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Comment by harimau777 | Hacker News Reader

Since Ohio is a fairly red state, I wonder if this could be a "You can food some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." As much as I am angry at MAGA for not prioritizing my civil liberties, it does seem like conservatives are starting to notice that those in power don't actually care about conservative principles like privacy, small government, and individual liberty.

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Conservative voters themselves have been quite clear that they don’t actually care about any of those principles either.

I remain skeptical.

The term "voter" seems relevant -- in my conversations with conservatives, they care quite a bit. In the way they conduct themselves (ignoring voting), they care quite a bit. It's only the voting in which there's an obvious disconnect. Ignoring that risks applying the wrong fixes to the wrong places.

Voting is where the rubber meets the road. If they don't vote like they care, then they don't care for all intents and purposes.

Voting is choose between two terrible candidates, neither of which represent the majority of any group’s interests. No one ever elected has delivered 100% satisfaction to the majority of their constituents.

> Voting is choose between two terrible candidates

This framing makes it seem like the candidates are identically terrible. Which is never the case.

Correct. They each offer their own unique flavor of extreme terrible.

And are able to capitalize on the fact that some voters are more afraid of terrible outcome A than terrible outcome B, and others are the reverse, to shoehorn both A and B into policy.

Edited this after the fact to reduce the intensity of my tone.

This “both sides” nonsense is not particularly convincing when one party literally has masked goons on the street sending people extrajudicially to concentration camps.

A reminder to support approval voting, star voting, and proportional voting so we can end the 2 party system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU https://www.equal.vote/

Approval voting is reasonable, but a ranked-choice ballot with either IRV or a Condorcet tabulation would be better.

Proportional representation would be catastrophically worse than the status quo.

Ranked choice is not better. It has the center squeeze effect.

this!

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/the-proportional-representat...

no, it would not be better. see voter satisfaction efficiency metrics from monte carlo simulation here.

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/the-proportional-representat...

score voting is simpler and better than STAR voting in every way, and approval voting is radically simpler and better in most scenarios.

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/the-only-voting-reform-worth...

and PR is a red herring.

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/the-proportional-representat...

Thanks for sharing!

I love approval voting the most by pure simplicity and effectiveness. How does score voting work better than STAR? I thought STAR degenerates into score voting when clone candidates run?

I haven't heard much of an argument against proportional voting before. Your article just casts doubt, but doesn't really make a decisive argument against. I actually don't like proportional voting because it reifies parties into the system, but I only support it because I think it can break the party duopoly and step towards better systems. I should rethink that.

No candidate is going to perfectly match your desires. So voting becomes a measurement of where your priorities lie.

Of course, media and the candidates themselves will use propaganda to manipulate your priorities.

Right-wing media has done a great job convincing people that the greatest threat to them are trans women in women's sports and illegal immigrants.

Given that the Republicans claim to be the “party of personal responsibility”, I utterly reject this attempt to frame its voters as the poor and unfortunate victims of manipulation and choose instead to hold them personally responsible.

Like most marketing you can basically invert it to arrive at the truth. Republican propaganda continually harps on about personal responsibility because Republican voters are lacking it and desperately wish they had some. The propaganda is a coping mechanism.

In other words, “the point of a system is what it does” applies to humans as well.

Alternatively, they can care about principles and issues that differ from that of the other party.

Or, they are convinced the other side is much worse

Most of the erosion of our civil liberties is too abstract and requires education and awareness. Average voters will defer to generic arguments about "safety" from authorities. The "four horsemen" get trotted out so often that they're basically show ponies at this point.

The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see these engineering senior-design contraptions ruining the most rural landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening. It was a baffling miscalculation not to anticipate this backlash happening.

It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to undermine our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.

At the same time, our security state apparatus is in a full-force China panic; they've failed to offer a better social contract. We are the ones actually getting a social credit system, without getting anything in return.

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