🔥 perhaps this should have a themed title. but, so far this year, there are no themes. "Iowa" was 2024, and "North Dakota" was 2025.
i feel like i have been driftless for the past 10 days.
unproductive. unsatisfied. unemployed in a bad way. 💡 as opposed to the good way of rich, working on side projects, and doing the stay-at-home labor of the relationship
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so the solution is the THC.
and solving all the problems of the world.
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one of the things In The News is re-districting. the Democrats want to do it in Virginia. the Republicans want to do it in Florida. and a Calvinball of rules and partisan judges will decide what ends up happening. ⚙️ it's only partly the fault of partisan judges. the morass of laws is the fault of legislators. constitutional amendments in Virginia and Florida. the Voting Rights Act. but also, decades of interpretation. and a critical mass of the federal bench that will ignore the law on behalf of a political agenda.
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the solution, in theory, is multi-member districts with members chosen by single transferable vote - party list system. the details are a bit complicated. but: if 30% of the people want Democrats, 30% want Republicans, 20% want Labor, and 20% want Conservative, the elected members roughly match that. no map-making.
some of the details are solvable:
- in the US, you probably can't have districts that cross state lines. so does Wyoming have 5 reps, or just 1 (and thus a single-member district)
- the party system inevitably mutates as a result of the electoral system
- drawing the multi-member districts still has some power
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the biggest problem is that the fundamental flaw of democracy remains.
- elect some people
- a major problem arises
- the elected people study the issue and come to a solution
- stochastically, a lot of uninformed people feel the other way
- they elect new people, on the platform of being unreasonable and uninformed
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what is the purpose of government?
what was the purpose of government? how did it come into being?
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government provides:
- social services / safety net
- public works / infrastructure
- military
- education
- currency
- court system
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government is how a bunch of thugs and bandits convinced themselves they were something else ...