chaogomu @ chaogomu @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Yup, the US was founded on high ideals and blatant hypocrisy.

We're doing better than when we started, but there's a lot of room to grow.

And I can say that is true for pretty much every country on Earth. Humanity in general can do better, but to actually put that into practice needs a highly educated population who are actively engaged with government. And to get there will require some structural changes to the government itself.

Changes like abandoning Ordinal Voting Systems in favor of Cardinal voting systems. And expanding the size of the government massively.

As much as I hate the corpo Dems, the Progressives might just be the key to moving forward. The Regressives of the Republican Party are right out, a complete step backward. And due to Plurality, those are our choices.

So yeah, we work with the system we have, until we can change it into something better.

Welcome to Plurality voting, advocating for third parties is mathematically indistinguishable from advocating for Trump.

Stop it unless you want Trump to win, in which case, fuck off.

I'm not voting Third party because I'm not a Trump Supporter.

But you may be one. Mathematically speaking.

What background do I need to have in order to be allowed to recognize that the mathematics of lesser evils don’t make any sense?

A mathematically illiterate one.

See, we live under a system of First Past the Post, otherwise known as Plurality.

It's a system that forces a two party system. Not as a conscious choice, but as a consequence of the very system itself.

Here's the kicker. Plurality voting actively punishes you for supporting a third party.

If you siphon votes away from the lesser of two evils, the greater evil wins.

It's a pretty simple concept. And since we are just weeks away from the election, anyone who is actively pushing for third parties is automatically suspect.

Because the problems with Plurality are not some newly discovered quirk. They've been studied for centuries, but most extensively by Kenneth Arrow in the 70s.

What I'm saying is that most of the money given to support Third Parties, comes from people who are on the opposite side of the spectrum from those Third Parties.

Simply put, Trump and company throw money at the Greens and Socialists to siphon support away from the Dems, so that Trump and company can win with fewer votes.

So you, advocating for a third party, are mathematically indistinguishable from a Trump supporter.

Mathematically you are indeed a a Trump supporter.

Literally throwing away their vote, and helping Trump.

You cannot have a third party under First Past the Post. It it literally impossible and only aids Trump. So yeah. It's not awesome to see. It's aggravating. Because if you advocate for third parties, you're a stealth Trump supporter pretending to actually care.

It would be interesting to see.

There's a condition called cerebral microvascular disease.

Basically individual neurons die, but because the brain is fairly plastic the surrounding neurons pick up the slack.

That is of course until the brain is stressed, at which point the surrounding neurons drop the extra duty to focus on just their own jobs.

Once the stress goes away, the neurons pick up the slack again.

Now here's the somewhat scary part. Something like 5% of adults over the age of 50 have it, to an extent that can be seen on a CT scan.

And 100% of those 90 and older have it.

It's a major cause of dementia in older adults but is usually seen as momentary brain fog.

Biden and Harris have made some slight noises about being unhappy with Israel.

But they're likely waiting for after the election to make any sort of move. But I'm not hopeful that it will be a large move.

Trump would make a large move to ramp things up.

And again, Ranked Choice is flawed to its core. It's the only voting system in existence that fails the monotonicity criterion. Basically it's the only voting system in existence where you can rank someone lower and it increases their chances of winning the election.

Ranked Choice is so flawed that every place that implementes it, has a movement to repeal it. Sometimes a successful movement (Like in Burlington Vermont)

Ranked Choice is a step back and actively harms real efforts at Voting Reform.

Maybe they just like the GOP but don't want to admit that they like them.

They also completely disregard the fact that the Voting System itself causes the very problems they have with the political system.

First Past the Post is 100% the reason why we vote against a party, rather than for a candidate.

That combined with the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 have caused all sorts of problems. That too is something to advocate against. But one thing at a time.

I'm a realist.

The US has been involved in one genocide or another since its founding. We Can do better, but likely will not.

And I'm also a student of history. Almost every country on the planet has been or is currently involved in some sort of genocide or ethnic cleansing. Because humans kind of suck. We can be better, but we almost never make that choice.

To be fair to the piece of shit Fetterman, he ran on a very progressive platform.

Then he had that stroke and now he's one of the least progressive members of Congress.

The question is, was he always a lying sack of shit? Or did the stroke literally change his mind?

Advocating for third parties under our current voting system, and at the current moment, is indistinguishable from advocating for Trump.

Or don't vote against your own interests by voting third party. Because First Past the Post means that any third party is going to act as a Spoiler, siphoning votes away from the major party that is ideologically closest to the Spoiler.

What you should do is hold your nose and vote against the literal fascist.

Then on November 10th or so (for incumbents that win) and Jan 10th or so (for the newly elected), start writing actual letters to your congressmen, Call them, email, seek them out in person at meet and greets, and push for voting reform.

Now, the temptation will be to advocate for RCV. This is the wrong move as well. RCV is inherently broken and can actually produce worse results than First Past the Post, while also having some diehard fans who promise the fucking moon. No, if you want third parties to have any chance at all of growing and possibly winning, you need to advocate for Approval or STAR.

So remember, start pushing voting reform the second we kick the fascist to the curb. Push on day one of the new session, and keep pushing. Do the work ahead of time, and maybe, we can revisit the third party issue in the future.

Mostly it started as a Biden was old, and was a fairly good choice to follow Trump.

So Age need not be a disqualifier on its own...

After that, I started rambling a bit.

Yeah, the moment they started to gain any media attention.

Biden wasn't that bad a choice. I would have preferred someone to the left of him, by a lot, but I can acknowledge that he's done an objectively good gob, all things considered.

That infrastructure bill is already righting the economy. I think it could go further, but these things take time. Even so, we're in a much better position today than 4 years ago. We could be better, but where we are isn't horrible for where we came from.

So yes, Biden has enacted policy competently. Overall a C+. Maybe even a B- but there are things I'm unhappy with.

Like his DoJ slow walking the Jan 6th prosecutions, and not being aggressive about them. I mean, it was an open conspiracy to overthrow the US government. That had the wife of a Supreme Court Justice involved, along with about a dozen former and current Republican lawmakers.

The sentencing hearings for all of them should have been held last year, and yet most of them haven't even been charged.

Then there are the genocides.... I can understand the ones where the US is not involved at all (beyond them being organized on Facebook, we should be doing something about that after all...) but the genocide in motion that the US is actively enabling... that shit needs to stop for Biden to get that coveted A.

Still miles better than Trump... And due to First Past the Post, that's the options we have. Come November 10th (for incumbents that win, Jan 10th for the newly elected) I'll be sending letters to my congressmen, and anyone else who's address I can find, talking about voting reform. Real voting reform, not the flawed RCV bullshit. But things like Approval and STAR.

Harris seems like the sort of person who will at least focus on the DoJ, so carrying on the Biden policies, and maybe a few tweaks of her own, she'd be in solid B- range. Maybe up to a B+ if she enacts some actual social policy. But no A until the Genocides stop, or at least is US stops enabling them.

I was ahead of the curve and liked Ron Paul in early 2008. He made some damn good points about the housing market back in 2007. Turns out he was right and the market collapsed.

That bought him some credibility, but then the Tea Party happened. It was ugly enough that I took a harder look at Paul.

Economic policy has a 3-4 year lag time until it's felt by the average citizen.

Biden has been picking up the pieces and putting the economy back together after the fiasco that was Trump. Just like Obama had to pick up the pieces after Bush, and Clinton had to after Reagan and Bush Sr.

To a lesser extent, Carter had to do the same, but Nixon and Ford didn't fuck the economy as hard as Reagan.

And if you go back a bit further, FDR pulled us out of the depression caused by Hoover, Coolidge and Harding.

The crash was due to the policy of Coolidge and Harding, but the depression, that was pure Hoover. He made a bad situation so much worse.

Kind of like Trump taking a pandemic, and making it worse.

Eh, it's honestly safer than you'd think. The size of the reactor plays a huge role in safety.

A reactor sized for a container ship would be literally incapable of melting down, because there just isn't enough fuel to get to those temperatures. You could then limit the ship's speed, and over build the reactor a bit, so that the reactor is never truly stressed during normal operation.

Then for refueling, you just remove the entire reactor and replace it with a new, fully fueled one every 10 years or so.

That's where you want your controls.

Other than that, yeah it would be safer than oil. A crash just means your reactor casing gets wet.

The main worry is someone cutting into the reactor to take out the spicy rocks... and there are easier ways to get spicy rocks.