Re: Poitics, or lack of same

On 05/12/2024 14:46, john larkin wrote:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/europe/france-political-mire-macron-kicking-himself-analysis-intl/index.html
 Parlimentary systems seem chaotic to me. In the USA, we schedule such
trauma to happen every four years. In europe, the chaos is high rate
random time sampled.

We have multiple actual opposition parties in Europe covering the entire political spectrum. Sometimes they even get a turn in government.
At least one typically provides the piggy in the middle balancing act and can form a coalition with either of the main parties to make a viable government. They do sometimes get shafted as a result.
What happened in France was that the ultra right and the ultra left ganged up to take out the unpopular centrist Prime Minister who was basically just trying to balance the books with a budget.
Politicians over estimate their own importance. Belgium survived OK for over 650 days without a government - breaking their own previous world record!
https://caw.ceu.edu/other-activities/academic-blog/politics/how-did-belgium-manage-to-survive-without-having-agovernment
TBH I'm more worried about Korea declaring martial law. That could invite very big trouble and there are plenty of US bases there.

I guess there worse things than having no government. No running water
or no beer maybe.

Lack of running water is inconvenient, lack of potable water is much more serious. You die of dehydration a lot faster (days) than starvation (weeks).
Beer has the big advantage that in dodgy third world regions it is usually safe to drink even when the water isn't.
--
Martin Brown