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Stay Gold, America

blog.codinghorror.com

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Re: Stay Gold, America

#221

Post by zephyrfalcon »

fifilura wrote: post #186
lapcat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't vote because they feel that in our American plutocracy, no matter who wins the elections, the elected leaders always cater to the needs of their financial benefactors rather than to the needs of their constituents. The outcome is never good for the public. This is not to say that the candidates are exactly the same but rather that the candidates are simply different forms of corruption, controll…

Seeing it from the outside, i can understand. There was a lot of Musk/Thiel billions here, Kamala spending surge there, George Clooney, Taylor Swift. (And now this guy who will spend more millions) Wasn't the intention that you could not buy a democratic election? The real winners here must be Ad providers (google/facebook) and television networks.

Taylor Swift didn't donate anything to either party. (as far as we know)

Re: Stay Gold, America

#222

Post by gadders »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #202
gadders wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Grabbed it - not sure it disagrees with either of us.

"There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired."

Re: Stay Gold, America

#223

Post by watwut »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #205
watwut wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it does, as much or more as spending whole day in a reddit/blogosphere bubble of like minded individuals with the same interests does.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#224

Post by gadders »

angoragoats wrote: post #199
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between kids away at school, a friend who stayed with us for a time, and my invalid mother, my wife and I could have mail-in voted for six people last cycle. I mean, we literally had their ballots sitting on our kitchen counter. All we had to do was forge their signatures (which we didn't do). Having to show an ID to a poll worker to get a ballot is a higher bar than signing something. I mean, look, I get the argumen…

> Having to show an ID to a poll worker to get a ballot is a higher bar than signing something. I agree, but it's also true that 1) strict ID requirements inconvenience poor and other disadvantaged people the most, and 2) there have been multiple studies on the effectiveness of voter ID laws which have found them to have little impact on voter fraud. Additionally, if my data is correct, only 11 US states have strict…

[flagged]

Re: Stay Gold, America

#225

Post by angoragoats »

gadders wrote: post #224
angoragoats wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having to show an ID to a poll worker to get a ballot is a higher bar than signing something. I agree, but it's also true that 1) strict ID requirements inconvenience poor and other disadvantaged people the most, and 2) there have been multiple studies on the effectiveness of voter ID laws which have found them to have little impact on voter fraud. Additionally, if my data is correct, only 11 US states have strict…

[flagged]

I’m sorry you don’t like it, but it’s true. Care to respond to anything else in my post?

Re: Stay Gold, America

#226

Post by pjz »

roenxi wrote: post #119
michaelt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while philosophically I don't want to see any barriers to voting, full participation is not a good thing in the abstract. Have you ever heard people say, when government policies transfer wealth from the young to the old, that it's because young voters have low voting rates while old voters have high voting rates? If you believe politicians will naturally favour the interests of demographics who vote, then having e…

> ... having equal voting rates across all demographics is required for a just society... The logical endgame of that approach is to have a big tug-of-war between two big coalitions struggling to steal stuff off the other (which, in fairness, is a pretty common equilibrium in democracies). That actually goes right to the heart of the issue - you can't get a just society by doing things by the numbers. To get a just s…

>The logical endgame of that approach is to have a big tug-of-war between two big coalitions

...why just two? He specifically mentioned advocating for ranked choice voting, which would make it a tug-of-war between N coalitions, and would lead to better outcomes that our current broken two-party system.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#227

Post by clayhacks »

coryfklein wrote: post #193

> 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…

Have you heard of sortition? Its taking your last idea even further, and having that random selection just actually become the legislative body. Would hopefully lead to less polarisation as parties would have less opportunities to fundraise and divide. Most people don’t fall neatly into the two party buckets anyway

Re: Stay Gold, America

#228

Post by Vilian »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #220
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well a system would work if it had compulsory voting, but there was always a 'none of the above' option on the ballet. If 'none of the above' gets the most votes or above a certain threshold, the current candidates are disqualified and another election is called with new ones.

Yes. Once that is in place you’ll realise that most people aren’t cynical about their politics and would always choose a candidate since they choose to make a trip to the voting booth.

Make it compulsory them, if they don't like it gonna show

Re: Stay Gold, America

#229

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

watwut wrote: post #223
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes it does, as much or more as spending whole day in a reddit/blogosphere bubble of like minded individuals with the same interests does.

Having interacted with many people who don’t engage with any kind of political media, this isn’t true. It’s very difficult to have any clue what to vote for or why when you have no information; these people end up going off vibes. Spending all day listening to choir preaching may still diffuse useful information about current issues into you by accident.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#230

Post by roenxi »

pjz wrote: post #226
roenxi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... having equal voting rates across all demographics is required for a just society... The logical endgame of that approach is to have a big tug-of-war between two big coalitions struggling to steal stuff off the other (which, in fairness, is a pretty common equilibrium in democracies). That actually goes right to the heart of the issue - you can't get a just society by doing things by the numbers. To get a just s…

>The logical endgame of that approach is to have a big tug-of-war between two big coalitions ...why just two? He specifically mentioned advocating for ranked choice voting, which would make it a tug-of-war between N coalitions, and would lead to better outcomes that our current broken two-party system.

Power is somewhat binary - either you've got it or you don't. Ranked choice doesn't change that. The advantage of ranked choice voting is it allows people to be more expressive in signalling who they want to be in power.

And if N coalitions playing tug-of-war, that means there is an (N-1)/N chance that your preferred one loses. It is much better if everyone agrees not to play that game and adopts smarter strategy. Which has little to do with the number of people participating in the election.

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