Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

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Ain't the software; it's the peopleware.

What does that mean?

One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth

No, that's clearly not viable. The US is still "really" a democracy in the sense those who get the most legal votes really do win - real, fair elections right now, are a big factor in the distribution of power in the US, for democratic-ness on a world-scale, that's pretty good. Yet the extremely unequal distribution of wealth makes a mockery of the realness of voting's impact. Most people are effectively powerless to make an impact on much outside their immediate lives.

Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level

This is an extreme reactionary viewpoint, taken from the 3-percenters or similar outfit.

This is why I get frustrated when people try to say “the system is broken, we should have a revolution!”

To have a successful revolution, you need to convince a lot of people that your cause is just, and worth dying for... if we can’t even convince people to VOTE for the right people/things, how can we possibly convince them to have a revolution?

You don’t think that the people who manipulate the populous to win elections couldn’t do the same thing to stop a revolution?

You can't manipulate populous forever. At some point they rise and protest. Look at Belarus right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWeIdPhgRs

Sure, but all we have to do to throw off our oppressors is vote.... if we can do that, we wouldn't need anything else.

"Most people are effectively powerless to make an impact on much outside their immediate lives."

Isn't this a good thing? Doesn't it mean that they can't harm others?

It wasn't a good thing in Aushwitz, Birkenau and other death camps for those who were about to die, while others around did nothing to stop it.

It isn't a good thing for people in Belarus right now with dictator applying brutal force when he didn't manage to win even unfair elections. Police simply shoot people on the streets and even aiming to home windows if they scream in protest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ynUNGNHdk

And also the context was about wealth and unequal weight of vote power. So right now the uber wealthy can do much more harm than the average low income voter who hasn't worked since March

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