Proportional representation

A person called James Manuell has tweeted that proportional representation (PR) is like the market and first past the post (FPTP) is like a protectionist duopoly so we should adopt PR:

This tweet is wrong.

The state is not a market of any kind. The state is a monopoly on the legitimate use of force that is held by some particular group of people at any particular time. If you defend yourself or others, the government might sometimes  your use of force was legitimate. But often they won’t. Sometimes the government acts appropriately. But the government might just as well turn around and decide to destroy your life cuz government officials happen to feel like doing that. And if you want any compensation or admission of wrongdoing good luck with that because you’ll need a lot of luck. If enough people happen to like you, then you might be okay, but in most cases if the government takes a dislike to you then you are totally fucked.

As long as we have a state, you have to take account of the fact that it is a monopoly. Any electoral system that doesn’t do that is bad. That system has to allow voters to remove bad parties and policies, otherwise such parties and policies are entrenched permanently. PR fails to do this because it almost always leads to coalition government. The third party gets to be the kingmaker and determine who is in government. And the third party can never be removed from power. Nor can any policy they support ever be revoked. If we had PR the Liberal Democrats would be in power permanently and we would never be allowed to leave the EU. FPTP produces coalitions less often and enables parties and policies to be removed from power. See The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, Chapter 13 for more explanation of these points.

If you want a market in defence and court services, then you need anarcho-capitalism: multiple competing groups providing court and defence services. A person pretending that our current system is a market or can be made like one by a change in electoral rules is badly mistaken.