They’ve been spamming some attack ads about some fake strawman Carney on YT pretty damn aggressively. And idk if I’d ever call whatever they’ve had these last couple years a platform.

Thank you for the message. I don’t find your message to be as much of doomerism than you’ve warned upfront, and if anything, I think you’re being really optimistic, though not in a bad way.

On the topics mentioned under The Carrot, as someone’s who’s technically inclined, I’m not sure if I agree on finding new companies here just to replace the American ones, as it feels like we’re possibly leading ourselves down a similar path where few options exist and money, and power, ends up getting centralized and controlled by random individuals, leading to a possibly oligarchic scenario. What would stop the stakeholders from these companies from installing someone who would place profits before people, if not slowly replacing CEOs over CEOs as they slowly go down that slide? And we already have great decentralized options to replace many, if not all, of these services. Sure, they still have usability issues, but I think things, in this alternative tech landscape, are already in the right direction, even if they aren’t great and may even require a complete rethink. “There is opportunity, but we shouldn’t seek to just replace what’s lost as is,” is what I’m trying to say. If anything, Canada’s been a bit behind as we’ve relied on the US for so much for so long.

I won’t argue against your pessimistic views on life and humanity; I too sometimes think that way. It can be somewhat comforting, maybe in a bit of a twisted way, but it can make us feel a bit better. But I will say that it’s not helpful to others and yourself to keep thinking like so, about how a lot of people just seem too stupid, or that they are born into stupidity and are thus conditioned into thinking that stupidity is the norm, and that there is not real progress.

Real progress is being made, even now, despite all the chaos that we know of. The fact that people can talk about these problems, internationally and openly, despite some threats from those who despise it, is unthinkable 70 years ago, or even 100 years ago, and further. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

History is repeating itself, but it’s not without its differences and variations.

And despair isn’t the end. Where there is despair, there is hope.

While I’m somewhat dejected that I can’t convince you to open up, I hope it becomes part of what you would think about again in the future.

Best wishes there

To the “brainwashing our kids” crowd, my stance is that the kids can decide for themselves if it’s brainwashing, as long as we aren’t actually doing that, and is instead simply equipping them with the ability to think on their own. So I’m not bothered by them, and I think we should make that narrative clear enough, with experts in and out of power to have their say, and the rest can complain all they want. I do understand that that doesn’t always work well in our political climate; just look at the carbon tax, but if we hold ourselves back just because some crowd might fight back, and essentially do nothing, based on the trajectory where things are going, I fear that we’re only sleepwalking ourselves into ruin. This applies to adopting PR as well.

In other words, I’d rather we say that we’ve tried to do things that we have good reasons to believe are good and may actually steer us in the right direction, than go for something that might please more people but is no different from our current trajectory.

If a single issue is enough to make people put their vote into, why wouldn’t a larger party simply make that promise themselves, as long as it still somewhat aligns with their party goals, or is not in the way of their goals, and eat the single-issue platform’s pie?

And if anything, we already have single-issue politics, right within our FPTP system, and I don’t see why this wouldn’t happen under ranked ballots or instant runoff as well. Instead of forming a party, they lobby, and whichever party adopts their stance will win their votes, along with whoever else they can influence. There already is a subset of the electorate that are geared into thinking that way.

I don’t think there’s a good solution to mitigating single-issue politics, perhaps other than good education about our governments and institutions. It certainly isn’t solved under PR, and, as you said, could possibly lead to the proliferation of small single issue parties (though I believe larger parties will absorb their vote by promising the same while offering more), and it certainly exists even today under FPTP, just not as a party but a lobby group, and it will no doubt exist similarly as a lobby group in other winner-takes-all system.

Never subbed to Netflix so don’t know the shows there, but that exists, that’s funny as hell.

I just thought the “flying” part was apt when I heard it cause chickens don’t stay in the air for long enough to be a menace.

There’s an even better name: whispers flying cobra chicken

You’re the kind of Trudeau lover that no matter what evidence is presented, you’ll always believe that he’s just some kind of freaking god. He’s gone, good riddance. May we never hear from him again. Go cry in your cereal lol.

Quoting your comment for posterity.

I didn’t even talk about Trudeau or how much I like him or not, and literally gave you a chance to explain what you’re trying to say through the link.

But I think we all see what kind of person you are now.

How about you go back to your little hell hole?

Depends on which one of the flavours we’re talking about. I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that, in general, we could go with the urban/rural approach by breaking up the city into smaller voting districts to reach some kind of acceptable balance in both the population across the city, and the number of MLAs across the region, just to somewhat balance out the urban and rural voices. How big should the rural regions be? I don’t know, cause it’ll be up to whatever census data that we know about the region.

That said though, I never realized it but Barrie is somewhat special from what I can find online, in that it’s politically independent from the Simcoe county. So perhaps it can just continue to be independent from the county? I’m honestly not sure about what being politically independent actually entail.

Sending a link to some opinion piece that doesn’t even discuss the topic at hand is kinda weird. Care elaborating on how these two things are related?

Hi, I believe we’ve had a short chat before.

Your arguments, while I acknowledge them to be valid, are not something that I believe should be addressed by an electoral system.

Why do you think that we have the right to deny, say, a gun freedom advocacy group, for running for office, as much as their taking of the office could be a scary one? If you could give a reason why, how does that prevent someone else to declare that climate advocacy groups shouldn’t run for office, and try to give some reason that sounds sufficiently legitimate to enough people? And what comes next?

The guardrails that you speak of work to shut people off. Is that how a democracy should work?

If an electorate is that concerned with gun freedom, and think that it’s more important than issues such as a dilapidated public infrastructure, then sure, they can vote for whichever party that will support gun freedom, and that party will have a better chance at winning, assuming a healthy voter turnout. This applies to both winner-takes-all systems and PR systems.

But gun freedom is likely not the only issue people have in mind. The gun freedom party can’t just stay as politicians over that one issue. How would they handle foreign relations? What about our national debt? No single issue platform can give us answer to every one of those larger problems.

So I say let these people speak their minds. If enough people actually support them and they have enough support to even form government, then such is the reality of what your nation cares about, and the numbers tell you that.

Or perhaps do you not believe that Canadians are inherently good and reasonable people? Perhaps you think education has really failed this country that people can’t think sufficiently well for themselves? I’m not sure where this issue with, say, religious parties trying to voice their opinions on how they think things should be run, is coming from.

“Let’s give the CEO big bonuses instead of investing it back into our failing business that desperately needs that money.”

Says, apparently, no one at Intel.

Edit: I just realized my punchline was off but I’ll leave it as is anyways. You get the point.

I also want to add that anyone who uses Germany as an example of a potential takeover of extremists under PR does not understand the politics of Germany.

Here’s a video from Real Life Lore about how Germany is still divided: https://youtu.be/c-sOqHD6Pw4 I do not necessarily advocate for this channel, but they have usually presented accurate data, even if the choices of how those data are presented may at times be questionable.

The TLDR/W is this: Germany was divided politically in the past. After reunification, it’s not like East and West Germany essentially mixed and there are now no differences between the two historical sides; quite the opposite actually. They are still very much separated in terms of economic chances and social development, and this leads to a strong distrust and perhaps even hatred of old East Germany to the West.

If anything, it shows that PR works as intended: when a proportional number of people feels like current politics, its trajectory, or just politicking, does not work for them, they get represented because the system allows for it.

Is there anywhere else that’s switched to proportional representation, run-off voting, or similar from FPTP?

https://www.fairvote.ca/how-democracies-adopted-proportional-representation/

How does it affect things like regional representation

https://www.fairvote.ca/localrepresentation/

For example, if we go with MMP, https://www.fairvote.ca/mixed-member-proportional/

If you prefer a video format, https://youtu.be/D3guVBhKmDc

Seems like it creates instances where the candidate from some ridings gets a seat with fewer votes than the other candidate.

Not too sure what you mean by this, but maybe MMP would give you an idea as to what would happen, and whether the scenario you’re thinking of would actually be possible? Lemme know.

I think the urban/rural divide is only going to get worse as technology leads to more migration to urban areas even though it’s the rural population that’s taking care of the fundamentals in our economy.

I don’t really believe that technology is the leading factor to the migration, but economic factors are. This isn’t to say that our farms aren’t profitable (I believe they are and should be), but there simply are more options of work in urban areas. Given that farms take up a lot of space, population ends up being sparse, and so do economic opportunities. It doesn’t have to stay that way of course, perhaps we could rethink how rural life works, e.g. rural Japan, but that’s not only a change in culture but likely also a multi-year work, so I digress.

PR isn’t one electoral system but more so a principle that some systems follow. So it makes more sense to talk about the different systems that implement PR, and see how they can work for us, or if we can give it a bit of a twist so that it can work for us.

Fairvote has another proposed system that aims at the rural/urban divide: https://www.fairvote.ca/rural-urban-proportional/

I’m not sure what you mean by not having a country.

Also, the government doesn’t have a singular function. It can work on the threat from the south, and have people look into what needs to be done for electoral reform and even execute it, all while the PM does squats.

What we need is a quick move to come up with a plan to handle an unstable US for the long term. Such a plan may include improving Canada’s own security, and reform our electoral system to prevent demagoguery from the US from taking hold of our government. If the CPC’s earlier lead in the polls is not a red flag for it happening, idk what else is. Far-right, anlt-right, and maga-like rhetoric is here in Canada, and is influenced not just by the Russians and Chinese, but also the USA.

It’s quite hard indeed, especially given that the current, dominant North American culture is one seeped in a high degree of hedonism. We don’t typically hear stories of how people endured decades-long of hard work and inconveniences to achieve something significant. I know they exist; I’ve talked to a good number of people to know they do, but we just don’t all hear them in a manner where it’s broadcasted.

In East Asia, there are many such stories that go around, even as stories for children. The narrative around education itself is molded by it; study hard and well, and you’ll most likely end up with a good job, which means potential for a good and comfortable life. Outside of education, certain tv shows like to go into stories that span multiple years that shows the struggles humans go through in their lives, and how they will be rewarded or punished by their earlier actions. Take the Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Filipino dramas that span literally hundreds or even thousands of 30-to-45-minute episodes, some of which are still ongoing.

That said though, Western culture has taken a strong hold of the younger demographic in East Asia, so instant gratification is also a growing problem there.

While I don’t think East Asian culture sets itself out to dissuade people of self-gratification, it sets up people’s expectations of the different kinds of gratification you can get through life, some of which clearly require years to attain.

And I don’t think people don’t really know of it here either. We understand that teaching can be a very rewarding career, not in terms of how much you’d make, but that we’d better the lives of the young, and it may lead to them carrying that torch and passing it forward. It’s also slightly more tangibly rewarding when old students come see you years down the road and thank you for teaching and guiding them. These are stories that can be told, and they can stick because they’re touching, human stories.

So yeah, I’m not sure how we can actually tell people that we shouldn’t just focus on instant gratification, in a society where it’s so deeply engrained into their psyche. It would be quite the fundamental shift in culture. I think there are steps we can take, eg via education and messaging through mediums like entertainment and the news.

More like most of the suburbs and small towns just outside larger cities did. Most large city centres all voted for either Lib or NDP.

Maybe there should be known public crawlers hosted by several people that would set up some kind of shared but separated indices, and people could self host their own search page and set it to subscribe to these indices and filter for sites they care about. The index hosted by one person must be public and easily recreated elsewhere, so that if they can’t host it anymore for whatever reason, others can fill the gap.

Or! Each server would kind of be in some federation, and we all have our own index, some overlapping. The overlapping simply becomes a kind of redundancy.

Sorry if that makes zero sense or is a bad idea. Just tossing it out cause I thought it might be somewhat viable after some (or much) tweaking. Been somewhat interested in information retrieval lately and this is making my little brain kind of excited.

弾幕 (read: danmaku) is literally translated as “bullet curtain” to refer to a barrage of bullets that are so close together they form some kind of veil, or curtain. But yeah, it’s what we know as “bullet hell” in English.

I’ve seen Vampire Survivors referred to as “reverse bullet hell” at some point, but didn’t look like that stick.

Says the guy who literally decided to slap tariffs on Canada over a flimsy pretext.

If his goal is really to depreciate the USD, he’s doing a fucking good job while sabotaging Canada at the same time. Not sure if he thinks this’ll make Canadians consider moving their businesses there, which is one of his goals, but this is also a man-child who doesn’t understand empathy and assumes everyone works like the stone-cold (failure of a) businessperson he is. There’ll be some who’d do that, but idk if they’ll find a depreciated USD all that alluring to earn. Trump essentially wants the US to become China though, as the global factory of sorts, and wants to force others to buy US products, in a way that so far seems to be more heavy-handed than China, who typically looks more for weak points and pressures other nations into buying their products if they don’t already buy enough. He claims that this’ll make Americans rich, but in truth, this only enriches the rich, just like, well, right in China.

Might be my dumb 2 cents but it’s what I’ve gathered from the material consequences of his actions so far.