The world's richest 62 people have as much wealth as half the rest

boing
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Although vastly better than FPTP, we still have a 2 party system split between the far right and a bit right of center.

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There’s disappointingly little overlap between that list and the accompanying list of top 12 hottest daughters of legendary rock stars.

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It actually looks more like one-party system with two bitterly fighting factions.

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45

It is one of those things that is so obviously common-sensical to those of us native to it that we wonder why no one else does it.

It does bring its own problems; the backroom preference deals between parties get very shady at times, and the major parties have been known to cooperate in favour of crushing upstart minors by trading preferences.

But it sure as hell beats the crap out of FPTP.

46

Absent preferential voting [1] or public election financing [2], voting for a known hopeless candidate is very close to abstaining in effect.

[1] AKA the “Australian ballot”, AKA instant runoff voting.

[2] Also present in the Australian system. You give your first preference to the party you truly support, because the next election’s public funding is based upon how many first-preference votes were received in the previous election. Then you vote from the bottom up, ranking the candidates in order of descending evil.

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We’ve got empirical evidence that a weighted preference voting system is both the most democratic solution and the one that electorates are most satisfied with the results of.

We don’t have it because both the wealthy and those in power know it would be the best system for expressing the will of the electorate. And if anything scares rich people and politicians, it’s giving someone else a fair shot.

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To these 62 people: mazel tov!

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There were a couple of really good looking people in the top 62. I was thinking that given all the other options, I could be a trophy wife. I probably need to hit the gym more.

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Pretty sure they’re all doing excessively well.

Even the few who worked hard to get where they are (Bill Gates for example) didn’t work harder or provide more than an average ER Trauma Surgeon. They just happened to be lucky enough to be part of a system that gave them hilariously disproportionate rewards.

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It’s also a helluva drug if ingested orally.

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