) running it past the monarch - who owns the military.

I fail to see how this is a good thing. You are making the assumption that some un-elected official is better at making decisions for the citizens of a country than a person directly elected by the citizens themselves. It sounds like you are a fan of dictatorships. Well, I'm not. The great thing about elected officials is that if you think they are doing a bad job, you don't elect them next time.

It's antiquated, a little bit silly, but it works. It certainly works better than the USA model.

I think you have a misunderstanding of the problems with both systems.

[Minimalist]

I can't find any information at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Obama wasn't a millionaire before he ran for president.

You misunderstand his point, Divi Tiberio. It's like horse racing. The owners are billionaires and the horses don't own shit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/us/pol...d=all&_r=0

MANCHESTER, N.H. — For weeks this winter, as Newt Gingrich’s presidential hopes faltered under the weight of millions of dollars in attack ads paid for by backers of Mitt Romney, a small group of Gingrich supporters quietly lobbied for help from one of the richest men in America: Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner and Mr. Gingrich’s longtime friend and patron.

They don't even care which end of the horse they support, you see.

[Creed of Heresy]

...Red, your post...it kinda hurt me...in my smarts. First...the Kardashians as a political party would be impossible to ignore, largely because at that point I would be making a death-or-glory run to get to the Big Red Button to nuke the fuck out of the country because if they got elected then clearly this country would have lost its shit to the point that it needed to be destroyed before it dragged the entire human race down with it. Second, libertarians are not bad people, and if you void out the Tea Party [who are to Libertarianism what Joseph Stalin is to social-democracy], they've got some good ideas...certainly much fucking better than what the neocons have, at any rate. Third, parliament, in the US? Are you mad? We'd never get a fucking thing done! You think we have political paralysis now? PPFFWHOOOWHEEE! You ain't seen nothin' yet! Parliament would not work for us. At ALL. As the Paladin put it, every two years our government would suffer critical existence failure.

Generally-speaking, for the US, we've got a pretty DECENT system. Not the best, but we won't get the best until we deserve it, and we won't deserve it until we demand it. And we won't deserve it until we finally get our collective heads out of our asses. We've got some more growing to do. People are often pessimistic about our chances, but in truth there hasn't ever really been a system quite like ours. It has its flaws, has had its flaws, but they've been getting corrected in a lot of ways. We hit our lows but we bounce back and do better once we wake up and realize what we fucked up on. Our country is pretty malleable. We actually adapt to change fairly well, all things considered. We could be doing worse, but we could be doing better, and we tend to realize both, in our own strange little way. Thanks to rapid communication, we're much better informed than previous republics and democracies in history have been, and that's going to help us immensely going forward. Stagnation isn't going to be such a problem because ideas flow too fast for that to suck us into the quagmires of beureacracy [I can never spell that damn word right!] and total conservatism that have dragged previous electoral processes down so totally.

[Doubting Thomas]

I can't find any information at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Obama wasn't a millionaire before he ran for president.

What about all those millions of dollars he was spending to keep his birth certificate from being seen?

[Red Celt]

My point (mainly) was that both countries have less-than-great systems of government (for different reasons). In that regard, it is ridiculous for Americans to whine about the royal family and (in comparison) I prefer the UK system to the USA system.

As has been pointed out, the candidates don't have to be millionaires but their campaigns cost millions and they have to get that money from somewhere. Also, whether the president's party also has congress is rather a moot point... because the lobbying system in the USA is also obscene. It is an actual industry. It exists in the UK, too, but on nowhere near the same scale.

Money buys political influence. Which is something that should always be in the realm of all of the people, and not just restricted to the wealthiest people.

So yeah, in the UK non-power is at the hands of one family by right of birth. Whine about that, while explaining how George W Bush managed to become president if it had nothing to do with who his father is.

[Kayenneh]

HE HE HE, I have infected you with the real fab 4.

I don't need to be infected

Please tell me something I don't know. Yes humans have all sorts of escapes from celebrity to sports. But we are not talking about ABBA running a nation. Britian's royal family is not merely the Kardashians. They are heads of state, and not even elected heads of state. They are dictators, not in a literal sense, because if they did what their ancestors did in the history of their families rule today, they would have their asses handed to them. So they in reality, are nothing more than a living museum wasting public resources. Much like in the states when an NFL owner blackmails a city for money for a stadium the tax payers cant afford, and threatens to move the team if the city does not comply.

Point taken