Different design paradigms. In 1969, they had one shot to get everything right, and prepared accordingly (not to mention, they had a massive budget since the space race was all part of the cold war).
SpaceX is taking a different approach, fail fast and cheap. They are taking an iterative approach that allows them to learn from previous failures, rather than anticipating what all those failures could be and then over engineering the rocket to prevent that.
They are different approaches, and each has their own pros and cons. ¯\(ツ)/¯
The Artemis 1 launch was also staggeringly expensive, and yet to be repeated.
In the time it’s taken to develop that rocket, SpaceX has gone from it’s very first real flight (by which I mean actually achieving something, rather than a pure test flight) to launching far more every year than the entire rest of the world combined. Note that by that definition, Artemis hasn’t had a single “real” flight yet.
SLS did a lap around the moon flawlessly and returned safely.
Starship, a scale model of the empty shell that HLS might one day sit in, when it is finally developed, can’t even land without exploding.
According to a recent speech by musk, it wasn’t even the real shell. IFT3 was a 40ton-to-LEO craft, where HLS will have to be around 100, which would take the as of yet unflown and (mostly?) unbuilt “Starship 2”.
And where SLS will simply have to do a repeat of what it has already done for Artemis 2.
HLS will have first be actually built, get launched, get refueled by a tanker craft that also doesn’t exist yet, an unknown number of times (probably 12), fly to the moon, land there, take off, come back, land on earth and then do ALL of that again in time for Artemis 3 where it will have people on board.
SLS is 1 for 1, and if Starship IFT4 does everything right tomorrow, HLS is still at 0. And if it does everything right, I will buy a hat and eat it.
SLS is also ridiculously expensive. They hope, with time, to bring the cost down to $1 billion per launch. And the first one took 6 years longer than expected. If we’re going to get to the moon more than one more time before I die, this isn’t the vehicle I’m going to pin my hopes on.
SLS is a disposable product based on existing technology. Starship intends to be reusable and is an evolution based on tech developed in the last 20 years.
Neither private companies nor the DoD is interested in using the SLS once it has been proven in the Artemis project, and given the project is based on the time-honored tradition of government pork, it’s doubtful it will ever be economical. Every indication I can see is that the Blue Origin and SLS contract are to hedge bets in case Starship fails. After all, we know SLS will work, but it will always be cost-ineffective just based on the nature of the beast. Blue Origin might work out, but they’ve been around as long as SpaceX and have achieved suborbital flights so far. Meanwhile, SpaceX has had 332 successful launches in 14 years, with 2 failures. Their team seems to know what they’re doing.
As I say elsewhere, Starship is a scale model of an empty shell into which the HLS might one day be built. HLS has not been built. HLS doesn’t even exist as a non-functioning mockup. HLS has not even been designed. The vehicle to carry HLS into space has not been built. The vehicle that will refuel HLS when it eventually has been built, has not been built.
HLS has so far cost 3 billion, and doesn’t exist even slightly. All that exists is a scaled down model of an empty shell and a scaled down model of the booster that has not lifted even a single pound of simulated cargo off the ground.
I’m not saying Starship won’t be a great heavy-lift craft for LEO or maybe GEO cargo one day, but HLS does not exist in any way other than CGI renders, and it has cost 3 billion government dollars so far, and many more other funds.
And that’s not to say I don’t think Falcon isn’t a great machine. It’s a machine that runs entirely on unsustainable artificial demand, but I’m a massive proponent of burning the private venture capital of overly-rich idiots to fund useful spacetravel.
Well, that dollar value seems to be a big deal to you, but you brush aside the costs of SLS, and completely ignore the many billions spent to make the SLS components even possible. This has sunk cost fallacy vibes to me.
3 billion is a lot of money to pay for getting nothing, so yeah. I’ll change my tune when I actually see HLS, instead of the money being spent on developing another LEO lifter
Do you know how you get new things? Not by not researching them? You should see the amount of money the US government alone has spent on fusion, and still nothing. Look at the money DARPA has spent! Sure, we got the internet, among others, but these people got the money before there was a finished product! And some of those projects failed!
They have completely different goals. If SpaceX wanted to throw out the Starship and Booster sections every time, they’re already as capable as the Artemis launcher. But they are looking longer term, and want to also be 1000x cheaper.
It took them dozens of launches to be able to re-use a Falcon9. They’ll get there eventually.
Nobody thought they’d get Falcon 9 to launch, and they did. Nobody thought they’d get Falcon 9 to land, and they did. Nobody thought they’d be able to re-use a Falcon 9 enough to make it worth the investment, and they did.
Doesn’t mean they’ll succeed, but it does mean they have a good track record.
To put it in context, Artemis did many fully destructive tests but typically on the ground. Artemis had and spent an overhaul budget that was likely close to a hundred times that of what SpaceX is spending in today’s dollars.
And even better representation, all the fully destructive tests of SpaceX have carried out have costs less than a single successful shuttle launch. And it has a much larger payload.
Even with the destructive tests, of which are planned this way, not only is SpaceX is far cheaper than any past space program, they are advancing fairly rapid.
The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch was accessed each day, nothing more.
So people see it on the list and click on it wondering “what the heck is this MX Linux thing”. And that boosts the ranking. And now that it’s at the top, it attracts more curious clicks, thus it continues to remain on top.
Definitely, but still those hit per day numbers gotta come from somewhere. There is of course the possibility to mess around here but I don’t want to make accusations out of the blue when there may be that huge fanbase that’s just keeping it low >.<
It was around the end of last year for me. Got truly sick and tired of using Arch and derivatives for 2+ years and having them crap out all the time. Went through a bunch of distros, but MX felt the best and had the best support for xfce. Slapped nix on top to install userland packages, and it’s pretty damn good.
No, people go on the distrowatch website, see mx linux at the top and wonder what it is because it seems to be popular but they’ve never heard of it, so they click on it, which boosts the ranking and makes it remain at the top. A website can’t change your browser’s start page.
@d3Xt3r@zyratoxx IT is true that this is a terrible way of measuring popularity, like they could put surveys or use the searches on the site for instance
If you ask Rick Astley for his copy of Disney Pixar’s Up, he can’t give it to you, because he’ll never give you Up. But by not doing so, you’d be let down, and he’ll never let you down.
Testing this scenario is ofc incredibly risky to the state of our reality, so the Astley paradox must remain a thought experiment.
Firstly, it does make you sweat more, which reduces your weight (temporarily). It’s common for people in sports that require a weigh-in to do this and also partially dehydrate themselves before they are weighed to make their weight class.
Secondly, it’s done by people trying to lose weight in general who have heard about the first group and incorrectly believe inducing sweat this way will speed up their weight loss. The exact opposite is true: by intentionally overheating yourself, you actually reduce the effectiveness of your workout, making your fitness goals harder to achieve in the long run. There are tons of myths like this that seem intuitive but hold a lot of people back.
Thirdly, people are just self-conscious sometimes and cover up their body
I have 4 things plugged in permanently (mouse, keyboard, audio interface, wireless headset receiver). It used to be 5 but I haven’t used my wireless controller since I built this PC.
I have a midi keyboard I plug into the front when I’m going to use it. And a USB cable in the drawer if I ever need to plug my phone in (which otherwise sits on a wireless charger plugged into AC)
My bedroom media pc (old-ass enterprise tower) has 8 on the back and 5 on the front. So 13 usb ports. It doesn’t have any wireless anything, physical ports only, and there’s no room to add internal cards for it, but plenty of usb ports for dongles!
I use 3 of those ports at most (I use Ethernet, since it’s my acquisition machine, or it’d be 4), and 2 are for keyboards and mice (one handheld with touchpad, the other a normal set).
I’m struggling to even come up with 7 things that would all need to be plugged in together… I guess webcam, mouse and keyboard if they can’t run off a single port, and headset maybe if you got one that bypasses the audio jacks for whatever reason… but that’s still only 4.
Chipsets have tons of connectivity available, there’s more than enough physical space in the back panel and it’s not expensive to add. So yeah, your analogy doesn’t make much sense.
Keyboard, mouse, usb extension to have a port on my desk, wireless charger, dac, xbox wireless controller dongle and a usb microphone. That’s 7 and I’d use an 8th port to charge my vr headset. So yeah, it’s not that hard to use 7 ports at once.
Yes, it is. Are you familiar with any usb spec? The ports in your pc simply cannot even deliver 240W. Also, rying to use pretty much any cable to deliver that kind of power would melt it.
To add to that, there’s a data throughput limit (important for a VR headset, external drives, etc) . There’s also the latency aspect. I would not like to connect my controller dongle, dac, mouse or kb to a hub for example because that adds unnecesary latency. There are several reasons for using a dedicated port for each device and power has nothing to do with it.
Why would you charge things from your PC?
Are you really this dense? Why would I not? It’s not only convenient but it’s also because I don’t have that many outlets available after plugging in 2 studio monitors, 2 displays, a laptop for work and my personal PC.
Really, it’s pretty unvelivable that you’d defend putting in the minimum amount of ports possible considering current chipset capabilities and the sheer size of the required ATX rear panel size. In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s the ATX spec. Not to mention that motherboards are getting more and more expensive and there’s no excuse for increasing cost and reducing functionality.
Some people like them for the aesthetics. In my case, I have a custom made desk with a tray for the keyboard and mice so the cables are not even visible. Longevity wise they’re obviously inferior and have an expiration date basically. The performance is also worse unless you’re using a wireless dongle instead of bluetooth.
I just see three cables on my desk for keyboard, mouse, and headphones and I prefer it like that.
Aesthetics are illogical and often times social conformity rather than personal desire. Like those stupid coiled USB C cables for keyboards that do nothing.
My keyboard has a 2.4ghz dongle, bluetooth and wired connectivity. I choose to use it wired because it has lower latency and I don’t have to worry about the battery dying. The mouse is wired and I chose the wired version because it costs half as much (razer deathadder v3) and I don’t really have any benefits if’d bought the wireless version (which also uses a dongle). A bluetooth mouse would have much higher latency and a lower polling rate. Same thing with the controller. Bluetooth is slower and not as reliable. Regarding the mic, yeah, no. It’s the mic I use for my camera as well and I’m not buying a dedicated wireless mic that would be more expensive and have a lower audio quality. Also, and this goes for everything, batteries can flat out die and they’re usually not user replaceable. Not to mention that you have to charge all of these battery powered things and that’s a pain in the butt.
How is it at even legal to employ him anywhere where he will have contact with women?
If it was illegal for someone to get a job where they could come in contact with 50% of the population you’re just setting them up for failure. What about murderers? Should they be prevented from having a job where they interact with anyone because there’s a chance they’ll kill them?
I understand that first sentence it’s makes sense, but that second sentence, now come on a murderer should in fact be made known and jobless for some pretty damn obvious reasons.
If someone is executed for murder, then you definitely shouldn’t hire them. But if they served their punishment, letting them out of jail and then not letting them earn the money the need to survive is a recipe for disaster.
There’s different reasons for murder that could explain how they’re not a threat. For example someone killing the person that molested their child is unlikely to kill a random coworker. That justification doesn’t really exist for rapists.
All your basic staples: salt, flour, oil, sugar, pasta, pasta, milk, eggs etc. There’s literally nothing to do better or worse, so for god’s sake don’t pay for the label. Fancy olive oil is nicer, and fancy butter for actually putting on bread is nice too - but for cooking, cheap the hell out.
Get your spices from an Indian / Asian / etc grocer - you can get a huge bag for the price of a tiny supermarket jar, and because they have so much turnover, they’ll be plenty fresh.
Store-brand laundry detergent and dishwasher tablets work just fine for me (and dear god you can save a lot on those).
All your basic staples: salt, flour, oil, sugar, pasta, pasta, milk, eggs
It depends. Cheap salt is just fine. And flour, unless you’re into baking. But some things can make a difference and you don’t necessarily have to pay a lot more for it.
Pasta, for example. Bronze cut pasta absorbs sauce a lot better than “normal” pasta. It looks dull, rough, and pale as opposed to shiny and smooth. It usually only costs a buck or two more. I find it’s a big step up taste and texture-wise.
Or butter. The ones without natural flavor taste better. Sometimes it’s the store brand that doesn’t have added flavor.
And eggs. Orange yolks are way better than the pale yellow ones. But those you do have to shell out for.
Eggs I always buy free-range because yeah it makes a difference to taste (and is so much kinder to the chickens), but in the UK butter is butter. I know in the US you have butter that's practically white but here's it's all yellow and tasty. Flour every brand has plain, self raising and bread flour and those categories are pretty similar across brands.
Milk, the filtered stuff (Cravendale or similar) is nicer but not much nicer so it's not worth the upgrade IMO
TBF he said kinder, not kind. I don't buy eggs myself except for occasionally from rescue hens, but if I was I'd feel a lot better knowing they saw daylight occasionally.
To be clear, it is kinder. Not much, but it absolutely is kinder. Pasture raised is what free range should have meant… But fortunately we have a word for it now.
Oh yeah, the yellow European style butter was a revelation when I found out about it. It tastes way better and is less watery than the pale American butter.
I never heard of filtered milk. Milk is milk for the most part, but once I made the mistake of buying it on clearance. Grabbed it without looking because the price for a normal gallon freaked me out. It wasn’t spoiled, but it was super watery and had a weird color.
This has been my favorite dried pasta! I used to get it off Amazon before my grocery store carried it, and I can still get more shares online. I like three orrichetti and radiatorre(sp?)!
That was my exact reaction! But butter is literally nothing but churned cream and possibly salt added? If there’s anything else added, such as water or any kinds of oils, it’s no longer butter. I get more scared every time I learn something new about US food culture…
Gotta check the ingredients on damn near everything here, or just make everything yourself :P.
Homemade unwashed butter = best butter (although spoils very quickly when not washing, like a day or two). I would eat that shit by itself if it wasn’t so unhealthy lmao
Eggs isn’t true. The only thing you’re buying is for sound of mind for ethically raised chickens and the orange color of the yolk specifically for things where you need that nice orange color.
Nutrients aren’t statistically significant. Taste has no difference. Especially if you aren’t eating them plain.
Agree no difference as an ingredient in some baked dish.
But if you are eating the egg by itself or as the primary item, there is definitely a difference in taste. Not a revolutionary change your life difference, but still a difference.
In my experience the difference is pretty small amongst the options in the grocery store, but fairly noticable for eggs I get from the farmers market.
Chicken wrangler here. This may be true of supermarket eggs but should not be taken to imply that all eggs are the same.
Perhaps there isn’t a huge difference between the different labels available at the supermarket.
However, I’m incredulous that there is no difference between an egg laid by a backyard chicken who is well cared for and has a varied nutritious diet, and that which you’ll find at the supermarket.
I realise you (and youtube guy) are not talking about backyard eggs, but just because “pastured eggs” are not significantly different to cage eggs, that does not mean that it’s not possible to buy proper eggs.
Flour - disagree. King Arthur for baking vs your basic supermarket crap is a tangible taste and texture difference in baking. While you’re at it, get a mill and buy organic wheat berries and save money for higher quality l, more nutritious flour. It’s literally cheaper to get better quality if you are willing to mill it.
Butter- Same for butter if you’re using butter as a spread. It’s ok to use cheap stuff in cooking but if it’s the main complementary flavor, like butter on toast, treat yo self to some Kerry Gold.
Agree on spices, bulk and into the freezer. Cheap spices aren’t just as good, they are better.
I used to agree on flour, got good bread flour but recently husband brought me store brand unbleached white flour and it near killed my sourdough starter, so my mind is changed on that - I’d still use it for cake, but cheap flour is low protein and won’t work for everything.
Disagree on pasta too, good pasta is easier to cook, doesn’t turn to mush as easily.
Yes. I’d always used whatever brand all purpose unbleached flour for the starter and figured it didn’t matter. So I always asked for “Gold Medal Bread Flour and whatever brand all purpose unbleached flour”. But the Publix brand all purpose unbleached wrecked my starter. It took almost the whole bag before I figured out it was the flour, because I didn’t realize they varied.
It’s actually quite good for pancakes. Maybe it’s good for biscuits, that would actually make sense. But it’s no good for bread; but Gold Medal or King Arthur unbleached all purpose work fine.
Great advice for the most part but I very much disagree on dishwasher detergent. Nothing works as well as finish pods for us. Could be our dishwasher of course but all the cheap brands leave our dishes dirty.
Same thing. I was considering buying a new dishwasher, until we switched to a good brand. I think cheap dishwasher detergent used to be ok until they removed phosphates around 2010.
Nestlé Maggi also adds lead to its tastemaker spice mix. No idea if for taste or to kill people faster, because I have not eaten Maggi in about 12-13 years. Stopped as soon as I learnt about it in childhood.
Authentic Asian/Indian/Chinese/Korean ones do not do it. This is a Western capitalist thing, because Nestlé is well known to add lead in Maggi’s tastemaker. Worst form of adulteration I have seen in Indian grocery sellers is adding tiny stones to bags of lentils or beans to increase weight, and they can be easily removed and is also becoming uncommon with time.
I’d hope this isn’t a concern in any country with even a small account of regulation on what you’re allowed to sell or on whether you’re allowed to murder people
Well, most of these spices are imported (in western countries), and it’s hard to tell how often they’re tested. There are some tests you can do at home (for example, turmeric should apparently not dissolve in water, so if you drop a spoonful in a glass and look at it after 20min, the water should still be relatively clear, or it means there are other additives).
You’re absolutely wrong about flour. There’s a huge difference in flours (besides the cursory fact that most wheat undergoes a process called desiccation which is literally spraying it with roundup).
I’ll take my glyphosate-free wheat and corn and I won’t be cheaping out thank you very much, Toxic Avenger.
You are also missing the FACT that the other essentials you name are also badly polluted with chemicals that medical science has yet to understand.
I always buy the cheapest pasta available and they’ve always been good. Just last week, the store brand (Complements) was cheapest for the first time I’ve seen, and it was also my first time experiencing bad pasta. I don’t know what they did differently, but there’s clearly a way to mess it up.
I “joke” all the time that the CIA ended their mind control programs because they succeeded and moved all if it into the private sector in advertising.
Having kids. I love my kids, but if I could go back and not have them I absolutely would. Never have kids until you’re financially comfortable. Fuck, the struggle is fucking real.
It is a sad reality that I hate even thinking about. I love these little bastards to pieces, but the money thing is killing me. I’m in a spot where I’m “too rich” to qualify for any government help and too poor to be able to afford it on my own.
And for most people that day never comes and THAT’S PERFECTLY FINE. It is horrifying that something as extreme as creating a human from nothing is seen as something that people should just do. Baffling.
I feel this. I still don’t have kids of my own, but my parents had some rough patches which I hope I learn from and don’t repeat; thankfully I only realised most of that when I grew up.
Much respect to your parents and you. Raising kids has been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, and I’ve been deployed into war zones twice.
So did I, but I have to say he’s done better than I expected. I almost think because he’s another Old White Man he can slip stuff through that would have gotten shot down by the rest of the Old White Men if Obama had tried it, or a woman, or even a progressive OWM. Maybe it’s because they know he’s not going to press for more progressive goals so they don’t see it as a slippery slope and dig in their heels. At least in his geezerly way he seems to have the best long-term interests of the people at heart.
The ones who fucked our country don’t want to admit they were wrong.
The party that’s been in charge of our country has been dismantling and selling everything worthwhile for over a decade, and the only viable alternative party seems to be running on “we don’t want to change anything major, but at least we’re not those guys” because they’re too scared to say anything after their last leader got torn apart constantly by the right-wing press.
I’m honestly worried about what we’ve become and how everything is just getting worse here. Nobody seems to have any hope for the future anymore, there are no positive things to look forward to, just a constant spiral of rising costs and declining health and public services.
The sad truth is it will need to get much worse until conservatives will admit there is a problem and let progressives solve it.
It has always been this way. You either live in a progressive, upwardly moving state with improving quality of life or you get stuck in a conservative, stagnant or downward trending place where people are more concerned with "others" than they are with doing anything productive as a society. As a species, we seem to slowly wobble back and forth between these extremes. It's maddening.
It’s not that there aren’t any, it’s that the protections for workers are abysmal compared to protections for businesses.
For example, if I stole money from my employer, they could have me arrested and press charges for theft.
On the other hand, if I am able to prove that my employer hasn’t been paying me fairly and has been shorting my paychecks, I can spend a lot of money to take them to court, and in most cases, all that will happen is the business will have to… pay you back exactly what they already owed you. They won’t pay fines, no one will go to jail, and it’s an “oops” and then slap on the wrist kind of deal.
Worker protections exist, but the deck is stacked against us.
The Netherlands had a recent court ruling that established that if the employer is satisfied with your performance, then it doesn’t matter how much time you spent doing your job. This was in a case recarding a man secretly working multiple jobs.
Source: I teach U.S. history at the high school and collegiate level.
The Electoral College was one of the original pieces of the U.S. democratic system created when our constitution was drafted and ratified in the 1780s. It’s important to remember that the drafters of the constitution were very much experimenting with a modern representative democracy based on the values of the Enlightenment. So to the extent that the Electoral College seems odd, it’s largely a result of the context of its creation - namely, we weren’t sure exactly how our system would function yet.
One of the key tensions that the framers were trying to address in the 1780s was the struggle between anarchy and tyranny. That is, finding the right balance between giving too much power to common people and too much power to the elites. The framers thought that giving too much power to common people would create a “tyranny of the majority” and result in things like demagogue politicians and threatened property rights (the foundation of a stable economic system). However, too much power to elites would result in the same sort of tyranny that we lived under when we were part of the British imperial system.
So one way that they tried to strike the right balance with federal elections was to have popular elections, but to give a group of elites veto power over whomever was elected by the masses. So if someone was elected by the masses who was grossly incompetent for President, the Electoral College, a body composed of elites, could choose someone else. This was dangerous. The Electoral College would risk a crisis in the U.S. democratic system if they rejected the will of the people. So although they could veto the results of a popular election, in theory they would only risk doing so in dire circumstances.
There is also a commonly understood function of the Electoral College that is not as commonly taught and is still controversial in some circles to point out: it was created to enhance the power of slave holding states. Electoral College votes are given to states based on their population. So the more populous your state is the more votes you get. Southern states wanted to count their enslaved persons when it came to allocating Electoral College votes, but they didn’t want to recognize them as citizens or people. They threatened to walk from the brand new union if they weren’t allowed to count their enslaved population for Electoral purposes. So this resulted in something called the Three Fifths compromise where slave-holding states could count each slave as 3/5 of a freed man for Electoral purposes, but they didn’t have to recognize them as citizens or people. I would argue that the fact that the Electoral College has consistently entrenched white supremacy in the U.S. has been one key reason behind its staying power in our governmental system.
Speaking of the modern version of the Electoral College, some political scientists claim that benefits are: -it forces politicians to campaign even in small, less populous regions of the nation rather than focusing on the large population centers. -I’m some cases (like Obama’s election in 2012) it can amplify majorities in the popular vote and make it seem like an electoral winner has a stronger popular mandate -It tends to result in two large parties that must put together broadly popular coalitions in order to win. This is in contrast to something like a parliamentary system when you often get a greater variety of more specialized parties. The claim is that, in theory, this makes parties more moderate and broadly appealing.
Some political scientists point out that some drawbacks are: -It disproportionately benefits regions of the country that are predominantly white, rural, and conservative (and, frankly, racist and patriarchal) -It allows conservatives to exercise minority rule by still winning elections even though they haven’t won the national popular vote in many years. -It dilutes the will of the people by allowing a candidate to become president without winning the popular vote. This has happened twice since 2000.
Haha no way! I’m connected with some history teachers that teach in FL, and the conflicts they’re going though are just mind boggling.
I do live in a purple state that is protected from that crap by a Democratic governor elected with a pretty slim majority. So it could well happen to me in the future. I’ve given a lot of thought to how I’d handle being in that situation. Scary stuff.
Yeah, two friends of mine uprooted their lives to move from Texas to Florida and things were going well until some of the higher ups were switched about. Last I heard they had only spent a year or two in Florida before making their way back to Texas.
Yep. And the kicker is that, with Trump, it failed at its core function of keeping incompetent people out of the presidency. So given that I think Americans are rightly wondering what the purpose of the institution even is.
In many ways, yes. There were also abolitionists and abolition sympathizers among the framers. It was a complicated set of individuals and the resulting constitution was complicated as well. It’s a document that simultaneously enshrines liberty and white supremacy. There’s a real Jekyll and Hyde nature to American democracy.
… something called the Three Fifths compromise where slave-holding states could count each slave as 3/5 of a freed man for Electoral purposes.
Jesus… That’s beyond awful.
I will say, though, and this is out of topic, you seem like a nice teacher.
English is not my first language and I’m kind of stupid when it comes to politics but you managed to not only make me understand everything but also made me interested, now I’m thinking about reading more of the topic, thanks!
Thank you for your kind words! I know many people struggle with politics and history, especially in school. It’s never too late to re-engage through books, movies, etc. as your time, interests, and happiness allow :)
“It tends to result in two large parties that must put together broadly popular coalitions in order to win.”
If you don’t mind, to what extent do you think the founders were aware of this? I know Washington made a point of warning about the dangers of political parties and then everyone else seems to have quickly hopped into the Republican/Federalist camps.
Was this seen as an unavoidable evil during the drafting, or did they think they were crafting something that would avoid parties becoming powerful?
That’s actually a really good question and I don’t know the answer. My best guess is that the founders didn’t intend that as a purpose of the EC, that it’s a secondary effect that modern political scientists have theorized.
You’re right that Washington pointed out the dangers of political parties, but that was in his Farewell Address which came at the end of his second term, by which time the Republican and Federalist factions were already becoming baked in and he had experience with Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s fighting within his administration. I don’t know that he or other framers were thinking of that when they designed the EC during the framing of the constitution eight-ish years prior.
For all I know, however, there might be a Federalist Paper that lays out partisan moderation as a function of the Electoral College. Maybe someone with more expertise can correct me here.
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