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Comment by Eextra953 | Hacker News Reader

What we have to do is offer a hopeful vision of the future that rings true to a majority of people. This starts with breaking away from the current party lines that deny what most people know to be true. For example, almost everyone can agree that health care is too expensive, corporations have too much power, housing is unaffordable, Trump is too extreme, Biden was too old etc. yet neither party is willing to state the obvious. If we can get a major party to do this, or to at least support candidates that do, we can get out of this hole.

Edited first response since it was too reactionary on my part.

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> hopeful vision of the future that rings true to a majority of people

77+ million Americans don't want a "hopeful vision of the future". They want to be angry. They're addicted to the anger. They want to hurt people. Present them any vision you want; they are not ever going to pay attention to it.

I think your right for some. I think there is also some aspect of identity. "I identify with <these set of ideals> and that's just what we do" kind of thing.

They want populism. That requires an enemy. It doesn't, however, require hurting anyone. If you're doing populism, you can either identify a set of scapegoats to slaughter or identify the actual impediments to solving the problems people experience in their lives. No party will identify such impediments, though. It would be very bad for business.

Most people don't want to be angry. But it's easy to be angry in times like this, and people just need to point to a target to justify the anger.

The answer is to ignore the theater and focus on improving lives anyway. The few truly hateful ones will be resolved quickly once people aren't worrying about rent, groceries, and making a living wage.

Everyone doesn’t agree that health care is too expensive. That’s the problem.

The other issue is that a significant portion of the country is not guided by logic. But fantasies like if we don’t save Israel it’s going to prevent the second coming of Christ and all natural disasters are caused by “legalizing gay marriage”.

> Everyone doesn’t agree that health care is too expensive.

Like a lot of the US, the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown. Many people on HN probably have great healthcare. Many seniors, often reliable voters, also have good healthcare through government programs that look a lot like single payer. This leaves poor people and those in the lower middle falling further behind.

It’s just the opposite problem. The Have nots - especially poor white America are some of the biggest opponents of “government run health care” and ironically enough, many of them are on Medicare.

Their fear is that their taxes will help “illegals” and “those lazy minorities”.

They are being manipulated into thinking it's the illegals fault. When we solve problems you'd be surprised how many people stop pointing fingers.

They are no more being “manipulated” than people were manipulated in the south during Jim Crew when people thought the world would come to an end if Black people drank from the same water fountain they did.

You’re assuming these people don’t have active animosity. Besides a large majority of the base are “evangelical Christian”. By definition religious people don’t appeal to logic.

How can you convince someone that Israel isn’t perfect (I don’t know enough to have a strong opinion either way) when they think that saving Israel is the first step in the second coming of Christ?

You are never going to convince these folks that Trump isn’t literally sent by God to save America?

> If we can get a major party to do this

The parties aren't going to change unless the incentives change. You need to get something like the anti corruption act through on the state level:

https://youtu.be/TfQij4aQq1k?si=DQlWV0u-YmSKqTnn

No, the parties aren’t going to change until the voting system changes.

What's wrong with the voting system? As one of the first and arguably greatest democracies (until perhaps recently?), the voting system is one thing that stands out as equal and fair when considering populations of different densities.

It’s literally the mechanics of the vote and how it encourages voting not for your favorite candidate, but the candidate most likely to win that isn’t the worst candidate for you.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

The two party system makes negative campaigning far too effective. If there are more parties and one spends its resources making another one look bad the others would also benefit from it.

>> For example, almost everyone can agree that health care is too expensive, corporations have too much power, housing is unaffordable

I would argue that most people don't agree on this. Firstly housing;

For decades Americans were told that owning your own house was an investment. To keep home owners happy prices have to go up. Clearly the message was flawed, but no home owner wants to see that number go down. The arguments that rely on "this will reduce of home value" us a strong one thst gets lots of support.

If you ask folk they'll tell you Health Care is too expensive. But equally they'll push back on any approach to make it cheaper. Obamacare made it cheaper, the public voted dems out of office. Biden put price caps on pharma, and got voted out of office. In both cases Trump (with massive support) tried to, or did, wind it back.

Many states didn't take up expended Medicare. Now, we could argue that doesn't make health care cheaper (overall) it just moves it to a different payer. But apparently folk dont want that.

Corporations having power is completely because we give them power. If we truly believed in that excess we'd behave differently.

Truth is we mostly like our corporate overlords. We rail against Musk and Zuck, but we carry on using their platforms. Fox has power because they amplify people's fears and gives them a scapegoat.

Currently DEI is under the spotlight. It's a very convenient scapegoat to every unsuccessful white male. As long as we have someone to blame, we can avoid our own failings.

> If you ask folk they'll tell you Health Care is too expensive. But equally they'll push back on any approach to make it cheaper. Obamacare made it cheaper, the public voted dems out of office. Biden put price caps on pharma, and got voted out of office. In both cases Trump (with massive support) tried to, or did, wind it back.

Vague memory here: IIRC, alongside Obamacare came a requirement to have healthcare, and if you didn't get it you'd be penalized on your yearly taxes. I'm fairly sure I remember that being a big part of the issue with it, people didn't want to be forced into it.

Yes it was the mandate that the GOP lost their minds on. The “don’t tread on me” crowd. The problem is that an insurance like program can’t work if the only people paying are sick people.

>If you ask folk they'll tell you Health Care is too expensive. But equally they'll push back on any approach to make it cheaper

As a game developer: people are great at telling you what's wrong in their experience. They are awful at giving solutions.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar thing here. There's another phenomenon where lowering speed limits is an unpopular decision. But once it's made almost all complaints disappear in a few months. I think this is one of the cases where we just need to do it and deal with any fallout as it comes.

>Corporations having power is completely because we give them power

Not necessarily. Especially not for Healthcare. That's an industry of people leaving the consumer almost completely in the dark and having businesses battle with businesses in how much money they can extract or save. And it's not the kind of thing you can just cancel and find a competitor for.

In other cases I feel many are frustrated. But most aren't frustrated enough to give up concinience nor security. So yes, we do give powerto Musk, to Zuckerberg, etc. Those are in our control but nothing has hit at a scale to really hurt them.

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