I can only accept that as an argument for why strategic voting is smart. It doesn’t make sense to me as an argument for saying voting for the candidate you want is morally wrong in contexts where it could cause a spoiler effect. This is where people are blurring the line that bothers me.
I agree with all that. Your point about ranked choice is why I personally think state elections are more important than presidential at the moment, and is one of the major reasons I have for still voting democrat.
I think when it comes to telling other people how to vote, people should be more careful to not accidentally encourage hopelessness and voter apathy by the way they phrase it.
I don’t agree with saying anything but voting for joe biden is totally equivalent to voting for trump, which is being said a lot… I don’t see why.
Not voting or voting 3rd party can cause a spoiler effect. But obviously that effect is less than directly voting for the worse guy. Mathematically they aren’t the same.
It is causing a lot of conflict to try and place a moral obligation on strategic voting specifically.
Everyone who is about to yell at me: I’ll probably vote strategically, that is my plan. I just don’t agree with all this hatred for 3rd parties.
Global climate change and the all the plants and animals that have gone extinct makes Africa a different place than it was when hominids first evolved. And the population sizes were on entirely different magnitudes pre-agriculture. And even then, when they did start spreading, many of them starved or died from other things we would consider preventable in modern contexts.
So whether or not people are currently dealing with food insecurity in Africa has pretty much nothing to do with where humanity evolved from. The explanation for what is going on, even though we have agriculture and could feed everyone, is colonialism.
I agree with and understand a lot of your frustrations, as they are also my frustrations.
But you basically said “I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, so now I will vote for the greater of two evils.” Just vote 3rd party or something, and try to not take it personally when people are assholes about elections.
The two party problem as a result of first past the post means that not voting against the party you dislike more can result in a spoiler effect, and reduce the chances of the not-as-bad mainstream party winning the election. But, I reject that that spoiler effect is necessarily as bad as voting directly for the worse candidate, it is mathematically untrue. Many people try to insist they are equivalent to try and motivate voting, but I think it has the opposite effect, making people feel apathetic about the entire voting process.
Under first past the post we cannot be free of the biases of the system that enforces two parties, BUT it is possible to rarely, with a big movement of people, swap a third party with on of the major parties to replace it as a major party. The way I see voting 3rd party in situations like this is like the prisonor’s dilemma. People are motivated individually to cast their votes strategically for the major party they prefer by the spoiler effect, but if enough people collectively vote 3rd party then the outcome would be better for everyone. Thus, I cannot agree with or accept people claiming voting third party is unacceptable. It might not be likely to be effective, but it is hopeful and not nearly as misguided as people try to insist it is.
Also, Idk if this even applies to me, I’ll probably be using my vote strategically. I just support people’s right to vote 3rd party.
I’m so tired of people saying not voting for biden is completely equivalent to voting for trump, but this is stupid.
You trying to lead them by the nose to a sane position/definition for genocide, and them just being intentionally obtuse, basically saying “nu-uh” over and over…
Painful to read. Kinda frustrating to see a moderator behave that way. I appreciate your effort though.
That is the point, maintaining a status quo of “all politicians are war mongers”. They don’t want to let any non-war mongers into the club.
It’s not just about money, it’s also about approval raitings. Out of control and bizarre as it all feels, the individual politicians involved have to continually keep their supporters scared and seeking violent action (and therefore voting for them) or else a sane person might get elected and stop shoveling money into the war-engine.
Switching to propane is one safer alternative that is being recommended for people with natural gas lines to their houses, it is less leaky and cleaner burning than the methane stuff. Propane won’t be banned, but it will become more expensive as supplies dwindle.
If you have an air conditioner you already have a heat pump, it just needs to be one that can alternate directions between heating and cooling. Also, backup emergency heat would not need to be nearly as extensive as a full house propane furnace. Or, you could just use a propane emergency generator instead and keep using the heat pump. Propane can be stored long term much more easily than alternatives like gasoline, and while it can be pricier, just having enough for emergencies is not a great cost.
Batteries or generators could also work for heat pumps, or you could have emergency backup propane heat. Basically the short answer to your concern is “prepare” just like how you handle every other emergency situation like that ever, regardless of what kind of heating system you use.
Also a big part of it is fixing up your insulation. Modern insulation is great, a well insulated house is super cheap/easy to heat.
What???
This is about heating homes in winter, what are you talking about?? Electric fans are more efficient at what?
Not all propaganda is untrue. Sometimes it is more tactical. In this case, implying one true thing is more important than it is.
All construction projects of all types have been having impacts on the animals that are displaced or effected for a while, and we do need to have concern for it and change many things, from infrastructure designs to materials used and how they are manufactured.
But inflating this concern over these birds related to windmills is intended to bring hesitation to people who are concerned about the environment that would otherwise support these necessary changes to our power grid.
There will always always always be less damage to environments from windmills than there is from equivalent power fossil fuel use. Implying otherwise is dishonest. Look at any image of a strip mine and tell me that causes less damage than windmills
This isn’t true. We very much can.
Have you considered that the sun is a gigantic self sustaining ball of fusion that bathes our entire planet in an amount of power you cannot comprehend in its scale, every single day? Because that is a big part of it.
This is an argument for differently designed windfarms, at best, and you are defending propaganda.
A lot of what you just said is not true, fully bullshit, so I’ll just ignore all that. Dead birds? Cmon. Are we going to tear down all the skyscrapers in the world because birds run into them? Are we going to stop the entire logging industry because it takes away bird’s nesting space? Don’t spout anti-green energy propaganda like you are worried about the birds, if you were really worried about them, you would be pro green energy
If you consider the peripheral waste involved in their production it is only fair to do the same for everything else, and when you do, solar and wind still win. And it’s only going to get better, we are refining and recycling the rare materials involved better and better every year. We are kindof in the golden age of solar power improvements.
Wind and solar > nuclear > fossil fuels
Nothing really against nuclear except how it is being weilded as a distraction from better, cleaner, energy. We need to be going all in on converting everything to wind and solar, with batteries and other power storage like water pumping facilities filling the gaps.
Nuclear needs a few more issues figured out, like how to actually cheaply build and get power from all those touted newer cleaner reactor styles.
They did, it is there under blocked instances
I’m not sure why anyone would expect trump to not also fund the genocide of Palestinians.
Bluntly, the policy differences between the two are insufficient, but the behavior of trump supporters themselves is part of my considerations. Having trump as president for 4 years inspired incredibly fucked up behavior from conservatives.