> Blame the voters. Voters have agency. Meta: I appreciate your candidness in getting to the point, I wish more political debate was like this instead of wrapp

> Blame the voters. Voters have agency. Meta: I appreciate your candidness in getting to the point, I wish more political debate was like this instead of wrapped in layers of fluff. I disagree though, and I'd go further and say selectively assigning agency - especially on a binary basis - distorts the solution space and waters down any good faith attempts to further the discussion, albeit unintentionally. Our implementation of democracy is not a magically balanced game where incentives line up in perfection. As a result, you cannot point to an outcome and blame the players any more than you can do in a video game with a shitty meta. In reality, players interpret and influence the rules of the game itself. In particular, our modern version of democracy is based on the fundamentals of marketing - where actors influence (aka nudge) aggregate behavior and sentiments, to get what they want. This system is vulnerable to feedback cycles leading to large concentrations of power - both political and corporate. The last decade is a prime example of both - not just in the US, but globally.