Favorites September 29th 2021
Many proponents overhyped what single-winner RCV was likely to accomplish. It can have some marginal good impacts (and some drawbacks), but if your belief is that the political system is "broken," RCV was never going to fundamentally change that system.
Lee Drutman @leedrutman
I'm a bigger fan of STAR voting, but it's very important that proportional representation is a more important aspect to policy outcomes similar to what people want than the way the voting works.
We urgently need more social science research to figure out why Americans care so much about federal budget deficits.
When the market offers the US government an interest rate lower than inflation, it's silly not to take it. But big numbers scare voters.
An impressive thing about the conservative movement is that *the whole group of people* pivots to deficit alarmism the moment a Democrat takes office, it’s not limited to elected officials.
There’s just marvelous movement-wide discipline.
Philip Klein @philipaklein
Focused nonstop talk about the debt during Democratic administrations is just another way to put up roadblocks to accomplishing things, and it works.
It’s not just that Trump (and Bush) cut taxes he (and Bush) also significantly increased military spending and he (and Bush) also increased domestic spending, all without major complaint or doom-charting.
But now it’s Biden Time and they all do the flip.
Like, Iraq/Afghanistan were… very expensive wars.
I am a connoisseur of weird robot vacuum issues, because they all seem to get at least one thing slightly wrong, but this might be my favorite.
I discover this happened almost every morning.
Safety covers over robot power switches:
pro: they don't accidentally turn themselves off.
con: harder to hit that emergency off switch during robot uprising.
