It grabs attention. Tell everyone the world is getting better daily, the long term trend of violent crime and war is actually trending downwards. We are making progress towards elimination of diseases, hunger and poverty. No one bats an eyelid. Say the world is verging toward WW3 and imminent destruction is here and everyone pays attention to you.
Its easy to be in a fatalistic mindset. Its easy to say its all going to shit, What’s the point? It’s difficult to be positive. Its difficult to take action. No matter how small. Its difficult to see the ultimate impact of small positive acts. But every small act can and does make a difference. At least to the person it benefits. Its even more difficult to face the fact that all the positive can be easily undone by one guy pressing a button. Its difficult to keep trying despite that fact.
We could very easily vote on most issues ourselves using the wide array of technology at our fingertips, with a similar or possible better sense of security than what politicians currently provide.
But the only way for that to happen is for politicians to make it happen, and who would vote to eliminate their own job? No one.
Hmm… I’m not sure I agree with this completely despite politicians obviously being problematic. At least at its core, the rationale is that the significant majority of people aren’t aware enough of all the contentious (or even mundane) issues in society, so we elect people we trust to make our decisions for us. I just checked Canada’s recent bills in Parliament, and the voter turnout for something like this would be almost nothing:
Bill C-16 - An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023
Obviously our current system is very easily corruptible and that needs to be addressed, but getting rid of politicians altogether wouldn’t necessarily fix our society, despite how terrible they’re making it right now.
Who would draft new legislation? I know it’s not just politicians that do this but their staff helps a ton. I just don’t see a good system of John Everyman drafting a bill that makes sense. That said I would like to see politicians get fixed cause the system is clearly broken.
Well, the second problem would be figuring out who curates the system. If you’ve ever voted on a referendum you’ll probably know what I’m talking about. You can make any proposal sound awesome/horrible if you leave out the right details.
If you’ve ever organized to resist a referendum you’ve probably also experienced the “we’ll just rephrase this and try again later” effect, wherein special interests just need to stubbornly keep pushing until the opposition voters get sick of participating in the polls.
I don’t think these are unsolvable problems, but they do inherently require setting up a representative beaurocracy of unelected technocrats – an apparent oxymoron. It’s gotta be someone’s job to run the machine and ideally you want them to be looking out for the people above all else.
So, how to play kingmaker? Well, if we take literal kings & elected representatives off the table, what remains is a model akin to academia, wherein credentials & seniority are prioritized above most else. It’s not a bulletproof system (none are), but if you squint hard enough the EU sort of exemplifies what this model could look like – just replace the delegates with smartphones, essentially.
I have $150k in mortgage debt on a house worth about twice that. Plus a couple more years car debt.
What really gets me is my health insurer severed relations with the county in May and I got hospitalized two weeks ago. So now I will owe the $8,000 out of network deductible. That pisses me off.
They still exist in most towns and cities, and if not a mall, a strip mall usually has some inside portion. Smaller with less options, but still fits the bill.
Oh that would make sense. I’m in the Midwestern US and mostly we just have strip malls and regular shops (and Walmart of course) in our town of 13K. Malls around here are only found in the larger towns of ~50K or more.
Her bio: “crypto researcher & critic, software engineer, wikipedian”
She is follows the developments in the crypto/blockchain world and explains them to lay audiences (she thinks it’s horse crap and a scam). Right now, she writes near-daily updates on the Sam Bankman-Fried trial.
“web3 is going great” is her creation: @web3isgreat
Your politicians, along with business leaders, have made sure to remove those places as much as possible.
But I have to ask: Is talking not allowed in American libraries? Cause where I live, libraries are places where you can sit, talk, eat, drink, play board games, and of course read. There’s different rooms for different activities.
Some libraries have this in the US, but not all. Also a lot of funding to libraries has been cut over time. Due to this a lot of libraries that once had these features no longer do.
I started with LoadingReadyRun (@LoadingReadyRun) because I’ve been a fan of their work for many years now. I’ve found a couple of authors I’m fond of: Charles Stross (@cstross) and Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself). George Takei is a good one to follow as well (@georgetakei).
He seems like a lovely man and is generally interesting. But he has an opinion on everything even when he doesn’t have any knowledge of the subject. So can be a difficult follow on occasion. If that happens, don’t unfollow but put him on mute for a few days.
Capitalism didn’t kill third spaces, technology did. Niel Postman and Robert Putnam spent most of their lives writing about the creep of technology and how it destroys actual human society and its base-level interactions.
I’d say it’s not even capitalism but the rabid anti-tax people/movement. Third spaces like libraries and parks are paid for by tax money, and if people keep voting against raising taxes, well guess what. No more public spaces.
I’m curious, were they ever that stereotypical “shh” environment that movies claimed they were? Because no public library in my lifetime was ever like that (just smaller school libraries), but I can’t go back very far. Most libraries I’ve been to have multiple areas or floors, some which are quiet and others which are allowed to be noisy.
They were “shh” back in the day, but with time they have become more of a place for activity for the community. When I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s they were definitely more strict with keeping quiet, especially in the reading halls. Library history is actually quite interesting, and the whole development of the library as a key element in building and supporting democracy and community, is worth looking into.
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