The EC can work but make it a contest for each electoral vote, and remove the states from the equation entirely. California being safe blue and Texas being safe red don’t matter, each district is counted for one electoral vote, and the states don’t get extra votes anymore.
That just seems like popular vote with extra steps. I’m not sure, but I feel like mathematically there would be no way in which the result of the EC would differ from the popular vote under such a system. I suppose it might still be possible to skew it far enough to shift the outcome using some extreme gerrymandering.
It is a popular vote with extra steps. That’s literally what it is.
The extra steps mean that politicians can’t purely focus on population centers, rural communities would count for the same vote. each district should be of similar population size, and every district counts for one.
each district should be of similar population size, and every district counts for one.
seems to run counter to this:
The extra steps mean that politicians can’t purely focus on population centers, rural communities would count for the same vote.
As an example, lets say you have a rural area with 1000 people in it, and you decide that each district should contain 1000 people, so that entire area is one gigantic district. Nearby you have a city with 10,000 people, so you split the city into 10 districts. That city still counts 10 times what that one giant rural area does. The only way I can see where you could make the rural area count for more is with extreme gerrymandering where you snake little bits of every rural area in to include a chunk of the city population thereby diluting the strength of the cities vote by smearing part of it over the rural areas.
I see absolutely no reason why we should adopt a system that exists solely for the purpose of making gerrymandering possible, and I see no reason why doing things this way would make any difference over just using the popular vote if you aren’t gerrymandering.
Many democracies don’t have the people directly vote on their leader. Parliamentary systems typically have the people voting for a representative who will then vote for the Prime Minister on their behalf.
This would not really change the two party system. All it would mean is that you genuinely need a majority of votes and not the majority of a weird convoluted combo of states.
First-past-the-post voting systems result in two conflicting parties. This would entrench the two party system. The current system is not good, but popular vote is only slightly better.
Tue votes of the flyover states would matter exactly as much as the votes of any other arbitrary subsection of the country with the same number of people. That’s the point.
Fun bit of trivia: which state had the most Republican voters in the 2020 election? Answer: California had more R votes than Texas or Florida or any deep-red state. But neither party gave a shit what California Republicans wanted: Democrats knew that the Electoral votes would go for Biden no matter what, so they didn’t need to campaign there or court anyone’s vote. And Republicans knew that there was no way to get even one of those Electoral votes, so their time and money was best spent campaigning elsewhere.
I hate this argument. There are still a lot of votes in the flyover states. The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
Republicans still win the Ohio governor’s election despite 5 major metropolitan areas in the state.
Also there are Republican votes in New York and California that get discarded currently.
This isn’t a game, this is just making the thing fair.
I think what they’re speaking to is how such a change may alter the course of a presidential campaign. As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.
Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami. Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”
Conversely, the Republican campaign (not even considering the existing insanity) becomes “everywhere else.” They can push the message of “big city Democrats want to destroy you” even more convincingly.
Such an outcome strengthens the “not my president” sentiment (on either side), and just further aggravates partisanship. I’m not saying eliminating the electoral college is a change that could never be made, but I definitely think this is a bad time. It will feel like exclusion and alienation and in politics perception is reality.
For the obvious follow-on question “when is a good time,” I don’t have a pat answer and I can’t even speculate if that will be in 4, or 12, or even 20 years. But it needs to be a time when there’s far less immediate friction between the two leading parties, or it’s just going to be another wedge opening the divide.
The problem with your whole argument is that ultimately it comes down to the fact that the literal minority might be unhappy that they didn't get pick the winner over the will of the majority, and that might make them feel that it's exclusionary to them.
Such an outcome strengthens the “not my president” sentiment (on either side),
By definition, the majority will actually get their chosen candidate as president. Do you know what strengthens "not my president" sentiment? Having a privileged, autocratic minority choose the president, overriding the will of the voters.
Well, our campaigns are ridiculously antiquated with the campaign season being kicked off in…Iowa? And silly photo-ops of them eating county fair food and so on, as if that is somehow representative of America in the past several decades.
Sorry, most people are not farmers, and it’s absurd to pretend as if that is “middle America”.
It would make far more sense to kick things off on the coasts. Where all the people are.
If you’re still voting based on whether or not someone visited you or not I’m also giving you exactly 0 sympathy. It doesn’t matter, that’s just a show. Jason Aldean can visit all the county fairs he wants, that doesn’t make him a real country boy or mean he’s “with you.” The same is true of a politician. What you should care about is how their policies affect you and the rest of the country.
Not to mention areas already have disproportionate representation via the Senate. If you can’t get your case across to the majority of the county or by senate representation… maybe you don’t have a very good case.
We should be trying to convince a majority of people about something, not forcing some arbitrary “win” that allows a minority to have disproportionate power over the majority in multiple areas of the country. We’re closer than ever to having “taxation without representation” as is, and it’s getting worse (Gore only had ~500,000 more votes, Clinton had ~3,000,000).
That’s 3,000,000 people that didn’t get their voices heard at all, and that Trump promptly told to go pound sand (even in the face of a natural disaster forbes.com/…/trump-administration-refuses-to-give…).
Except they can say whatever politics they feel like that day, and the average American is neither smart nor informed enough to predict how policies will affect them.
The only solution is to go back to supporting ethical politicians instead of the ones who are best at saying what you want to hear. And that will only happen if we start actually educating citizens instead of just teaching them to check educational boxes.
As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.
That’s currently not the case: in most states, the vote isn’t close, so we know before the campaign even begins how most states will vote. There’s no reason for Republicans to appeal to Kansans, because Kansas will vote R no matter what. Likewise, there’s no point for Democrats to appeal to Kansans because it won’t do them any good.
Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami.
There’s a word in politics for a candidate who wins in big cities, and nowhere else: “loser”.
Check the demographics. Get a list of the 20 biggest cities in the US and add them up. You’ll see that’s only about 30% of the vote. So even if you somehow managed to get everyone in the big cities to vote for you, including children under 18, felons, and people on student visas, that still wouldn’t be enough to determine the election.
Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”
Just in passing, there are more Republicans in the California sticks than the total population of several other states. If the president were elected by popular vote, candidates could no more ignore those voters than California gubernatorial candidates can, today.
The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
When you’ve become accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.
The “fix” for the problem of equality isn’t removing voter power from the flyovers it’s ADDING voter power to the large coastal states like California and doing it is so damned simple. Uncap the size of the House of Representatives by changing the Re-Aportionment Act of 1929.
Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on the districting process in each state. We’d certainly see new Republican’s in Congress from California but we’d also see new Democrats in Congress from Texas.
If that happens then it happens. The intent of increasing the size of the HoR isn’t so that the Correct Party, whichever you judge that to be, would win. The intent is restore its ability to correctly represent the Citizens of this country. Doing that will have a direct and positive impact on the EC and other things.
Not quite, the number of house reps is not strictly proportional to the population of each state. California has 704,566 people per house seat, while e.g. Wyoming has 568,300 per house seat. This means a Californian house vote is worth roughly 80% of a Wyoming house vote.
No, but a Kansan’s vote should have the same weight as a New Yorker’s or Californian’s, or even a Pennsylvanian or Michigander. Not all Kansans vote the same way, and it would be nice to have a system that recognizes this.
They get to vote, don’t they? They just don’t get to have their vote given extra privileges just because they live in a sparsely populated area, that’s all.
And so, neither party is going to bother trying to court your vote: one can take you for granted, and the other will write you off. So I hope you have the same concerns as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, because that’s what you’re getting.
Just think about it. You’re born filthy rich. You inherit 500 million dollars, in the 1980’s. You learn to live off of loans from banks, how to inflate the worth of your “properties,” and how to deflate the worth of your “properties” to scam banks, because unlike your father, you’re an absolute moron when it comes to making an honest buck. Even with the army of lawyers and accountants you inherited from dad.
So when American and European banks stop loaning you money because you default on all your loans, you need a new source of income. Your best bud Super New York Mayor Man ruined your daddy’s connections with the Pizza Guys, so when some guy who sounded like Chekov from Star Trek called and said he wanted to buy 50 condos at the same time, you knew God was Real.
Life was good. You still hadn’t made a single honest buck, but boy did those Russian guys like their condos. You even had your own TV show, where everyone could see how much you loved being a bully and an asshole. You even had your own beauty contest, and saw lots and lots of that sweet, sweet 18 year old T and A.
You. Had. It. Made. Millions of dollars. Eastern Block ex-porn wife who couldn’t stay off of the phone with someone named Vlad.
It could have went on until you had your stroke on your gold plated shitter.
But no, your ego is so fragile, you’re such a raging narcissist than you have to play King of the World, too.
What a fucking idiot.
Edit: I didn’t mean to imply Fred Trump was honest. I meant that he actually made his money, unlike Donald, who inherited his.
It’s why society sucks. The people who could change things for the better don’t. They could make things better or just retire. Instead they make things awful.
We have no idea how much running for president was Trump idea, vs Russia’s. Trump didn’t want the job, Melania definitely didn’t want him to win, and Trump thought about running a few times before but never cared to do it. He just doesn’t have the balls himself, he’s a huge coward. And Russia provided a lot of assistance and benefited immensely from it. More so than Trump himself.
So I’m betting there was a call in 2014 or 2015 between Russia and Trump. My bet is there was blackmail or promises made if he ran.
Now he’s hooked on the attention, but the first time around it’s dubious it was 100% what he wanted to do.
Seriously, the only thing you have to do to manipulate a narcissist into doing what you want is to kiss their asses, and tell them what they want to hear. It’s that stupid easy.
Putin destroyed Clinton because he knew she would bring down NATO on his head over any of his invasion plans, just like Biden is doing now. Trump talked openly about leaving NATO. I wonder why.
He also allegedly liked busting in on sub-18 year olds at those pageants as well. He also allegedly had a long history of using “illegal aliens” as labor so he wouldn’t have to pay them and they had no recourse.
Listen/watch episode 300A & 300B of The Dollop podcast on Trump and be amazed he went this long without someone (he couldn’t counter-sue away) bringing charges.
I read this as Gen Z doesn’t tolerate the boomer/older Gen X intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic bullshit that younger Gen X/Older Millennials had to, and a lot of folks receiving this deserved pushback don’t like it.
Thus…proving the point? “If a person thinks I can’t handle disagreement, I bet it’s because they’re some kind of asshole nazi or something! It would be wrong of me to tolerate a difference of opinion with them!”
If the only disagreement you can tolerate is irrelevant minutia, then you aren’t actually tolerant. “I’m totally tolerant, as long as our opinions don’t differ on race, culture, gender, sexual relations, work, religion, or politics” is pretty weak sauce.
Yeah if someone thinks I and people I’m friends with shouldn’t exist than I’m not gonna want to work with them. American Republicans are actively trying to remove any legal protections or rights trans (and LGBT in general) people have, and anybody who shares their views is helping them along. Why on god’s green earth would I see that as anything less than an existential threat?
if you hold a view that is intolerant, I will not tolerate you. simple as. we don’t have to agree but you can have basic fucking decency (don’t be racist)
You guys literally couldn’t be leaning into Gen-Z stereotypes any harder.
“Some guy says Gen-Z doesn’t have the ability to respectfully disagree.”
“Man FUCK that guy, I bet he’s an intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic piece of shit, and that’s why he can’t get along with us, because it’s definitely not our problem!”
“Uhh, it sorta feels like you’re demonstrating that you really don’t have the ability to disagree.”
<downvote><downvote><downvote><downvote><downvote> “Lol just cuz I reported a guy who said a thing that hurt my feelings, does that mean we can’t be friends?! Lol jk fuck you too buddy!”
No, sure, you’re totally right, you guys are a real delight to have in conversations and debates.
Interesting examples for irrelevant minutia. Pretty sure a lot of those things would be very important, particularly race, gender, and sexual orientation.
I mean those are pretty major things, especially if you’re part of one of the affected minorities. If I were trans I wouldn’t really want to work with a coworker who insists on misgendering me and makes a fuss out of me using the right bathroom.
If it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t come up. People can agree to disagree, also. But there are also cases where the disagreement is so fundamental that it makes it pretty hard to respect someone or even want to be in the same room as them.
There was a point where Europeans were massacring and torturing each other over religious differences, for centuries. Protestants and Catholics considered each other literal heretics, and mortal enemies.
Then they developed this idea of tolerance, and decided that your religious beliefs were your own business. And that worked amazingly well! We can all just get on getting on. This was a huge deal, protestants tolerating catholics and vice versa was every bit as hard as trans people tolerating transphobic people. But it worked, and eventually the differences faded into irrelevance.
And it turned out that the same attitude was great for progress in general: who you love and who you sleep with is your business, and after a decade or two: you know, we’ve all got pretty used to the idea of people being gay. They wanna get married? Sure, I don’t see why not. Tolerance was the basis of most progress in the past few centuries.
And now Gen-Z (or probably just terminally-online people, but as a ratio that’s more of Gen-Z than any earlier group) wants to flip the table. Tolerating ‘intolerance’ is practically a crime! Intolerance, BTW, is when you don’t have the correct set of opinions. People who don’t have the right opinions are monsters, and must be harassed, deplatformed, fired, etc. The wrong opinions are violence.
I’ve seen reactions to ‘bad’ opinions that I would call hysterical.
Brooklyn is right by Parma. Parma is known by locals as having a high concentration of, as you put it, “right leaning poors”. We just call them racists. But they’re mostly boomers who are dieing out.
That whole area of Cleveland suburbs is pretty interesting. It’s a lot of diverse blue collar neighborhoods surrounded by more affluent areas. I’m honestly surprised by this story, as the youth of the area tend to be pretty progressive.
I think the alarming rise of ultra right movements is because of the failure of leftist governments around the world. So yes, ultra right will come, we’ll get tired of that, and then ultra leftists will come again. It’s a vicious circle.
It’s in line with the history of most of South America. Swinging from far left to far right because they both lie and promise economic prosperity while lining their and their friends pockets.
Germany had 16 years of conservative rule and still has the fat right surge
For them everything is left
And it had nothing to do with governments getting successful or not it’s just social media connecting all the racists that previously where to scared to speak out and now there’s proof that 20-30% of people are just racists and probably always where
In the case of Argentina we come from 20 years of mostly anti-entrepreneur left leaning govts that left us with 110% inflation, and over 40% poor and rising.
Sounds like a good case of “fuck around and find out” to me. Acting aggressively and being a douche just to get views on YouTube is a good way to get shot. Especially when the shooter specifically asked him to stop several times. I really do not like douche nozzles like this guy.
No, im someone that never uses amazon and has never had a problem getting anything from other retailers. Yall are the ones came in assuming no one could compete because their prices are too low, but turns out theyre too high.
First they set them low and take a loss while they undercut their competitors. Then, when the competition goes out of business, they can jack their prices way up. And at that point it’s much more difficult for someone to start a new business and compete with the behemoth that is Amazon.
I’m not quite sure you are thinking of a monopoly in the way everyone else is. They don’t mean Amazon controls literally everything but it’s a big enough piece of online retail that price ranges are controlled by Amazon. They also take a high percentage of all transactions through their website.
A monopoly means you have low competition for a product or service, so customers have to use you. Amazon is shitty, ive boycotted them for a long time, but they dont have any monopolies, people just dont have standards. Theres readily available alternatives for everything they offer.
Its like im watching a bunch of cardiac patients suing KFC for all the buckets of fried chicken they willingly ate.
Remember that AZ takes a percentage cut of each sale and is also able to ship cheaper than basically anyone because of their position in the market. So imagine you have a product, and in order to make a profit from said product you have to charge $x. But in order to profit after Amazon’s fees you have to charge $x + $y on Amazon’s platform. So that’s where the “prices too high” cones from. If your product does well on amazon they’ll make their own version and sell it for less than $x. Now you get less sales on AZ and you can’t go back to selling on your own site because you can’t compete with your higher shipping costs, plus AZ can run at a loss on the product they copied from you until you’re out of business… This is where the “prices too low” comes from; the price AZ can offer is too low for you to compete with. After you go out of business, AZ can charge whatever they want. So you see “prices too high” again.
When you start selling a new product you take on risk because there might not be a sustainable market for it. AZ never has to take this risk, but they can reap the rewards from your risk if it does well.
Because AZ represents almost 40% of the ecommerce market, because no other company is as horizontally and vertically integrated, because no other company has the same stranglehold on third party sellers. I’m not defending the practices of other retailers; that isn’t what this lawsuit is about. It’s the practices COMBINED with the unique position that AZ holds where they control so, soooooo much more than any other retailer. Honestly AZ is like textbook monopolistic and if you still can’t see how that’s a bad thing I can’t really help you any more.
I’ll give an anecdote that I experienced just now. I bought a computer component, but I had to dig through the “other buying options” to find it on Amazon. The default recommended listing had a price of $207, delivered to me by 2 October. The listing I eventually found was priced at $206, delivered by 28 September. So it cost less and would arrive sooner, the only difference is that it was a third-party seller and not Amazon.
Amazon sells many items I sell in my brick and mortar shop for less than I can purchase them from distributors. Many times at not much more than my distributors pay. This causes me to either not be able to sell the items, or sell at a loss.
Amazon, like Walmart, targets smaller retailers with undercutting prices. The difference is Walmart does it on a local store by store basis and Amazon goes after entire sections of online sales.
The company keeps prices higher by deterring online sellers who offer cheaper alternatives by burying their results on its platform making them “invisible,” the FTC claimed. Amazon made it expensive for sellers to sell products on other platforms when they are part of its fulfillment service, which then makes it tougher for these businesses to compete against the retailer.
The regulator also accused Amazon of “deliberately” flooding a customer’s search results with ads that make it a less pleasant experience when they search for products on the platform. The company also elevated its own products over others that might be of better quality in its search results and charges sellers fees that are about 50 percent of their revenues, the FTC alleged.
I took 10 seconds to look more into it for you. You’re asking a lot of questions that can be easily answered by reading about it
I think writers need this to be over so they can get back to work. This isn’t just fun summer break going on here, peoples lives are being put on hold. Doesn’t mean it’s a good deal though.
So when they inevitably do, will you crown me and say kind words about my prowess in predicting the future? Or maybe just recognize that the writers simply want this over…
If I turn out to be wrong, would me saying “guess I was wrong” not be enough for you? I have to bow and scrape at your feet? Really? Because if that’s what you expect me to do, you can go get fucked.
Likely what happened is writers are seeing what a mess AI generated art is, so they're letting the industry to have this as it might end up in a quite bad for them.
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