Swedish Voters Keelhaul Pirate Party

Billosaur writes "Apparently the 'scurvy dawgs' are still in control. Results from Sunday's Swedish national election were not favorable for the Pirate Party, according to Wired News. According to the article, 'The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.' However, the party sees this as a learning experience and morale is still good."

The "lost vote" argument

[Opportunist]

That's most likely what they tipped over: It's a "lost vote" 'cause they won't make it anyway and so on.

In fact, if you do the math, you'll see that in the long run, it does usually not matter. Coalitions are rarely formed with a single vote majority, usually the majorities are held with substancially more seats than the one or two that MIGHT have been to their favor if you just didn't vote for the "underdog" party instead.

In fact, though, they want that seat, if for no other reason than to sit on of their guys there and cash in more for their party from the governmental pot. So, if you vote for a party that furthers your agendas, even if they don't make it into parlament, the parties that are in there will try to get that odd 2 percent of voters by adding that agenda to their portfolio.

In short, your vote will move more with the underdog party than with the one that you could vote for instead. When you're already in, 2% is not a significant change when it comes to coalition talks. But it's usually one or two seats in parlament, and boy, they want that seats!

Re:This was not good to start with

[portmapper]

I thought America was supposed to be better than other countries since it allows any ideas to participate in the democratic process.

I think you forgot to add [/ironic] ;-)

Charlie Chaplin was deported due to his anti-war opinions, while there was attempts to do the same for John Lennon. Now, imagine you are not famous, rich and happens to be a muslim.... (deportation [zmag.org])

The new documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to antiwar activist, and recounts the facts about Richard Nixon's campaign to deport him in 1972 in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement. The filmmakers got lots of people to talk about Nixon and Lennon on camera, including Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela Davis and Bobby Seale, with G. Gordon Liddy representing the other side; the film also includes archival footage of Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, and stars John Lennon and his biting wit and great music. It opens Sept. 15 in Los Angeles and New York City, and nationwide on Sept. 29. The story of Nixon's attempt to deport Lennon is relevant today because deportation, and the larger issue of immigrants' political rights, has become a central problem in American politics.

Re:This was not good to start with

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed 100%. They seemed to advocate that anyone could copy anyone elses intellectrual property without permission. Best summed up as the abolition of conventional capitalism.

'[A]bolition of conventional capitalism?'

Tell me, exactly, what is 'capitalistic' about the current 'intellectual property' system? Do you know what capitalism is? How is the scenario promoted by the Pirate Party, i.e., the legalization of 'piracy', causing the means of production to be somehow not private? Under the legalization of 'piracy', do you think that capitalists in a free market system would not find a way to make money? Did the popularity of Napster and later peer-to-peer networks put the RIAA and its member compannies out of business? Did it even come close?

Perhaps you should do some reading and understand what is captialism and what is communism before posting such comments.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:oh well,

[joe 155]

replying to myself... I might be insane :S

In the Swedish elections there were issues of massive importance going on. The right of centre party actually won on a promise to cut down on what has been the jewel in the crown of the worlds welfare states, a social democratic state (to use the terms of Esping-Anderson) and one with a high degree of decomodification. This was a big deal to a lot of people. If you look at pretty much any of the literature on the subject of welfare states then you'll see that most people saw the Swedish one as institutionalised and one which would be fatal for anyone to cut back on. A lot of people will have been rallying desperately to increase or at least not move their cradle to grave welfare state. This, as far as I can see (being external to Sweden) would be the big issue, and would take precedence over the right to have a torrent site or not.

As a side note I would say that it is quite shocking that they have voted out the social democratic party, especially when their conventional wisdom says that the two track tax burden (high personal tax but low corporate tax) was working and the welfare state was doing them the world of good.

If anyone is interested in why it might be logical to think this, or just learn more about the politics of welfare states, way you might want to look at an excellent book called "The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and/or Esping-Anderson's "The Three Worlds of Welfare capitalism". Both are excellent... OK, I know that I've spent too long learning about Welfare states.

Re:This was not good to start with

[MrZilla]

In a debate close to the election, both of the top candidates for the prime minister post got asked the question 'does the current laws making file sharing (of copyrighted materials) a felony need to be changed?', to which both responded 'yes'.

In fact, one of the candidates (I forget which one) said 'we cannot have a law on the books that makes our children criminals. This needs to be changed, and we will have to find a way to compensate artists.'

Re:This was not good to start with

[hcob$]

Charlie Chaplin was deported due to his anti-war opinions, while there was attempts to do the same for John Lennon. Now, imagine you are not famous, rich and happens to be a muslim.... (deportation)

You're leaving out one major distinction about Chaplin and Lennon. Neither were American Citizens and it's perfectly legal to have them removed from US soil. (Notice that I didn't say wether it's right or wrong... Just LEGAL)