Hacker News Reader

Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

If we removed the electoral college in the US, or if voting day were a national holiday, all those issues would automatically be addressed.

The old and conservative make too powerful a voting block, and it perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system. I don't think old people are bad because they're just taking government money and have big fancy houses, but largely they do vote the same way and that way they are voting is causing problems.

> First of all, you don't freaking need your own new house to start a family. In most countries most people never buy a new house.

It's important to understand the similarities and differences between "need" and "precipitates conditions that massively increase the chance of", when it comes to demographic trends.

View on HN

The "all problems will be solved if all my political policies are implemented" seems to be a fairly insidious strain of authoritarianism that is infecting the progressives.

'insidious authoritarianism' is a curious way of describing two not-unreasonable proposals that are presumably aimed at making american democracy more representative and accessible...

> The old and conservative make too powerful a voting block, and it perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system. I don't think old people are bad because they're just taking government money and have big fancy houses, but largely they do vote the same way and that way they are voting is causing problems.

You must have missed the part where they referred to human beings who they disagree with as "a rot in our system". The fact that you're apparently blind to such toxic rhetoric isn't surprising--it is increasingly common among progressives.

I believe you may have misread. They weren’t calling any specific group of humans a rot in our system. They said they believe a specific and overly powerful voting bloc perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system.

It’s not the voting humans who are labeled as the rot, it’s the cycles that result from the exercise of that bloc’s outsized voting power—as said in the second part of your quoted excerpt: “… that way they are voting is causing problems.”

I’m not suggesting the original wording was great and non-toxic, but I don’t think the poster said what you interpreted them as saying.

That fairly insidious strain of authoritarianism isn’t infecting progressives alone, sadly. Nor is it infecting progressives more. The “all problems will be solved if all my political policies are implemented” argument appears to be the starting line of most vocalized political positions.

> if voting day were a national holiday

I see this suggestion a lot, but I struggle to understand what problem it's expected to solve. It certainly wouldn't help voter turn-out. Most service sector jobs (the kind where it's hard to get a couple of hours off to vote) require you to work more on national holidays, not less. It's mostly the relatively voting friendly office jobs that give the day off for a national holiday.

The point is that it’s not like other national holidays. Stores are closed. You’ll manage.

If you plan to ask stores to close, they just won't. If you plan to require it, then the law won't pass.

you don't need to make it a holiday, just doing it on a weekend should suffice. E.g. in Australia, elections, Federal, state and local are all held on Saturdays.

If you actually want to improve turnout, enact compulsory voting. That is much better, but still no silver bullet to electing sane competent and not corrupt politicians.

>If we removed the electoral college in the US, or if voting day were a national holiday, all those issues would automatically be addressed.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

>The old and conservative make too powerful a voting block, and it perpetuates every corporate, oligarchic, xenophobic greed cycle one could point to as a rot in our system. I don't think old people are bad because they're just taking government money and have big fancy houses, but largely they do vote the same way and that way they are voting is causing problems.

Please refrain from toxic Othering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com