There is no middle ground when it comes to Russia's continuing atrocities against Ukraine. By cutting off a Starlink capability that Ukraine was already depending upon, Musk is acting against the interests of the United States which is actively supporting Ukraine financially and militarily. This has the effect of directly supporting our adversary Russia and Putin. The United States should move with all possible speed to legally end, suspend, and/or not renew any and all business relationships with Musk and any of his companies, as quickly as practicable.

@lauren
Starlink could not exist without the US government. The US funded most of the research upon which Starlink's depends, it is a primary customer, it sponsors Starlink's use of space in international regulatory forums, etc. While Starlink is technically a private company, it is very much a product of our government.

From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

It is reasonable to demand that Starlink not oppose US government goals and policies.

@bobwyman @lauren
And that is why gov should have partial ownership of every private company that receives significant investment/bailouts.

"We" paid for it. Why don't we own a part of it?

@TCatInReality

I want to emphasize part of my point though: it's not voter INaction, but voter ACTION where we voters go to the polls and actively reelect representatives with their track records.

We don't just sit back and let it happen. We participate in the process of putting these individuals back in power even after they demonstrated how they would vote.

I don't know how many issues I see where friends will be excited to vote for some candidate even though I know that candidate contributed to some serious problem that the friend personally cares about.

We eagerly reelect the people who cause so many problems. Voter education is seriously lacking, but in the end, we get the government we vote for.

@bobwyman @lauren

@volkris @bobwyman @lauren
Completely agree on that.

First past the post system lead to a "lesser of two evils" decision and campaign that focus on tarring the other side.

@TCatInReality @bobwyman @lauren But let me build on that just a little bit.

The big problem with first past the post is that when I cast my vote I have to worry a whole lot about how my neighbor is casting his vote, I have to game things because I don't want my vote wasted on somebody that doesn't actually stand a chance of winning... maybe because other people aren't voting for that candidate because they don't want to waste their vote on someone who doesn't have a chance of winning... which obviously becomes circular and stupid pretty quickly 🙂

SO how do we mitigate this problem? By only having two candidates to vote for. By organizing ourselves behind two candidates supposedly diametrically opposed, and so we evolved a primary system with two major political parties.

Which is all to say that as much as people complain about the two-party system in the US, two few people realize that the two party system is merely the natural attempt to mitigate issues with our voting system.

The two party system is harsh medicine for a deeper problem. We should cure the deeper problem instead of spending so much time worrying about the mitigating mechanism.

@volkris @bobwyman @lauren
Very interesting.

What would you say is the deeper problem and its cure?

@TCatInReality @bobwyman @lauren

The deep problem is the first past the post #voting system. Almost any voting system would be better.

The cure is to change to a different voting system, probably one of the many ranked choice systems.

We can argue about which one would be the best of imperfect options, but at the end of the day, they would all be better than what we have now.

(This is even more or less mathematically provable, but that's tricky because it's calculating subjective priorities)

#RCV