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Stay Gold, America

blog.codinghorror.com

201–210 of 239 posts

Re: Stay Gold, America

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

You should see how security handles drunk people at the slot machines in Vegas. Just recently a friend saw them come over, prop up a dead drunk guy, reach into his pocket, put money in his hand and help him feed it into the machine. (My response was: That security guard should get a raise; you really need more minimum wage employees who care that much about the company /s)

Gambling against the house is a sad sight. But security maneuvering a passed out drunk person is much worse still.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investigate anything hard enough and it’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. Hard to imagine any result to that investigation that would be universally accepted. Why not apply a little bit of technology to the problem so we can verify our vote was counted, and that only legitimate votes were counted?

The obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/

Read the alt text. I can’t grab it on mobile, but it basically boils down to: never say never, and in service of that future possibility, we actually should explore it until such time that conflicts of interest naturally resolve.

If your tech friend says everything sucks in tech, then why should their judgement even be taken at face value? They’re part of the problem!

Re: Stay Gold, America

#203
post #34

As a foreigner, I think this is too naive. The Western elites are in cahoots, that's why they meet all the time. They negotiate things and then they make a DUAL narrative to be pushed by ad-controlled media and social networks so they can divide and rule. And, sadly, we are getting dumber and easier to manipulate. Grassroot movements with legitimate concerns are infiltrated and destroyed. Elite made "grassroot" movem…

"Don't replace the culture war with the class war"

Re: Stay Gold, America

#204

> We are a democracy, but 144 million Americans – 42% of the adults who live here – do not vote and have no say in what happens. Why do we worry so much about voter turnout? A 58% voter turnout is a statistically significant sampling of the population; aren't we getting a pretty accurate measurement of the actual vote with that high of voter turnout? Now if voter turnout is skewed , then that's a problem worth talkin…

it's likely if you took a random sample of the 2024 vote by total eligible population you'd end up with "none" as the president

Re: Stay Gold, America

#205
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have systematically annihilated the traditional alternative sources of community that would put people in contact with local, on-the-ground politics. Individuals, left isolated, often end up participating in a bastardized facade of politics built on media consumption. If you want to improve this you have to address the systems creating the isolation. If it’s not people who study policy as a hobby, then who ought t…

Pretty much everyone who wants to and is old enough for it. That would include people who have families they spend time to, friends they priorities and who have variety of hobbies and jobs.

I think the issue is that that doesn’t really prepare you to vote on national or often even statewide issues.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#206
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thinking has been that society only pays attention to the mechanisms that favour upward movement while completely neglecting how to push down - from the top. Maybe because of naive concepts like "enlarging the cake for everyone" or - more likely - the top won't allow the protections they raised to be lowered.

How is “enlarging the cake” (usually the metaphor is “pie”) naïve?

If everyone’s slices get enlarged in proportion, the naive assumption, then it works as expected. If some people are clever enough to direct the enlargement towards their slices, then it doesn’t.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#207
post #54
post #9

>> Whatever the reasons, 42% of adults living in America had no say in the 2024 election. The vote failed to represent everyone. The 2024 election had a turnout of about 59% of the voting age population. Since 1972, only one presidential election had higher turnout than that (it was 2020). If the 2024 vote didn’t represent everyone, then most every election for the last half century has been even worse at representin…

Furthermore, while philosophically I don't want to see any barriers to voting, full participation is not a good thing in the abstract. It is like free speech; great idea but that doesn't mean we just say everything. Similarly, everyone has the right to vote but for heavens sake people with only a shallow clue should stay away from all but the most basic of policy questions. Lot of great people of average intelligence…

You're assuming there's a significant, positive correlation between voter motivation and voter quality (thoughtfulness?). I wouldn't assume that.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#208
post #54
post #9

>> Whatever the reasons, 42% of adults living in America had no say in the 2024 election. The vote failed to represent everyone. The 2024 election had a turnout of about 59% of the voting age population. Since 1972, only one presidential election had higher turnout than that (it was 2020). If the 2024 vote didn’t represent everyone, then most every election for the last half century has been even worse at representin…

Furthermore, while philosophically I don't want to see any barriers to voting, full participation is not a good thing in the abstract. It is like free speech; great idea but that doesn't mean we just say everything. Similarly, everyone has the right to vote but for heavens sake people with only a shallow clue should stay away from all but the most basic of policy questions. Lot of great people of average intelligence…

so cancel democracy? a ruling party is about to give that a shot for sure :)

Re: Stay Gold, America

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation for this, or is it just something you've come to believe?

Come to believe, only. But the arguments for and against are pretty clearly laid out each time there is an election (and of course any other time like https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout-database/... ) (It's far from the only reason states don't use compulsory voting, I should say. There are many reasons both to have compulsory voting, and many arguments against. But the fact I was trying to point to w…

I'll change a few words, and hopefully illustrate why "[countries] feel the cons out weight the pros", doesn't look the most likely explanation to me:

"There are many reasons both to have gerrymander and not have gerrymander. The USA has gerrymander, because, one must assume, the USA feels the pros outweigh the cons."

Countries don't make the laws. They delegate that job to politicians. It should come as no surprise that even for an obviously anti-democratic practice like gerrymander, politicians get away with adding laws that favour them personally over democracy.

As for the arguments on www.idea.int, they say the leading one is "the leading argument against compulsory voting is that it is not consistent with the freedom associated with democracy". It's a circular argument. You don't have complete freedom under democracy, and there is no definitive list of freedoms democracy does give you. It varies from country to country. In some countries you don't have the freedom to not vote. So the argument made is really: "the leading argument against compulsory voting is that it is not consistent with the freedom associated with definition of democracy I just made up".

The other argument they raise is "random votes". True, there are random votes - 7.3% according to them. But that 7.3% is swamped by the 40% of additional voters in the USA who vote if you had compulsory voting. Besides, I'm suspicious of that 7.3% figure. In Australia we measure these things as best we can, and the figure is 1% .. 2%. Informal votes are around 5%, which if you add them together does bring the total to 7%. A vote is counted as informal votes when it's impossible to determine the voters intentions. Some are deliberate protests, but it seems most are just mistakes. In any case, they aren't "random votes" and don't effect the outcome directly so the 7.3% figure is misleading.

I've never head an Australian (where we do have compulsory voting) make what www.idea.int says is the leading argument for compulsory voting, which is that "decisions made by democratically elected governments are more legitimate when higher". Again, since I've never seen a solid definition of "legitimately elected government", I suspect it also suffers from the "definition I just made up" problem. I fact I've never heard anyone make any of the arguments on www.idea.int's list.

What Australians do say is it makes detecting many types of voting fraud easier, because it becomes trivially easy to check people votes just once: count the votes. Because detecting voting fraud is easy, there are no stringent ID checks. You just turn up, no ID required, get your name crossed off the electoral roll, get your ballot paper and vote (or not). So it in compulsory effect makes it easier to cast a vote. It also makes voter disenfranchisement much harder for a pollie to pull off, because people start yelling loudly if they cop a fine because someone makes it near impossible. Surprise, surprise, disenfranchisement is common in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite... It's not a thing in Australia.

Those are clear and obvious effects. A debatable one that I think is true is it pulls the vote toward the centre. The people pushing for extreme views always vote because they want things to change. Those that are happy with things as they are sometimes assume it will continue if they do nothing.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#210
post #79
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, while philosophically I don't want to see any barriers to voting, full participation is not a good thing in the abstract. It is like free speech; great idea but that doesn't mean we just say everything. Similarly, everyone has the right to vote but for heavens sake people with only a shallow clue should stay away from all but the most basic of policy questions. Lot of great people of average intelligence…

What would your response be to someone who, hypothetically, might view this sentiment as some unsettling combination of elitist and vaguely authoritarian and then decides that maybe you shouldn't be voting? Would you be bothered by that?

Philosophically I don't want to see any barriers to voting, so I would disagree with them.
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