cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/488620

65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.

  • @PizzaManOP
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    11 year ago

    the brits will be further along in the process, potentially giving them a competitive advantage.

    It has resoundingly hurt them.

    . It’s entirely possible for such an organization to collapse

    It’s entirely possible for anything to collapse, so I’m not sure what your point is.

    If trade were necessarily a panacaea that ended all war, then there wouldn’t be a war in Ukraine right now.

    Ukraine wasn’t trading with Russia, so this statement makes no sense. The whole point of trade is that country A and country B will be deincentivized from warring if they are trading. If country C is trading with neither, then they won’t give a flying fuck about warring with either A or B.

    And it is an incentive/decentive, not a guarantee.

    We have historical examples like Yugoslavia which point to a dangers of maintaining large unions when there isn’t the civic harmony to support such unions.

    So then as long as there is unity/harmony, there is no reason to fuck up a good thing.

    • sj_zero
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      fedilink
      11 year ago

      I’m disappointed with the nature of your responses.

      Nobody would argue I haven’t laid out my positions fully, I’ve spent much more time and effort crafting my responses than most people would.

      On your first point, you reiterate a point I’ve already covered fully in the case of brexit. You might disagree with me, but saying “It’s hurting the UK” doesn’t counter the point I’ve made.

      You claim you’re “not sure what [my] point is” after a thorough explanation of my viewpoint, at some point I feel it’s on you to engage with my argument and try to understand it.

      You have falsely claimed that Ukraine wasn’t trading with Russia when it was trading billions of dollars per year prior to the war. Russia was Ukraine’s second largest importer and third largest exporter in 2019. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/2019/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by-country

      The statement “as long as there is unity/harmony” when it’s clear that the United States is facing major issues with disunity and disharmony to the point of political violence in the streets and as I’ve explained the EU is under stresses that can tear it apart imminently so there isn’t or won’t be unity/harmony so your argument is moot.

      I think a key thing here is that the world won’t stay the same as it is today forever. In fact, all signs seem to be pointing to the fact that it will change dramatically in the near future. And many of the ways it’s going to be changing in the near term will be painful. Sometimes broader cycles aren’t stuff you can avoid, so the question stops being “how do we stop it”, and becomes “How do we deal with a future set in motion already now that we can’t stop it?”, and in many ways taking the pain quickly and dealing with reality as it is rather than as we wish it could go back to being is the way to get ahead.

      • @PizzaManOP
        link
        11 year ago

        I’m disappointed with the nature of your responses.

        Sorry, I only have so much time in the day to respond to these sorts of things.

        Nobody would argue I haven’t laid out my positions fully,

        You claim you’re “not sure what [my] point is” after a thorough explanation of my viewpoint, at some point I feel it’s on you to engage with my argument and try to understand it.

        When I said “I’m not sure what your point is”, I didn’t mean it as in “I don’t understand” I was essentially saying you don’t have a point, because you were highlighting an issue that applies to everything that exists.

        You might disagree with me, but saying “It’s hurting the UK” doesn’t counter the point I’ve made.

        Sure it does. You can’t correctly say that it is a good thing for the UK when all of the evidence suggests it is not.

        You have falsely claimed that Ukraine wasn’t trading with Russia when it was trading

        I see that I was mistaken on that part, and I apologize for that. However I want to make it clear that I never said trade is a guarantee of peace. Russia decided that the cost/benefit analysis of the situation was worth it. They took a gamble and were luckily dead wrong, but it’s never a guarantee.

        The statement “as long as there is unity/harmony” when it’s clear that the United States is facing major issues with disunity and disharmony to the point of political violence in the streets

        That disunity is largely between urban and rural, not state and state. So unless you plan to turn every U.S. city into a city state, and every rural region into it’s own state, then this idea of splitting up doesn’t make sense. But either way, it’s objectively harmful.

        I think a key thing here is that the world won’t stay the same as it is today forever. In fact, all signs seem to be pointing to the fact that it will change dramatically in the near future. And many of the ways it’s going to be changing in the near term will be painful. Sometimes broader cycles aren’t stuff you can avoid, so the question stops being “how do we stop it”, and becomes “How do we deal with a future set in motion already now that we can’t stop it?”, and

        And having more allies against imminent danger is far more preferable to the alternative. Just because things won’t last forever doesn’t mean that we should abandon our allies.

        in many ways taking the pain quickly and dealing with reality as it is rather than as we wish it could go back to being is the way to get ahead.

        This conclusion is based on the unfounded assumptions that it will be better in the long run, that the pain of the coming decades is unavoidable/unmanageable, and that allies will ultimately hurt us.

        And there is plenty of evidence against these notions, such as Ukraine. Without it’s allies in the west, Ukraine would have been toast by this point. The only reason it is standing is because it is getting billions of dollars of funding from it’s allies.