Mixed-Member Proportional Representation Explained

Script

Queen Lion of the animal kingdom is looking to improve her democracy. She recently allowed citizens to elect representatives to the Jungle Council which governs the kingdom.

However, she recognizes that her citizens are not happy with the voting system. Let’s watch an election on one of the small islands of her Kingdom to see why:

On this island there are three political parties: the two big ones: Kea and Tuatara, and a small third party, Kakapo.

On election day, the citizens each cast one vote for a local candidate they want to represent the range they live in. The results are as follows:

With the average across the island that Tuatara gets 49%, Kea gets 48% and Kakapo gets 3%.

The election is run using First Past the Post, meaning that candidate with the most votes wins. Because Tuatara got the most votes in each range, they get to control 100% of the seats on the council.

And this is why so many citizens are unhappy. The majority of them, the 51% who voted for other parties, get no representation on the council at all.

This seems unfair to Queen Lion but she’s not sure how to fix it. The citizens like having local representatives and don’t want to change the range boundaries.

But luckily Kiwi, one of the citizens of this island, has a suggestion for Queen Lion on how she can make the system better while keeping local representation and leaving the ranges as they are.

The idea is called Mixed Member Proportional or MMP and it makes two changes: the number of seats on the council is doubled and each citizen gets two votes, not one.

Here’s how it works:

At first, election day for Kiwi is just the same as before.

He gets a list of candidates running to represent his local range on the council. Kiwi picks one and the winner will be the candidate with the most votes.

So far the system is no better – Tuatara again wins all the local elections and still more than half of the citizens don’t have any representation. But here’s how Kiwi’s second vote – and those extra seats on the council – fix this.

Kiwi uses his second vote to pick his favorite political party.

These second votes are tallied up and show the percentage of support that each of the political parties has among the citizens as a whole and reveals how imbalanced the council is so far.

To fix this imbalance, members of the political parties are added, one at a time, to make the council more proportional.

Tuatara is the most over-represented and Kea the most underrepresented, so Kea gets the first empty seat.

This continues, adding one Kea at a time until both Tuatara and Kea are over-represented and Kakapo is under-represented, so they get the final seat.

Now, the jungle council represents, as close as possible, the actual preferences of the citizens – which is a huge improvement over the old, first past the post method.

There is, however, one interesting question that should arise at this point:

Exactly who decides which members of the parties get those extra seats?

The way it works is that, before the election, the political parties make a list of their favorite candidates in the order that they want them to get on the council.

So, if there is only get one extra seat, the name at the top of their list is chosen. If they get two seats, the first two are chosen, and so on.

This makes MMP a bit different from other voting methods in that it makes political parties an official part of the way the election works.

This may give the party leaders greater control over their members because they can reward or punish their actions by changing their placement on the party list.

While this may be a disadvantage of MMP there are a number of other benefits that Queen Lion, in particular, likes.

Because fewer votes are wasted, it mostly Eliminates Gerrymandering and prevents minority rule.

It also gives more choice to the citizens by encouraging political diversity.

This point is worth expanding on.

Notice how, with MMP, the percentage of votes for the local representatives isn’t the same as for the parties. This is because in the local elections, citizens have to vote strategically.

For example, Kakapo voters don’t like Tuatara at all, but they can tolerate Kea. Since there are so few Kakapo voters they know that their candidate doesn’t have a chance of winning the local election, so it’s really a race between the two big parties. Thus many of the Kakapo will vote Kea in the hope that he might win and be their representative.

However, when it comes to voting for their favorite political party, this strategy doesn’t matter. The more votes a party gets the more representatives it has on the council.

So citizens are free to vote for smaller parties they like like knowing that every vote counts.

Queen Lion reviews her options and decides to switch her Kingdom to MMP. Now, for the first time, the Jungle Council is a true reflection of what her citizens want.

What are Continents?

Script:

How many continents are there? If you grew up in the English-Speaking world you might think that the answer is obvious: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

But not everyone count continents the same way.

The usual deffiniton, that they’re large land masses separated from others by oceans is fine, until you actually start to think about it, and then you run into problems.

Problems, like, this:

Here’s Europe, here’s Asia and you’ll notice the lack of ocean between them. Why then, are they two different continents?

The usual reason for this split is a cultural one: that Europe is so different from Asia that it’s best to pretend it’s a separate entity.

OK… maybe.

But if the cultural argument is valid then surely it also applies to India and the middle east. Now you have nine continents and a new problem: if culture defines continents then you’ll never stop drawing increasingly unhelpful lines.

So some places ditch the culture division and combine Europe and Asia into Eurasia.

This Eurasia is not to be confused with this Eurasia, which has always been at war with Eastasia

Making Eurasia gives a six continent view of the world.

But what about over here: North America and South America?

They’re connected at Panama – or at least they were until Teddy Roosevelt decided that someone had to cut that country in half and it might as well be him.

But even still the Canal is only 13 meters deep.

You could walk all the way from Northern Alaska across the narrow Panama canal and, if it weren’t for the deadly, impenetrable, poison filled Brazilian rain forest, make it all the way to the southern tip of Chile. So North and South America, despite the canal, aren’t really divided.

Which is why some places, particularly South America, treat America as a single continent, not two. Which brings the total number of continents down to five.

But… if you discard the Panama Canal then you also have to discard the Suez Canal and you’ve just created the monstrously large Afro-Eurasian continent: 85 million square kilometers home to 5.7 billion people.

With this four-continent view of the world we must be done because there are no more continents to merge and our deffiniton from the beginning is now consistent.

Except we’re not done because of that troublesome word ‘large’. Exactly how large is continental large?

Is Australia really a dinky continent or is it the king of the Islands? Why not make Greenland the smallest continent? It’s pretty big, even if you took away its ice.

And speaking of ice, what about Antarctica? The forgotten continent unfairly smushed against the bottom of maps just because no one lives there.

Remove the ice sheet that covers Antarctica and you reveal it for the archipelago it really is not the single land mass it pretends to be.

And, to complicate matters, the largest of these Antarctic Islands is smaller than Australia.

So if you want to keep calling Antarctica a continent, then there’s a bunch of other islands that might want to be continents too.

Islands like New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin Island, Sumatra, and Honshu.

While this seems inclusive to the point of silliness, ultimately someone has to decide what ‘large’ means and that’s going to be an arbitrary line.

This problem will be familiar to anyone who remembers the is-Pluto-a-planet-or-not-a-planet fiasco which hinged – mostly – on this same issue of size.

So now we’re more confused than before we started: there might be three continents or dozens. You know what will sort this out:

SCIENCE!

Confusion + science = answers

Let’s ask a Geologist what a continent is.

For them a continent is a tectonic plate: parts of the Earth’s crust that move together. So, geologists, show us your continents

The Antarctic, plate, the Australian plate, the Eurasian plate, the South American plate, the African plate. So far, this looks pretty good.

The… middle eastern plate. The… Indian plate. The Caribbean plate?

The pacific plate? Well, there isn’t even anything there.

Well, there’s mostly nothing there. The Nazca plate? The scotia plate? Really?

At least North America is still lookin’ reasonable. Until you include a chuck of Russia, and half of japan and half of Iceland!

Well, this is unhelpful – thanks a lot, Geologists.

The heart of the problem is that the word ‘continent’ doesn’t have a simple & consistent deffiniton for every day use. So how many continents are there? Well, how many do you want there to be?

Six. The answer is clearly six.

Notes & Corrections

• Columbia should be spelled Colombia.

Copyright: Forever Less One Day

Script

The origin of copyright law takes us back to the 1710 and Queen Anne, the Monarch who had just overseen the Unification of England and Scotland into then, brand-new Great Britain.

Also on her busy schedule was the Statute of Anne: the very first copyright law. It gave authors control over who could make copies of their books or build on their work a limited time.

Later a group of rebellious colonists, thought the Statue of Anne was a good idea, and so copy/pasted it into their own constitution giving congress the power:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors… the exclusive right to their respective Writings".

Basically, copyright is a contract between authors and society: if you promise to make more stuff, we promise not to copy it or build on it for 28 years.

Here's an example from the modern day: let's say you're trying to be a director and you're looking for a project to get started.

Harry Potter is a story you'd love to remake. But since J. K. Rowling published 'The Sorcerer's Stone' in the United States in 1998 it still has copyright protection, so you can't use it.

Instead you need find something from a long time ago, like, for example:

Star Wars: A New Hope!

George Lucas released Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977! That's more than 28 years ago, So great! Get filming!

Alas, no.

While Star Wars should have lost copyright protection in 2005 it's actually copyrighted until 2072!

That's 95 years after publication, not 28!

So you can't use it unless Lucas lets you.

Why does his copyright last for ages?

Well, as long as there has been copyright there have been authors arguing that it's too short.

And perhaps, they're right. How's a poor guy like George Lucas supposed turn a profit in the mere 28 years between 1977 and 2005?

There was only the first theatrical release of 'A New Hope',

And the theatrical re-released in 1978

and 1979

and 1981

and 1982

and then there was the 1982 VHS and Betamax releases

the 1984 broadcast television release

the 1985 Laser disc release

the 1989 widescreen Laser disc release

the 1990 VHS re-release

the 1992 widescreen VHS release

the 1993 Laserdisc re-release

the 1995 VHS re-re-release

and the 1997 special edition theatrical release

Han shot first, you bastard.

and the 1997 VHS special edition release

and the 2004 DVD release

And now you, dear filmmaker, come along and want make your own version of Star Wars: a New Hope? For shame!

That like stealing food right out of George's Lucas' mouth.

Four times Congress has agreed with authors that the length of copyright is too short to turn a profit and so extended it:

First in 1831 from 28 years to 42 years, then again in 1909 to 56 years, in 1976 to the lifetime of the author plus 50 years, and in 1998 to the lifetime of the author plus 70 years.

That's a great deal for authors who have already made stuff, but does it really help society get more movies and books?

It's hard to imagine, for example, that Edgar Rice Burroughs started writing 'A Princess of Mars' and 'Tarzan' in 1911 because the copyright laws had just been extended and would not have done so otherwise.

Or that J. K. Rowling, while living on benefits in Scotland, was busy doing the math and wouldn't have written Harry Potter if the copyright protection was just for her whole life and not an additional seven decades thereafter.

Because, exactly who needs incentives after they're dead? Dead is the point at which literally no incentives in the whole universe can motivate you to write one more screenplay. Because you're dead.

If you're the kind of person who is only motivated by plans that unravel after your demise, you're either amazingly awesome or deranged.

But so what? So what if every kindergartner's macaroni artwork is protected by copyright for 175 years?

Why does it matter?

Because the main beneficiaries of copyright after death are not the authors, or society but companies. Companies like… Disney.

Remember all the good old Disney movies?

Yeah, all of them came from works no longer under copyright protection at the time.

The whole of the Disney Empire and all the childhood magic that it produces only exist because there was copyright free work for Walt Disney – you know the guy who actually started the whole company – to rework and update.

But the corporate, Waltless Disney was the big pusher of the 1998 life +70 years copyright extension. It made sure that no one could make more popular versions of their movies in the same way they made a more popular version of Alice in Wonderland.

This near-infinite control subverts the whole purpose of copyright which is to promote the creation of more books and movies, not to give companies the power to stop people making new creative works based on the efforts on their long-dead founders.

New directors and authors need the freedom to take what came before to remake and remix (romeo & juliet, emma). And they should be able to use creative material from their own lifetime to do so, not just be limited to the work of previous generations.

At the turn of the century, George Lucas wrought upon civilization a new word: anticipointment.

The tremendous let-down that was the lazy, bland, and soulless new trilogy.

George Lucas's was completely within his rights to make those movies into the sterile, toy-marketing vehicles they were. He owned Darth Vader and could tell the origin story as he wished – and that's the only version you'll ever get to see.

But, imagine for a moment, if copyright still worked as first intended.

In 2011 the whole of the original Star Wars trilogy – all of its artwork, its characters, its music – would have left copyright protection and been available to aspiring directors and writers to build upon and make their own versions of.

There would be a treasure trove of new Star Wars stories for fans to enjoy.

But as long as the current copyright laws remain as they are, no living person will ever get to tell a Darth Vader story, or a Harry Potter Story, or a Hobbit Story or any other story that matters to them, that the author or, when after their death, their company, disagrees with.

This video is released under a creative commons BY-NC license.

Credits

Image credits: kristiamb, izzyplante, martintaylor, Joi Ito, Gaetan Lee, fast50, allys_scotland, kessiye (2), thcganja, jdhancock, schluesselbein, mateeee, jurvetson, Randy Pertiet, David Goodger, elaws, andresrueda, pasukaru76, Star Wars Blog.