(Disclaimer: I’m only partially on board with the author’s opinions, and I’m dealing with a sinus infection and not really feeling articulate at the moment. But I sure have seen a lot of white (straight, cissexual, male, non-Muslim, etc.) people trying to shame other people with the “privilege” claim in the past week or two.
Also I figured Dr. Cornell West’s endorsement of Jill Stein really out to put the nail in that particular coffin, but maybe people are unaware of it or pretending it didn’t happen.
That’s fair, and I’ve gotten some similarly naive commentary during my travels (lots of work related stuff, though most of the time I got to explore was in the pac-rim…when I was in Europe I never seemed to get to do anything but work sigh)
Totally and completely agreed. I think that tangents nicely into the next point.
Excellent point! How about several people are selected to create ‘seed’ options, and people can choose between them (and then add that open-source forking concept, I really think that’s a powerful approach…incremental safe change from a number of firm bases rather than just being stuck with those options)…and then let people ‘vote with their feet’ literally and every year can choose to move from one to another or stay where they are. They wouldn’t have to be contiguous or anything, and group sizes could be as small as maybe a third of Dunbar’s number (Science FTW! They didn’t have a clue about that in the 1700s)
Eventually things would stabilize, and lots of people don’t mind just hanging out so wouldn’t really feel the need to move around as long as the system they’ve got doesn’t suck…and it could easily be better for everybody who’s not a white male like myself. I know I’ve had some advantages that others have not, I can share.
So starting points are defined, I like Jane because there’s a TON of evidence based analysis and science in there. It’s not for everyone, but for the subset of the population her ideas suit they’d be productive dynamos.
In fact, I think that’s a HUGE point.
There’s a TON of variety among us, right? Instead of one big idea, why not a bunch of little ideas inside a big framework? I’m NOTHING like ten-year-ago me, and I think that guy’s decisions would’ve been kind of lame and wouldn’t want to be stuck with them.
You’d still need some overarching connection…but we really do need to keep the ‘voting to influence strangers’ to a minimum, and we could still have something like ‘every five years we use three different voting systems to vote for which of the three we use for the next five years, and one of them has to be brand new’ or something like that? We generally focus on the local anyway, and that’d help keep us from poisoning ourselves with things like ‘let’s vote to say these guys can’t get married!’. The smaller groups can do the same internally and with respect to issues that bridge each other…and they can pretty much be set loose, but of course it’d have to cover the full scope… commerce, economics, the works.
That’s a bit more radical and a little off the cuff. It’s a concept that I’m working on that would be viable with a set of interconnected Skunkworks projects (kind of a Mondragon+Valve+Google+Company Town thing…that falls into my experience and expertise surprisingly well, in fact it’s easier because I get to control the inputs and outputs)…but there are some huge advantages there (like being able to let somebody who’s not working out go) that nations don’t have, so I’m sure there would have to be modifications to make it work for nations.
I’m only speaking for myself. If you mean that there are vulnerable people speaking up for 3rd party candidates, I wouldn’t include Cornel West in any such list, let alone the author of the article you posted (who I believe is a young white Chicago suburbanite).
This is going to sound weird, but I’ve done some thinking and come to the conclusion that while there are definitely some improvements that can be done with nations and national government… the geographical location of one’s birth is a really bad model for civilization anyway and a lot of those solutions I threw out are just a lot weaker when applied to nations than when applied to a large multinational corporation that uses campuses as ‘charter cities’.
Civilization should be a choice and a lot of that design was predicated on that … both the fact that people have to choose to join and the fact that it’s inherent in the design to make it very easy to leave. It’s not just for the addition by subtraction benefits but there’s also a couple of layers of mind hacks that just… don’t work nearly as well when it’s tied to a chunk of dirt. And a couple components fail if there’s no other option, which is exactly what happens if you apply it to a nation.
It’s probably more effective to just let nations be the mess they are and exploit their various rulesets when setting up campuses/experiments/mini-civilizations. Citizen’s United and the somewhat abusive powers corporations have can still be used to influence things in a positive way, but the mechanisms we have in place for the corporate-civilization hybrid structure to put the decision making in better hands…well, I don’t know that they fall naturally into place if we try to apply it to nations and I think that while there are ways to keep the forward progress going, it’s just NOT the same as it is when we can control the order in which we add people to this set of structures.
I still think there’s lots of room for improvement with nations and governmental systems, but most of the best solutions work best when they’re ignored and (from a min/maxing gamer’s perspective) exploited.
They ARE kind of really bad LARPs that everyone’s forced to play, after all…it’s an unusually apt metaphor and it’s far more powerful to just give people new options/‘games to play’ so to speak on top of that than it is to try to convert what’s already there into something that is flexible enough to provide that while simultaneously being tethered to terrain, with all the loss of agility and risk that’s associated with that.
“If the race in Florida is close, I will vote for Hillary Clinton,” she said. "That is a very difficult statement for me to make. I disagree with her on several important issues. I have worked to elect Republicans to national and statewide offices for the last 30 years. I have never voted for a Democrat for president, and I consider myself a conservative, a supporter of limited government, gun rights, free enterprise, equality of opportunity. I am pro-life. There are no other candidates who were serious contenders for the nomination that I would not have supported.
“But,” she said, “we are at a crossroads and have nominated a total narcissist – a misogynist – a bigot. This is a time when country has to take priority over political parties. Donald Trump cannot be elected president.”
It is a flaw in the democratic process, just as much as 60% of the people voting to take the other 40%'s wealth would be. White people can’t vote for a return to slavery. Democracy can’t just be 50%+1 vote. In theory the job of protecting minority groups is usually down to the courts. America, unfortunately, doesn’t have courts, but rather has panels of appointed politicians with law degrees.
How much longer do you think she’ll be looking into the release of transcripts of her Golden Sacks speeches? It sure is taking her a long time to look into this issue.
Former top Chris Christie aide Maria Comella, to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The unexpected and growing list of top republicans who are denouncing Donald Trump or announcing they will vote for Hillary Clinton, is starting to reach political critical mass i.e., having an impact on the 2016 presidential election.
“Donald Trump has been a demagogue this whole time, preying on people’s anxieties with loose information and salacious rhetoric, drumming up fear and hatred of the ‘other,’” Comella said.
“Instead of trying anything remotely like unifying the country, we have a nominee who would rather pick fights because he views it as positive news coverage,” she said. “It may make him media savvy, but it doesn’t make him qualified or ready to be president.”
It is a flaw in the democratic process, just as much as 60% of the people voting to take the other 40%'s wealth would be.[/quote]
So you think a system where a small group of elites making decisions would as a process be more democratic?
With the 60-40 example, are you making an argument against the Sanders-Clinton plans to tax the wealthy?
If America makes the right decision and elects someone who is a understanding and nurturing mother and grandmother, to the office of President of the United States, the following is unlikely to happen.
You think there is something better about having a president who is a grandmother than a president who is a grandfather? Do you have reason to believe that Trump is less of a caring grandparent than Clinton?
I favour an impartial court, much like the one described in the constitution of the US, for example (a document created by a small group of elites). And yes, they are a small group that can hardly be called anything but “elite” making decisions that sometimes go against the desires of the majority.
No, I’m making an argument against people voting for a return to slavery.
So, how do you decide when the 60% majority represents “democratically carrying out the will of the people”, and the 60% represents the “tyranny of the majority”? In the US system countering the latter is the raison d’etre for an independent judiciary; meanwhile, a Congress that carries out the will of the people is not being undemocratic. Even if the people call for something offensive like a return to slavery (which in any event is best countered neither by legislative nor judicial actions but by convincing the people not to support it).
I think if you take away the courts to check that Congressional laws are actually constitutional it is undemocratic for congress to just go about their business. I just don’t buy that the definition of “democracy” is whatever 50%+1 people want without any second thought or balance against broader principles.
I know this, Trump disrespected and made fun of a mother who brought her baby (that started crying), to here him speak.
New or added campaign ads/material for the Clinton campaign and Clinton Super-Pacs.
“Actually I was only kidding, you can get the baby out of here”–Donald John Trump
“I think she really believed me, that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking”–Donald John Trump
I know, Hillary Clinton would never disrespect and make fun of a mother–who brought her baby (that started crying), to here Hillary speak.
Donald Trump gets distracted and annoyed by a baby crying while he is speaking, and he wants voters to believe he has the required focus, temperament and disposition to meet the daunting and focused demands of being–President of the United States of America.
…Meg Whitman, a Hewlett Packard executive and Republican fund-raiser, said Tuesday that she would support Hillary Clinton for president and give a “substantial” contribution to her campaign in order to stop Donald J. Trump, whom she berated as a threat to American democracy.
“I will vote for Hillary, I will talk to my Republican friends about helping her, and I will donate to her campaign and try to raise money for her,” Ms. Whitman said in a telephone interview…
…Using remarkably blunt language, she argued that the election of Mr. Trump, whom she called “a dishonest demagogue,” could lead the country “on a very dangerous journey.” She noted that democracies had seldom lasted longer than a few hundred years and warned that those who say that “it can’t happen here” are being naïve…
I think that’s pretty much the textbook definition of “democracy.” The issue of whether democracy is an appropriate approach to government is a separate one (though by Arrow’s Theorem there is no always-right way to consistently aggregate the preferences of the individuals in the system). When the US leadership decides to grow its drone assassination program, if that program is also very popular among the general population, while you and I can complain that it ethically reprehensible it is kind of hard to argue that it is an example that the US system is not democratic, or even that it is politically broken in any way.
Likewise all the people trying to argue that the nomination (and probably election) of Clinton is evidence that our political system is broken - all I can say to that is not getting your way on a vote doesn’t mean that the vote is incorrect. I’m not crazy about Clinton, but she is certainly well within the range of what most Democrats would consider mainstream, probably closer to that middle of what most Americans would consider mainstream than Sanders, and except for a few nitwits in that other thread there is no question she is well-qualified for the position.
So would I. If your baby is crying so loud that it distracts the speaker, you and the baby should leave the room. If you don’t understand that, you haven’t spent much time speaking in front of a group of people.
I don’t understand why we should be happy about this; if 1 percenters are endorsing Clinton, to me that says she doesn’t represent me enough.
Apply the same unprecedented standard and request to male presidential candidates–not Wall Street speeches, but any paid speeches. That line of attack did not work during the democratic presidential nomination contest, and it won’t work in the presidential general election.
What is precedented and expected–is for presidential candidates to release multiple years of tax returns, something Hillary Clinton has done. There is nothing to hide in Hillary’s tax returns–and her tax returns prove it. If Hillary had anything in her tax returns that would jeopardize her presidential aspirations (Wall Street included), we would certainly have heard it by now.
We know what the response would be if Hillary Clinton, refused to release multiple years of her tax returns
Where is Donald Trump’s extended tax returns?
Whether or not Mitt Romney being forced to release his tax returns in 2012 resulted in him losing, Trump all but admitted there were things in his tax returns that would jeopardize his presidential aspirations in 2016.
Donald Trump joined ABC’s This Week and told host George Stephanopolous that Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election to President Obama, not because of his disastrous 47% remarks, but because he released his tax returns…
…Trump got defensive and then made a scurrilous claim about Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
He said, “I watched Mitt Romney four years ago. He waited 'til September to give 'em, just before the election. They made him look so bad. It was so unfair. I actually think he didn’t lose because of the 47%. I think he lost because of a couple of really minor items in a tax return, where he did nothing wrong.”…
