when strong third party campaigns force rival parties to cater to the independent vote to get over the 50% hump.

I’m not saying 3rd parties have zero influence, but they just don’t succeed frequently enough for it to be called fair. The spoiler effect is far too strong for that to happen.

we absolutely do have factions within the main two parties that have regionalized and polarized constituencies that are fighting for control of the national party apparatuses.

Absolutely. But because of the spoiler effect, the two parties are held together with glue. Reforming our electoral system would weaken that glue, and hopefully fracture them enough to make a difference.

Yeah it absolutely isn’t the only factor, but it’s one of the biggest ones. I neglected to point out it isn’t the only factor.

After FPTP issues, the next biggest one in my mind is the spending rules. I think that all candidates should operate from a “shared pool” of election funds. So if candidate A wants to use 1 million for the election, half of it goes to them, half of it goes to their opponent. No candidate should have a higher spending fund from another. It would drive down campaign spending, make bullshit political ads less frequent, and add a degree of fairness.

That, and there needs to be a full ban on lobbying (read bribery).

As for the few elections in southern states that use run offs, that’s not quite what I’m looking for, and those elections aren’t in a vacuum. The political power the two parties get from surrounding areas is enough to mean 3rd parties still don’t have a chance.

Our viable parties are shit because our electoral system is shit.

The 100 year path of wishful thinking that single person who votes will suddenly change their behavior such that they won’t vote strategically hasn’t got us anywhere. Our electoral system needs reform. It is inherently biased to make 3rd parties fail every single time. The game is rigged for 2 parties and only 2 parties.

and then just completely ignore that their view is led

You’re talking about a view different from mine.

Our current electoral system is inherently biased against 3rd parties. We need to switch to approval/STAR voting to make 3rd parties viable.

I haven’t heard that take before, which is actually a decent workaround for the “why can’t we replicate living beings?” question.

I doubt it would be detectable though. Because you’d have to be able to tell the difference between replicated molecules, and molecules that were transported, with only differences being individual atoms and subatomic particles. Neither of which I’d think somebody capable of discerning. Maybe it’s a bit if a placebo thing?

Or maybe it would be a “pure water has no taste” sort of thing, where replicators make things too pure, to the point where some consider it bland. A real tomato grew in dirt and still has at least some, and the soil effects it’s taste, whereas the same isn’t true for replicated foods.

There also may be some degree of intentionally making an excuse. Lots of people love gardening, and in a world with effectively infinite, free food, your hobby seems more valuable if you have an excuse that your home grown real food & liquor tastes better.

My point was that the way the economy is portrayed is such that we don’t get to see much of how it actually works, meaning that a lot of our understanding is speculation based on a handful of lines.

For sure, and it is rather frustrating. But it makes sense that they don’t outright explain the details, as it would just cause lots of people to complain.

The wildcard here is that we see Federation worlds that seem to still use money, namely the Bolians who are members of the Federation, but the Bank of Bolias is a major financial institution.

It also might be a planet to planet thing. Like, imagine if a ferengi colony world broke off and asked to join the federation? They would undoubtetly keep their currency. It would just be a question of whether or not it is seen as a dealbreaker for the federation. I’d wager it wouldn’t be, so long as said ferengi colony keeps to the “every one treated equal, with dignity, and sufficiently provided for” philosophy of the typical federation world.

It seems that replicators are not essential to eliminating money in the Trek universe, although I’m sure they’re a boon to the standards of living.

Yeah, that is a common theme that I’ve heard as well. If we had replicators in today’s world, it would only be for the rich, and even if it came down in cost it would still never be free to get one or operate. The philosophy of society itself has to change to agree to make sure everybody is housed, fed, and cared for sufficiently. Without that step, replicators aren’t going to do anything to get us to a post scarcity world.

I doubt it’s that big of a difference. If they have the tech to materialize full fledged humanoids regularly, millions of times a day, I’d think they’d also have the tech to make replicated food taste good.

But sure, I can see it being marginally better. But not enough to mean money is still in use.

It might be more of a “tomatoes I grew myself” type of thing for most cases.

all we know is that they don’t use money, except when they do. The writing is sort of fuzzy on the matter, which results (regardless of the intention) in an economy that doesn’t actually seem that different to our modern day in practice

At most they use credits, which at least according to this guy, are at most a peripheral, 3rd party currency, or at least a currency the federation uses for external trade, and that’s what makes most sense to me. Why would the average person care about federation credits when they’re only used on border systems at most, and your home replicator can make you pretty much anything you’d ever want? To a person living in such a world, for all practical purposes there is no such thing as money in the federation.

There’s no money, but people still own businesses and talk about buying stuff, which allows for the economic system to fade into a sort of forgettable background space.

They never seem to talk about buying stuff unless it is out on the frontier, exchanging with foreign entities, etc. It also doesn’t seem like businesses in star trek (at least the above board, earthlike ones) aren’t anywhere near today’s businesses. To me, it seems that they are treated as family businesses, with limited “employee” count, and with each “customer” getting their service/food/item for free, within reasonable limits. It’s like going over to your family’s house for dinner. You don’t pay, you’re family and they will happily feed you (within reason). And it seems that businesses treat everyone like that.

There is no stock market, profit motive, costs of running a business. It’s all done out of the goodness of people’s hearts.

I will say, part of that ignorance, apathy, and laziness is an intentional part of our existing society. You can’t spend the time to research every single product you ever buy, because many are stuck working several job, basically everyone is juggling their work, family, and social life.

A couple months back, I tried putting some effort into finding a printer that had all of the qualifications I wanted.

• usb printing, no network needed

• laser

• color

• not a brand that will fuck you over (looking at you HP)

• within a reasonable budget of $300-$400

And such a product just doesn’t exist. Brother comes close, but the market straight up isn’t producing good things. So at the end of the day all I can do is either get shafted at the local print store, or suck it up and get an inferior product.

But going back to the OP, it’s so much worse with cars because we have a car-centric society. You NEED a car in this place to have a normal life. Our cities and transportation have been intentionally designed to fuck over everyone not in a car.

So there is inelastic demand. The manufacturers can do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.

As always, citizens united was a disaster for our country. Or at least, it was a disaster before, and citizens united turbo fucked an already terrible problem.

Enshitification isn’t solved by voting with your dollar. If it did, the printer market wouldn’t be the shit show that it is. You can’t vote for the good if all the manufacturers mutually agree to only produce shit. Only regulation will keep them in line.

(inb4 “brother is better”, I am aware that brother printers are generally better, but they are far from good.)

offering to help

Calling me stupid does not help.

People took steps against him in 2016 as well. And voting him out previously gives no guarantee of anything.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/

Polling is bullshit, but to the degree that it isn’t, it isn’t looking great. This isn’t some guarantee that Trump will lose. The boomers that vote republican do so EVERY election. The people who vote against them aren’t so reliable in comparison.

You don’t understand anything and I ain’t on a laptop to school you. Gimmie a few hours til I get home and I’ll teach you a the best I can, if you care to learn

Thanks for being civil. Coming in with condescension really shows how smart you are.

If you care about the truth, quit being a dick.

The masses can review said asshole all they like, but it doesn’t mean anything, because nobody can stop them from removing the safeguards.

Then all of a sudden you have an AI that anybody can use that will happily generate even the most morally bankrupt things with ease and speed.

I love FOSS, but AI is inherently unethical. At best it steals people’s work. At worst it makes CP/unconsensual porn.

You can’t fix it with open source. All it takes is one guy making a fork and removing the safeguards because they believe in free speech or something. You can’t have safeguards against misuse of a tool in an open source environment.

I agree that closed source AI is bad. But open source doesn’t magically solve the problem.

Politically, it did do something. It was a useful wedge issue for republican politicians to take advantage of, at the cost of people’s lives.

The difference is that 9/11 was able to be channeled into xenophobia. The same can’t really happen with school shootings. The 40k mindset of hate being a valuable and limited resource hits way too close to home.

And it’s all a tragedy.

People have been trying to circumvent chatGPT’s filters, they’ll do the exact same with open source AI. But it’ll be worse because it’s open source, so any built in feature to prevent abuse could just get removed then recompiled by whoever.

And that’s all even assuming there ever ends up being open source AI.

Open source AI would be even worse.