4 ms·

I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote. It being shutdown is more evidence o

by slg 9mo ago

I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote. It being shutdown is more evidence of how broken the American political system is rather than an indication of the will of the people.

cucumber3732842 9mo ago
I think it's a pretty strong condemnation of the CIA that they can't find something more important to flamboyantly kill though. https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-politics https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-pol... (you can stop reading after the first couple paragraphs, it goes into federal budget politics circa 2013)
simonw 9mo ago
Right, World Factbook single issue voters probably don't exist. That aside, something that frustrates me about US politics is that I rarely see any evidence of consideration given to taxpayers who want value for their money as opposed to having their taxes cut. I pay taxes here. I like it when those taxes spent on wildly ROI-positive initiatives like the World Factbook. The Trump lot appear to be killing off a huge range of useful things that I like getting in exchange for the taxes I pay.
- oldmanhorton 9mo ago
  Sure, but this is based on a fundamental trust in governments ability to spend money effectively. The ineffective spending has been in the news way more than the effective spending, so some people take this to mean all of the spending is ineffective. I don’t know how to square this skepticism of government against very vocal “patriotism” coming from the trump camp, but humans can contain multitudes, I guess?
  - brightball 8mo ago
    It's a simple question of economics and observation. In a free marketplace, when a product, service or company is no longer useful...it dies. This creates a natural incentive to constantly improve, operate more efficiently or expand into new areas where it can create value. With government spending, this doesn't happen because there's no incentive for it to happen. Programs are created and then they grow, perpetually, forever. My goodness, I still remember Bill Clinton proudly showing a balanced budget. I remember George Bush Jr running with one of his biggest campaign points around fixing Social Security. How we got from that era of energy for fiscal responsibility to $39 trillion in debt is...maddening.
- redeeman 8mo ago
  wouldnt it then be significantly better if you and others who want "value for their money" spend your own money making a world factbook, and then let people who dont much care not spend on it? isnt this fair and equitable? you wouldnt pay for your neighbors lawnmower or cybertruck either?
  - simonw 8mo ago
    No.
    - redeeman 8mo ago
      well you know, I could use a cybertruck, i suppose you'll step up and chip in?
  - ligne 8mo ago
    This is all information the government will need to collate anyway. How much money do you think they'll save by not publishing it for others to use, exactly?
    - redeeman 8mo ago
      "will need".... and why exactly do they need that? I could easily envision that the government in fact does not collate such
- selimthegrim 8mo ago
  RIP Carmen Sandiego players.
- brightball 8mo ago
  I think a tremendous amount of people want value for their money. It's one of the reasons so many people talk about cutting government spending where it's wasteful, operating with a balanced budget and reducing the trillions of dollars in debt that we've accrued...which will eventually devalue all of our money.
bdcravens 9mo ago
As a single issue, probably not. However, the meta-issue that they did vote for was eliminating anything the government pays for (other than military, ICE, or related to drilling oil)
- slg 9mo ago
  Maybe in the philosophical sense in that this is what their vote wrought, but there is absolutely no way to conclude that people wanted their institutions dismantled. The number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump was nearly identical in 2020 and 2024 once we compensate for population growth (22.4% of the population vs 22.7%). Anyone making drastic conclusions on the will of the people is just making something up whether they are conscious of that or not.
  - jfengel 9mo ago
    What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024. So perhaps the number of people who wanted institutions dismantled remained the same. But the will of the people as a whole changed sharply, mostly because of people who decided it wasn't worth the effort to oppose it.
    - slg 8mo ago
      >What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024. How do you know this? How can you say the deciding factor was dismantling institutions rather than inflation, Palestine, misogyny against a female candidate, or any number of countless other good or bad reasons to have stayed home? You can't treat a single binary choice for red or blue like it was a referendum on every single individual issue.
- swed420 8mo ago
  The parent's point seems to be that since most voters of both corporate parties have pretty much universally internalized and accepted they're voting for the "lesser of two evils," it's safe to conclude our political system is captured and has been for decades. Furthermore, 1/3 of people refusing to vote is not solely out of laziness. Many of them have concluded the system is FUBAR. We're given two shit options which come about through a broken primary process and is reported on by monopolistic media. The news media and social media is siloed in such a way that people filter into one of two corporation-approved spheres of groupthink. These two spheres manufacture consent for each other in numerous ways, one of which is exemplified above. The good cop/bad cop setup makes it look like things are constantly getting broken only to have the illusion of being re-fixed by the other group, as measured by a pre-approved narratives that are disseminated. The COVID pandemic is another great example. Sadly the CDC has been a disgrace under all recent administrations of both parties and has lots of blood on its hands: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co... Unfortunately the WHO has similar issues: https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1q87aki/face_masks_inadequate_and_should_be_swapped_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1q87aki... Almost as if capital interests are running the show. But what are we fighting about in 2026? That's right, whether we should or should not be affiliated with the WHO, and to what extent our CDC should be funded. Two broken institutions and a performative fight about them. Meanwhile millions have/will see their grave earlier than they otherwise would have, thanks to long COVID (many of whom will never even make that connection, including their doctors who were spoonfed the "vax and relax" / "back to normal" messaging in service to an archaic consumption-based economy.
overfeed 8mo ago
> I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote That's just the specifics: Steve Bannon explicitly made it clear that one goal was to "dismantle the administrative state"
- red-iron-pine 8mo ago
  Bannon is a global security threat, and a dangerous ideologue far surpassing Dugan

by slg 9mo ago

cucumber3732842 9mo ago

I think it's a pretty strong condemnation of the CIA that they can't find something more important to flamboyantly kill though. https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-politics https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-pol... (you can stop reading after the first couple paragraphs, it goes into federal budget politics circa 2013)

simonw 9mo ago

Right, World Factbook single issue voters probably don't exist. That aside, something that frustrates me about US politics is that I rarely see any evidence of consideration given to taxpayers who want value for their money as opposed to having their taxes cut. I pay taxes here. I like it when those taxes spent on wildly ROI-positive initiatives like the World Factbook. The Trump lot appear to be killing off a huge range of useful things that I like getting in exchange for the taxes I pay.

oldmanhorton 9mo ago
Sure, but this is based on a fundamental trust in governments ability to spend money effectively. The ineffective spending has been in the news way more than the effective spending, so some people take this to mean all of the spending is ineffective. I don’t know how to square this skepticism of government against very vocal “patriotism” coming from the trump camp, but humans can contain multitudes, I guess?
- brightball 8mo ago
  It's a simple question of economics and observation. In a free marketplace, when a product, service or company is no longer useful...it dies. This creates a natural incentive to constantly improve, operate more efficiently or expand into new areas where it can create value. With government spending, this doesn't happen because there's no incentive for it to happen. Programs are created and then they grow, perpetually, forever. My goodness, I still remember Bill Clinton proudly showing a balanced budget. I remember George Bush Jr running with one of his biggest campaign points around fixing Social Security. How we got from that era of energy for fiscal responsibility to $39 trillion in debt is...maddening.
redeeman 8mo ago
wouldnt it then be significantly better if you and others who want "value for their money" spend your own money making a world factbook, and then let people who dont much care not spend on it? isnt this fair and equitable? you wouldnt pay for your neighbors lawnmower or cybertruck either?
- simonw 8mo ago
  No.
  - redeeman 8mo ago
    well you know, I could use a cybertruck, i suppose you'll step up and chip in?
- ligne 8mo ago
  This is all information the government will need to collate anyway. How much money do you think they'll save by not publishing it for others to use, exactly?
  - redeeman 8mo ago
    "will need".... and why exactly do they need that? I could easily envision that the government in fact does not collate such
selimthegrim 8mo ago
RIP Carmen Sandiego players.
brightball 8mo ago
I think a tremendous amount of people want value for their money. It's one of the reasons so many people talk about cutting government spending where it's wasteful, operating with a balanced budget and reducing the trillions of dollars in debt that we've accrued...which will eventually devalue all of our money.

bdcravens 9mo ago

As a single issue, probably not. However, the meta-issue that they did vote for was eliminating anything the government pays for (other than military, ICE, or related to drilling oil)

slg 9mo ago
Maybe in the philosophical sense in that this is what their vote wrought, but there is absolutely no way to conclude that people wanted their institutions dismantled. The number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump was nearly identical in 2020 and 2024 once we compensate for population growth (22.4% of the population vs 22.7%). Anyone making drastic conclusions on the will of the people is just making something up whether they are conscious of that or not.
- jfengel 9mo ago
  What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024. So perhaps the number of people who wanted institutions dismantled remained the same. But the will of the people as a whole changed sharply, mostly because of people who decided it wasn't worth the effort to oppose it.
  - slg 8mo ago
    >What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024. How do you know this? How can you say the deciding factor was dismantling institutions rather than inflation, Palestine, misogyny against a female candidate, or any number of countless other good or bad reasons to have stayed home? You can't treat a single binary choice for red or blue like it was a referendum on every single individual issue.
swed420 8mo ago
The parent's point seems to be that since most voters of both corporate parties have pretty much universally internalized and accepted they're voting for the "lesser of two evils," it's safe to conclude our political system is captured and has been for decades. Furthermore, 1/3 of people refusing to vote is not solely out of laziness. Many of them have concluded the system is FUBAR. We're given two shit options which come about through a broken primary process and is reported on by monopolistic media. The news media and social media is siloed in such a way that people filter into one of two corporation-approved spheres of groupthink. These two spheres manufacture consent for each other in numerous ways, one of which is exemplified above. The good cop/bad cop setup makes it look like things are constantly getting broken only to have the illusion of being re-fixed by the other group, as measured by a pre-approved narratives that are disseminated. The COVID pandemic is another great example. Sadly the CDC has been a disgrace under all recent administrations of both parties and has lots of blood on its hands: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co... Unfortunately the WHO has similar issues: https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1q87aki/face_masks_inadequate_and_should_be_swapped_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1q87aki... Almost as if capital interests are running the show. But what are we fighting about in 2026? That's right, whether we should or should not be affiliated with the WHO, and to what extent our CDC should be funded. Two broken institutions and a performative fight about them. Meanwhile millions have/will see their grave earlier than they otherwise would have, thanks to long COVID (many of whom will never even make that connection, including their doctors who were spoonfed the "vax and relax" / "back to normal" messaging in service to an archaic consumption-based economy.

overfeed 8mo ago

> I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote That's just the specifics: Steve Bannon explicitly made it clear that one goal was to "dismantle the administrative state"

red-iron-pine 8mo ago
Bannon is a global security threat, and a dangerous ideologue far surpassing Dugan