Good points, Dave, and we share the knowledge that there is no perfection, only optimizations.

Israel has been in a really precarious situation since inception. I do not recognize it as a standard nation at all, no matter its system. That it was capable of functioning this well for this long with a relatively pure proportional voting system is in my view a compliment to the people of Israel. That they are going a bit berserk is according to me more a sign of the times; as a world, we are still not moving into a good direction. As a species, we are not staying close enough to the balance but desire to get ourselves worked-up and go to the extremes.

Hungary is not a PR nation.

First off, they have a President, and while the Presidency does not hold too many functions, there is the right to veto legislation. In other words, there is definitively power associated with this function (but fortunately only one of thumbs up or thumbs down).

A president is always winner-take-all, even when this president is appointed by the National Assembly (2/3rds majority required, yet if no one succeeds then 50% is all it takes).

Then the National Assembly, 106 of the 199 seats are winner-take-all seats. The remaining 93 seats are proportional.

So, what we are seeing is the opposite of what they have in Germany. In Germany they have winner-take-all, but then they fix the end results up to be much more proportional in outcome. In Hungary, they just have a mixture of both systems, which is not as good as fixing up one system with the other.

So, Hungary is not a PR nation and they are not the best example to portray PR.

What we have seen in nations with PR is that Trump-like candidates can indeed get all the attention, but they do not get all the votes. As such, the system is working. Still, Germany in the Interbellum told us to be careful with embracing PR, particularly for large important nations.

So, when we view proportional voting, then we can find safe zones in the following situations:

- Local Elections (PR is ALWAYS the best)

- Provincial/State Elections (PR is very well possible, but a State like California or Texas is better off with the German system)

- Small nations (that cannot upset the global applecart).

The larger and more important a nation, the more they need to prevent getting more than six or seven parties in their Chamber(s).

Parties are not the issue, Dave. The amount of power given to the voters -- that is an essential part of what we find on the ground. Next, we need to be smart and have the largest and most important nations be stable nations (4 to 7 parties).

Ultimately, when the world has moved to greater and better forms of democracy, then that nasty competition that can truly undermine and erode so much will also be guided much better. Not many people recognize how the UK and the USA are ultimately based on competition-for-the-sake-of-competition and how this undermines all the good parts that these nations have brought the world. Winner-take-all contributes a lot to the competitive mindset where the means have become more important than the end goals, where winning is more important than having a good society.

PR is a system of showing our diverse human nation at the political tables.

Winner-take-all is too much a black&white system, a red&blue system. It brings out worse human traits than PR.