# Why do we need politic? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 1, 2010, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224 "2010-02-01T09:31:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/41 "2010-02-01T23:25:59Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Are you seriously trying to tell me that the fifth definition on this list is how we really should be thinking about politics? Do you take your cues from subordinate entries in an online dictionary for everything? No, but it is a real definition nonetheless. It is fifth because it is much less commonly used then the others, not because it has less validity. Most of us never analyze the politics that occur in our personal relationships anymore than we analyze the chemistry of our taste buds. We just deal with people and taste food. > [@](#): > > A group of friends deciding which movie to see is a great example of collective decision-making yielding collective action. It is a great example of a political decision. How friends organize together is sociological, the cultural norms that inform this decision is anthropological, and how they aggregate their preferences and round up everyone to actually see the movie is political. Nowhere did I stipulate anything about government, bad feelings, or infighting. I do not know what you are talking about. Sorry, that was supposed to be a reply to **Psychonaut** , not you. But to you I would say, it would be a mistake to forget that most politics comes down to the personal. Jonathan ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/42 "2010-02-01T23:31:37Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Sure. Last night a group of friends decided they wanted to see a movie. They had to choose between Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. After discussing the matter amongst themselves, they decided to see Sherlock Holmes. They saw the movie, talked about it, and parted amicably, a good night out having been had by all. No leadership was required. That’s the maximum level of decision-making a leaderless group is able to reach - decide to see a movie? That’s the best you got? How about this: let’s see a group of people manage to \*make \*a movie without a leader (a director or producer), and work up from there. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/43 "2010-02-01T23:44:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Sure. Last night a group of friends decided they wanted to see a movie. They had to choose between Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. After discussing the matter amongst themselves, they decided to see Sherlock Holmes. They saw the movie, talked about it, and parted amicably, a good night out having been had by all. No leadership was required. How do you think Congress works? Or Parliament? There are a bunch of people who have different opinions. They discuss issues and form coalitions to advance their own agendas. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Gordon Brown all need to have the support of a majority of their fellow members to get anything done. They’re no different than the guy who was saying “Let’s go see Avatar.” ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/44 "2010-02-01T23:46:37Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > This is a non-sequitur. Of course human artifice is natural. Everything is “natural” if itn’s “supernatural”. This is not an important distinction. What is important is whether politics can be derived from “human nature”, such as it is. I argue that no, it cannot be, certainly not from the Hobbesian conception of human nature that I largely agree with. That’s the “nasty, brutish, short” guy, right? I dunno. I don’t think that human nature is quite so dangerous. Certainly, I think there would be a fair share of conniving in human nature, which is at the heart of politics. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/45 "2010-02-01T23:51:41Z")
From [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/0684845911) by James Howard Kunstler, chapter on Boston: > [@](#): > > When friends and colleagues complain that someone is not treating them the way they would like, or the way they expected, or that some deal fell through, or that somebody failed to keep up his end of an agreement, or that someone broke her heart, or that someone did something absolutely bizarre and unexpected to them, or wantonly harmed them, or made an unreasonable demand, or insulted them, or misjudged them, or did anything else that implies the collision of two independent wills, I try to remind them, as untendentiously as possible, that human character is unfathomably mysterious and perverse. This ought to be the first law of **politics, which is the art of managing human will in the aggregate by force of character.** Best concise definition of “politics” I’ve ever read. And how could any cooperative or collective human enterprise, governmental or otherwise, happen without it? Yes, we need politics. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/46 "2010-02-01T23:58:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > From [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/0684845911) by James Howard Kunstler, chapter on Boston: > > Best concise definition of “politics” I’ve ever read. And how could any cooperative or collective human enterprise, governmental or otherwise, happen without it? Yes, we need politics. Yes, this definition is in line with how I was using it. ---
**Author:** ![tonyfop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/85f322/32.png) [@tonyfop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tonyfop)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/47 "2010-02-02T00:20:29Z")
But I wish there was a way to separate poltics from government. Of course people need leaders. Unfortunately, those leaders are usually in it for the wrong reason. Didn’t someone once say that the worst person to elect is the person who actually wants the job? American politics today is more about making people think one ideology is better than the other, to perpetuate one group or the other staying in power, regardless if it is what is best for the country. As many non-Americans on this board have pointed out, The American concept of Left and Right is extremely narrow compared with other countries. That is why I have thought of another way to run politics in this country. I figured this is as good a place as any to throw it out there, and let all of you rip it to shreds. Here is my plan: Take names off the ballot. Put issues on the ballot. For national elections, put about 7 national issues on the ballot. Make them as general as possible, and as neutral as possible. Figure out which choice for each issue was more popular for each district. Take the names of all the people who voted with the majority on all 7 issues, and randomly choose one of them to represent the district. The political parties can campaign as the wish, for or against the issues, but take the personal mudslinging out. Individuals and corporations can put money in to campaign for or against an issue, but no-one is beholden to their money. So, what do you think? Can we call the Constitutional convention? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/48 "2010-02-02T00:42:33Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > No, but it is a real definition nonetheless. Of course it is real; it is also terrible. It is not fake insofar as it isn’t completely made up. But if you actually want to say something about politics, ir is pretty useless. > [@](#): > > It is fifth because it is much less commonly used then the others, not because it has less validity. Most of us never analyze the politics that occur in our personal relationships anymore than we analyze the chemistry of our taste buds. We just deal with people and taste food. That just raises the question of why it is less commonly used than any of the others. My guess is, because it’s pretty useless. > [@](#): > > Sorry, that was supposed to be a reply to **Psychonaut** , not you. But to you I would say, it would be a mistake to forget that most politics comes down to the personal. No problem. I was somewhat confused. I also do not know what you mean when you say that politics comes down to the personal. If you mean that the political agent is the individual and politics is about how his/her individual preferences get translated into reality, then yes, this is absolutely correct and is at the core of the dominant paradigm of modern political science. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/49 "2010-02-02T00:45:05Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Yes, this definition is in line with how I was using it. It’s a terrible definition of politics. It is a mostly (though not completely) useless definition of how to stay in power. It says pretty much nothing about the scope of political phenomena. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/50 "2010-02-02T00:48:46Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Of course it is real; it is also terrible. It is not fake insofar as it isn’t completely made up. But if you actually want to say something about politics, ir is pretty useless. Not at all, in fact it’s more useful than the way you are using it. Because politicians represent the political will of aggregate populations who are engaging in their own low-level politics on a daily basis. > [@](#): > > That just raises the question of why it is less commonly used than any of the others. My guess is, because it’s pretty useless. Because people like you have emphasized the other definitions. 😉 It probably stems from the ‘Great Men’ style of history, where history is defined by a few big swinging dicks, and the actions of individual people on the ground is irrelevant to it. And you use the word every day when you use the word, ‘polite’. Would you prefer if I came over to your house and behaved in a politic manner to your wife? > [@](#): > > No problem. I was somewhat confused. I also do not know what you mean when you say that politics comes down to the personal. If you mean that the political agent is the individual and politics is about how his/her individual preferences get translated into reality, then yes, this is absolutely correct and is the core of the dominant paradigm of modern political science. For me it’s that the political agent is not the sum total of political action. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/51 "2010-02-02T00:50:22Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > It’s a terrible definition of politics. It is a mostly (though not completely) useless definition of how to stay in power. It says pretty much nothing about the scope of political phenomena. Actually, it does say something about the scope of political phenomena. It describes the scope accurately. Whereas yours does not. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/52 "2010-02-02T00:51:52Z")
> [@pedescribe](#): > > That’s the “nasty, brutish, short” guy, right? I dunno. I don’t think that human nature is quite so dangerous. Certainly, I think there would be a fair share of conniving in human nature, which is at the heart of politics. Yes, that’s Hobbes, but the quote is somewhat out of context. Hobbes is basically arguing that a “war of all against all” is the the consequence of humankind’s tendency to maximize self-interest absent any constraints. One of his big questions is how we got where we are from there, that is, how did we ever overcome this problem. His answer, in a nutshell, is that the solution to this problem is buckets of coercion. This is still quite controversial today, despite the fact that it has more than a little empirical support. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/53 "2010-02-02T00:52:50Z")
> [@tonyfop](#): > > Take names off the ballot. Put issues on the ballot. **That’s still politics.** ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/54 "2010-02-02T01:07:55Z")
**mswas** , you are officially killing me here. There are two strands getting mixed up. One is politics as governance (the nuts and bolts of how you rule people and keep your job) and the other as politics as phenomena of human organization. How you govern and keep your job is a product of how humans organize themselves and make group decisions. This is “collective decision-making” in my definition. We have rules for collective decision-making. They’re called elections and legislative procedures. How you get elected, get stuff done, and do some crap having to do with force of character or whatever are consequents of our rules of collective decision-making. If the rules were different, the techniques would be different and the collective action would be different. That is Politics. Handing out flyers by the subway entrance, backstabbing your cubicle neighbor at work, and paying people off to keep your job are all politics. They are political phenomena that people who think about Politics analyze and explain. You can’t have the strategy without the rules of the game. The details of these rules are very interesting and important. They drive how choices made by groups of people get translated into action. Which is exactly my definition. **Politics is how individual choice gets translated into group choice and then into action.** It does not require “character” or any crap like that. That stuff may follow from a particular setup of rules, but it is not required in any general sense. I am somewhat neglecting here the action side. This is an obviously important part of Politics: why doesn’t the “will of the people” actually get done? What can agents actually commit to? These are Political questions. > [@mswas](#): > > Not at all, in fact it’s more useful than the way you are using it. Because politicians represent the political will of aggregate populations who are engaging in their own low-level politics on a daily basis. **Maybe** they represent the political will of an aggregate. This is one of the more interesting (to me) areas of political science called [social choice theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_choice_theory). As it turns out, even our best rules for aggregating social preferences **to make collective decisions** are very imperfect in some extraordinary ways. > [@](#): > > Because people like you have emphasized the other definitions. 😉 It probably stems from the ‘Great Men’ style of history, where history is defined by a few big swinging dicks, and the actions of individual people on the ground is irrelevant to it. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here. > [@](#): > > And you use the word every day when you use the word, ‘polite’. Would you prefer if I came over to your house and behaved in a politic manner to your wife? I think you are ignoring the context of the word here pretty brutally. > [@](#): > > For me it’s that the political agent is not the sum total of political action. Who is the political agent for you? For me, it could be anyone. Usually just an ordinary voter. In my own theoretical and empirical work, I study the political behavior of people living in tiny villages. > [@mswas](#): > > Actually, it does say something about the scope of political phenomena. It describes the scope accurately. Whereas yours does not. I am very fortunate that the people who pay me to theorize about politics do not agree with you. I would hate to be out a job. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/55 "2010-02-02T01:19:00Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > **mswas** , you are officially killing me here. > > There are two strands getting mixed up. One is politics as governance (the nuts and bolts of how you rule people and keep your job) and the other as politics as phenomena of human organization. Agreed, and one can extrapolate what one is discussing by context, no need to say that one definition is wrong. > [@](#): > > How you govern and keep your job is a product of how humans organize themselves and make group decisions. This is “collective decision-making” in my definition. We have rules for collective decision-making. They’re called elections and legislative procedures. How you get elected, get stuff done, and do some crap having to do with force of character or whatever are consequents of our rules of collective decision-making. If the rules were different, the techniques would be different and the collective action would be different. And that’s accurately described as politics. But so are the rules that make me the Father and my daughter subordinate until she turns 18. > [@](#): > > That is Politics. Handing out flyers by the subway entrance, backstabbing your cubicle neighbor at work, and paying people off to keep your job are all politics. They are political phenomena that people who think about Politics analyze and explain. You can’t have the strategy without the rules of the game. The details of these rules are very interesting and important. They drive how choices made by groups of people get translated into action. And so are the choices made about when to give a toddler a time-out. > [@](#): > > Which is exactly my definition. **Politics is how individual choice gets translated into group choice and then into action.** It does not require “character” or any crap like that. That stuff may follow from a particular setup of rules, but it is not required in any general sense. That is how I am using it as well. It is the methods by which we have developed our rules of collective action. And a collective is any grouping as small as two people. > [@](#): > > I am somewhat neglecting here the action side. This is an obviously important part of Politics: why doesn’t the “will of the people” actually get done? What can agents actually commit to? These are Political questions. Well I don’t think I would say that something is actually will if it’s not acted upon. As you know, I am big dreamer. I have lots of dreams and fantasies that never become a reality. I have come to realize that if I do not act on them then I did not have sufficient will to make them a reality. This realization has helped me a great deal because I used to have a lot of angst over not accomplishing things I talked about. But if I have the will to do something and see the opportunity to implement that will, then I do it. > [@](#): > > **Maybe** they represent the political will of an aggregate. This is one of the more interesting (to me) areas of political science called [social choice theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_choice_theory). As it turns out, even our best rules for aggregating social preferences **to make collective decisions** are very imperfect in some extraordinary ways. Yes, definitely. I lack the numeracy to really look into that stuff meaningfully, but I’d say that it is kind of obvious that a lot of the ways we express such things are quite wrong. > [@](#): > > I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here. I guess I don’t really understand what you’re arguing about. I am just using the term very granularly. > [@](#): > > I think you are ignoring the context of the word here pretty brutally. I think you’re assuming that the word is only useful in a particular context. > [@](#): > > For me it’s that the political agent is not the sum total of political action. [ What I meant here was that the political agent as in the representative was not the sole actor. That the actions of individuals matter. For instance, I order my Chinese take-out from Amy’s just now. That was a political action and transfers some of my capital to the restaurant’s capital. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/56 "2010-02-02T01:36:53Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Agreed, and one can extrapolate what one is discussing by context, no need to say that one definition is wrong. I didn’t say it was wrong. What I said is that it is not analytically useful and somewhat unconventional. I did not make any claims as to whether it is right or wrong. I am actually less interested in those kinds of questions. > [@](#): > > And that’s accurately described as politics. But so are the rules that make me the Father and my daughter subordinate until she turns 18. Perhaps. A lot of people might consider this more sociological (organization and structure of the family, etc), but I am not too worried about defining strict boundaries like that. > [@](#): > > That is how I am using it as well. It is the methods by which we have developed our rules of collective action. And a collective is any grouping as small as two people. Now I agree with you. But this does not follow at all from what you actually said above. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Yes, definitely. I lack the numeracy to really look into that stuff meaningfully, but I’d say that it is kind of obvious that a lot of the ways we express such things are quite wrong. It’s actually not obvious at all. So not obvious that Kenneth Arrow won a Nobel Prize for universalizing some findings about preference aggregation rules. [Arrow’s Theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Possibility_Theorem) It is a purely mathematical finding, but its importance cannot be overstated. The wiki link explains it reasonably well. Just substitute Bush, Gore, and Nader for x,y, and z. 🙂 > [@](#): > > I think you’re assuming that the word is only useful in a particular context. When the OP wants to do away with politics, I do not think he means politeness. I am going to stretch things here a bit for lack of a better example, but bear with me. Nouns in some languages can be masculine, neuter, or feminine. Often this can be irritating, illogical, and confusing. If I said in the context of learning German that I wanted to get rid of sex, you would know I was talking about nouns and not fucking. [quote] What I meant here was that the political agent as in the representative was not the sole actor. That the actions of individuals matter. [quote] I agree. They occasionally matter quite a lot. > [@](#): > > For instance, I order my Chinese take-out from Amy’s just now. That was a political action and transfers some of my capital to the restaurant’s capital. I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I’d argue that what you did was an individual economic choice. People have made arguments that all consumption choices are inherently political or some such, but I personally don’t agree and do not find these arguments interesting or compelling. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/57 "2010-02-02T01:42:20Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Of course it is real; it is also terrible. It is not fake insofar as it isn’t completely made up. But if you actually want to say something about politics, ir is pretty useless. > > That just raises the question of why it is less commonly used than any of the others. My guess is, because it’s pretty useless. It depends on how you use it. The fact is that many people, including some in this thread, never bother to analyze group interactions in their own lives. But any really useful political theory has just as much application in understanding how a workplace, friendship group, family, or social club work as a government. But many people don’t ever want to think of what they do when the interact with others as politics. Politics has become linked to government as if that is the only place it applies. I believe for most of us understanding politics as it applies to our personal lives will provide more utility than understanding why Republicans filibuster more than Democrats. > [@](#): > > No problem. I was somewhat confused. I also do not know what you mean when you say that politics comes down to the personal. If you mean that the political agent is the individual and politics is about how his/her individual preferences get translated into reality, then yes, this is absolutely correct and is at the core of the dominant paradigm of modern political science. That and while you can talk about aggregate groups, in the end we all respond to people more than ideals or groups. People vote more for a person than a position. Voting for a platform may be a more logical way to choose sides, but in the end most people are more swayed by the person. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/58 "2010-02-02T02:19:53Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > It depends on how you use it. The fact is that many people, including some in this thread, never bother to analyze group interactions in their own lives. But any really useful political theory has just as much application in understanding how a workplace, friendship group, family, or social club work as a government. But many people don’t ever want to think of what they do when the interact with others as politics. Politics has become linked to government as if that is the only place it applies. I believe for most of us understanding politics as it applies to our personal lives will provide more utility than understanding why Republicans filibuster more than Democrats. I quite agree with all of this. Here is a trivial example, for shits and grins. I have a bunch of friends over pretty regularly, so we frequently have to decide which of the legion of take-out places to call. I’ll spare you the theory, but it is enough to say that six people cannot necessarily aggregate their preferences over a dozen delivery places in any resolute way. So instead of picking a place, everyone gets a veto. By the time everyone offers a veto, we have narrowed down agreeable take-out for everyone. This method is kind of sensitive to who goes first, so ideally you would pick randomly. It usually takes about thirty seconds for six people to decide where to eat. This preference aggregation rule can be defined formally and has some drawbacks, but for us, it works great. I have all sorts of other little rules like this that really grease the wheels. My wife and I hardly argue about crap like this ever. > [@](#): > > That and while you can talk about aggregate groups, in the end we all respond to people more than ideals or groups. People vote more for a person than a position. Voting for a platform may be a more logical way to choose sides, but in the end most people are more swayed by the person. I also agree. But I think this reflects the fact that people are not stupid. They know that candidates cannot actually credibly commit to deliver the things they say they will, so they just vote with their guts. It is by no means crazy or irrational or any of the other things people might call it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/59 "2010-02-02T02:25:34Z")
**Maeglin** I’ve used that method for ordering pizza from Grandpa’s. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2010, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224/60 "2010-02-02T08:53:30Z")
Let’s get rid of mathematicians. They are the real problem. I have all these wonderful plans that will allow everyone to live forever in peace and joy. Whenever I explain them to other people, they always say, “That idea doesn’t even make any sense. You haven’t even got the arithmetic right. Here, let me show you why your idea doesn’t work. It’s easy to calculate why it fails.” That’s why we need to get rid of mathematics. Let’s start by getting rid of mathematicians. We don’t need any picky busy-bodies pointing out mistakes in our arithmetic. If we could just ignore mathematics we could live in an eternal utopia. Next, let’s get rid of thought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-need-politic/527224.md?page=4)