The only difference between the Russian and US system is that instead of having one big party whose interests are entirely separated from the public and which completely crushes any opposition parties, we have two big parties whose interests are entirely separated from the public and which completely crush all opposition parties.
A sham democracy if there ever was one, but that’s because the purpose of indirect democracy is less to decide on policy and more to select a strongman leader that’s most appealing.
The Russian election was “rigged” in that there was only controlled opposition… But this is also not an inherently unique feature. When was the last time a US President was neither Democrat nor Republican?
The US needs ranked choice voting badly, but to say the only difference between the US and Russia is the two party system is just straight up incorrect. Opposition leaders and dissidents do not get regularly assassinated by the government in the US for starters.
Opposition leaders and dissidents do not get regularly assassinated by the government in the US for starters.
Currently yes. But Trump’s lawyers have argued in court that the President can’t be found guilty of any crimes, including assassination of political rivals.
The US president can still be held accountable though. Russia doesn’t habe such checks and balances. The russian president can veto over the court and can dismiss the legislature or the government. It can even annull rulings by the court. The court and government on the other hand, don’t have such powers over the president. The US court and government do have powers over the president. They can even dismiss the president.
The USs system is problematic in it’s own right, but it’s far from Russia-problematic.
The son of someone involved in a literal fascist overthrow plot in the 30s became the head of the CIA which takes over governments then the President. His son then stole an election and allowed 9/11 to happen
You live in a fascist country that the CIA literally overthrew the government of then instituted a crisis which ushered in a police state. Lots of people disappear and you don’t know because they run your media. Your country maintains black sites around the world including Guantanamo Bay. Your electrify the balls of people and say welp we tortured some folks. You don’t hear about it because whistleblowers regularly wind up dead. Consider yourself lucky that you are white passing enough or have enough money that you are protected from this and get to live in a bubble.
Opposition leaders and dissidents do not get regularly assassinated by the government in the US for starters.
The US internally disappearing and/or killing anyone who speaks out against it.
Yes they do. What do you think happened to Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X or Fred Hampton? What do you think happened or all the budding leaders you never hear about. You have a child’s understanding of the world you live in.
Because you have no historical or material context at all this needs to be explained to you. You live in a totalitarian fascist police state and are not informed of the death that occurs around you.
Nice that you can throw around big words like non sequitur. You only can’t follow this because you have an American education.
There are no two parties in USA. Both fund genocide and foreign interventions and unanimously agree on stuff like Patriot Act, no socialist healthcare, no welfare, no college funds, and other topics that favour citizens.
Personally I’d say score voting would make the most sense. Essentially it works like this, you get a list of parties and you vote them 1-5 on how much you agree with them. This changes the whole dynamics as you now aren’t choosing who will rule, but how much you agree with each party ideologically and forcing you to research on their proposed mandate plans. It also serves as sort of an evaluation of how do you think each party has been addressing the country’s issues before the election.
Mathematically, this may not ensure always the most happiness, but it ensures the least unhappiness compared to all current known voting methods (you can easily find research on how this was calculated in many papers on mathematics).
Personally i would also propose returning to the old Roman and the first proposed French republic system of having 2-3 consuls of the most voted for parties and they take turns proposing legislation to a senate that’s a direct seated representation of the voting results.
As an interesting tidbit, the reason we have a president/prime Minister with all the power in most western democracies, is because Napoleon altered the original proposed 3 consul system into a prime consul with all the power then minor ministers because he was aiming to become Emperor and wanted to centralize the power. Our democratic systems are strongly influenced by the first French republic post the French revolution.
Simple ‘first past the post’ systems like they have in the US are flawed. The biggest problem is that clones (candidates or parties with similar positions) split the vote. For example, suppose 10% of the population wants Evil Dictator, but the other other 90% each want one of 18 different candidates as their first preference, evenly divided on first preferences (so 5% on first preferences), but rank any of the other 17 higher than Evil Dictator. So Evil Dictator has 10% of first preferences, but is the last preference for 90% of the population. The other candidates have 5% each.
First Past the Post would elect Evil Dictator in this circumstance. Better electoral systems (e.g. the Schulze method) would elect one of the other candidates.
This applies still if you elect a plurality of people - e.g. there could be two Evil Dictators, who 90% of the public oppose, but who have the highest vote because there are fewer of them to split the vote. Better systems like the better STV variants ensure proportionality (it avoids a landslide where the same voters determine all the representatives in a winner takes all approach). A larger parliament means more representation of the perspective of smaller minorities - so they are at least heard.
A “score” based voting system, if it is just a ranking of parties, could work like this. But if you are suggesting adding up the votes (so, for example, a 5 is worth 5x as much as a 1), the problem is tactical voting. People will, in practice, vote to make their vote count them most.
Let’s say, for example, there are three candidates, Racist Evil Dictator, Racist, and Progressive. Let’s say we know for granted almost everyone is going to score Racist Evil Dictator as 1. If a progressive was voting honestly, they might vote Progressive as a 5, and apart from the racism Racist might have been doing well, so they’d get a 3. The racist supporters, however, if they were being honest, would give Racist a 5 and Progressives a 3. Let’s say there are 1000 progressive voters, and 600 racist voters. If voting honestly, the scores would be Progressive = 5 * 1000 + 3 * 600 = 6800, Racist = 5 * 600 + 3 * 1000 = 6000, Racist Dictator = 1 * 1600 = 1600. Now the problem is, you can’t really get people to vote honestly. So let’s say Racist riles up their followers to instead vote Progressive as a 1 to, even if they don’t really think that. Now the scores are Progressive = 5 * 1000 + 1 * 600 = 5600, Racist = 5 * 600 + 3 * 1000 = 6000. Racist wins.
In practice, when a system allows people to vote tactically and have an advantage, it becomes a race to the bottom. That’s how you end up with dynamics like the two-party system. A good voting system works by removing incentives to vote tactically - if you put your true preferences down, you will not be disadvantaged in your influence on the election, even if other people attempt to vote tactically. That means that genuine third parties have a chance if the people like them, even in the absence of coordination.
Two of the top university presidents in the country were taken down after daring to question the common narrative on the conflict in Gaza.
A whistleblower for a government defence contractor was just assassinated in the middle of legal proceedings against that defence contractor.
Whistleblowers are hunted after: Assange is struggling to avoid extradition and Snowden is stuck in Russia after being pressured to leave everywhere else.
Meanwhile, even legitimate presidential candidates like Sanders are given every disadvantage, most notably in terms of (a lack of) funding and superdelegate votes in primaries.
I can’t take you seriously at this point, we have protests here regularly and people speak out against the government like it’s a hobby. To imply otherwise is farcical to say the least.
Lmfao and I can write on a piece of paper I’m the king of France but at the end of the day it’s just a piece of paper with writing on it and no enforcement. They have it written on the constitution so they can say they have it, but then the ruling party does whatever it wants.
Again, what are the recent policy impacts of this “free speech”?
I can point to a very clear example of Chinese protests netting real, tangible policy change at the national level: Chinese protests took down Zero COVID policy. This is recent, large-scale, national, and resulted in a real and tangible change in government policy.
What can you point to in the US over that same time frame? I guess the march on Washington in support of Israel’s genocide?
Oh, true! Perhaps someone could remind russki police of that next time they’re being arrested for holding a blank sheet of paper. Y’all sound dumb as hell.
That is quite incorrect. First the parties have quite different platforms but they overall stay fairly centered. That is if you compare them to most other more extreme governments. Secondly even if you had one hundred parties to choose from, there will be no individual party that will represent your views 100 percent. The point of democracy is not to cater to any single individual but to try and find a middle ground. Yes a bit more variety might be better but at the end of the day you likely would have similar laws and rights.
Western nations are not intimidating or assassinating people with incompatible opinions. Yes there could be improvements to voter suppression but it is extremely limited in effectiveness. The US employees regional representation that does create some popular vote issues but it also fixes some regional issues where people in part can be under represented. So I can understand some argument for the current system.
Perfect no. Anywhere near the problems in Russia and most of the rest of the world, not at all. Get a grip.
What do you call a company which receives 40% of funding from the government and which plays a pivotal role in national security? In other countries, we call those state-owned enterprises.
Oh yea, true but that less about politics and more about capitalist creed. The US also has a police system that seemingly runs on the ritual sacrifice of innumerable black folk and pets but that is also not relevant.
How can you possibly separate politics from capitalist greed. The government represents the class that holds power, and US it’s the capital owning class.
In Russia the olicarchs are directly ruling the country so you can’t criticise them without endangering your life. In the US the capitalist class heavily influences the politics but isnt the one directly ruling the country so you can criticise the politicians all you want. That’s the difference I was pointing out.
The only difference between the Russian and US system is that instead of having one big party whose interests are entirely separated from the public and which completely crushes any opposition parties, we have two big parties whose interests are entirely separated from the public and which completely crush all opposition parties.
A sham democracy if there ever was one, but that’s because the purpose of indirect democracy is less to decide on policy and more to select a strongman leader that’s most appealing.
The Russian election was “rigged” in that there was only controlled opposition… But this is also not an inherently unique feature. When was the last time a US President was neither Democrat nor Republican?
The US needs ranked choice voting badly, but to say the only difference between the US and Russia is the two party system is just straight up incorrect. Opposition leaders and dissidents do not get regularly assassinated by the government in the US for starters.
Currently yes. But Trump’s lawyers have argued in court that the President can’t be found guilty of any crimes, including assassination of political rivals.
The US president can still be held accountable though. Russia doesn’t habe such checks and balances. The russian president can veto over the court and can dismiss the legislature or the government. It can even annull rulings by the court. The court and government on the other hand, don’t have such powers over the president. The US court and government do have powers over the president. They can even dismiss the president.
The USs system is problematic in it’s own right, but it’s far from Russia-problematic.
Because there’s no need to do it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
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The son of someone involved in a literal fascist overthrow plot in the 30s became the head of the CIA which takes over governments then the President. His son then stole an election and allowed 9/11 to happen
Nice non-sequitur but that doesn’t excuse anyone of anything.
You live in a fascist country that the CIA literally overthrew the government of then instituted a crisis which ushered in a police state. Lots of people disappear and you don’t know because they run your media. Your country maintains black sites around the world including Guantanamo Bay. Your electrify the balls of people and say welp we tortured some folks. You don’t hear about it because whistleblowers regularly wind up dead. Consider yourself lucky that you are white passing enough or have enough money that you are protected from this and get to live in a bubble.
Death to America
I refer you to my previous comment.
Yes they do. What do you think happened to Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X or Fred Hampton? What do you think happened or all the budding leaders you never hear about. You have a child’s understanding of the world you live in.
Because you have no historical or material context at all this needs to be explained to you. You live in a totalitarian fascist police state and are not informed of the death that occurs around you.
Nice that you can throw around big words like non sequitur. You only can’t follow this because you have an American education.
There are no two parties in USA. Both fund genocide and foreign interventions and unanimously agree on stuff like Patriot Act, no socialist healthcare, no welfare, no college funds, and other topics that favour citizens.
Personally I’d say score voting would make the most sense. Essentially it works like this, you get a list of parties and you vote them 1-5 on how much you agree with them. This changes the whole dynamics as you now aren’t choosing who will rule, but how much you agree with each party ideologically and forcing you to research on their proposed mandate plans. It also serves as sort of an evaluation of how do you think each party has been addressing the country’s issues before the election.
Mathematically, this may not ensure always the most happiness, but it ensures the least unhappiness compared to all current known voting methods (you can easily find research on how this was calculated in many papers on mathematics).
Personally i would also propose returning to the old Roman and the first proposed French republic system of having 2-3 consuls of the most voted for parties and they take turns proposing legislation to a senate that’s a direct seated representation of the voting results.
As an interesting tidbit, the reason we have a president/prime Minister with all the power in most western democracies, is because Napoleon altered the original proposed 3 consul system into a prime consul with all the power then minor ministers because he was aiming to become Emperor and wanted to centralize the power. Our democratic systems are strongly influenced by the first French republic post the French revolution.
Simple ‘first past the post’ systems like they have in the US are flawed. The biggest problem is that clones (candidates or parties with similar positions) split the vote. For example, suppose 10% of the population wants Evil Dictator, but the other other 90% each want one of 18 different candidates as their first preference, evenly divided on first preferences (so 5% on first preferences), but rank any of the other 17 higher than Evil Dictator. So Evil Dictator has 10% of first preferences, but is the last preference for 90% of the population. The other candidates have 5% each.
First Past the Post would elect Evil Dictator in this circumstance. Better electoral systems (e.g. the Schulze method) would elect one of the other candidates.
This applies still if you elect a plurality of people - e.g. there could be two Evil Dictators, who 90% of the public oppose, but who have the highest vote because there are fewer of them to split the vote. Better systems like the better STV variants ensure proportionality (it avoids a landslide where the same voters determine all the representatives in a winner takes all approach). A larger parliament means more representation of the perspective of smaller minorities - so they are at least heard.
A “score” based voting system, if it is just a ranking of parties, could work like this. But if you are suggesting adding up the votes (so, for example, a 5 is worth 5x as much as a 1), the problem is tactical voting. People will, in practice, vote to make their vote count them most.
Let’s say, for example, there are three candidates, Racist Evil Dictator, Racist, and Progressive. Let’s say we know for granted almost everyone is going to score Racist Evil Dictator as 1. If a progressive was voting honestly, they might vote Progressive as a 5, and apart from the racism Racist might have been doing well, so they’d get a 3. The racist supporters, however, if they were being honest, would give Racist a 5 and Progressives a 3. Let’s say there are 1000 progressive voters, and 600 racist voters. If voting honestly, the scores would be Progressive = 5 * 1000 + 3 * 600 = 6800, Racist = 5 * 600 + 3 * 1000 = 6000, Racist Dictator = 1 * 1600 = 1600. Now the problem is, you can’t really get people to vote honestly. So let’s say Racist riles up their followers to instead vote Progressive as a 1 to, even if they don’t really think that. Now the scores are Progressive = 5 * 1000 + 1 * 600 = 5600, Racist = 5 * 600 + 3 * 1000 = 6000. Racist wins.
In practice, when a system allows people to vote tactically and have an advantage, it becomes a race to the bottom. That’s how you end up with dynamics like the two-party system. A good voting system works by removing incentives to vote tactically - if you put your true preferences down, you will not be disadvantaged in your influence on the election, even if other people attempt to vote tactically. That means that genuine third parties have a chance if the people like them, even in the absence of coordination.
deleted by creator
What opposition leaders? What dissidents?
Two of the top university presidents in the country were taken down after daring to question the common narrative on the conflict in Gaza.
A whistleblower for a government defence contractor was just assassinated in the middle of legal proceedings against that defence contractor.
Whistleblowers are hunted after: Assange is struggling to avoid extradition and Snowden is stuck in Russia after being pressured to leave everywhere else.
Meanwhile, even legitimate presidential candidates like Sanders are given every disadvantage, most notably in terms of (a lack of) funding and superdelegate votes in primaries.
I can’t take you seriously at this point, we have protests here regularly and people speak out against the government like it’s a hobby. To imply otherwise is farcical to say the least.
To the same extent this is true in both Russia and China, yes. Yet, what are their impacts on policy?
No.
Not even close.
Neither of those countries have constitutionally protected free speech and they both regularly disappear their people, even in other countries.
Like that Boeing whistleblower last week?
You’re making it seem like things are so much better here.
I’m sorry, are you trying to suggest that the US government offed a whistle blower for Boeing??? Why would they even do that? To what end?
Article 29 of Russian constitution and Article 35 of Chinese constitution prove you wrong.
Lmfao and I can write on a piece of paper I’m the king of France but at the end of the day it’s just a piece of paper with writing on it and no enforcement. They have it written on the constitution so they can say they have it, but then the ruling party does whatever it wants.
Again, what are the recent policy impacts of this “free speech”?
I can point to a very clear example of Chinese protests netting real, tangible policy change at the national level: Chinese protests took down Zero COVID policy. This is recent, large-scale, national, and resulted in a real and tangible change in government policy.
What can you point to in the US over that same time frame? I guess the march on Washington in support of Israel’s genocide?
Oh, true! Perhaps someone could remind russki police of that next time they’re being arrested for holding a blank sheet of paper. Y’all sound dumb as hell.
It seems there’s an unspoken community rule against Un-American Activities
I genuinely don’t understand why Americans feel the need to the bidding of their fascist overlords… They get literally nothing out of it.
Doing this 2,340 times during one’s formative years might have something to do with it.
Absolutely nauseating. That’s not low-key fash that’s flat out grooming your children.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Doing this 2,340 times during one’s formative years might have something to do with it.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Incorrect. They were rigged pretty much completely, as some data shows. Something about 30 million fake votes.
No, it was rigged in that there was election fraud.
In the same way every election in the US was due to “election fraud”?
If election fraud is so easy, maybe democracy isn’t that great a deal…
The results of the US elections at the presidential level are not due to election fraud though so you do not really have a point.
That’s not my claim, that’s the claim of the party claiming to represent about half of Americans’ interests.
You make Venedictov, Sobyanin, Churov and Pamfilova happy. You have been elected with 146% votes.
That is quite incorrect. First the parties have quite different platforms but they overall stay fairly centered. That is if you compare them to most other more extreme governments. Secondly even if you had one hundred parties to choose from, there will be no individual party that will represent your views 100 percent. The point of democracy is not to cater to any single individual but to try and find a middle ground. Yes a bit more variety might be better but at the end of the day you likely would have similar laws and rights.
Western nations are not intimidating or assassinating people with incompatible opinions. Yes there could be improvements to voter suppression but it is extremely limited in effectiveness. The US employees regional representation that does create some popular vote issues but it also fixes some regional issues where people in part can be under represented. So I can understand some argument for the current system.
Perfect no. Anywhere near the problems in Russia and most of the rest of the world, not at all. Get a grip.
glances at Boeings whistleblower
Boeing != The US government
What do you call a company which receives 40% of funding from the government and which plays a pivotal role in national security? In other countries, we call those state-owned enterprises.
I call it a business that works on government contracts. Nothing more, because that’s literally what it is.
tell that to Daphne Caruana Galizia
US politics is absolutely retarded but at least you aren’t going to fall out of a window for criticizing the president.
No, but if you blow the whistle on a US company you might end up suicided.
Oh yea, true but that less about politics and more about capitalist creed. The US also has a police system that seemingly runs on the ritual sacrifice of innumerable black folk and pets but that is also not relevant.
Capitalist greed is what influences the base of US politics, though.
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How can you possibly separate politics from capitalist greed. The government represents the class that holds power, and US it’s the capital owning class.
In Russia the olicarchs are directly ruling the country so you can’t criticise them without endangering your life. In the US the capitalist class heavily influences the politics but isnt the one directly ruling the country so you can criticise the politicians all you want. That’s the difference I was pointing out.
I hope you enjoy your freedom of screaming into the void while being exploited.