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Comment by rmbryan | Hacker News Reader

does anyone feel like they have a plan for responding to these risks? i see the possibility of nastiness, but the only idea i have is to move away. is there a more helpful response available?

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I think that people’s grievances just need to be addressed, and it’s almost entirely about increasing poverty (with the rest being a matter of blaming somebody for it).

Helping people to thrive better with today’s economy would go a long way

I think your apparently non controversial answer is spot on. However the idea that people are getting poorer is a highly contrarian position.

It doesn't matter if people are getting poorer, it matters if they think they're getting poorer. By most metrics, people are better off now than they used to be, but what matters is whether they feel like they're better off, and income inequality is one way people feel they're worse off than before.

However, I don't think that's what's fuelling current sentiments from the right. I think it's more a feeling of "everyone is against you", stemming from a distrust of mainstream media (mentioned in the article) and assumptions about mainstream media heavily influencing politics. Also, the current crop of Democratic candidates are more socialist (I'm using that term in the current "Democratic Socialist" vernacular) than ever before.

I think the best solution here is to reform our voting system to eliminate first past the post. We've been getting more and more extreme politicians, and implementing something like ranked choice voting should encourage more moderate candidates, which should in turn encourage more moderate mainstream media, which I think would ease political tensions. It's probably not a panacea, but I think it's a move in the right direction.

I don't think you made a single statement that was correct. I recommend you watch some videos by say someone like Mark Blyth.

My best idea is to reform voting to get rid of first past the post. I think a lot of the nastiness is because we've become so polarized politically that we see ourselves as enemies. Doing something like ranked choice voting would hopefully result in more moderate candidates that more people actually like instead of the "lesser of two evils" bull we have now.

And I think we just need more centrism to ensure these fringe groups don't get more attention than they deserve.

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