Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (2012)

Post by _fq4v » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #119

tathougies wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are increasingly beyond the reach of normal citizens. If your views do not align 100% with either party, you are increasingly marginalized. See the treatment of Donald Trump (a republican outsider, and not a traditional conservative by any means, but not a democrat in principle either) by the Republican party. For the past four years, republicans have refused to pass bills due to not matching ideological purity…

> Honestly, after seeing both how the GOP and Democrats treated Trump, Sanders, and Gabbard, I find myself supportive of all three of them despite them having a very different views. I simply like that they're not either party. This seems absurd. If your political reasoning puts you in a situation where Trump and Sanders are both options for you then your system is broken - they are antithetical to each other in styl…

Post by curryst » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #209

anewaccount2021 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I would expect a technocratic forum like HN to suggest. America's most poverty stricken regions have had public education for nearly a century with almost no meaningful improvement in prospects. Tell me how rural poverty in West Viriginia is reduced by giving people humanities degrees. Better educated voters? Who cares, the poor have no representation of merit anyway; their choices are to vote for one pa…

I would argue that while it may not help rural West Virginia, the location, it can (and does, just not for everyone!) benefit some subset of that WV population who does manage to become educated and leave for a better prospects in a city or some other part of the country.

Post by cmurf » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #17

inglor_cz wrote: post #2

Turchin's two main ideas are intriguing. a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of the window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but 50 years is currently enough for a complete generation exchange, so the new leaders have no memory of the previous upheaval and will make the same mistakes again. Or at least the same kind of mistakes, details are always different. b) elite overproduction…

> a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of the window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but 50 years is currently enough for a complete generation exchange, so the new leaders have no memory of the previous upheaval and will make the same mistakes again. Or at least the same kind of mistakes, details are always different. That's why education is the most important pillar of democracy…

Post by jfengel » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

bob_doggo wrote: post #228

sdsaga12 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of this study by professors from Princeton and Northwestern that finds that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence"? Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... What do you make of Jimmy…

You, like many others have some really good arguments to why the current american system doesn't work. But where is the american movement to end the FPTP-voting system?