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> until real revolution in US, or some sort of vigilantism movement America doesn't need a revolution, it just needs more informed and motivated voters who vot

by VieElm 12y ago

> until real revolution in US, or some sort of vigilantism movement America doesn't need a revolution, it just needs more informed and motivated voters who vote in their self-interest. Maybe that counts as a revolution, but the way you paired it with "vigiliantism movement" suggested some kind of violence or government overthrow which would be pretty awful to be honest and I hope never happens in my life time or the life time of my children.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>America doesn't need a revolution, it just needs more informed and motivated voters who vote in their self-interest. No, one of two things is needed: either a revolution, or a mass migration of voters to places where their votes actually count. Both gerrymandering and the tendency of American seat allocation to favor rural districts have strongly reduced the effect of voting on the formation of actual governments.
- gomerclaus 12y ago
  I've been screaming the "Let's migrate!" mantra for years. If we want rational politics in this country, we have to stack the polls with rational votes. As it stands, our voice is largely--in some instances, mostly--drowned out by single party voters. A pragmatic solution would be for the people who recognize the problem to migrate to the same city or county and work our way up the political ladder. I'm down; where are we moving to?
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Vermont.
  - forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
    Come to Detroit!
- twoodfin 12y ago
  "Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". >[T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuster (or the threat of it) has become a routine part of Senate business. >In this country, the ratio between Wyoming’s representation and California’s is 66 to 1. This means that if you are a software or computer engineer living in California, as is the norm here on Hacker News, you have 1/66 the Senatorial voting power as anyone at all who happens to live in Wyoming. >This pattern has policy consequences, notably ones concerning the environment. “Nations with malapportioned political systems have lower gasoline taxes (and lower pump prices) than nations with more equitable representation of urban constituencies,” two political scientists, J. Lawrence Broz and Daniel Maliniak, wrote in a recent study. Such countries also took longer to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, if they ratified it at all. These differences were, they wrote, a consequence of the fact that “rural voters in industrialized countries rely more heavily on fossil fuels than urban voters.” http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?_r=4&#/#change http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/de... Emphases mine. But please, explain to me why the voting majority should be consistently denied implementation of their ideas just to cater to people who happen to live where there aren't many other people? That's before we consider the influence of money on elections.
    - briandear 12y ago
      To not understand the Senate representational system is to not understand that the explicit purpose of the Senate was to prevent the tyranny of the majority. That was the foundation of the U.S. Constitution. The Great Compromise of 1787 was expressway to ensure smaller states had their rights protected. Without that compromise, tax dollars could be voted to improve New York City while draining the economy of less populous states. That's the genius of the American system. It is the very definition of a check and balance. The States are sovereign entities and deserve an equal voice. The House of Represenatives provides representation based on population, so that does ensure that every person is represented equally, while the Senate technically represents the states, which ensures that each state is represented equally. The foolish amendment that enabled the direct election of Senators somewhat diluted that dichotomy, but ultimately the Senate represents the states.
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
Are people supposed to look on TV or other mass media outlets for proper information and motivation? If so, I think we need a revolution because TV, Radio and now the Internet are controlled assets of the current system.
- jberryman 12y ago
  You're commenting in a thread about an article on cnn.com
  - orbifold 12y ago
    The trick is not to suppress a story, like you would with less sophisticated propaganda, but to frame it in a particular way. You can spin negative stories in a way that they either become tedious to the public quickly or by focussing on more or less irrelevant details and statements of officials about the story. There are probably a multitude of other tricks and techniques that are well known in the public relations industry and by now huge offices with many smart people whose sole job it is to direct a story in a particular way.
    - tripzilch 12y ago
      See the great BBC series "Babylon" for a taste of that ... Hell, the spindoctor is even the good guy (woman) (at least for now).

by VieElm 12y ago

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>America doesn't need a revolution, it just needs more informed and motivated voters who vote in their self-interest. No, one of two things is needed: either a revolution, or a mass migration of voters to places where their votes actually count. Both gerrymandering and the tendency of American seat allocation to favor rural districts have strongly reduced the effect of voting on the formation of actual governments.

gomerclaus 12y ago
I've been screaming the "Let's migrate!" mantra for years. If we want rational politics in this country, we have to stack the polls with rational votes. As it stands, our voice is largely--in some instances, mostly--drowned out by single party voters. A pragmatic solution would be for the people who recognize the problem to migrate to the same city or county and work our way up the political ladder. I'm down; where are we moving to?
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Vermont.
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  Come to Detroit!
twoodfin 12y ago
"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". >[T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuster (or the threat of it) has become a routine part of Senate business. >In this country, the ratio between Wyoming’s representation and California’s is 66 to 1. This means that if you are a software or computer engineer living in California, as is the norm here on Hacker News, you have 1/66 the Senatorial voting power as anyone at all who happens to live in Wyoming. >This pattern has policy consequences, notably ones concerning the environment. “Nations with malapportioned political systems have lower gasoline taxes (and lower pump prices) than nations with more equitable representation of urban constituencies,” two political scientists, J. Lawrence Broz and Daniel Maliniak, wrote in a recent study. Such countries also took longer to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, if they ratified it at all. These differences were, they wrote, a consequence of the fact that “rural voters in industrialized countries rely more heavily on fossil fuels than urban voters.” http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?_r=4&#/#change http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/de... Emphases mine. But please, explain to me why the voting majority should be consistently denied implementation of their ideas just to cater to people who happen to live where there aren't many other people? That's before we consider the influence of money on elections.
  - briandear 12y ago
    To not understand the Senate representational system is to not understand that the explicit purpose of the Senate was to prevent the tyranny of the majority. That was the foundation of the U.S. Constitution. The Great Compromise of 1787 was expressway to ensure smaller states had their rights protected. Without that compromise, tax dollars could be voted to improve New York City while draining the economy of less populous states. That's the genius of the American system. It is the very definition of a check and balance. The States are sovereign entities and deserve an equal voice. The House of Represenatives provides representation based on population, so that does ensure that every person is represented equally, while the Senate technically represents the states, which ensures that each state is represented equally. The foolish amendment that enabled the direct election of Senators somewhat diluted that dichotomy, but ultimately the Senate represents the states.

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

Are people supposed to look on TV or other mass media outlets for proper information and motivation? If so, I think we need a revolution because TV, Radio and now the Internet are controlled assets of the current system.

jberryman 12y ago
You're commenting in a thread about an article on cnn.com
- orbifold 12y ago
  The trick is not to suppress a story, like you would with less sophisticated propaganda, but to frame it in a particular way. You can spin negative stories in a way that they either become tedious to the public quickly or by focussing on more or less irrelevant details and statements of officials about the story. There are probably a multitude of other tricks and techniques that are well known in the public relations industry and by now huge offices with many smart people whose sole job it is to direct a story in a particular way.
  - tripzilch 12y ago
    See the great BBC series "Babylon" for a taste of that ... Hell, the spindoctor is even the good guy (woman) (at least for now).