Really, it's not the court costs that outweigh the $100 million. It's the losses that they would incur from having to give Creative a slice of all the profits from their iPods, their most profitable product and the thing keeping their stock prices high on Wall St.
Because we don't care. And our country isn't the size of a postage stamp, like Holland or Venice, so reclaiming tiny bits of below-sea level land isn't crucial to the nation's survival.
A grass roots movement behind a man worth somewhere between 90 and 300 million dollars who spent several million dollars of his own money on the campaign. Some "grass roots."
The spin machine reminds people that democrats are left wing radicals that are weak on homeland security.
Lieberman is a Democrat, and no one could accuse him of being "weak on homeland security." Just like no one could accuse fellow-Democrat Paul Wolfowitz of being weak on security.
The timing is only suspicious if you think the world revolves around Connecticut primary races. Talk about U.S.-centrism...
At an anti capitalist demo (I'm not a loony, but I do think some of the issues raised at those demos need to be raised - like subsidising the third world out of the world markets etc... but lets not go off topic)
Actually, let's go off topic for a moment. The above statement is exactly why no one pays any attention to activists. If activists had read Adam Smith, they would understand that the arch-capitalist himself advocated getting rid of distortions to international trade. Such barriers to trade include tariffs, quotas, and subsidies. Adam Smith argued (intelligently, as opposed to histrionically) against those kind of distortions, which hurt both countries, concluding that free trade would benefit both sides more by allowing them to specialize. The parent poster essentially advocates free trade (getting rid of trade distortions like subsidies) but terms it an "anti-capitalist demo"--categorically absurd! That would be like having a vegetarian demo in support of the meat packing industry--polar opposites. My suggestion is to try reading a book, and then holding yourself an "anti-mercantilist", "anti-socialist", or (dare I say it) "pro-capitalist" demo.
The Iraq War is differs markedly from past wars in one critical aspect: while Washington sends a small minority (i.e., the soldiers) of Americans to Iraq to possibly die, the overwhelming majority of Americans has made no sacrifices whatsoever for this war.
We've had quite a number of wars in between WWII and the Iraq War that shared the same characteristic: Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Bosnian and Kosovo Wars, and War in Afghanistan. The Iraq War isn't different or unique at all in that respect.
If you want to make a sacrifice for the war, you can. Don't wait for the government to instruct you to--this is a free country. There are pages on the internet where you can buy a marine sniper a better scope, or army soldiers clay pieces to reinforce their body armor, or buy phone cards for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
The federal government has greatly exceeded those original aims, and now passes laws, collects taxes, and runs social programs that directly affects the individuals in our country, rather than indirectly though the states. Therefore, the citizens should have direct representation in the federal government, rather than indirectly through the states.
I think you've got things backward. If the federal government is doing things that are unconstitutional it should cease doing those things. We shouldn't hamstring the power of the states even further simply to accommodate the expansion of centralized federal power.
All it does is change the way that elections are conducted at the federal level.
That's just it though: elections aren't conducted at the federal level. They're conducted at the state level, by the states, and under the aegis of state law (within the guidelines set by the Constitution). Moving to a PR system will undermine the state role in elections by removing any meaning from state groupings.
One: It's silly if individuals rather than states are electing the president, but individuals aren't electing the president, states are. Once aggregate state data is collected the state can decide what to do with it, according to local preference. In most states, there is a winner-take-all system, which is what people have been happy with for 200+ years. In a few states, the states electors can be subdivided--again by state choice. But since states comprise the Union, and states elect the president, it's legitimate for them to use the aggregate result and throw away the particular data. If you don't like the federal system and the dual-sovereignty division of powers you can always get rid of states altogether and have regional administrative zones under a central government--but this would quite clearly be an undesirable centralization of power.
Two: your photoshop analogy is flawed because it assumes that each person's voting preferences is a known quality. However, of the population that votes, 10-20% are swing voters who do not decide until just before the election. The electoral college system magnifies the importance of campaigning for specific groups, making the system more responsive. Under a PR system, swing voters in swing states would have dramatically less importance, making candidates less responsive to minority interests and more focused on already-established large voting blocs.
How can you rationalize the electoral college on something as specific as state history, when most of the state history that matters now hadn't even occurred when the system was devised?
Because each state willingly signed on to the system when they applied for statehood?
...and the electoral college is clearly more centralized than the popular vote.
Not so. In the current system, the presidential candidate interacts with 50+ discrete voting units. Under the PR system, the presidential candidate would interact with 1 discrete voting unit: the mass. The electoral college forces the president to consider regional variations and sub-state groups. A nation-wide PR system would allow the presidential candidates to focus on the largest blocs in the nation--white, Christian, suburban, middle class--to the exclusion of minorities and regional interests.
Mass appeals aren't going to be the order of the day - statewide crude mass appeals are already the order of the day because minorities are unrepresented, and the great thing about PR is that it gives such minorities the overall mass that they can't be ignored, and so mass appeals simply won't work.
This is incorrect. Since the United States is not a parliamentary system, politicians would pander to the largest mass of voters: white, middle class, suburban, Christian. They would have little to gain from reaching out minorities, if in doing so they ran the chance of alienating the majority. In a parliamentary system in which there are numerous parties sharing power in coalition governments, small parties can wield power by appealing to niche interest groups and minorities. Not so in a presidential system.
The paradox present is that by introducing intermediary institutions, voting is both distorted and therefore more responsive to minorities. Under PR, we would see:
300 million voters:: 1 President; whereas under the EC we see
300 million voters:: 50 states + one district + some territories:: 1 President
Within the smaller groupings of states, groups that are minorities on a national scale can exercise decisive weight as swing votes within the state. Thus regionally grouped minorities (Polish in Chicago, elderly in Florida) can gain a voice they might not have had otherwise. In a nation-wide PR system, the presidential candidates will all go for the big homogeneous bloc of white, middle class, Christian, suburban voters than make up 60-70% of the United States, ignoring the minorities making up the other 30-40%.
Finally, by further undermining the importance of states, a PR system would weaken the federal system that the States established in order to maintain a proper division of powers. The importance and influence of states were undermined when the 17th amendment was passed, removing from the state legislatures the right to appoint Senators. As a result, even more power was centralized in Washington DC. Moving to PR, and erasing the importance of states would be one more step in that direction.
Everyone on Slashdot understands why centralizing power is a bad thing in the computer science / tech industry / operating system market. Why don't they understand why further centralizing power in national politics is just as dangerous?
The Electoral College reduces the weight of large states and increases the weight of the small states
Some hypotheticals to back this assertion up:
122 million people voted in the last election. Therefore, it takes about 62 million voters to win an election. Hypothetically, it would take a minimum of three states with 100% of the population voting for one candidate to win an election under a proportional voting system.
270 electoral votes are necessary to win under the current system. It takes a minimum of 11 states to produce a winner under the electoral college system.
By minmaxing potential voting outcomes you can clearly see that the electoral college is more successful at decentralizing and diffusing power throughout the constituent units of the United States than would an unmitigated proportional representation system.
Article One, Section 3, Clause 1 specifies that Senators are to be chosen by the State legislatures. According to the Framers, the Senate was supposed to represent the interests of the States, while the House was to directly represent the interests of the people. With the Seventeenth Amendment, Senators became directly elected by the people, bypassing (and thus reducing the power and importance of) the State legislatures.
The solution is neither to change the constitution, nor to have each state's electors vote for the national majority, but rather to implement the electoral college the way the constitution originally defined it
I find this to be the solution to most voting complaints. Most things can and should be solved at the state level. People who strongly desire imposing a universal solution on all 50 states like proportional systems, and like the idea of getting rid of the electoral college, and speak disdainfully about the need for substantive state powers. People who want instant runoff voting can implement it at state level, and people who want proportionally assigned electors can implement that through state law. None of this needs to be implemented at a federal level.
Change can and does happen faster at a state level: state legislators are more accessible to local activists than federal representatives (who are completely swamped), and states were intended to be laboratories of democracy and innovative government (according to Supreme Court Justice Brandeis). Pursuing universal solutions through the federal government when there is no need for nation-wide uniformity robs the country of states-as-laboratories and hamstrings one of the major advantages of a federal system of government.
Power is power, whether it is the ability to coerce through legislation, or the ability to select an executive through voting. You said it yourself:
What electoral college systems do is to provide local centers of power at the time of an election...
That's exactly what they're there for: to keep political power divided into constituent parts. The system for dividing the power into intermediary institutions does introduce distortions (like the four elections in U.S. history when the popular vote candidate was narrowly beaten by the electoral vote candidate). The question is whether four vote distortions in 230 years is so hideous an outcome that voting must be centralized, politics divorced from local concerns, and mass appeals made the rule of the day. I think the latter is far worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Just one word: plastics.
That just about sums it up, doesn't it?
Really, it's not the court costs that outweigh the $100 million. It's the losses that they would incur from having to give Creative a slice of all the profits from their iPods, their most profitable product and the thing keeping their stock prices high on Wall St.
One more example:
One could dislike people who cannot register sarcasm, but still tolerate them replying to posts on /.
Because we don't care. And our country isn't the size of a postage stamp, like Holland or Venice, so reclaiming tiny bits of below-sea level land isn't crucial to the nation's survival.
Attn: Please revoke parent poster's official geek card. Thanks.
Yeah, how is it possible to dislike something but still think it should be tolerated? What a crazy concept!
A grass roots movement behind a man worth somewhere between 90 and 300 million dollars who spent several million dollars of his own money on the campaign. Some "grass roots."
Lieberman is a Democrat, and no one could accuse him of being "weak on homeland security." Just like no one could accuse fellow-Democrat Paul Wolfowitz of being weak on security.
The timing is only suspicious if you think the world revolves around Connecticut primary races. Talk about U.S.-centrism...
Actually, let's go off topic for a moment. The above statement is exactly why no one pays any attention to activists. If activists had read Adam Smith, they would understand that the arch-capitalist himself advocated getting rid of distortions to international trade. Such barriers to trade include tariffs, quotas, and subsidies. Adam Smith argued (intelligently, as opposed to histrionically) against those kind of distortions, which hurt both countries, concluding that free trade would benefit both sides more by allowing them to specialize. The parent poster essentially advocates free trade (getting rid of trade distortions like subsidies) but terms it an "anti-capitalist demo"--categorically absurd! That would be like having a vegetarian demo in support of the meat packing industry--polar opposites. My suggestion is to try reading a book, and then holding yourself an "anti-mercantilist", "anti-socialist", or (dare I say it) "pro-capitalist" demo.
We've had quite a number of wars in between WWII and the Iraq War that shared the same characteristic: Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Bosnian and Kosovo Wars, and War in Afghanistan. The Iraq War isn't different or unique at all in that respect.
If you want to make a sacrifice for the war, you can. Don't wait for the government to instruct you to--this is a free country. There are pages on the internet where you can buy a marine sniper a better scope, or army soldiers clay pieces to reinforce their body armor, or buy phone cards for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.
They're accountable, but they're accountable to the state, not to you.
The South I'm not worried about. It's the North that's the problem.
It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.
Yeah, I was joking about the cockroach thing.
I wouldn't give them that much credit. Machiavelli was brilliant; these guys are bunglers at best.
I think you've got things backward. If the federal government is doing things that are unconstitutional it should cease doing those things. We shouldn't hamstring the power of the states even further simply to accommodate the expansion of centralized federal power.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell didn't wake up as a cockroach at any point in the last five years.
Voting shouldn't be some sort of state worship. It's a civic duty, not a party or act of reverence.
That's just it though: elections aren't conducted at the federal level. They're conducted at the state level, by the states, and under the aegis of state law (within the guidelines set by the Constitution). Moving to a PR system will undermine the state role in elections by removing any meaning from state groupings.
One: It's silly if individuals rather than states are electing the president, but individuals aren't electing the president, states are. Once aggregate state data is collected the state can decide what to do with it, according to local preference. In most states, there is a winner-take-all system, which is what people have been happy with for 200+ years. In a few states, the states electors can be subdivided--again by state choice. But since states comprise the Union, and states elect the president, it's legitimate for them to use the aggregate result and throw away the particular data. If you don't like the federal system and the dual-sovereignty division of powers you can always get rid of states altogether and have regional administrative zones under a central government--but this would quite clearly be an undesirable centralization of power.
Two: your photoshop analogy is flawed because it assumes that each person's voting preferences is a known quality. However, of the population that votes, 10-20% are swing voters who do not decide until just before the election. The electoral college system magnifies the importance of campaigning for specific groups, making the system more responsive. Under a PR system, swing voters in swing states would have dramatically less importance, making candidates less responsive to minority interests and more focused on already-established large voting blocs.
Because each state willingly signed on to the system when they applied for statehood?
Not so. In the current system, the presidential candidate interacts with 50+ discrete voting units. Under the PR system, the presidential candidate would interact with 1 discrete voting unit: the mass. The electoral college forces the president to consider regional variations and sub-state groups. A nation-wide PR system would allow the presidential candidates to focus on the largest blocs in the nation--white, Christian, suburban, middle class--to the exclusion of minorities and regional interests.
This is incorrect. Since the United States is not a parliamentary system, politicians would pander to the largest mass of voters: white, middle class, suburban, Christian. They would have little to gain from reaching out minorities, if in doing so they ran the chance of alienating the majority. In a parliamentary system in which there are numerous parties sharing power in coalition governments, small parties can wield power by appealing to niche interest groups and minorities. Not so in a presidential system.
The paradox present is that by introducing intermediary institutions, voting is both distorted and therefore more responsive to minorities. Under PR, we would see:
Within the smaller groupings of states, groups that are minorities on a national scale can exercise decisive weight as swing votes within the state. Thus regionally grouped minorities (Polish in Chicago, elderly in Florida) can gain a voice they might not have had otherwise. In a nation-wide PR system, the presidential candidates will all go for the big homogeneous bloc of white, middle class, Christian, suburban voters than make up 60-70% of the United States, ignoring the minorities making up the other 30-40%.
Finally, by further undermining the importance of states, a PR system would weaken the federal system that the States established in order to maintain a proper division of powers. The importance and influence of states were undermined when the 17th amendment was passed, removing from the state legislatures the right to appoint Senators. As a result, even more power was centralized in Washington DC. Moving to PR, and erasing the importance of states would be one more step in that direction.
Everyone on Slashdot understands why centralizing power is a bad thing in the computer science / tech industry / operating system market. Why don't they understand why further centralizing power in national politics is just as dangerous?
Some hypotheticals to back this assertion up:
122 million people voted in the last election. Therefore, it takes about 62 million voters to win an election. Hypothetically, it would take a minimum of three states with 100% of the population voting for one candidate to win an election under a proportional voting system.
270 electoral votes are necessary to win under the current system. It takes a minimum of 11 states to produce a winner under the electoral college system.
By minmaxing potential voting outcomes you can clearly see that the electoral college is more successful at decentralizing and diffusing power throughout the constituent units of the United States than would an unmitigated proportional representation system.
Article One, Section 3, Clause 1 specifies that Senators are to be chosen by the State legislatures. According to the Framers, the Senate was supposed to represent the interests of the States, while the House was to directly represent the interests of the people. With the Seventeenth Amendment, Senators became directly elected by the people, bypassing (and thus reducing the power and importance of) the State legislatures.
I find this to be the solution to most voting complaints. Most things can and should be solved at the state level. People who strongly desire imposing a universal solution on all 50 states like proportional systems, and like the idea of getting rid of the electoral college, and speak disdainfully about the need for substantive state powers. People who want instant runoff voting can implement it at state level, and people who want proportionally assigned electors can implement that through state law. None of this needs to be implemented at a federal level.
Change can and does happen faster at a state level: state legislators are more accessible to local activists than federal representatives (who are completely swamped), and states were intended to be laboratories of democracy and innovative government (according to Supreme Court Justice Brandeis). Pursuing universal solutions through the federal government when there is no need for nation-wide uniformity robs the country of states-as-laboratories and hamstrings one of the major advantages of a federal system of government.
Power is power, whether it is the ability to coerce through legislation, or the ability to select an executive through voting. You said it yourself:
That's exactly what they're there for: to keep political power divided into constituent parts. The system for dividing the power into intermediary institutions does introduce distortions (like the four elections in U.S. history when the popular vote candidate was narrowly beaten by the electoral vote candidate). The question is whether four vote distortions in 230 years is so hideous an outcome that voting must be centralized, politics divorced from local concerns, and mass appeals made the rule of the day. I think the latter is far worse.