I’ve been thinking a little more about your post.

Organized crime is a big player in the Italian economy and cannot seem to be rooted out. In Canada, organized crime is a player in Quebec, especially in the construction industry. Shoddy construction is part of this province’s way of doing things. But Quebec has 50% of Canada’s Covid cases and deaths. I am wondering if there is not a connection between how a pandemic is handled and the extent of organized crime.

Your comments on Spain being recent converts to the PR democracy are interesting. True it is that it takes a long time for citizens to be trained to participate in democracy. I remember George Bush 2 believing USA’s involvement in Iraq would be limited to six months. Democracy comes in, and all is well. “Nope,” I said, “It won’t work that way.”

The TDG will require a new societal training. Even the Europeans stumbled with their PR systems (remember that WW2 thing).

Then I started thinking more about your post two layers ago. If San Fransisco did indeed institute a version of PR for its municipal governance, and the Democrats pulled that back, that does not speak well for the democratic nature of the Democrats. These days, they are promoting the use of mail-in ballots so that voters can vote without having to stand in line. But getting the bugs worked out of these new systems requires 3 or 4 election cycles. And in the end, they are introducing this idea now because it will help them in 2020, not because it improves democracy.

Western politics has some strong fuedalistic tendencies. The party members get to choose the names on the ballots. I would say that, at most, 500,000 of Canada’s 35,000,000 people belong to a party. In a way, they have formed their own aristocracy. I believe that both the D’s and R’s of the USA enjoy their monopoly of who puts the name on the ballot.

The TDG opens the ballot up to everyone.