Common sense.
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
77 points (91.4% liked)
No Stupid Questions
43423 readers
795 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Direct Democracy, perhaps? One way to not have these parties is to not have representatives at all.
I’m not sure there’s a name for thinking the parties shouldn’t exist. If you tell us what you think SHOULD exist we can probably tell you what labels apply to that.
George Washington didn't want political parties either. So whatever you are it's patriotic af.
I think parties are fine but a multi party system usually works much better since parties will have to make coalitions and will usually shit on each other a bit less.
GW specifically didn't want the US to devolve into a 2-party system.
IMO single party or multi party system can both result in a functional representative democracy.
Are the examples of single party functional representative democracies? I have no clue…
The USA didn't have a 2 party system for GW's first 2 terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_the_United_States
I would argue that if the system completely lacked merit, than the USA would have dissolved given the inherant fragility of any newly founded nation.
nonpartisan democracy
You know, I don't think there is a term.
So, I'll coin it: Washingtonism.
Our first President famously advised against political parties. He also stepped down after two turns, establishing a tradition that later became part of the Constitution after FDR won his third term.
He also had slave teeth.
I don't think there is a term
Pretty sure it's "common sense".
Nonpartisan. Though there are not really movements against this, just small nations that ban parties.
I will push back on your opinions, though. "Division" is not a moral or political quantity. It is not itself good nor bad. Trans people were universally oppressed for centuries. Now they have some protections. This is a consequence of struggle against transphobia, that struggle is inherently a division. There are transphobes and pro-trans people. The pro-trans group should win. For them to win we need to support them materially and in as effectively as possible, which means through organized work. Progress against oppression only occurs through division and struggle. And the best vehicles for this are organizations - basically parties or very similar apparatuses.
The two-party system is a symptom of deeper problems and they shouldn't be summarized as division. The two-party system is really just a very effective way for the ruling class (business owners) to achieve their ends while still providing a venue for "the political", often struggles and oppressions that they personally exacerbated. For example, some of the earliest institutional racism in what would become the US emerged due to worker solidarity and struggle. The ruling class decided to divide and conquer: they created a race-based system, defining a new class corresponding to "black", who would be the most exploited, and exploiting everyone ekse skightly left. This is not theater, as the oppressed are facing actual oppression, but it is cynical: it's really about profit maximization and controlling workers. The two-party system makes this kind of thing a constant endeavor, you can spend all of your time invested in struggles imposed by the ruling class and exemplified in the parties, and in doing so never focus on the underlying system that creates it. But of course not every oppression makes its way into this attempt at distraction, as when the oppression is bipartisan (no division in that case but still bad!). For example, both parties are in favor of the genocide of Palestinians and both actively ensure that it happens. A few decades ago both were purely transphobic and did nit evdn exhibit today's liberal cooption of the struggle (notice that it has slowed down).
Most importantly, the two-party system prevents popular politics that runs counter to ruling class interests. Their greatest opponents are the left, so the US political system prevents left parties from functioning abd becoming popular. Want to run as a third party? Well the Dems will gladly do a last-minute change to how many signatures you need to gather to get on the ballot. They can meet the number because they will pay people to collect them, but you have to have already prepared a horde of volunteers. Organize a socialist party? They might just plain kill you.
It is not the existence of parties that is the problem, but the stifling of left parties, of those that can challenge the systemic causes of oppression.
Political parties are inevitable with fptp elections. It will always come down to 2 candidates. Any 3rd candidate will only split the vote with whoever is most similar. People tend to naturally organize themselves into groups based on who they agree with most. I don't know if its possible to get rid of political parties all together but having more than 2 would be an improvement. The only way to do that is to change our elections. Either ranked-choice voting or runoffs when no one gets more than half the votes could allow for people to vote 3rd party without throwing away their votes.
Political parties coalesce in a representative government anyways. “Hey Sally, can you support my bill to buy flowers for the White House, and I’ll support your bill to buy guns for the army”
Common sense
Non-partisan.
There is a word anti-partyism, but it doesn't seem to be commonly used.
The literal answer to your literal question is called "believing that US politics should be non-partisan".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy
The US started as de facto non-partisan democracy. There is a de jure option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
Direct democracy would probably give less power to political parties, but there still could be voting blocs. An example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Jewish_bloc_voting
It's hard to assign a name to a negative, as the alternatives are so plenty. Maybe describe the improvements you might like?
I, for one, like the ideas of liquid democracy.
Finally! I found the name for what I've been thinking of. Thank you!
Yeah! I think liquid democracy is practical with today's technology, especially if it is encrypted correctly with verification and privacy in mind.
This is my favorite type of democracy. Why even have representatives in a digital-first world?
There was a very interesting tool/game someone made in Finland. You got shown the same problems the actualy Ministers of Parliament have to vote on, and all attachments that are available for public.
The idea was that it shows that direct democracy can work just fine.
I spent an evening trying to make my mind on whether I want to support expanding a ski centre in Lapland or not. Both sides had very good arguments! In the end I ended up thinking "Damn, this is a huge amount of work! If there was a system like this in place in Finland, I'd definitely want to outsource my part. I'd find someone that thinks more or less the same way as I do and I'd pay them to do the research and use my vote. It would make sense that people would sell that service to several citizens at once, bringing down the cost per person. I would not want to spend several hours each day researching something like ski centres 800 km away from my home – yet if only few do and vote, then the result is really random. So, I would definitely want someone to represent me."
And then I figured that "damn, this is actually the system we have right now!"
And then I figured that “damn, this is actually the system we have right now!”
Not quite. Liquid democracy lets you delegate your vote to someone who either has the same love of skiing as you do, or same preference to give as much cash as dividend to citizens (UBI/freedom dividend) and a bias to reject frivolous spending without a ROI for your future dividend.
You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.
There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.
None of those are close to what we have right now.
There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.
I didn't get what this is referring to. Is it some Canadian or US-American concept? I'd be happy if you could elaborate a bit!
You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.
I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment. Luckily I've never had to exercise that right. Also, another thing that flew far over my head: why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?
Liquid democracy is crypto voting from phone or computer. There is no majority winning parliamentary representatitves. You directly choose your own representative, if you want to. That representative has as many votes as the number that were delegated to them. No necessary parliament means no parliamentary restrictions (based on limiting volume of bills to manageable amount)
I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment.
Liquid democracy lets you change it every day. Even if you live in a system where recall elections are possible, it is a lengthy process that requires significant cooperation and agreement.
why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?
You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.
You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.
Uh, people choose when they are 18 whether they want to go to civil service or army. If they choose army, they will obviously be drafted if the Russia ever attacks, unless they have later had themselves removed from the drafting lists. To make a decision on how many soldiers we'll need for the defence is actually an extremely good example of what kind of decisions absolutely cannot be made by a broad public vote. You need a military person relaying secret strategical information to the Ministers of Parliament. It cannot be relayed to all 5.6 million people without compromising the information. If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.
So, at least for that kind of decisions something else must be at place. Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked and you could then choose which one of those will handle your vote in this precise case – before they have talked with the military specialists.
Paid young adult mandatory military training/service is an entirely reasonable policy where if pay is high enough, enough old people will force the young to do it. Even mandatory "go die in vietnam because domino theory will destroy capitalism" can have more old people force the young into draft. Though obviously, exposing those reasons to kill our youth makes the vote less favourable.
If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.
Our military slave numbers are public.
The extreme cost of maintaining offensive and diminishment operations is the first thing likely to be eliminated in favour of cash dividends to voters. There can be constititutional limits on what can never be voted against. Legitimate defensive needs/preparation of the nation would be covered. Funding a proxy war on Russia or Palestine or Israel would come from personal individual donations rather than forced social budget support. Constitutional limits against offensive war propaganda are just as important as defense preparation.
Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked
There needs to be an administrator (President) to respond quickly to emergencies. Review of adminstrator behaviour after emergencies is a liquid democracy process. You're right that genuinely required secrets (as opposed to frequent national security classified corruption and evil) would require private judicial review, but liquid democracy would select the judges.
I don't think we could implement your suggestion. Our wartime maximum strength is about 700 000 soldiers and our population is around 5 600 000. That means, in wartime, one out of 8 inhabitants will be in different forms of military service. There's no way we could pay an adequate salary for that many soldiers. And, that number is still a third less than how many soldiers Ukraine has, and Ukraine is just barely able to keep the Russia from advancing.
I'm not sure why you're taking Vietnam war as an example, as it's an offensive war and for example Finland has no plans to do anything like that.
Our military -- numbers are public.
Yes, but the speed at which one can recruit soldiers in an emergency is not public.
maintaining offensive and diminishment operations
This is irrelevant, because most countries do not have any offensive operations to maintain in the first place.
You may not know what the phrase "proxy war" means, because in this context it's rather insulting. And I do not think you meant to insult me or others. But do tell, why and how would Finland wage an offensive war?
Yeah, this is getting a bit off topic, but you're making wild claims that would really need some clarification.
I’m not sure why you’re taking Vietnam war as an example, as it’s an offensive war and for example Finland has no plans to do anything like that.
The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.
one out of 8 inhabitants will be in different forms of military service. There’s no way we could pay an adequate salary for that many soldiers.
Finland joining NATO is joining offensive military operations to diminish Russia. Finland was much much safer before. That media propaganda is permitted to claim Russia is not defending itself, or has no right to object to demonic supremacist attitude that it needs to be destroyed/divided, and privatized for pittances to US dominated financial interests, is an extreme affront to reality and humanity. Any Finnish media that says anything to the contrary could be nationalized for more pro human pro Finland prosperity mandates, and it is only liquid democracy that has a chance to not allow CIA bribed/threatened politicians to not pillage or suicide Finland for CIA diminishment value. The only threat to Finland exists from joining axis of evil against Russia. Liquid democracy offers chance to appeal to non suicidal/stupid to preserve Finland and citizen prosperity.
Yes, Finland security does require citizen training in guerilla sniper tactics for self defense. No, that security is destroyed by joining axis of demonism. CIA can compromise every politician and media in your country ultra cheaply. Not possible under liquid democracy.
The US instituted a mandatory draft to fight that war.
But that was an offensive war, and most countries don't do those.
Finland was much much safer before.
Depends on how you define "to be safe". The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire. That sounded a bit scary, but we shrugged it off, because it would require a war and that would hurt the Russia so much that such a war would be idiocy and therefore will not happen.
In case you don't know where the borders of the Russian Empire were, they included for example these:
- Finland
- Estonia
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- half of Poland
- Ukraine
- Moldova
The Russia has declared that it wants to make all of those countries part of the Russian Federation.
So, we were not in danger, because the Russia would not be stupid enough to begin a war in Ukraine or in Finland, as it was clear that it would hurt the Russia's economy more than it could ever be of use to it. The Finnish defence doctrine was based on the concept of credible defence. We were told in school that "they can attack us and they could most likely even take over all of Finland, but our army is able to incur such big losses to them that they will not want to do that."
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.
So, we found out two things:
- the Russia is really interested in acting to its declarations. They are not just empty words as we had assumed
- the Russia does not care about losses – therefore the doctrine of credible defence does not protect from the Russia
You can say that we were not in danger because we didn't know that we are in danger. And in some way that's true. But, once we found out that we are in danger, then, well, we were.
Since the doctrine of credible defence went down the drain, meaning that Finland effectively did not have a defence that is able to protect it, what else than joining NATO do you suggest we should have done to gain a level of defence capability able to keep the Russia out of Finland? Name one other option that we had.
Your idea that the Russia has a right to defend itself by preemptively taking over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, half of Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova is, well... It would be impolite saying what it makes you look like.
EDIT:
And of course this is relevant:
In January 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 35 %.
No "let's join NATO" propaganda had been made at all, but in May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %.
The only thing that caused this was that people around Finland saw that what we had been taught about the Russia in our schools was crap. It was part of the school curriculum to make sure every Finn knows that the Russia is not going to attack us, with an explanation of why not. And it seemed to make sense. And everyone had that in their heads. And then... We saw what the Russia is doing in Ukraine, and it was clear from that alone that shit, we are fucked! That meant, 80 % of the people decided they wanted a new kind of safety against the Russia.
Maybe you can say that they told that in our schools for about 40 years just so that in 2025 Finland could join NATO. But... Well, you know.
In May 2022 you could go to any bar to talk with random people and it would be clear that the assumption was "we are joining NATO. There is no other option." There was no real dialogue about it, because basically everybody was of the same opinion. For the abovementioned reasons.
The Russia had declared that its goal is to return the borders of the Russian empire.
That is an outright falsehood that would be exposed in democracy. Even idealist "Reconstitution of USSR" implies zero military threat to non-deranged non-propagandists.
But then, it turned out that the Russia does not care about losses.
They of course care about losses. Hopefully, you are not taking Ukrainian claims about their losses with any credibility. Not submitting to demonic evil is a very high priority for Russia. Dead, nuclear incinerated, Finns being more useful to world than the territory of Finland should be your primary concern with your rulers and the lies you repeated from them.
In May 2022 the support for joining NATO was around 80 %
All of it based on programming that the US is not 100% responsible for nazification of Ukraine and starting the war they wanted 100% started. The corrupt tyranny of Finland that dooms its people to destruction based on this genuinely absurd lie, has corruption so strong in their CIA devotion, that Trump's extortion and 5% of GDP as military spending US tribute gives them 0 pause in their fascism over you. Similar brainwashing levels apply to Canada, but we're lucky to not pose enough of a threat in our evil that requires nuclear annihilation of our population.
ranked-choice voting? that would eliminate much of the need for parties anyway
That really does not end up resulting that way.
EDIT: I didn't have a lot of time to flesh this out at time of reply and I think the 10 upvotes for the person I replied to and single downvote for me might be an indication that my comment has been interpreted as disparaging preferential voting systems. For my comment to be understood correctly I should clarify that that is definitely not my intended meaning.
I was careful to say "resulting" because although perhaps theoretically you could say there isn't a need for parties in preferential voting systems (though I think you could technically do the same in first past the post systems as well), the way it works in practice, and I speak from experience as a voting citizen in Australia where we have preferential voting, political parties are the dominant and indeed only viable political forces capable of weilding significant power and influence. There are a handful of state and federal independents but governments are formed today as they pretty much have done from our earliest days, by political parties. I'm not sure I can think of examples of representative democracies with preferential voting systems that don't also exhibit this dynamic. I also strongly suspect if this state of affairs was reset tomorrow and we decided to run things closer to the way our Westminster system was initially conceived where the emphasis was upon individual parliamentarians representing constituentcies rather than parties; that voting blocks, factions and inevitably parties would rapidly form.
Parties emerge because of their branding and political machinery, they're well financed and they're organised with internal mechanisms to enforce member votes along party lines in Parliament making them more effective at forcing an agenda than loosely or temporarily coalesced independent representatives.
I might not like them and I feel like they undermine the whole point of having a representative supposedly chosen to represent me and my local area, given they first and foremost represent this other organisation instead but it's naive to think that our voting system, while technically not mandating the existence of parties, would somehow eliminate them. They are also favoured by the public themselves as well, as a shorthand for a candidate's platform and ideology which is more efficient and effective at messaging and communicating to the public than campaigns by multiple individual candidates with far smaller warchests and recognition.
It's a sign of above average intelligence. The two party system is what has destroyed the United States. Democrats and Republicans and the citizens who fear anything different are all equally responsible.
I don't know how the hell we're going to eliminate our first past the post voting system. The two entrenched parties, by design, will want to hold onto that power, and it will require their cooperation to both make change while simultaneously making the active choice to let go of power.
Doesn't seem likely to happen, which is depressing.
BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you, just felt my reply made the most sense here.
New Zealand switched from first past the post to mixed-member proportional in 1992. Despite a two party system at the time.
The two parties will go away if nobody votes for them. The population is far too complacent for any kind of actual change.
No they won't. As long as fptp exists, and as long as one party that blindly aligns with fascism and votes no matter what (as we have seen in practice), then all we will see is continued consolidation of power to that one party and a continued erosion of our rights.
We are living this exact scenario RIGHT NOW. One party was apathetic in voting, and the other one capitalized on it.
I dont know how they got rid of monarchs when they hoard all the power, but somehow they're mostly gone (at least de facto, since "monarchs" in constitutional monarchies are not true monarchs)
Maybe it goes a bit beyond just asking nicely. See Euromaiden Revolution (it was about corruption and foreign influence not fptp, but same principle applies)
Edit: typo
We can get there with A LOT more violence.
Anti-partisan maybe?
Ignorance.
Idealism
This is something called anarchy (not the form that's co-opted). It'll be more of a meritocracy if anything, though.
Anti-zionazi??? The single issue that determines candidates for office in both parties is loyalty to Israel. DNC approval more important than RNC. The Green party only ever saying/doing anything 2 months before elections is as close to proof of being a RNC vote splitting organization.
We have the technology for liquid democracy. Every citizen has the right to vote on every issue, or delegate their vote to anyone they trust, who can delegate further. Sure, an administrator should exist for purposes of instant reaction to emergencies, and subject to continuous confidence votes when out of emergencies, but liquid democracy is only actual democracy. What we have is who gets the most money/zionist media love to make them look good when kissing babies or making promises of improving lives, but just implement zionazi warmongering once elected.
Following Washington's guidance is what I call it.
They will always exist, its natural for form alliances.
Seems like you just want to get rid of fptp and the emergent property of the two-party system under fptp. So maybe you can call yourself an "Advocate for proportional representation / multi-member districts"
Simone de Beauvoir would call that the aesthetic attitude.
Patriotism. Democracy. Representational Government. Freedom. Liberty. Take your pick.
Being normal. That's what it's called as a two party system is just bound for failure if one party does not uphold the social contract.