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Comment by infl8ed | Hacker News Reader

Although I don't disagree with you, I will just mention that housing affordability is also a problem in Australia where voting is mandatory

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I don't think mandating voting really helps that much. At best, you'll get people to vote for the candidate with the (D) or (R) next to their name. What we need is for people to be more informed. Fewer than 20% of people can name their state legislatures, let alone their stances.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/12/14/americans-dont-understand-sta...

Mandatory voting doesn't fix all the problems, but it's better than the alternative. Instead of campaigns focusing on "go vote" you get campaigns focusing on the actual voting.

I often watch architecture videos with houses from australia. Lots of properties built more or less to look like contemporary style stock photography. No wonder your houses are expensive, they are built for luxury investment

how do you think politicians make money? They usually own assets.

In the US some politicians make money by using their knowledge of upcoming legislation to trade stocks.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-are-trad...

What kind of insider knowledge did Pelosi have that would incline her to throw money into Roblox?

While I completely agree that Pelosi does this with insider knowledge, she and her husband also seem to be investing based on the hype they hear from people around them. Why else would the Pelosi's have taken such a bath on Roblox?! They had to have known shit is going bad over there, but they lost a LOT of money on that one...

So yeah, they do insider trading, but they are sometimes also the dupes in these deals. Look at their history. They make money, yes, but they lose a lot to stupid investments too, ones they obviously made because some Steve-Jobs-wannabe got a meeting with them and fired their reality distortion ray.

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