The devil is in the details, isn't it?

For instance, what kind of guaranteed minimum income are we talking about?

The context they used (automatisation, labour supply) suggests to me something along the lines of an unconditional basic income. If that's the case, it cannot be compared to a minimum wage at all, since it has effects that go far beyond the labour market and the income situation. It's a massive reshaping of how we organise society. And it becomes a pain in the ass to even conceptualise properly once you talk about how to finance it...

A minimum wage, no matter how decent it is, doesn't even put a dent into the disparity between income from labour and income from capital. It makes life less horrible for those it applies to and it somewhat curtails the welfare queens among corporations who like their wage slaves being paid for by society. Yes, I'm looking at you, Walmart! Still, on its own, it does very little about income inequality, and nothing at all about wealth inequality.

How would I address income inequality?

In German, the words for taxes and steering are the same: "Steuern". If you want to steer the income towards a more equal distribution, taxation might be the easiest way to go about it. Treat all forms of income equally in terms of taxation. Or go one step further and treat wages preferentially to support employment.

However, redistribution will only get you so far. So why not address it at an earlier stage: distribution. Mondragon serves as a successful example of how a cooperative structure puts democratic checks and balances on the wage structure within a corporation. One person, one vote puts the lid on any attempts by higher-ups to rake in 300 times as much as the peasants on the factory floor.

Yet it doesn't do anything about the inequality between wages and capital income. Even a combination of progressive taxation and fixed income-ratios doesn't do much about it. Especially since non-wage income can evade taxation in a million different ways and most politicians in every country in the world seem more than eager to protect what loopholes they created over the decades.

So what's my suggestion? Well, progressive taxation of both income and wealth, living wage plus job guarantee, support of democratic structures at the workplace, international pressure on tax havens (which includes my own fecking country). Realistic? No. But neither was our welfare system until it was implemented.

How are you going to implement a multi party system in the US with the current voting system; one person, one vote, majority wins?

>> ^VoodooV:

Quite simply, people need to take a stand on the whole "Money is not free speech" issue
If enough people dislike a product and don't buy it..thus motivating the company to make a better one, well that works for commerce, but it doesn't work for government. equating money to speech runs DIRECTLY counter to the whole notion that everyone has an equal voice in our gov't.
I would simply argue that in the information age, there simply is no need for lobbyists and corporate donations. If you've got something to say to your elected officials, you can email them or write a letter just like everyone else. You want to learn more about a candidate? that's what we have debates and that's what we have publicly funded websites for. There is just absolutely no need for billboards and commercials and stupid lawn signs that clutter and ugly up the landscape.
Remove/ban private money from public government (no I'm not referring to taxes, that's separate and necessary and you know it...deal with it) and I guarantee you we'll have a more fair society. Remove/ban the ability for a business to influence gov't and there will be no incentive for a politician to take the job so he can get corporate lobby/donation money.
We have to make it so that the only reason to become an elected official is because you want to make the country better. We have to make so it really is one person one vote and restore democracy


Correct step, but you're not accounting for folks who hire onto some big corporation or what not after their public service term. Government regulatory bodies are notorious for this, but so are Congress or their staffers. You can't really deny them future employment, but there is obvious alignment and abuse of that taking place throughout government. Taking lobby dollars away might make it harder for them to maintain a relationship, but they will work out it by employing their family members with fat salaries or other means.


And then once they get to working for the company, they have a line into the relationships created during their terms. While it'd still be lobbying, it'd just end up being favors....a less quantifiable currency.

Quite simply, people need to take a stand on the whole "Money is not free speech" issue

If enough people dislike a product and don't buy it..thus motivating the company to make a better one, well that works for commerce, but it doesn't work for government. equating money to speech runs DIRECTLY counter to the whole notion that everyone has an equal voice in our gov't.

I would simply argue that in the information age, there simply is no need for lobbyists and corporate donations. If you've got something to say to your elected officials, you can email them or write a letter just like everyone else. You want to learn more about a candidate? that's what we have debates and that's what we have publicly funded websites for. There is just absolutely no need for billboards and commercials and stupid lawn signs that clutter and ugly up the landscape.

Remove/ban private money from public government (no I'm not referring to taxes, that's separate and necessary and you know it...deal with it) and I guarantee you we'll have a more fair society. Remove/ban the ability for a business to influence gov't and there will be no incentive for a politician to take the job so he can get corporate lobby/donation money.

We have to make it so that the only reason to become an elected official is because you want to make the country better. We have to make so it really is one person one vote and restore democracy

>> ^Hastur:


I'm sorry to be pedantic here, but I don't see why you get to decide what an abstainer thinks. I think they don't like any of the candidates, so I say they're casting a vote for "none of the above". However you want to count them, the 69 million popular votes cast for Obama in 2008 represents about 23% of the 300 million residents. It's simply not the will of the majority. It's not even the will of a representative sample, being that it excludes everyone under 18 and everyone not a citizen.
In a country where people seem reasonably satisfied with two senators per state, unelected judges, and all kinds of other "transgressions" against one-person-one-vote that occur in a republic, I just think it's misguided to believe that the electoral college is some huge injustice. The US is called the United States for a reason; it's not conceived to work purely as a direct democracy on the federal level, and there's no prior reason to believe that's a more effective form of governance at that scale.


I don't decide, the abstainer decides... Whether it's apathy (my vote doesn't make a difference), indifference (don't care either way) or a genuine protest about a paucity of good candidates, the abstainer chooses (democratically) not to participate. They lose the right to complain (although most will still do so) about who they wind up with, but it's not like they were disqualified against their wishes...

With that in mind, if Obama wins with 69 million votes in a popular election, it is still a majority of people who voted... EC's basically say that even once you take out the abstainers, a person with less than 50% of the actual voters can win office. Abstainers drop out of both systems, the important metric is total votes accrued per candidate vs total number of people who placed votes.

re: the second paragraph, just because problems aren't getting solved doesn't make them not problems. Essentially the apathy to change a flawed system is a democratic expression in itself, that does not make the system fair. And a popular vote for the president (ie. the executive) has little to do with the day to day running of towns/cities/states. A president might be hamstrung by a hostile congress and/or senate and achieve little during his term/s (see Obama and his great plans which were mostly stymied by the legislative branch of the Fed).

A direct popular vote means that instead of appealing to a few niche states, the candidates have to make a broader appeal to the electorate, and are less prone to pork barrel the power brokers of the electorate. It might not ever change but that doesn't mean we can't point out the inequalities in the current system.

>> ^Asmo:
Btw, a person who chooses not to vote does in fact cast a vote, a vote to abstain. Because they choose to exclude themselves from the process does not mean they weren't given their democratic right to have their say.
I'm sorry to be pedantic here, but I don't see why you get to decide what an abstainer thinks. I think they don't like any of the candidates, so I say they're casting a vote for "none of the above". However you want to count them, the 69 million popular votes cast for Obama in 2008 represents about 23% of the 300 million residents. It's simply not the will of the majority. It's not even the will of a representative sample, being that it excludes everyone under 18 and everyone not a citizen.

In a country where people seem reasonably satisfied with two senators per state, unelected judges, and all kinds of other "transgressions" against one-person-one-vote that occur in a republic, I just think it's misguided to believe that the electoral college is some huge injustice. The US is called the United States for a reason; it's not conceived to work purely as a direct democracy on the federal level, and there's no prior reason to believe that's a more effective form of governance at that scale.

>> ^Hastur:

>> ^Asmo:

Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.
So is the UK not a democracy? Canada? Australia? Germany? France? All have a head of government who is not elected by one person, one vote. In any of those cases, it's quite possible to choose a prime minister not favored by a majority. There are different flavors of democracy, some of them pre-dating the US, many of which do not directly elect their executives by one-person, one-vote.
The philosophical point of democracy is to best represent the will of the majority. In the US, we have the additional task of doing so while protecting the rights of the minority. The best way to do that is not always one-person, one-vote.
And like I said: even if you abolish the electoral college you still don't get the will of the majority, since there are many people who cannot legally vote and many others who choose not to.


Yes, they are democratic systems built on the principle of democracy. However, "equality and freedom have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times" (from the Wiki). Most modern democratic systems are not equal.

Btw, a person who chooses not to vote does in fact cast a vote, a vote to abstain. Because they choose to exclude themselves from the process does not mean they weren't given their democratic right to have their say.

As an Australian, I'd prefer a Prime Minister voted in by popular vote. During the last term, the sitting PM Kevin Rudd was deposed and replaced by Julia Gillard in an internal coup due to his poor polling results (ie. it was looking like Rudd was riding the Labor party in to the ground). They replaced him as party leader which also meant he was no longer PM. That was not democratic in the slightest. At the following election, Julia Gillard won government by securing the votes of independents/crossbenchers, but achieved less of the popular vote than Tony Abbott from the Liberal party. Incidentally, voting in Australia is compulsory and you're fined if you don't show up (so much for that 'freedom' principle)

Our system is built on democratic principles, and is a form of democracy, but it's far removed from the method used by the Greeks who coined the term (Demos = "people", kratos "people"). The US electoral college is in the same boat. Someone said it earlier, the founding fathers didn't trust the average moron to get it right and put in a system to leave the true voting to 'wiser' minds.

When you can achieve 50+% of the EC votes for less than 20% of the popular vote, the system is broken, end of story. Keeping the EC seems more a matter of convenience (eg. "there will be too much rorting", it'll be too hard, waaah etc) than a matter of fairness.

>> ^Asmo:


Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.
So is the UK not a democracy? Canada? Australia? Germany? France? All have a head of government who is not elected by one person, one vote. In any of those cases, it's quite possible to choose a prime minister not favored by a majority. There are different flavors of democracy, some of them pre-dating the US, many of which do not directly elect their executives by one-person, one-vote.

The philosophical point of democracy is to best represent the will of the majority. In the US, we have the additional task of doing so while protecting the rights of the minority. The best way to do that is not always one-person, one-vote.

And like I said: even if you abolish the electoral college you still don't get the will of the majority, since there are many people who cannot legally vote and many others who choose not to.

>> ^Hastur:
Exactly. The premise of the video, that 5% of the time the "loser" won the election, is only true if you define "winner" as the candidate with the most popular votes. In fact that's a pretty arbitrary definition, even in a democracy. Even if you abolish the electoral college, you'll find all kinds of strains on fairness.


Umm, isn't that the very definition of democracy? Getting the most votes, one person one vote.

The fact that people can elect to not show up to vote is neither here nor there, they forfeit their right to have a say. So the winner is out of 100% of people who voted. It might still be a minority of the overall population, but you'd be hard pressed to make the argument that a person who didn't vote has the right to complain about the president they get stuck with...

>> ^marbles:

Well you got it mostly right, the fact is we're not suppose to be a democracy. We are suppose to be constitutional republic of individual sovereign states with democratic checks and balances. Democracy ≠ freedom.

Exactly. The premise of the video, that 5% of the time the "loser" won the election, is only true if you define "winner" as the candidate with the most popular votes. In fact that's a pretty arbitrary definition, even in a democracy. Even if you abolish the electoral college, you'll find all kinds of strains on fairness.


Continue the thought experiment: you'll probably want to start by wiping out the Senate, since it grossly overrepresents the vote of a Hawaiian relative to a New Yorker. Next, onto the Supreme Court. A whole *branch* of government unelected! Where's the democracy?

Now that we're casting our votes for Scalia or Kagan, there's a thorny problem with the numbers. Somehow, even with the electoral college gone, we're still ignoring the will of the 24% of the population under the age of 18. Don't forget the 20 million immigrants living legally in the United States. What happened to one person, one vote? Under what definition of "fair" do only adults and citizens get to determine their own destiny democratically?

After you've rectified that "indefensible" affront to democracy, you'll still find that, because of the typical ~55% turnout, 51% of the popular vote really only wins about 28% of the population. Why should that candidate be president, they don't even represent the will of the majority! How is that democratic?

Don't assume that electing the president by popular vote is somehow more fair. It's not, it's just more direct, and a different set of arbitrary rules. What we should really be concerned about is the same thing the Founding Fathers were thinking about: coming up with the most *effective* system of government within the framework of a constitutional republic. That may not be the Electoral College, but directly electing the president doesn't necessarily make anything better, or more fair.

it's not that all corporate stuff is good or bad. it's a big shade of grey.

i think a better question is whether we'd be better off with a different legal framework for large entities other than the corporate charter, which often operates at the expense of the public good.
An executive in a corporation only has a fiduciary duty to maximize the earnings of the shareholders. There is no duty to public trust.

right now corporations generally:

a. are mainly owned by the upper class
b. mainly employ the lower class
c. mass produce second rate goods
d. Dominate smaller and emerging markets/
undercutting emerging technologies and competitors in order to monopolize markets. Once competition is squashed, they can price control, insuring profit.
e. Carefully protect their trade secrets in order to maximize profits. In other words, they don't share.
f. due to a history of conservative US judicial decisions, are treated "legally" as people for purposes of "free speech" and unlimited political access (money), but are not treated like people when it comes to liability for their actions.
g. Wield enormous financial political power that incredibly undermines the democratic idea of one person, one vote.
h. Mega-corporations are almost always multi-national - operating in different countries and "forum" shopping for the cheapest labor, best tax benefits, cheapest resources, easiest military dictator to support, and crappiest environmental standards. And as multinationals - they often operate outside of ANY laws, since jurisdiction becomes such a complicated issue.

to really fix the problems with corporations, the legal framework on an international level needs to be addressed, and soon.

and before any of you right wing dipshits start jabbering about liberal bias, know this:
I'm an ex-lawyer and a critical, independent thinker, so think twice and read carefully before emailing me your bullshit.

One person, one vote.

Wrong wrong wrong.

The electoral college is a safety net. For one thing, if a candidate dies from Nov-Jan there is a way for electoral college to select better choice. It also prevents weird things like China bribing tons of people to buy their votes, or other weird things. It also can be used to overturn corrupt state gov't.

Here is the flaw with your popular vote nonsense. You assume every state is equal when it comes to counting and casting a ballot, so that one person one vote.

In reality this is not the case. There are counties in rural places where it is so corrupt and they pay you $5 to cast their ballot and bring them your blank. At least with electoral college, we semi-limit the damage one bad state elections can have on the overall election.

Let's say CA decided to choose the next president or the Gov of CA runs.. they could just stuff the ballot box and win the popular vote PERIOD. With electoral college there is more input into the system where smaller states still have a stake in the elections.

Only ignorant people keep repeating these ideas of popular vote and getting a "receipt" to prove how you voted.

and to take your own viewpoint in a different direction, what's to say that upper stars should have the ability to be "better critics" than everyone else? I mean, I have been here long enough to have earned silver, maybe even gold, but I keep putting up vids that I LIKE. Not stuff I think will get me my stars. I'm not lolcatting even though I understand that would get my star rising faster. Fine strategy for others but I'm not interested. Yeah half of my stuff ends up being a dupe but honestly I am flattered by that because it usually means I'm picking good stuff - just too late. It hasn't escaped my notice that some types of vids are harder to get sifted than others but that's fine. If a philosophical vid or obscure music vid or art vid actually does get sifted, I feel even more satisfied that it was a good pick. Sorry but people naturally vote up things that make them laugh or give them warm fuzzies. So, there's going to be a lot of lolcat sifts. Is that bad?
Keep the voting the way it is please. Maybe hand out more star powers or give them more often because I DO trust the upper stars to pick good things and bypass the system occasionally, but please, the symbolism of "one person, one vote" is too powerful.

haha raven thanks for playing.

K0MMIE... it IS one person one vote, but senior sifters would have the power to help things out of the queue.

there is a difference between a video dying because it's bad and dying because not enough people lol'd. some things get loads of votes because they are 20 seconds long and make you laugh. fine. but is VideoSift a lolmeter? or a place to find the best archive of video links?

lol does not equal ultimate truth.