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Comment by DSingularity | Hacker News Reader

You say “until we are dominated by idiot majority” as if it hasn’t happened. Just look at the platforms of the peoples vote to represent Americans. Rarely are they platform that would actually matter to the people and most of the time it is identity politics, nationalism, gun rights, and religion. We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state.

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> We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state.

Gotta appreciate the irony of this statement. The Idiot Tribe are victims of The System, not driving it. They are not my enemy.

Agreed. If we're using education and related achievements as a barometer for "not idiots", the American ruling class are hardly uneducated dimwits. Those at the highest rungs of power in politics, academia and the mass media are almost without exception highly educated graduates of top institutes. If they fail, that's clearly on them, and not the "idiot tribe".

> highly educated graduates of top institutes

Sorry, have you seen the educational record of the guy at the top right now?

Have you seen the university pool of your congress? Hell, even Bush was a Yale and harvard grad.

They are all victims. Nonetheless, the unfortunate reality is that the state persists precisely because this idiocy broadly holds.

I fear I am feeding a political tangent here, but I think most of the problems you mentioned could be fixed in the US by recognizing (admittedly this would be a timely process) an official third electoral party. It's a lot easier for nuance to prevail when the system isn't designed to be binary.

Recognizing a third party does little with the spoiler effect. Not sure if you are referring to this in your final sentence, but the voting system has to change first to some sort of runoff model so people can express their primary choice without fear of the spoiler.

The spoiler effect is basically a non-issue with ranked choice voting. Some states are already adopting ranked choice.

The spoiler effect is a problem for tribal voters and for politicians but I don't think it matters for the actual outcomes of laws passed. If a minor party steals votes from a major one, that major party has an incentive to win them back by offering those voters what they want.

Nice comment but I think this is a bit wide of the mark. Schools are a state and local issue in the US where party is less significant. Look at the difference between a "republican" in, say, California's central valley vs. the same in Alabama. In most other places, that'd be two different parties.

Though I agree we'd be better off with something more like Germany or the UK, with coalitions.

The issue is not that we need n+1 political parties. Its that people don’t have time or much motivation to read actual policy.

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