The Fleecing Act

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Sorry for chiming in again (not even sure why I do that, I'm completely neutral on this topic), but:

republicanism (ie, only sizable parties should be permitted to be in the Ziu, not small parties of one or two people)

I dont understand how discouraging one-or-two-man bands is related to not having a hereditary monarch. Is this some semantic quirk that I'm too European to understand?

It's probably just my own lack of political acumen at work, sorry!  I'm a teacher and community organizer, and I have no training at all in poli-sci.  I was trying to find a term that wouldn't be inflammatory (like "exclusionary") but which accurately described the stance.  A republic is contrasted with a direct democracy inasmuch as people vote for representatives, and that's what I was getting at.  I'd love a better term, since that one has like twenty meanings and is immediately confusing.  Suggestions?

EDIT: Since provincial governments have been mentioned, I have to ask: whats the point of having them in the first place? Like, I get having provinces, I suppose, but what do the provincial governments actually... do? They have leaders and assemblies and all these structures that, in the end, don't do anything for the entire term until the next election rolls around. Am I missing something?

I can only really speak to one province, but M-M actually did do stuff back in the day, including passing our own laws and coming up with our own traditions.  There's also room for a lot more to develop, if we can get back some momentum.  Provinces represent opportunities for smaller groups to develop their own identities and explore ideas on a smaller level.  IRV was introduced successfully in one province before it was expanded nationally, for example.  It's mostly been a question of potential rather than actual success, but it's still tantalizing for a lot of us as an opportunity.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

I was trying to find a term that wouldn't be inflammatory (like "exclusionary") but which accurately described the stance.  A republic is contrasted with a direct democracy inasmuch as people vote for representatives, and that's what I was getting at.  I'd love a better term, since that one has like twenty meanings and is immediately confusing.  Suggestions?

Ah, so it was a semantic quirk. The mainstream term for a democracy that functions through representatives would be, well, "representative democracy", though I'm not sure if the term has enough oumpf. "Exclusive democracy" means something else entirely (think Apartheid South Africa, which was perfectly democratic... if you were White.)

As Miestră has pointed out, election thresholds are par for the course in any representative democracy out there. Even Switzerland, which would be the closest thing to what an American would call a democracy I guess, has these thresholds on the cantonal level. In a 20-seat Real Cosă, you would need 5% of the non-PRESENT vote to get one guaranteed seat. This equals 5.34 votes based on the average voter turnout of 106.9 non-PRESENT votes since the 45th Cosă election. Thanks to rounding though, you would only need roughly 2.5% of the vote (2.67 votes) to get in in most scenarios.

Now, whether a de facto 2.5% treshold is too high or too low is a different topic entirely (and is only tangentially related to the Fleecing Act). Just wanted to put that out there.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the best term would be still. Exclusionary is too inflammatory even if it were accurate, anyway.

I absolutely agree that every single parliamentary democracy in the world has a high threshold for getting into the parliament. Often it's extremely high, on the order of thousands or tens of thousands. But it's not a good thing, it's a necessary evil. One of the best parts about our country is that it's small enough for people to meaningfully participate in all sorts of aspects like that. Why would it be good to make that harder? Just blind imitation of these other countries?