Fred-Rick
3 min readMar 7, 2020

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It is always good to discuss political change, Dave, and you are therefore doing a fantastic job. Both you and I are discussing our views about the setups of nations, and we take our zeal to the outside world and promote it, discuss it some more. So, yes, this is simply always a good thing to do.

You bring up a fascinating aspect that humans have a tendency to reject change and keep things the way they are — even to the point of rejecting the clear benefit. Folks don’t like upheaval and there is little we can do about that.

One option is the legal course, but I am not familiar with the Canadian setup. If I am not mistaken, the UK does not have a constitution and perhaps Canada does not either. Equality to a T may therefore not be written in the ground rules of the nation.

I have also been amazed in the US where I have talked to many people about the system, and not gotten even a nudge of action out of folks that otherwise agree fully with me. I think that is fascinating. Somehow the focus is not on the truth, and if not on the truth, then the focus is most likely on the power.

My article The American Truth is intentionally set up to make folks aware that they were had. I am trying to get a reaction that folks are not woke (to use a word that may not stick around long but that has some punch to it).

Part of the explanation is that people tend to look at other folks’ behavior and when no one is getting up from their seat, then they are also not getting up.

Another part of the explanation is that our lives here are so complicated and loaded with tasks that there better not be anything else that needs fixing. We’re too busy.

Regime change tends to come when the cost of bread and gasoline have become too expensive, and this must affect not a minority, but a reasonably large group. We are not in that situation (even though there is a sincere child hunger problem in the US).

Lastly, the invisibility of the system makes this a tricky subject matter for many people as well. They see that the seats are filled, and the decisions made are reasonably good, most of the time, so why change that, right?

The voters that would benefit the most by the regime change are too busy, too much involved with survival, and not willing to battle with the gods of politics.

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I am glad that Canada has more than two parties and I hope that will always be the case. It makes people smarter; it makes folks look at the actual issues better. In the Americas, there is not a better nation for folks to live in from a sociopolitical perspective than Canada. Yes, that doesn’t help either with making change come quickly.

But, New Zealand did change their system in 1996, so there is hope. They, too, could somehow not make the full change to proportional voting, and created a double system (voters vote twice in one election): half of the seats is voted for using winner-takes-all, and the other half is voted for using proportional voting.

They moved from two parties to eight parties (a bit much if you ask me), and I have heard kiwis say that unfortunately the two original parties are now still much in control. Having more than two parties, however, does mean the conversations are better, the outcomes smarter.

Thank you, Dave, for all your work. You are doing a good job. Someone’s got to do it and why would that not be you and me?

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Fred-Rick
Fred-Rick

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