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A Call for Candidates
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: A Call for Candidates
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really fair. There's lots of political discourse on HN.
In my experience political posts get [Dead]ed pretty fast, but this guy's articles always stay at the top for hours because of his association with HN/YC.
In my ecperience, lots of political posts stay up for quite a long time without getting [Dead]; articles that are on classic flamewar topics or which are fairly shallow posts on the partisan controversy of the day tend not to.
Re: A Call for Candidates
#23I can name one engineer who was president, Jimmy Carter. How many politicians in general are engineers or scientists? How many are in positions Sam mentions? My guess would be Engineers can be politicians, would be the name of my non-profit. This new yorker piece is also a good read: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/two-nasa-engineers-tr...
Re: A Call for Candidates
#24Why did this get flagged? A bunch of people being sour? If the technology community cannot come together here to find solutions to the problems of government, where shall we gather?
Re: A Call for Candidates
#25Cool. I wonder where Altman stands on Citizens United and the aftermath that is super PACs. A big problem to me is how to keep money out of politics wherever possible. I guess this would fall under his "fair government" policy, although I don't see it explicitly mentioned. Do libertarians support having super PACs? That would be yikes to me. Unless that is a primary issue for a candidate, I don't see how we'll ever g…
Citizens United is very clear - it's about free speech. if the New York times wants to release a documentary about a candidate before the election would you stop them? Libertarians, of course, support super PACS, people do not lose their ability to speak when they form a group. To illustrate this point imagine 2 people: a famous movie star and a wealthy movie producer. When the famous person speaks it is news and spr…
We still have limits on donating directly to candidates.
More dollars going to super PACs devalues people's votes. I think it's producing lousy candidates so I would support a law for enforcement that would bring us back to the time when we didn't have super PACs. I understand you disagree. That's fine.
Re: A Call for Candidates
#26Why did this get flagged? A bunch of people being sour? If the technology community cannot come together here to find solutions to the problems of government, where shall we gather?
probably related to this:
"Political discourse is off-limits on Hacker News * *Except when Sam Altman feels like talking about it"
Re: A Call for Candidates
#27How many people here can name their state senator or representative? Of the hundreds of people who might read this, I'm sure only a small handful could do it without looking it up. It's a serious problem that people don't follow state politics at all, and it's not a problem with the people themselves. We need a system that doesn't require people to follow what their president, senator, congressman, governor, state se…
> We need a system that doesn't require people to follow what their president, senator, congressman, governor, state senator, mayor, and city councilman, along with dozens of other elected officials, are doing while in office.
... so you don't want a representative government? Couldn't disagree more. Sure it's tough to keep up with everything they're doing. But I like being able to look into it at my leisure, and I trust my community to bring important issues to my attention. Just because I don't know exactly how my representative has voted doesn't mean I'm unaware of how government is changing things that impact my life.
Really unclear to me how you would accomplish your goals without eliminating democracy as we know it.
Re: A Call for Candidates
#28How many people here can name their state senator or representative? Of the hundreds of people who might read this, I'm sure only a small handful could do it without looking it up. It's a serious problem that people don't follow state politics at all, and it's not a problem with the people themselves. We need a system that doesn't require people to follow what their president, senator, congressman, governor, state se…
> We need a system that doesn't require people to follow what their president, senator, congressman, governor, state senator, mayor, and city councilman, along with dozens of other elected officials, are doing while in office. ... so you don't want a representative government? Couldn't disagree more. Sure it's tough to keep up with everything they're doing. But I like being able to look into it at my leisure, and I t…
> ... so you don't want a representative government?
No, that's not what I'm saying.
> Really unclear to me how you would accomplish your goals without eliminating democracy as we know it.
Then you should study other electoral systems.
At the state level, you could have proportional representation and then just vote for the party you want. That would allow for multiple parties, and it's much easier to follow what a party supports and does than it is to follow an individual.
Re: A Call for Candidates
#29Non american citizen living in the US. Just a couple of though while reading "most" of it.
> I was one of the last children of the American Century. I’m not quite ready to let it go. If we don’t take action now, the US will be surpassed as the world superpower. I’d like to get back to the values that made our country the envy of the world. I still believe in American exceptionalism, and even with Trump in the White House, my proudest identity of all is being American.
> and the US should be the technology center for the world.
> US workers are the most productive in the world when they are allowed to compete on a level playing field.
This obsession with America position in the world is so pervasive that i think most thinker don't realize that it has a cost. A lot of bad policies and decisions have been in the name of "American exceptionalism".
> We should require that Californian politicians and senior civil service send their kids to public schools. They need to be aligned.
This would be a game changer...
> 1. Prosperity from technology > Creating prosperity is how everyone’s lives get better every year.
How true is this. Or is it just the author focusing on what worked for him.
Re: A Call for Candidates
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes, how does creating another super PAC achieve fair government?
It's not really about fair government. Just different government. I don't think government will ever be fair, but at least ours can be changed.
I'd suggest the best hope the US has for a better government is Wolf PAC, which is essentially a PAC to get rid of PACs (by constitutional amendment, so it can't be easily overturned):
It's had some success already, with some states signing up to it, but plenty of work remaining to push it forward.