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That's bullshit. The government at least owes you a song and dance about how it's working for you. Even if you're too poor to pay taxes. Corporations don't owe

That's bullshit. The government at least owes you a song and dance about how it's working for you. Even if you're too poor to pay taxes. Corporations don't owe you anything. When the masses have been squeezed dry they will have nothing to protect themselves from the externalities of corporations. The failure of this government is that it no longer exists. It's a corporation now. Sort of an inter-corporate security/insurance firm. What we actually need is a working government. I can't believe we still have the electoral college. Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Or what happened in 2000 with Nader and Gore. The problem isn't just government period. It's this pretension of one.

randiantech 10y ago
Governments are the more dangerous, objectively speaking. All of them have the monopoly of army and public forces. Not a single corporation in the world could be equally dangerous just based on this.
- MawNicker 10y ago
  Are you sure? There are some pretty scary private security firms. Do you actually know what they have? I hope government really does have a monopoly on force.
  - randiantech 10y ago
    No private organization has committed crimes comparable to the ones committed by authoritarian governments. I could mention USSRs pogroms, concentration camps on Germany or summary executions in Cuba, to name a few.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Approval voting. You want approval voting. Range voting is actually better but approval voting is almost as good and is a lot simpler for people to understand, and both are better than IRV.
- MawNicker 10y ago
  I agree that approval voting is simpler conceptually. I like that IRV lets me prioratize my vote. It's not that much more complicated. Counting the vote is a lot harder but the voters don't have to do that. If 60% prefer Gore to Bush and 90% of them prefer Nader to Gore then you don't get the "correct" result. You'd have Gore beating Nader with 60% vs 54% approval when 54% (the majority) of the population actually prefered Nader to Gore. They can't risk leaving Gore unapproved because then Bush might win. IRV solves this.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    You're only getting that result by having 100% of the voters who prefer Nader to Gore approve of both while 100% of the voters who prefer Gore to Nader only approve of Gore. In which case approval voting does what it's supposed to do and gives the election to the candidate with the highest approval. Moreover, the problem you're trying to solve is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is provably impossible to do. You could have a third of voters prefer each candidate but majorities prefer Nader to Gore, Gore to Bush and Bush to Nader.
    - MawNicker 10y ago
      I see what you're saying about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. I don't think I was specific enough. You're right in the general case and IRV doesn't solve that problem. What I mean is that 54% could prefer Nader outright. But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. This causes Gore to have the highest approval even though he wasn't the majority's most desired candidate. It wouldn't fix the bias towards those expected to win.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        > But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. Only the Gore voters have to do the same thing, and then Nader wins if he has more support. Because a small percentage of people will vote only for their preferred candidate and risk Bush, which will be proportional to the support that candidate has and thus give Nader the win if he actually has more support. The thing you're really objecting to is why range voting is better than approval voting. With range voting the Nader supporters can give Nader 10, Gore 9 and Bush 0, the Gore voters swap Gore and Nader and then there is less brinkmanship necessary to get the right outcome. But that's the cost of using the one which is easier to explain. And range voting is more complicated than approval voting, but it's simpler than IRV, so you're really just making the argument for range voting over approval voting. I feel like the trap you're falling into is to grade approval voting based on whether it does what IRV does. The problem with IRV is that it tends to do crazy things. So for example, imagine everybody expects that in a runoff between Bush and Nader, Bush wins. But between Bush and Gore, Gore wins. So then people who would vote for Nader can't vote for him because it would give the election to Bush again. But even weirder, Bush voters can vote for Nader in order to give the election to Bush. So IRV doesn't solve the most important problem, because people will still be clamoring for third parties not to run and for people not to vote for them for fear that they'll harm the major party most similar to them.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
There is actually quite a bit of government out there. I don't know exactly why it is the Legislature has all but collapsed, but that's not all of government. Thing is, w.r.t the economy, what can actually be done? The only thing I know of that isn't pretty disruptive is as higher inflation target - and we cannot maintain GDP growth to hit the one we have.

randiantech 10y ago

Governments are the more dangerous, objectively speaking. All of them have the monopoly of army and public forces. Not a single corporation in the world could be equally dangerous just based on this.

MawNicker 10y ago
Are you sure? There are some pretty scary private security firms. Do you actually know what they have? I hope government really does have a monopoly on force.
- randiantech 10y ago
  No private organization has committed crimes comparable to the ones committed by authoritarian governments. I could mention USSRs pogroms, concentration camps on Germany or summary executions in Cuba, to name a few.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Approval voting. You want approval voting. Range voting is actually better but approval voting is almost as good and is a lot simpler for people to understand, and both are better than IRV.

MawNicker 10y ago
I agree that approval voting is simpler conceptually. I like that IRV lets me prioratize my vote. It's not that much more complicated. Counting the vote is a lot harder but the voters don't have to do that. If 60% prefer Gore to Bush and 90% of them prefer Nader to Gore then you don't get the "correct" result. You'd have Gore beating Nader with 60% vs 54% approval when 54% (the majority) of the population actually prefered Nader to Gore. They can't risk leaving Gore unapproved because then Bush might win. IRV solves this.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  You're only getting that result by having 100% of the voters who prefer Nader to Gore approve of both while 100% of the voters who prefer Gore to Nader only approve of Gore. In which case approval voting does what it's supposed to do and gives the election to the candidate with the highest approval. Moreover, the problem you're trying to solve is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is provably impossible to do. You could have a third of voters prefer each candidate but majorities prefer Nader to Gore, Gore to Bush and Bush to Nader.
  - MawNicker 10y ago
    I see what you're saying about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. I don't think I was specific enough. You're right in the general case and IRV doesn't solve that problem. What I mean is that 54% could prefer Nader outright. But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. This causes Gore to have the highest approval even though he wasn't the majority's most desired candidate. It wouldn't fix the bias towards those expected to win.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. Only the Gore voters have to do the same thing, and then Nader wins if he has more support. Because a small percentage of people will vote only for their preferred candidate and risk Bush, which will be proportional to the support that candidate has and thus give Nader the win if he actually has more support. The thing you're really objecting to is why range voting is better than approval voting. With range voting the Nader supporters can give Nader 10, Gore 9 and Bush 0, the Gore voters swap Gore and Nader and then there is less brinkmanship necessary to get the right outcome. But that's the cost of using the one which is easier to explain. And range voting is more complicated than approval voting, but it's simpler than IRV, so you're really just making the argument for range voting over approval voting. I feel like the trap you're falling into is to grade approval voting based on whether it does what IRV does. The problem with IRV is that it tends to do crazy things. So for example, imagine everybody expects that in a runoff between Bush and Nader, Bush wins. But between Bush and Gore, Gore wins. So then people who would vote for Nader can't vote for him because it would give the election to Bush again. But even weirder, Bush voters can vote for Nader in order to give the election to Bush. So IRV doesn't solve the most important problem, because people will still be clamoring for third parties not to run and for people not to vote for them for fear that they'll harm the major party most similar to them.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

There is actually quite a bit of government out there. I don't know exactly why it is the Legislature has all but collapsed, but that's not all of government. Thing is, w.r.t the economy, what can actually be done? The only thing I know of that isn't pretty disruptive is as higher inflation target - and we cannot maintain GDP growth to hit the one we have.