Politics turned to Left-wing/Green party vs AFD and there is no middle ground anymore. The FDP basically disappeared and there’s a cliff in society over things like the refugee crisis and Merkel’s “everyone is welcome here” politics.
If I’d ever come back to Europe, I’d settle in Switzerland. It just is the better Germany(at least to me).
Is this intentionally ironic?
There is no contradiction. If you want to come to Canada, for example, you have to qualify for one of the programs, e.g. "Express Entry". That is, have education or better yet Canadian education, at least bachelor's degree but better PhD, experience or better yet Canadian experience, profession in a shortage list, proficiency of English and French, enough money for a year, be <35 y.o., have a husband/wife who also has all of those. If I have none of those, should I be welcome? What if I'm part of ISIS and has been sent to found an HQ in Toronto? You wouldn't invite everyone to your house indiscriminately. Why would you to your country (and then also feed them and house)?
Isn't there a grand coalition in Germany for most of the last 15 years between the center-left and center-right which did very well?
With all the scaremongering about a growing right wing party like the AfD, many Germans fail to realize its supporters have always been there and never grew in numbers but before Merkel had been represented by a caucus inside the most popular parties. There have been various connections inside the CDU and the “Seeheimer Kreis” in the SPD that have become marginalized during the Merkel years with her overly pragmatic and uninspired way of administering a whole country and not committing to any visible political principles.
As a famous German conservative politician of the 1970s once said: „There must never be a political party establishing itself on the right side of the CDU“ (or it‘ll be the end of its dominating power). Exactly that, leaving room for the AfD, was one of Merkel‘s biggest mistakes and it’s going to haunt Germany‘s politics for many years to come.
But the Great Barrier Reef is definitely no endangered, because UNESCO says so!!!
Australia is a joke of a country. It's just a Texas with ocean.
Unfortunately it's worse than that, at least Texas has significant fiber infrastructure and quality high-speed Internet, some basic understanding of personal freedom and respect for individual privacy, and low enough property costs and taxes that normal average people can survive comfortably there, not just those blessed with a corporate job. Also in Texas, hobbies aren't banned simply because it might upset some Karens.
Australia is following in the footsteps of the worst facets of China, with also having the worst facets of Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...
Excluding the gun deaths and socialised health care of course. Those are two things that Australia has unambiguously gotten right that Texas and/or the US seems incapable of addressing.
It's called California.
To me, "moralizing" is when I tell you to not do something that I don't like but which doesn't directly affect me. Like, don't drink alcohol to excess, or don't cheat at cards, or don't swear in front of kids, or always tell the truth.
I have an opinion that media diversity benefits society, and I don't consider that "moralizing". I consider it caring about my community, and I consider opposing media monopoly to be fighting back against an individual who would denigrate society for his own ends. That's not moralizing - that's standing up for ourselves.
> Moralize definition, to reflect on or express opinions about something in terms of right and wrong, especially in a self-righteous or tiresome way
Which is roughly what you (and the rest of the social justice crowd and, apparently, western Europe) just did.
The abolition (of slavery) movement in the 19th century was a moralizing one. And they were very right!
The irony is when one proclaims not to be moralizing in their argument, but are indeed making a moral argument, insistently, including the insistence they aren't moralizing.
The challenge is that to anyone who doesn't want to hear the message, having something be repeated continuously is frustratingly annoying. And it sure doesn't help any overall movement when specific extremes of that movement, or cherry-picked instances of that movement can be highlighted as representing the whole thing. This is certainly factor in the increasing polarization of society, for if the other-side is full of moralizing assholes, why should I bother listening to them? Especially if they are just going to keep repeating their same tired BS? This can apply to both sides of some many contemporary debates - independent of the merit of either side!
This seems like such a bad idea. Ideally, the democratic process taps ‘the wisdom of crowds’ and allows a society to make reasonable decisions. But all human beings are not capable of contributing to good decision making. Roughly the 15% of people have IQs below 85, making them effectively mentally retarded. And beyond that, a huge number of people are grossly uninformed about contemporary political issues, history, science, etc. The best contribution that some folks can make to the democratic process is not participating in the democratic process.
Moreover, if you force the unintelligent and uninformed to vote, you’re empowering the media to run the country. When someone’s politics are uninformed by firmly held principals and a solid understanding of history and current events, they will be more susceptible to be steered by biased media.
Government should be for everyone. Parties should have a platform that is for a majority. For the most part, Australia has populist fairly centrist small c conservative governments.
It's getting bad at the moment here mostly because the current governing party is past due for it's turn on the opposition benches. And it also seems that everyone's having a go at being corrupt at the moment. Hopefully we get ontop of that.
Anyway, folk with low IQ's making bad choices isn't really a problem. We have optional preferential voting (rank choice), it's hard enough to make an informed decision above or below the line each time and I do research!
Most of the uniformed, just vote along family lines.
Anyway, everyone has a right to vote and a duty in some respect. Making it harder for some, by making it opt in, will lead to more problems then having disengaged voters participating in haphazard ways.
You don't seek out the advice of the mentally retarded when making personal decisions. Why would you do so when determining how to run your society?
> Most of the uniformed, just vote along family lines.
The point of a democratic elections is to get the considered input of the population. People who 'just vote along family lines' are noise in the signal. If they want to, then fine. But why would you force them to contribute their arbitrary, uninformed opinions?
> Anyway, everyone has a right to vote and a duty in some respect.
Of course they do.
> Making it harder for some, by making it opt in, will lead to more problems then having disengaged voters participating in haphazard ways.
This is nonsense. Forcing older kids to go to school doesn't result in more engaged school-kids, it results in rooms full of angry, disengaged kids who cause problems for the people who want to be there. Similarly, forcing people to vote just adds a bunch of random votes to the pile.
Democracy is a great thing. But democracy doesn't work because more human hands touching ballots makes for better government--it works because you can get good advice by asking the input of a large number of responsible, conscientious people.
We know that the least educated among us are the least likely to vote. We also know that IQ predicts academic achievement. So why would you go out of your way to increase the proportion of Prec
Say you have the right to own property. That comes with the obligation to respect other people's property. And so on.
When a right comes obligations it isn't a right. It's a privilege. That's the stuff kings used to have (and still have, in some places).
Pretend you're an Australian and have a long tradition of fining people minor sums of money for not showing up. Why would you change to non-compulsory voting?
You're thinking of the role of democracy as a way to solve problems, but it also plays a role in fairly allocating resources between sectors of society. The IQ < 85 demographic might not seem valuable to the IQ > 115 demographic, but in fact that is why they need to vote, to counterbalance the self-interest of the IQ > 115 demographic. Likewise, PhDs in political science might be prone to think that highschool dropouts are not valuable contributors, but that is exactly why highschool dropouts need to vote - to counterbalance the will of the political science PhDs to support policies that only help PhDs.
I would argue that largely happens today, but not on the basis of IQ. Large chunks of western countries believe all sorts of (what I would consider) crazy things. And IQ isn't the driving force of belief here.
None of this is an argument to disenfranchise segments of the populace. But it is also increasingly naive to believe that voters vote on the basis of rational self-interest, and we need to have serious discussions about how to counter the forces that drive that, be it IQ, misinformation, in-group/out-group dynamics and more.
You've misunderstood my comment. I'm not saying that we should prevent unintelligent people from voting, I'm saying we shouldn't actively seek out their input by compelling them to vote.
We know that poorly educated people are the least likely to vote, and we know that educational achievement correlates strongly with IQ--so by requiring voting, you will be significantly increasing the proportion of voters who are not intellectually capable of making an informed decision about how we can run a society.
You do not seek out the advice of the least intelligent people you know. Even if, out of a stubborn commitment to egalitarian ideals, you did ask for their advice, you'd be a fool to weight it equally with the people who you hold in high regard. So why the hell would we, as a society, choose to do so by compelling the vote?
There is a natural experiment on this. See which countries have compulsory voting and see how they have fared since. The results are not pretty.
On the flipside, the strongest "free" countries, switzerland and USA, have had voluntary parricipation since time immemorial...