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Fucking do it you cowards.
I think you’re forgetting about Republicans.
Or more than half of the democrats that do Wall Street’s bidding too.
Or the courts that would throw the law out as soon as it gets challenged the first time
Or wallstreet for just switching to hiring people to hold the land for them as third party agents.
Impossible before the age of computers, but now it’s just a spreadsheet.
They should never have been allowed to buy them to begin with.
The second best time is now.
People require housing. Corporations are people. /s
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I’ll believe that when one is executed.
Or charged with a crime. All the protections of a person with none of the liability. Seriously it’s beyond stupid. If someone said that to you you would laugh awkwardly and get out of the convo asap and depending who it was talk to their family about possible treatment from psychiatric providers. Yet here we are, having to all pretend like the psycho is right because they bribed a politician into making it the law.
Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better.
Yeah, but you can squeeze 285,000 corporations in one office building!
I mean it’s a free market, it’s not reasonable nor desirable to proactively prohibit all possible bad scenarios
edit: to anyone downvoting, read carefully
I read your comment carefully and still downvoted because its an incredibly dumb thing to say.
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Nice username, fam! I’ve not found an Expanse community around here yet, but I see lots of fans
Wtf, I literally just re-watched the scene 5 minutes ago, and I come on lemmy and see this. Are the planets aligned or am I about to die or something?
Final Destination, Expanse style? That sounds… unpleasant lol
I bet you downvote this!
Edit: shit! I meant to say “won’t!” I bet you won’t downvote this!
I only said that because I’m pretty sure 99% of the people here agree with me, you included but are downvoting as a kneejerk reaction.
There’s never a scenario on the internet where 99% of people agree with you…unless you’re just talking to yourself. Just let it go, not like you lose anything with downvotes.
Then you have expressed yourself poorly and have made no effort to correct that.
What the fuck do you think regulations are for? If we didn’t have them companies would skip crucial steps because they are expensive. Take Tesla for example, removing radar/lidar because of expense and they are bulky. But are nessesarry, shit they’re putting mics outside the car to listen for sirens.a
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why is that?
why is it a dumb thing to say? in a free market, it is wise to take all that you can for your shareholders. Maybe a free market isn’t what you desire?
It’s greedy and antisocial. You’re a moron. Capitalism is a stain on world history.
well, that’s kind of exactly what we’re saying. we are stating what laissez faire capitalism is. i agree that it is antisocial, greedy, immoral and a bane of our existence…and really the major thing holding modern society back. i never said i support a free market (hint: i don’t)…just stating what it is. your reply might come off as antisocial (ie morons)
So the way to counteract that would be passing laws preventing it? The thing being proposed?
This is like me saying “my house is on fire! Put water on it!” And someone replying “you shouldn’t do that because the purpose of fire is to burn things” and thinking they’re clever. Nobody here is pro-fire.
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maybe there is some other kind of problem here, because i’m anticapitalism, if you’re reading the correct thread
That’s a really good point. I should be able to buy some people since it’s a free market and it’s just impossible to curb exploitation.
I don’t wanna get exploited! You better be willing to buy me for a fair price…
“Best I can do is minimum wage and some cheap pizza on labor day.” -somebody
Hmmm… Can you tell me how to use my paid leave? I like it when medical leave gets denied because I wasn’t sick enough. Beat me with those loopholes, daddy!
“You get paid leave? Shit. Who fucked that up?”
that is not what I said at all
Looks like people think that’s what you said. Maybe you should consider clarifying instead of just saying “I didn’t say that” or “read it again”.
If the majority of people are “misunderstanding” you, maybe you should consider the possibility that the problem is with what you said, not with the people reading it.
I’ve looked over it, it’s one very simple sentence.
There’s not much I can do at this point, my comment is caught up in the circlejerk train. That’s just the
redditlemmy experienceIf everyone is misunderstanding you, and you can’t figure out how to reword or explain your intention, that’s not a circle jerk. That’s just you expressing yourself incredibly poorly.
Reword it, delete it, or walk away. Insisting people “read it again” isn’t doing anything.
You must not be very familiar with the internet
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Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.
I read carefully, then un-downvoted so i could downvote you again
Now are downvoting because: What they said isn’t true… Disagree with what was said… Missed that they are pointing out a free market does not give a fuck about you; unless you are profits…
Because it’s inaccurate.
It would be correct and proper for the government to pass laws to protect the population and prevent bad outcomes.
uhmmm that is the point being expressed here…you all just want to fight. Bro describes the exactly what a free market is and people get up in arms here. That’s like if someone describes what a house on fire looks like and then is accused of being pro-house-on-fire. smh
uhmmm that is the point being expressed here…you all just want to fight. Bro describes the exactly what a free market is and people get up in arms here. That’s like if someone describes what a house on fire looks like and then is accused of being pro-house-on-fire. smh
The point being expressed here is the current system is bad and needs to be fixed.
It’s like if someone proposed putting out a house fire and bro came in saying you shouldn’t put out the fire because that’s how fires work. It’s neither profound nor helpful.
Again, you are arguing with people who agree with you.
I was just saying that as I was about to send my 6-year old out to the corner store to go buy some cigarettes for me, since our free market hasn’t imposed any restrictions on that transaction.
Or if you look at the housing market specifically, in my area at least, I can’t buy a second home in the same area as an individual. I can buy investment properties that I’d need to rent out, but I’m forbidden from owning a second residence for myself.
State, Local, and Federal lawmakers are constantly proactively prohibiting bad scenarios. And in this case, it wouldn’t even be proactive, it’s literally something that’s going on right now that needs corrected.
Homes are for people.
A true Libertarian utopia.
If allowing ordinary people to be priced out of owning homes is your idea of a free market, then fuck the free market.
People are priced out of homes specifically because the market has been kneecapped by bad zoning policy.
Homeowners got theirs and then pulled up the ladder
Gods yes. We can’t predict every sort of bad behavior in the market, only react. Bunch of arm-chair quarterbacks in here, “We should have seen this coming!” Watch 10 people tell me exactly how we could have.
And on this issue, it’s high time to react. Doubt it will happen. :(
Fuck the free market. Fuck capitalism. Fuck you, too.
I could use a good lay
Got money?
It’s not a free market… that’s not an actual thing that can ever exist. It’s a state where the markets are in a perfect, frictionless state, where barriers of entry are non-existent and everyone has equal access to trade on the market… Ignoring petty things like needing to actually source things
It is, in fact, both reasonable and desirable for the government to proactively watch and interfere in the markets before they enter a failure scenario, that’s their job in the market.
It’s often willfully misunderstood, but what you’re describing is a half step from lasse faire capitalism. Which is the idea that a “free market” is a stable state, and we just need to let it settle long enough without interference. But that’s literally psuedoscience…
And this is the sort of legislation that should be passed by direct referendum, will of the people, and not by representatives who have been bought out by special interest groups. Desperately needed but unlikely to happen.
the country would function so much better if we just sent out ballots to everyone to vote on every bill if they want to
That’s how Brexit happened in the UK.
I agree about not trusting the politicians, but not sure I trust the general public much more unfortunately.
The founding fathers didn’t either that’s why they put a buffer in in case there was a nuance not under stood by the general public. The only problem is I don’t think they envisioned a party hell bent on the country’s destruction.
The greatest flaw in the founder’s reasoning was that they trusted public servants to fight for what’s best for the country. They expected public figures to always attempt to do what’s best for the country and their constituents and built our systems based on a lot of trust.
They never expected there to be half the country that doesn’t care about the rules and only works for their own benefit.
They didn’t really… there are a LOT of check and balances in the US constitution.
There were a few holes though. FPTP is possibly the biggest one, yet the easiest to forgive them for because they literally didn’t know any better, but FPTP causes bipartism which leads to line-toeing which necessarily weakens the “balance” part of check and balances.
Then there’s the almost complete immovability of the US constitution which gives enormous power to the SCOTUS and led to a whole lot of gaps being filled with fragile “tradition” or nefariously repurposed (2nd amendment, citizens united, executive orders, yada yada). This isn’t just on the founders for trusting states too much to continuously reform the constitution, but also lies squarely on this frankly insane cult around the revolutionary mythos which made it entirely taboo to reform anything the founding fathers ever did to the point that no meaningful amendment was passed in over a century.
Complain all you want about the founding fathers, but they aren’t to blame if a vast majority of Americans would almost certainly, in a hypothetical referundum, vote against even the smallest constitutional reform on the grounds that “it ain’t what the Almighty Fathers intended”. The very fact that you’re talking about the Founding Fathers’ intent as is if it has ANY BEARING on today’s politics shows just how deeply ingrained this personality cult is.
A two party system was one of George Washington’s fear. It breeds division while both sides occupy themselves making us emotional about how much the other side does wrong. Then they get more donations and more power. They don’t care if they aren’t effective because they know we won’t ever go to the other side.
… There’s a great Freakonomics episode on the duopoly formed by the Democratic and Republican parties and how they both benefit while stifling the competition from other parties that could provide more varied perspective.
My takeaway - support rank choices voting and elimination of closed primaries (which encourage extremism in candidates).
Just look at your presidential race, sadly I agree
Bad example, Trump lost the popular vote both times. Dang electoral college was responsible for that travesty. Also George W. Bush lost the popular vote in his first election too. Thanks again, electoral college.
People voted for him, those people are fucking brain dead
I don’t disagree, just saying it’s an instance where direct democracy would have been better than having this representative layer of the electoral college in between.
Well we’re on the same page now
That’s because we need a maximum age to vote too.
A maximum age to vote?
Wtf?
So old people should have no voice?
I kind of see what they’re saying. If you’re on your way out, you probably shouldn’t have a ton of sway on how the world operates after you’re gone.
But that is a suuuuper slippery slope.
“The law abhors dead hand control.”
Voting is a basic human right, though.
I non-sarcastically love your optimism. But part of me really believes that 50% of the country votes however their church tells them to. So I’m not sure it’d be better.
Johnson should have teeth.
Mine doesn’t have a mouth though, just a small opening
It’s more like one fourth. Half the country doesn’t vote at all.
I would be very careful with that. US should try having a more representative government first.
So long as you don’t like a functioning economy, sure.
You’d get people voting for all the projects and none of the budget.
You are getting down voted for telling the truth.
It happens. I’m not concerned about it. I’ve seen that happen first-hand. If people don’t want to acknowledge it, they can learn it for themselves.
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Stupid take. Nobody thinks rote popularity contest is a good idea. There’s too much to know. Too much to regulate. Have to employ experts.
If it were left to popular vote, do you think we would have the Exclusionary Rule? A ban on cruel and unusual punishment? A right to remain silent? Any criminal rights?
Any minority rights at all?
So just vote for the issues that matter to you.
Either way, you get more control than having someone else make the decisions for you.
“Abstain from votes you feel unqualified for while the unqualified radicalized masses vote every time” isn’t exactly the winning strategy either. Fact is a large portion of the population has no problem voting incompetently and/or under the influence of malicious talking heads.
I don’t see why you think the constituency would routinely make worse decisions than the people they put in power.
Fact is a large portion of the population has no problem voting incompetently and/or under the influence of malicious talking heads.
What makes you think politicians are exempt from this?
Honestly how old are you?
Direct voting is the future.
We have frequent ballot measures in California and as a voter I do a lot of work to understand those ballot measures that many do not have the time or the ability to do. California ballots may have 5-10 questions on them, and these things already take a long time to properly research and understand…Can you imagine the complexity when you’re talking about national issues and especially thinking of running the entire government that way?
It’s a full-time job. There’s no way it’s scalable to run a country this large with this many competing interests using direct voting. You’d spend your whole life voting on or researching on voting on things.
Ultimately, you’d wind up with industry writing all of the law proposals and a misrepresented version of those coming across some kind of voting device. We’d still continue our slow slide into some sort of industrial feudalism, just without the politicians to blame for it.
I think proportional representation and ranked choice voting are both better ideas.
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Mmm, your entire point can be negated by acknowledging that politicians and elections are usually bought out.
How is anything I’ve posted negated by the fact that corruption exists?
This will pass at the same time as the healthcare, world peace, and word hunger bills.
From the article:
With a divided Congress, the bills are unlikely to pass into law this session. But Mr. Smith said legislators needed to start a conversation.
Solid odds this will be a campaign issue, which is a great thing.
It will be a campaign issue and then nothing will be done about it. Fingers will be pointed.
This 1000%. A bunch of bullshit from all sides, all these “ought to’s” and a bunch of malarkey will get tossed around. The election will get won by Biden or Trump, and all this will just turn into the same thing it always does…empty promises and a shit ton of money getting made at the top while we’re all fucked.
Real change won’t happen by voting for it, it’s when billionaires find their heads in baskets staring up at the axe/guillotine/whatever that just cut their fucking heads off. Eat the rich.
The “Guillotine the rich” crowd sure loves saying they wanna do it but they never have the balls. You talk of politician “ought to’s” yet here you and many others are not executing billionaires. Put up or shut up.
I said, and I’ll copy and paste:
Real change won’t happen by voting for it, it’s when billionaires find their heads in baskets staring up at the axe/guillotine/whatever that just cut their fucking heads off. Eat the rich.
That’s a message to show support and willingness. I can’t pull it off myself, but if more people are aware and willing, the future is bright.
Disolving companies resolves problems only if the people who bought the products dont turn immediately to the replacement.
can’t wait to see conservatives line up in droves to defend wall street buying houses in a few months time
Everyone will talk about it, nobody will do anything to improve the situation.
Once you reach the ranks of the Senate, you have more financial interest in the future of your REIT-heavy investment portfolio than the price any of your constituents are paying for housing. Hell, more than a few Senators come straight from the halls of Wall Street themselves. That’s how they have the kind of surplus cash to run for office to begin with.
Or they could all be vampires, if we’re just making shit up.
Even vampires don’t suck this hard.
I agree your comment here was just bad lol
Like, volunteer on any campaign whatsoever and see how wrong it is
I’ve seen the inside of the Beto O’Rourke campaign three times over and it got worse every time.
don’t forget gun regulation
Gun regs have better odds, as high real estate prices don’t put Congresscritters in the hospital.
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A great deal of the Safer Communities Act is simply sending more money to municipal and state police budgets. Given the sway these organizations have in electing state and local leaders, its certainly something.
Liberals: “We’re teetering on the brink of tyranny, democracy may cease to exist after 2024.”
Also liberals: “Please remove our 2A rights while fascists in red states expand their own.”
“remove our 2A rights” is a weird way to phrase “regulating gun availability to make it harder for people who intend to use them to kill people to get them.” you know the text of the second amendment includes the phrase “well-regulated,” almost as if they did not intend for gun availability to be the lawless wasteland that it currently effectively is.
I’m sure that if federal legislation is passed all these fascist militias made up of racists, theofascists, and law enforcement officers will all willingly give up their firearms and comply with the law 🤡.
I get it, it’s not ideal, but that ship has sailed. Additional gun regulations only pass in blue states, and only further weaken our defensive posture. If you truly believe trump and his retarded followers represent an existential threat to democracy in the US (as I do) I cannot understand why you wouldn’t understand the necessity for access to normal capacity magazines and non-nerfed firearms, unless maybe you think Jon Stewart is gonna come rescue you with a witty quip when some fascist has you on your knees in front of a ditch.
You should start believing conservatives when they tell you what kind of America they want to live in and what they’re willing to do to get there, cause although they’re fucking morons, they’re also dead fucking serious.
Your rifle isn’t going to protect you. Did guns stop the war on drugs? Did guns stop the Patriot act? Did guns stop the Japanese interment camps? Did guns stop Jim Crow? Did guns save the Natives? Did guns stop the anti-black city riots? Did guns end the robber barrons or the city bosses? Did it stop the attacks on Asians in San Francisco and New York last century or even two years ago?
Your gun means jack and shit. The biggest proof of that is you are not in front of a planned parenthood in Texas ready to battle with it.
Did guns stop the Japanese interment camps?
Fun fact, my great grandfather, an immigrant from Mexico, worked on a large Japanese farm during WW2 as a foreman. When fearful citizens came for the Japanese my great grandfather took ownership of the property and kept it running during their detention. Upon their return he relinquished ownership, having kept everything in order all while continuing to pay himself the same wage.
The biggest proof of that is you are not in front of a planned parenthood in Texas ready to battle with it.
I’ve taken and thrown punches for my fellow POC and the queer community, I’ve been arrested in protest, and have stood in solidarity when members of my community have required defending. I’ve been shamed for my culture and where I come from, looked down and spit up on for being less than - and I can still hold my head up high and stand with dignity exactly because I’ve always chosen to ‘battle with it’.
You might consider this interaction the next time you accuse someone of inaction just because their experience and principles differ from your own.
I won’t.
“HuRrDuRr LiBrUlZ”
Find a second brain cell. JFC.
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Do your part and vote 3rd party. If we want change we have to vote for it.
Our current electoral system is inherently biased against 3rd parties. We need to switch to approval/STAR voting to make 3rd parties viable.
Yeah, people keep saying things like this, and then just completely ignore that their view is led us down a 40-year path where our liberty and economic power has dwindled progressively with each passing election.
So no.
Your viable parties are shit. I’ll vote better.
It would help if third parties would do something other than put a candidate up for President every 4 years, fail, and then disappear for the next 4 years. That’s a waste of everyone’s time, money, effort, and votes. Parties that do this should be looked on with suspicion.
Get people into city councils, school boards, and county comptroller. Work up to state level government. There is tons of good to be done at that level of government–in many ways, far more than the White House could ever do.
Greens, this is about you, specifically.
It would help if, when we give the White House and Congress to Democrats, they actually follow through on their promises.
But they never do.
Voters do not have a viable way of holding them to their promises, because letting Republicans win is unacceptable. A good third party would help that, but they’re all busy trying to get into the White House and failing.
Our viable parties are shit because our electoral system is shit.
The 100 year path of wishful thinking that single person who votes will suddenly change their behavior such that they won’t vote strategically hasn’t got us anywhere. Our electoral system needs reform. It is inherently biased to make 3rd parties fail every single time. The game is rigged for 2 parties and only 2 parties.
and then just completely ignore that their view is led
You’re talking about a view different from mine.
All you do by voting for a 3rd party in a FPTP election is take a vote away from the major party you are most closely aligned to. You may as well just not vote
Both parties rule as conservatives. Can’t say I really align with either.
You’re right though. I may just as well not vote, given that we always get conservative outcomes.
As much as people are disenfranchised the two parties are not the same. One is conservative, and the other is trying to create a authoritarian theocracy.
One is trying to create an authoritarian theocracy, and the other is collaborating in that effort either overtly or by inaction. They are functionally the same.
our liberty and economic power has dwindled progressively with each passing election
That’s as much a consequence of legalisms - Bush v Gore invalidating votes in swing states, Tom DeLay kicking off a big wave of legislative gerrymandering, candidates party-flipping starting in the White Flight of the 80s/90s (WV’s governor flipped the day after the '17 election), the banning of earmarks in legislatures and the legalizing of unlimited campaign donations following Citizens United - as voting patterns.
So much power has been consolidated within the hands of party leadership and so much money has flown to affiliated party-loyal business interests that voting no longer shapes political behaviors. When Republicans can’t win an HISD board seat, they turn to the governor to simply take over the entire board by fiat. When someone in the Democratic Primary attempts to unseat an incumbent, the party spends tens of millions to defend them. When a third party bid emerges, they’re cut out of debates and excluded from news coverage save for the yellow journalism designed to dismiss you as a crank. (And, in fairness, there are tons of cranks in the 3rd party scene already).
I don’t think you can strictly attribute this to “not enough 3rd party bids”. We have consolidated political power in the same way we’re consolidating economic power.
Then you might as well not vote. This is not the right political climate to try to make 3rd parties viable.
Unless, of course, you want the country to become a fascist theocracy.
I literally only voted Biden because I thought it might help stop fascism.
He couldn’t find five minutes in his busy schedule of shoveling more of our money into other countries’ wars to be bothered with it.
There’s quite a few southern states that use runoff voting. Their state legislatures are just as filled with the big two parties as everywhere else. Additionally, the US is not alone in favoring FPTP voting, but many of those other countries still have third parties that are viable in individual regions (Canada and UK, for example). The US is unique in how the big two parties are dominant everywhere at every level.
People focus a lot on FPTP, but it’s not the only factor at work.
Yeah it absolutely isn’t the only factor, but it’s one of the biggest ones. I neglected to point out it isn’t the only factor.
After FPTP issues, the next biggest one in my mind is the spending rules. I think that all candidates should operate from a “shared pool” of election funds. So if candidate A wants to use 1 million for the election, half of it goes to them, half of it goes to their opponent. No candidate should have a higher spending fund from another. It would drive down campaign spending, make bullshit political ads less frequent, and add a degree of fairness.
That, and there needs to be a full ban on lobbying (read bribery).
As for the few elections in southern states that use run offs, that’s not quite what I’m looking for, and those elections aren’t in a vacuum. The political power the two parties get from surrounding areas is enough to mean 3rd parties still don’t have a chance.
Our current electoral system is inherently biased against 3rd parties.
That’s true until it isn’t. Year-over-year, the nation can only support two parties nationally and one dominant party state-by-state. But which party (and which coalition of leaders) hold power can change in wave years, particularly when strong third party campaigns force rival parties to cater to the independent vote to get over the 50% hump.
There’s a podcast called Hell of Presidents that does a great job of documenting the rise and fall of state party organs and their impact on the national scene. The rapid collapse of the Federalists, the rise of the Jacksonian Democrats, the collapse of the Whigs and emergence of the Republicans, the rise and fall of democratic socialists, and the emergence of liberal progressives, movement conservatives, libertarians, and neoliberal democrats all begin with third party bids in small states.
While we don’t have more than two distinct parties in the US, we absolutely do have factions within the main two parties that have regionalized and polarized constituencies that are fighting for control of the national party apparatuses. Even setting aside guys like Trump and Sanders, just check out Nebraska’s Indie dark horse contender Dan Osborn, whose union organizing is putting him ahead of both party candidates.
when strong third party campaigns force rival parties to cater to the independent vote to get over the 50% hump.
I’m not saying 3rd parties have zero influence, but they just don’t succeed frequently enough for it to be called fair. The spoiler effect is far too strong for that to happen.
we absolutely do have factions within the main two parties that have regionalized and polarized constituencies that are fighting for control of the national party apparatuses.
Absolutely. But because of the spoiler effect, the two parties are held together with glue. Reforming our electoral system would weaken that glue, and hopefully fracture them enough to make a difference.
they just don’t succeed frequently enough for it to be called fair
Statistically speaking, the majority of campaigns are going to fail. There’s one seat and, unless it is uncontested, a minimum of one losing candidate. But politics isn’t a one-and-done game. Its a game of coalition building and expanding name recognition. Starting off as a third party candidate, establishing a message and a political brand, and then canvasing your neighborhood to build up your appeal is fundamental to most successful politicians.
But because of the spoiler effect
The spoiler effect only matters to losers. If you’re the guy with the plurality of support, you’re in the best position to win.
Sometimes, the winning move is simply to carry the banner of the dominant political party (which is why you’ll have a dozen people compete for the Texas GOP gubernatorial nomination while only two or three bother trying to run as Dems). But other times, it really is about issues-based politics and name recognition.
Schwarzenegger was able to win in California by being a famous popular guy. Sanders won in Vermont by being a high profile well-respected mayor of the state’s biggest city. Joe Lieberman lost his primary but held onto his Senatorial seat back in 2006 by rallying the Democratic Party leadership around him even after he’d lost the state party nomination.
Bush beat Gore in 2000 not because of a Green Party spoiler effect (Nader actually pulled more Republicans than Democrats in the state) but because he had die-hard conservative activists willing to risk jail to shut down the recount with the Brooks Brothers’ Riot, while Al Gore’s party just kinda shrugged and gave up as soon as the Republican-leaning SCOTUS sided with the Republican candidate. Hell, the 2000s were awash with caging, disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and outright election stealing from the top of the ballot to the bottom. Third parties didn’t have anything to do with that.
Statistically speaking, the majority of campaigns are going to fail.
That wasn’t quite what I was getting at. Roughly half of all positions are democrat held, the other half republican held. 3rd parties make up such a small percentage of the existing seats, hence the “they don’t succeed frequently enough for it to be called fair” statement.
The spoiler effect only matters to losers.
Not really. Take the green party for instance. They definitely don’t align with the democrats, but they can at least agree on some things, where as them agreeing with republicans is far, far more rare. So it is in the interest of green voters that green politicians get voted in most, followed by democrat politicians, then republican.
But when they split the vote due to the spoiler effect, it ends up meaning the worst of the worst options gets voted in, a republican. And that should matter to the 3rd party losers.
Third parties didn’t have anything to do with that.
They don’t have to. The threat of splitting the vote is more than enough for everyone to vote strategically, which means 3rd parties don’t get any votes.
Roughly half of all positions are democrat held, the other half republican held.
Its more 55/45, as Republicans dominate the rural sectors with a plurality of smaller seats while Dems dominate the large-pop singular seats. Even then, the real balance of power is in the financing of races, with local business magnets and special interest groups dictating the nominees of both major parties. Down in Houston, for instance, the candidates that consistently win the mayorship have to first win the endorsement of either the police or fire departments (ideally both), as these organizations command popular prestige, enormous campaign war chests, and a large body of active canvasers who will work on your campaign’s behalf. Similarly, everyone kowtows to the oil and gas industries.
Introduce an independent candidate for mayor, and that candidate will still need to suck up to O&G, fire, and police in order to win the race. And, once in office, they’ll be constrained just like either of the two major party’s preferred candidates would be.
Go up to the Rust Belt and you’re bowing to the interests of the automotive industry. Take a stab at politics on the West Coast and you’re going to need to cater to Silicon Valley. Everyone running for office on the Atlantic Seaboard is keenly aware of the clout enjoyed by the investment banks, the real estate magnets, and the DC bureaucracies. Add a modern-day Ross Perot to your list of candidates and you’re still juggling these interest groups in order to win.
Take the green party for instance. They definitely don’t align with the democrats, but they can at least agree on some things, where as them agreeing with republicans is far, far more rare. So it is in the interest of green voters that green politicians get voted in most, followed by democrat politicians, then republican.
But when they split the vote due to the spoiler effect, it ends up meaning the worst of the worst options gets voted in, a republican. And that should matter to the 3rd party losers.
Except you’re assuming people are choosing to vote D, R, or G and then ranking their preference. In truth, you’ve got a substantive pool of voters who simply do not turn out when they don’t like who is on the ballot. Turnout in the US rarely breaks 60% of the eligible base. But when it does, you can see establishment candidates falter behind insurgents.
At that point, the Ds and Rs will court you for your membership in their party. And because they have far more to offer than a Green Party leadership, more viable candidates tend to be attracted to the Big Two parties. Greens (and Libertarians and other niche parties) are stuck with candidates who can’t get onto the D or R ticket via a primary or appointment.
If you have a candidate that is genuinely popular and generates a ton of organic enthusiasm - a guy like Trump, who bounced from Reform Party to Dem Party and then on to the GOP unsuccessfully for decades, before catching fire among anti-Obama anti-immigrant conservatives - then that candidate is going to dramatically increase voter participation and win regardless of which party they run under. Similarly, Obama was able to undercut Hillary in the '08 primary by dramatically boosting turnout, particularly in states where Hillary failed to campaign aggressively. So Tennessee and South Carolina and Georgia went to Obama in landslides, undercutting Hillary’s thinner margins in California and New York and Florida.
Obama could theoretically have run as an Independent candidate for Senator of Illinois and won (in large part thanks to the Republican incumbent flaming out in a sex scandal), then challenged the Top 2 for the Presidency. But why do that when you can run inside the party apparatus and fall back to a cabinet position or VP slot if you lose?
The spoiler effect doesn’t come into play, because the people who have the most viable campaigns get absorbed by the bigger parties. That’s why Sanders and Angus King caucus with the Democrats and even run as Democrats on the Presidential ballot.
As another case-in-point, consider Dan Osborn, an Indie currently being courted by the Democratic Party entirely because he polls so well against sitting Senator Deb Fisher.
That’s true until it isn’t.
The way you change that is election reform. Not thoughts and prayers and spoiler votes when one of the 2 big parties is running a wannabe-dictator.
Think, if fools in Florida didn’t vote 3rd party in 2000 you’d never have bush or the war in iraq, and we might have given a shit about global warming.
The way you change that is election reform.
Can’t even get DC statehood with a Dem majority and Presidency. Couldn’t do it when we had a 60 vote supermajority in 2008. We’re certainly not going to get it through the courts, given how the SCOTUS is stacked.
Think, if fools in Florida didn’t vote 3rd party in 2000 you’d never have bush or the war in iraq
The majority of green party votes came from registered Republicans. 2000 was decided by mass deregistering, disenfranchisement, and intimidation of the state’s black voter population, combined with the Brooks Brothers Riot that halted the ballot counting long enough for the conservative SCOTUS majority to certify the election in Bush’s favor.
Please, tell me you’re a child who knows nothing about the US electoral system without telling me. People like you got us Trump
Too much of a baby to read and understand the spoiler effect that comes with FPTP? Too impatient and short-sighted to push for election reform (RCV or approval voting) and just want some low effort immediate option that requires nothing more than casting a vote? Child. Democracies require effort to survive.
You’re looking at 3rd party votes in the wrong light.
They’re an effective means of voicing discontent with the candidates from the two largest party. Unlike the third of Americans who don’t vote 3rd party votes demonstrate a willingness to go out and vote along with their discontent in the platform of the two largest parties.
We aren’t going to get RCV by just waiting for it to happen. It’ll take actual work.
And calling people who have different opinions from you on the Internet ‘child’ isn’t going to get them to agree with you.
Yeah I’m comparing 3rd party votes to voting for the less harmful duopoly + activism, you’re comparing it to doing nothing.
You’re right voting 3rd party is better than doing absolutely nothing. What a high bar
Looking at companies like Blackstone, who buy up houses at auction, lightly flip them and put them back on the market as high-priced rentals. THEY’RE the big reason for the lack of affordable housing.
Remember that Blackstone and the other institutions are only financing it. These companies have names; like American Homes/AMH, invitation, opendoor and so on. There are a lot of them and they are all given billions to go buy as many houses as they can get their hands on… essentially bottomless pockets. And those are just the large ones. There’s plenty of people churning 100s of homes and letting property management companies do all the work, financing new deals with existing rentals as leverage.
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I mean, would it be better if we had a thousand mid-sized car dealership style house flippers rather than one singular monolith doing the same thing?
Blackstone agents are operating at a national scale in a market that’s been flush with speculators and flippers going straight back to the colonial era. The high price of real estate is the consequence of housing as a commodity. There’s no more free land to develop on the cheap and no more suburbs for young people to push out into searching for cheap new constructions. Take everyone at Blackstone out of the market tomorrow and you’ll have a hundred smaller banks lining up to repeat their formula by the end of the month.
So long as cash is cheap, housing is in demand, and REITs are a thing, you’re going to have businesses looking to profit off the difference between sale rates and rental rates as well as the gap between the prime rate and the going mortgage rate.
Did you just scoff at the idea of competition improving a market?
One big monopoly looks no different to the consumer than a cartel of mid-sized dealerships. You’re not fixing the underlying speculative demand issue, just changing the number of participants in the speculative racket.
Yes it would be better. Monopolies are bad. Near monopolies are bad. The more market power a company gains the more they can charge for no reason at all except “fuck you pay me”.
Monopolies are bad.
Cartels are equally bad. Unless you change the economic incentives in home building and real estate speculation, you are - at best - changing the discrete number of people who get to participate in the profiteering. I don’t particularly care if one national guy or fifty state guys get to ratchet up my housing prices. Big Number Goes Up all the same.
Absolutely. Especially since we just caught them colluding to raise the market price.
The solution is to make hoarding rental properties an unattractive investment. Put an escalating tax on owning multiple residences. If the 5th property is at 40% tax every year it’s no longer a money maker in a competitive market. Put the money towards tax rebates for single mortgage interest. Now you have buyers back in the market and landlords looking to sell.
Home 1 : 100%
Home2 : 133%
Home 3: 175%
Home 4: 250%
Home 5: 325%
Excellent suggestion. I don’t mind people having a second home or a couple of rentals, but more than that is just greed.
Put the money towards tax rebates for single mortgage interest.
Or just use it to construct new multi-family units that are sold at cost of construction.
There WOULD be more suburbs to develop if we were allowed to work remotely. I would gladly move to the developing suburb of bumfuck-nowheresville if I could go there and keep my job, but I have to stay within a reasonable commuting distance of the nearest metropolis.
Monopolies are bad.
So are cartels.
So why are you advocating for one?
For the same reasons you are, i guess.
So preying on the victims of the growing wealth innequality and income gap. That will surely accelerate the decline of civilization.
Well said, people think that making certain companies go poof will suddenly resolve issues for a long time, without thinking about resource availability, the circumstances which led to the sutuation and the customers who enable them.
Which is the exact reason the government is supposed to step in when there’s this kind of excess in the sector. Especially regarding a need like housing.
Capitalism and its endless profit motive should never be near the things that have direct effect on people’s well-being and livelihood. All the human basic necessities should be capitalism free, housing, healthcare, education… etc… If you want to built a better and healthier nation of course, but no one cares about the nation, money is above everything to these sick fucks.
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Achievement unlocked: socialism
Though I absolutely don’t mind!
I kind of agree, but has this ever been done successfully? It seems to me at some point you disincentivize work to the point it all collapses
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Right. Examples?
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Don’t have time to separate the wheat from the chaff today. But I understand if you don’t have any actual sources to back up your assertions.
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So you say, and yet you still offer nothing.
It’s social democracy. It’s a slight socialism under a capitalist umbrella where social services are untouched by capitalism. All of Europe operates this way.
It’s a fair question. The first universal basic income experiments have just begun in the last few years. Based on this article there’s been a little success at least.
https://globalaffairs.org/bluemarble/multiple-countries-have-tested-universal-basic-income-and-it-worksI think we’re only recently getting to a level of technology that we need less human workforce and can still prosper when inevitably some choose not to work.
Thanks, I am in favor of UBI, but like anything else I think the cost of everything will just rise to eat it up. With various trials going on, we should have better data soon
But like, you bring up “human basic necessities” and soon the old arguments about Maslow’s Hierarchy rear their ugly head.
How does this limit a corporation from doing the same thing?
So a hedge fund doesn’t do it, but a specific company does the same thing and that’s fine. What am I missing?
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That sounds like the perfect opportunity to work in property management because the owners will be so diffuse that you could be very lazy and they would be none the wiser
If we actually had a democracy, there would be a total of 0 people against this. It’s so incredibly unfavorable to want corporations to buy houses for profit.
There are people profiting from this either by owning the investment firms e.g. through stocks or by working in them in highly paid positions. In a democracy, the majority might be for such a law, but certainly not everyone.
0 souls then
Inb4 the Republicans vote it down
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Nancy Pelosi’s husband is literally one of these real estate ghouls.
Please do. I’d love to see more supply.
Home Ownership and protecting the middle class used to be phrases so often uttered by the Republicans 40 years ago that I yawned.
I’m glad to see someone pick up the gauntlet. Boggles the mind that this hasn’t become a huge political issue yet.
it’s cool they had the idea. hopefully they act on it
Now what’s the chance of this actually passing?
Via referendum? I say 80% chance of a majority.
Congress? 5% is generous
Eh maybe, I can see the attack ads now though.
Special interests in Washington want to destroy the value of your home by placing strict regulations on home ownership! Government beurocrat fat cats wants to put themselves in charge of who can and can’t buy a home! Don’t let the big wigs in Washington destroy your homes value and strangle your children’s future and their inheritance! Vote no on proposition 1! This ad paid for by free homes for all real Americans (a Koch industries subsidiary).
Never underestimate peoples ability to vote against their own interest when partisanship get involved.
With a divided Congress, the bills are unlikely to pass into law this session. But Mr. Smith said legislators needed to start a conversation.
:|
How exactly does Mr. Smith propose a conversation begin with a bunch of seditious asswipes???
It’s probably not intended for them, it’s another issue they want in the media to bring people to the polls next year
First he has to go to Washington…
Dad joke extraordinaire.
Lol
I wonder which side doesn’t want it to pass /s
Well, yeah. That’s how politics work. Or should.
Get the issue in front of the people, get them talking. Like we are now. Give one side a chance to say, “See what we tried and got shot down!” You gotta start somewhere.
This is the first I’ve heard of such an initiative and I’m all in.
Fun fact: there is always a divided congress because the ruling class just adjusts its spending on elections to ensure nothing ever gets done in our favor.
As soon as we start voting more/for better candidates, they start spending more. They haven’t even scratched the surface of how much they can spend to control the government; they don’t need to yet.
As the disparity in wealth continues to grow, they’ll just have even more money to ensure their grip for generations.
Please make it happen, it’s an important first step
why were they ever allowed to do this? why should the system allow you to gamble on houses?
Because they saw an opportunity to fuck America again after imploding Wall St in 2007-08.
Rampant unfettered capitalism only cares about the money they can make, never about the people’s lives they destroy.
