volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@resuna

Again, it seems to be that you're so focused, even obsessed, with parties that you're missing how voters are impacted.

Third parties collapsing into two is only a problem if you're focused on there being third parties.

But if you focus on voters, as I do, that collapse isn't a problem but a solution as voters mitigate vote splitting and ballot wasting of the US voting system.

You seem to see it as a problem because it doesn't match your biases. But really, it's a solution, not a problem, if we consider the real people of the country.

@cinnarose @1dalm @brianklaas

@resuna

In case I haven't been clear, I don't care about third parties. In fact, that third parties collapse into two naturally is a huge sign of how misguided it is to focus on that.

Third parties don't serve voters well considering the problem of split votes and wasted ballots given the standard election method in the United States.

So again, I see you're focused on parties instead of voters, and I think that's really the wrong thing to focus on.

I want to serve voters and support the democratic process. I think that would be healthy for society. I don't really care about parties beyond the way they serve voters.

So I don't care about third parties except to point out that they can be bad for voters.

@cinnarose @1dalm @brianklaas

@magitweeter and I'm trying to point out that you are wrong about how banking works 🙂

When you have a bank deposit in a modern bank, you absolutely do not have a claim on any money. You don't own any money. Instead, the bank moves the money out of your ownership and gives it to other people.

When you deposit into a bank you give up your ownership of money.

What you receive in return is a claim against the bank itself, you receive a promise that the bank will give you other money when you request it. But you do give up your money when you deposit it in a bank.

So yes, I know that to you, hoarding means accumulating large amounts of titles to things, but what I'm trying to convey is that in modern financial systems you don't so much accumulate large amounts of titles to things.

(I'm trying to say this a few different ways to try to explain it)

So it's not so much that we are talking past each other, but that we have a disagreement over fact.

We agree that hoarding may involve keeping ownership of money. The difference is that you think these wealthy people do that, while I know that's not how banks work, and they give up that ownership when they deposit money.

@Vincarsi

@DrewNaylor I know it's an aside, but FWIW, I've really liked functional programming and how it naturally scales to our multicore environment.

I broke up with Python when I realized some functional programming techniques weren't speeding up, and then found out about the Global Interpreter Lock that pretty much binds it to a single core.

That's pretty sinful to me, that we've been living in this multiprocessing future for a generation now, but Python is hamstrung to a single core.

@Azen well, it's more the tradeoff for working in a workplace that's goal oriented, that's doing something great and pushing boundaries, and setting the balance between safety and accomplishment in a different place than other workplaces might.

Those aren't office jobs.

Risk aversion is paralysis to so many organizations. That SpaceX is willing to take more risks is part of why it's been so successful.

I'm jealous of a workplace willing to take more risks to do meet high goals like that.

@ajsadauskas from everything I've seen I get the impression that everyone WANTS Fediverse integration, but when Tumblr started working on the implementation they quickly found that Fediverse was designed in a way that is technically too expensive or unworkable for them.

The biggest benefits of federation come with scale, but unfortunately it was designed in such a way that the resources required to operate it scale even faster.

So as it scales the cost blew up faster than the benefits, if that makes sense.

These are fundamental design decisions made long ago that can't really be changed at this point.

Everyone agrees that integration would be good. It's just that it ended up being too expensive to actually implement.

@darnell

@DrewNaylor I was with you since I've fallen out of love with python and cheer for better languages.

But you lost me with VB transpiled to Rust because that sounds crazy complicated. :)

Surely we can find a solution that's both better than python but also straightforward.

@Vincarsi

It doesn't because in our reality the net worth doesn't really count what you HAVE but what you're OWED.

There's little hoarding with our banking system.

When you deposit money in a bank the bank doesn't just throw the cash in their vault. No, that money is lent out and otherwise used elsewhere.

If you deposit $1T into the bank, so you have a net worth of $1T, you're not sitting on that cash. The cash is gone, with the bank transferring it to other people and institutions.

That's the disconnect between measures of wealth and hoarding. Hoarding represented an opportunity cost, so these days we've broken that connection through banking.

@magitweeter

@magitweeter

But that touches on my point: the million dollars *doesn't* sit in your bank account in modern financial systems.

The bank writes down that it owes that money to the depositor, but then it takes that money and loans it out to others.

That million dollars doesn't just sit there. It goes to help a small company make payroll for the week, or it helps a machine shop buy a lathe, or it helps a middle class couple buy a new car for their commute.

The idea that money is sitting in an account is exactly the misunderstanding people have when they talk about the wealthy that way.

@Vincarsi

@sc_griffith whoever said you should be grateful?

React however you want. I really don't care how you feel about insurance.

But when you form that opinion, it seems to me you should at least be factually informed about the situation, and consider that you'll be paying either way.

The only difference is whether you involve the insurance company as a middleman or not, involving them in your business and having them tack a charge on top as a processing fee.

@swamphox you realize there is viral load in that dampness in your mask?

That's a mask working, that you can see for yourself.

The dampness of a mask after you've worn it is viral material that the mask has trapped.

@maniajack the US system doesn't leave any such choice up to any single individual, though. There are checks and balances.

Thomas didn't act unilaterally.

Rather, Thomas's opinion was joined by most of the members of the Supreme Court and was itself built on rulings going back into the history of the SCOTUS and deep into the history of courts below.

Stories focusing on personalities instead of processes or arguments make for good drama and clickbait, but they don't really inform the public as to what's going on with their governments.

Regardless, I suppose I'm talking about checks and balances in general. The Court refused to grant executive branches powers that they legally don't have, even if the restraints involved a reference to history.

@resuna you said, "something like the Westminster Parliamentary System and transferable votes"

The "and" there meant you weren't suggesting it as good in and of itself. If you didn't mean "and" that's fine, but the "and" did lump the two together.

You really seem to be putting parties ahead of other legislative functions in your comments. You focused on having third parties, and now you're bringing up multi-party environments.

But I'd say that focus on party overlooks the more important role of representing people, ahead of party, that we tend to want in our democratic processes.

@cinnarose @1dalm @brianklaas

@sc_griffith I think it's telling that you're willing to declare something as naive when you don't even care what you're talking about.

Now THAT'S naive.

But no, this just an expression of mathematical reality. A business cannot spend money it doesn't have. Therefore it has to raise revenues to cover higher costs.

Yeah things would be more complicated if insurance companies could print their own money, but they can't, and that really simplifies the reality before us.

@AnthonyFStevens and what if it's really not possible?

What if it really is like trying to grow wings, seriously just not an option on the table?

We can work with such a reality and try to get through it as well as possible, but we can't so long as we're denying that unfortunate reality.

I still don't hear a workable plan here, just vague ideas. I don't know how to get from here to there, and I think it's not possible, but these vague ideas don't bridge the gap.

@Vincarsi where is that wealth?

Again, it's Scrooge McDuck. Do you think they have moneyvaults that they go swimming in? Giant piles of coins? Maybe their driveways are paved with currency?

No, of course not. In a modern society people invest their wealth, making it available for use by others.

Because modern cultures push those with money to share their money with others, and not to hoard it.

There's a good chance your paycheck is in part made possible by some rich guy sharing his wealth with your employer, even if indirectly.

Now I'm not saying anything about whether this is good or bad or whether rich people are good people. I figure most of them aren't. BUT the reality is that wealthy people don't tend to hoard their wealth.

Even if such stories make for compelling clickbait and political messaging.

@swamphox have you ever worn a mask and noticed that it gets a little damp?

Guess, what, that's it doing shit.

If you've ever worn a mask you've been able to see for yourself that masks do shit, and if not, well most of the rest of us have.

The claim that masks don't do shit is just as obviously wrong as a claim that masks provide 100% protection. Both extremes are clearly wrong.

@AnthonyFStevens

But that's circling back to, what's the plan? :)

Or what's the plan to get agreement on a plan, I suppose.

This is the problem. I don't think it's possible to have a workable plan, just as I don't think it's possible to grow wings.

I don't think there is a whole united nation that just wants peace and an end to war, and I see no plan to get there.

@Vincarsi I'm not talking about altruism, though. You brought that up, but it's not necessary to highlight that our culture doesn't value hoarding wealth.

Wealth hoarding is already not considered a virtue. It has nothing to do with altruism but rather alignment of interests, people being rewarded for working in common interests.

It's fine to prefer altruism and think that's panacea to all of society's ills, but in the mean time we can recognize the way the institutions we have now work for the common good.

And in particular, the way the institutions we have now punish the hoarding of wealth, if that's something you care about.

@AnthonyFStevens

How do you plan to cut extremists off from their support base and isolate them?