You are correct here; see the debates regarding whether employers can fire employees who smoke at home, or in other places when they're not 'on the job'.
No offense, but that's a terrible analogy. And I should know; you would think terrible analogies are my bread and butter at the speed I churn them out.
I like the pit bull, though, so lets go with that. Alright, your neighbor... lives in a cul-de-sac with you, and subscribes to a newspaper. And every morning there is a finite chance that the newspaper is missing. He knows two other people in the cul-de-sac don't subscribe to newspapers, so he decides, heck, he'll send his pit bull after both of them.
One of them happens to be you. Turns out, though, that you didn't take his newspaper. He would have known this if he'd, say, gone over to your house and rang the door bell and saw the note on the door for the postman, "Please hold all mail... out of town from a week ago until a week from now." You couldn't have stolen his paper. But, instead, when you get home there is a pit bull prowling around that goes after you - and when your neighbor sees you yelping and running around with the dog slavering at your heels, he realizes that your oversized SUV is stuffed full of camping gear, and that you weren't home. So he tells his dog to heel, which it does, but glowers menacingly at you, because if you HAD been home, you might have stolen the newspaper. I mean, you live right next door after all.
The thing is that in a neighborhood we wouldn't stand for that sort of antisocial behavior. We shouldn't stand for it from the RIAA either. If they are truly being hurt by this they have legal recourse - but only against those people damaging them. It is irresponsible for them to send their pit bulls against anyone and everyone that might remotely be in a position to wrong them - and if they're going to do that erroneously, it is not acceptable that they simply say, "Oops, my bad." Actually, if they went that far, it would be a great start.
I hesitate to say that we should unilaterally say, "Oh, we should suppress their sex drive." or "Oh, we should make sure they're being sexed up enough." These solutions are not going to work in all situations, and border on unethical. What you need is a dynamic sexual framework.
One component of that is the foundational, physical fall-back layer: the astronauts need to be able to get off. Hence they need to be provided some privacy, and tools to that end as needed. Another component is that the astronauts need to be able to get along with each other. This latter is interesting because it will exist outside of sexuality, unless we lobotomize them - obviously not a possibility.
On the other hand, we're talking about a community that is physically isolated, not one that is socially isolated. (Though, long missions will run up against the restraints of the speed of light.) For instance, one solution might be to develop the long-distance intercourse body suit and virtual reality environment, so that the astronauts can 'be with' their partners on earth. Another option is that you could develop an Eliza program for sex; something that simulates that sexual intimacy enough to take the edge off. But even more than this, we can look at providing, across space, the ability for astronauts to talk with professionals about problems as they arise - and hopefully, if they're good astronauts, they're creative and will have enough tools at hand to work through problems.
Why is it that we can train a young child to control their bowel movements, yet expecting an adult to control their sexuality is somehow considered oppressive?
Much like bowel movements, it is healthy to engage in sexuality. Men who ejaculate often, for instance, are less likely to get prostrate cancer. When your leg cramps, everyone suggests you stand up and walk it off. Generally speaking, if you find yourself with any physical issue, the best treatment includes, well, use.
But, really, no one ever tells you to hold your bowels in more than a few days at best. And if they do, chances are you won't be able to. Control isn't about denial; it's about choosing the whens and wheres. We don't teach children not to pee. We teach them not to pee in their pants.
And, for the record, people who have sex regularly live longer. Likewise, people who hold their bladder too long, get bladder infections and die.
Alright, I agree that human - and in particular American - culture is a little screwed up about sex. People have sex. It is a natural part of life. It should not be swept under the rug. Astronauts - at least at this stage - should have birth control, and we need to not get all hysterical about that idea. A baby conceived in space is unlikely to ever be able to come to earth, meaning it will probably die of suffocation. Etc.
And I agree with the point that sexual desires should be monitored consistently and professionally, but I do not think mandatory sex is a good idea. It is probable that in some relationships this would work, but in most relationships it's going to be giving one partner or the other a degree of power that is unhealthy. Suppose, for instance, one of a partner pair doesn't want to have sex, but has to for the sake of their duty to NASA and nation? It is not hard to see how this could quickly send that person down a road to lessened self-esteem and depression; it happens all the time on earth. In space where you have little to no other human contact it could be devastating.
"What, I went to college, got a higher degree, trained real hard and became an astronaut so I could become someone else's sextoy?"
It is a bad idea. And there are alternatives; such as masturbation. NASA should at the very least be providing for materials that the astronauts they hire for their qualifications need in order to satisfy sexual urges. Pornography, dildos, what have you. Those astronauts also need to be well-trained on how to cope ultra responsibly with an adult relationship (and, for that matter, I think this has the potential of being another great technology brought to us by the space race), so that they can choose to get intimate with each other, or chose not to - but they have the choice. And not just the first time, but every time such conjugation might occur.
But, yes, it's an incredibly important matter; one that we tend to ignore because our culture is bound up in the idea that sex is bad. Let's abolish that soon, eh?
I agree. It's not like Jewelers aren't pushing an entirely created market, anyway - and one with blood on it's hands. When the diamond industry stops killing Africans (and, I'm sorry, "Less than 1% of our diamonds are blood diamonds!" is simply not good enough) and comes up with a good reason that their earth-grown diamonds are better than cool synthetically grown ones, I'll start to feel pity for them.
Sensors require a minuscule amount of power to run in comparison to lights. Seriously, this is a huge problem; that people who use 'some' technology think that it is sufficient. It is never sufficient. Make no mistake; the only reason humans exist as a species is our ability to offload work onto things not ourselves. When we stop doing that we start getting owned.
While I think it is important to illuminate the shadow support that crickets give to the megacorps, we're talking about Fire Alarms here. And where there are Fire Alarms there are Fire Trucks. And Fire Trucks are cool. And red. And they matter.
Plenty of our emergency equipment only comes on when there is actually an emergency; alarms, strobes, etc. If a computer system is monitoring where everyone is, and knows where the problem is, it can more expediently guide those people out using special lights. It wouldn't in any sense replace the "Emergency Exit" stencils on doors and lit 'Exit' signs, just allow for the Ender-like wall light pointing "This way to salva^H^H^H^fety."
And this way, emergency workers have a better idea where people are.
The reason gerrymandering is an issue, though, is because it entrenches the politics on the top level by reducing the value of the vote. What I think people keep missing is that the reason for, say, Federalism is much the same reason that we have three separate branches of government; it spreads out the power. If the states don't agree with the nation, they withhold power. If the people disagree with their leaders, they vote them out. If the Executive branch does something illegal, the Legislative impeaches them.
But in recent years we've put a lot more faith in the three branches to balance each other, without worrying overmuch about those three branches being balanced against the power of the people. When corporations, PACs and other high-money, high-influence organizations can sway that end of things more than the common people, we're in big trouble.
We're in big trouble.
Centrists don't waffle; that's a myth of extremists who use alternating perspectives on the actions of centrists to get people unhappy about them, and therefore more willing to go with the extremists. The problem with those same extremists is that it's their way or the highway - they're not willing to take compromises and see where it goes. The solution to a conflict is therefore never quitting the field, but escalating; and we see where that gets us.
The Civil War, when we decided that the Federal moral responsibility to abolish slavery outweighed the rights of states to institutionalize the ownership of people of a different race.
You're being inaccurate here. The Civil War was not about abolishing slavery. It was about an economic divide between the northern industrialist and the southern agrarians. The south revolted and the revolt was put down. You're not wrong in that this dealt a firm blow to federalism, but lets not say it was because of morals.
In ideal conditions, it seems reasonable that a little bit of desert would yield an enormous amount of power. But conditions are rarely ideal. Your power arrays out there in the desert need to be maintained by someone - do you also build desert communities? You have to pipe the power from the desert out to where it's going to be used. Efficient? A 3% loss over a thousand kilometers means that sending power from Albuquerque, NM to Washington, DC would result in nearly 10% energy loss - assuming an absolutely straight route, which it would by no means be. Maine would be much worse off. Also, heat exchange is a notoriously lossy activity; the article suggests using gas when sunlight isn't available, in no way reducing the energy you need for shipping fuel there.
Further, there is a societal implication to concentrating power production. Power plants have to be protected, maintained and upgraded. Failure to do so can affect large swathes of people; why not focus on creating more spread out, more maintainable plants? The fact of the matter is that land we don't use abounds; desert isn't the only one. And deserts do serve important ecological functions; just because they're not generally inhabited by humans does not mean we don't benefit from them being there. This sort of one-sided approach to the matter smacks of Special Interest, and I don't know that it should be taken as The Solution.
It may not be a superpower, but given that it has a tenth of the population of the U.S. it's in a very good position to leverage strategic oil reserves to concessions by America. We can't invade them; the U.S. populace would never stand for a war on their own territory. We can bring a staggering amount of economic pain down on them, though, and by stockpiling oil, they're in a very good position to tell us to get lost even in the face of that threat. I think it's wise of Canada to hold onto the one thing their huge neighbor is addicted to; it will allow them to maintain autonomy from us should things turn seriously bad in the world.
I think you're overestimating the government's desire to catch international criminals. Everyone's election systems are warty - internet voting is not going to be particularly wartier. But it hasn't really been done before. This is a way to publicize it, and it stands a decent chance of not having any show-stopping holes showing up. But even if it did, guess who comes off as progressive?
This is publicity. Occam's Razor suggests it's not much more than that, and trying to read in Machiavellian intent is only serving their basic purpose, and making all those now-backward nations look worse by comparison. After all, why hasn't the U.S. with it's wealth and it's democracy done this yet?
I think you overestimate people's willingness to disrupt stability for the sake of a political statement. A job is livelihood. It may not be the only path to supporting yourself, but it is the primary one, and most people won't even quit jobs they hate - why would they quit a job they even marginally like just because the CEO has a different political viewpoint? Especially when, in all likelihood, they will be replaced by someone who wants the job and is willing to at the least ignore the political issue?
It also seems to me like it is not better for corporations to give money to candidates to advertise, wherein only the candidate need take responsibility, rather than they themselves having to take responsibility for their own corporate stance. The obfuscation of the source of support is the direst of threats to democracy. You're always going to have advertising - though if you can think of a reasonable way to avoid that, I'm all ears.
I'm not talking about sticking it to the man, nor of banishing corporations. I'm simply saying that corporations should not have an inordinate say in our government. The say they have should come from the people who are invested in them, not by them spending money to invest the government in them.
If a corporation of a hundred people donates a thousand dollars to a political campaign, if 40% of those people disagree with that campaign they can't say, "Dude, don't fund that campaign." Only the people in charge of the pursestrings can say that; and they may be as few as 1% of the corporation. But you're not going to see people give up their livelihood for the sake of political protest of corporate policies.
It is an evident reality that money influences campaigns. If corporations can muster more money than the individual, and only small groups of individuals control that contribution, then you're undermining the idea of democracy. Resources not privately owned should not be allowed to be contributed to a political campaign. What is wrong with letting corporations run their own advertising, and marking it as such, just like politicians have to?
A) They're not citizens
They cannot vote. They're not People in the sense that our government is For the People, By the People and Of the People. They are a framework for commerce, but they do not magically gain meta-citizenship simply because they involve a lot of people.
B) They're not of a locality
Take Amazon. If it sells books to a certain region, is it of that locality? Or do they have to employ someone there? How many someones? If a company chooses to open ghost-offices in a locality for each of their people, are they part of that locality? What about businesses that have jobs that move, like trucking? Suppose an employee spends time in two localities? Can one employee therefore cover multiple localities? What about a Real Estate agent who might one month spend the vast majority of their time in a given locality, and the next month in another locality?
First, I think it is an incredible mistake to continue to build new economic systems based on locality. Gerrymandering has long since corrupted that thinking, never mind the fact that we currently have highly mobile populations. Secondly, I think that it is against the idea of "One Person, One Vote" to allow a few people in charge of large companies to pool the resources of those companies - against the potential interests of all the employees, nevermind the customer base - and spend it to influence the political process. This nation started off with the idea of separating Church and State for a very similar reason; the influence of a select caste (the clergy) over both a populace and their secular political interest led to too great a concentration of power. It was abused. Corporate influence is in a similar category, and truth be told, I would not oppose the banning of all corporate contributions - for campaigns or otherwise. I see it as undermining my vote.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a certain untaxed amount. In fact, if all taxes were done this way, I would leap for joy - as it would truly show that math would be applied to the economy, rather than some simple accounting and hacked solutions. Personally, though, I would pin that 'baseline number' around the region it would take to have an 'adequate minimum staff' and 'reasonable advertising'. I think that would have the effect of coralling salaries and advertising costs, which get egregious. Why, after all, should the media networks be the primary profiters of election season?
Take a look at pure math. Provided that space is continuous, we can model position (in one dimension) as a real number. In two dimensions, we need 2 real numbers.
I'm not an expert on topology, so I'm not going to be able to keep up with your numbers, but suppose space is continuous, but it is also curved such that if you continue on a straight line in one direction, you eventually return to a point an infinitesimal distance to the 'right' angle of where you started. Thus, a movement along a 'y' axis is in fact a movement some unknown distance along the 'x' axis, resulting in a two-dimensional space in fact being shaped like a one-dimensional line in a spiral. (In fact, this is not unlike how bits and data is managed in a hard drive.) For that matter, you might be able to explain such things as why an electron in an electron cloud can jump orbitals without apparently crossing the intermediate distance if all such matter worked on a similar principle, simply with a different movement length along your one axis.
Anyway, I figure someone must have wondered this before and shown why or why it wouldn't work.
Matching funds is based on an ethically and mathematically unsound idea. Say I give $10 to a candidate that supports my viewpoint. Now the U.S. Government cuts checks to two or three other candidates whose views I do not support - indeed, that I am not willing to even give $10 to. Worse, now, assuming that there are two basic methods of campaigning - building yourself up and tearing your opponent down - I'm suddenly in a conundrum. If I give $10 to the candidate I choose, I have effectively caused my candidate's opposition to earn a collective $20. Let's say they each use half the money each to tear down my candidate: My candidate has $10 to build himself up, and $10 tearing him down. Each of my opponents are left with $5 to build themselves up. I have succeeded in sinking my candidate.
But lets take that a step farther; suppose I start fielding straw-man candidates? Does the government have to pay them, too? Suppose I field twenty candidates from my party to one from yours? I probably don't even need to do anything substantial with their campaigns; just collect money to tear yours down with. Mathematically speaking, matching funds works against the system, encouraging people to engage in tear-down campaigns with straw men.
There is a more insidious problem, though; namely where that money is coming from. It is not the people's burden to provide for all electoral campaigns. As a citizen, I certainly do *not* consent to giving my tax dollars to any candidate for the purposes of getting them elected. This has an entrenching effect; the government pays itself to elect itself. It flies in the face of democracy.
I recommend a far, far simpler plan. I'll even skip over the idea that greater (indeed complete) transparency of where money comes from would eliminate much of the corruption from the process. Rather, I will suggest we remove all restrictions to how much money you can raise. Indeed! All restrictions. Save one. The government - nay, the People - get's it's take, and gets it in a graduated fashion. I won't suggest a particular formula, but for illustrative purposes will use f(x) = 1 / x, where f(x) is the part of the next dollar you earn you get to take back to your campaign, and x is the count of the dollar you've earned. The first dollar you keep all of. The next dollar you keep fifty cents of. The third dollar you get a third of. The fourth, a quarter. The tenth a dime. Obviously you would not want such a severe progression, but any function whose f(x) goes to zero would work. That way, someone could have raised $10 to your one, but is only getting (not quite) $3 out of it. At a certain point diminishing returns sets in, and you *have* to turn your attention to being the sort of candidate people want to hire, rather than being the sort of candidate that people mindlessly hire. And in the process, the government has profited - perhaps paying for that oversight and transparency that would help root out the rest of our problems.
No linear algorithm will work. Hillary raises $36,000,000. I only need $360k? I'll just mortgage my house... and instantly pay that back for a profit of $35,600,000. (You know, $40k in expenses.) All of this at the expense of the Government.
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And, ironically, most people don't think that sex between three or more consensual adults is bad. What mostly seems to be bad is the lying about it.
You are correct here; see the debates regarding whether employers can fire employees who smoke at home, or in other places when they're not 'on the job'.
No offense, but that's a terrible analogy. And I should know; you would think terrible analogies are my bread and butter at the speed I churn them out. I like the pit bull, though, so lets go with that. Alright, your neighbor... lives in a cul-de-sac with you, and subscribes to a newspaper. And every morning there is a finite chance that the newspaper is missing. He knows two other people in the cul-de-sac don't subscribe to newspapers, so he decides, heck, he'll send his pit bull after both of them. One of them happens to be you. Turns out, though, that you didn't take his newspaper. He would have known this if he'd, say, gone over to your house and rang the door bell and saw the note on the door for the postman, "Please hold all mail... out of town from a week ago until a week from now." You couldn't have stolen his paper. But, instead, when you get home there is a pit bull prowling around that goes after you - and when your neighbor sees you yelping and running around with the dog slavering at your heels, he realizes that your oversized SUV is stuffed full of camping gear, and that you weren't home. So he tells his dog to heel, which it does, but glowers menacingly at you, because if you HAD been home, you might have stolen the newspaper. I mean, you live right next door after all. The thing is that in a neighborhood we wouldn't stand for that sort of antisocial behavior. We shouldn't stand for it from the RIAA either. If they are truly being hurt by this they have legal recourse - but only against those people damaging them. It is irresponsible for them to send their pit bulls against anyone and everyone that might remotely be in a position to wrong them - and if they're going to do that erroneously, it is not acceptable that they simply say, "Oops, my bad." Actually, if they went that far, it would be a great start.
I hesitate to say that we should unilaterally say, "Oh, we should suppress their sex drive." or "Oh, we should make sure they're being sexed up enough." These solutions are not going to work in all situations, and border on unethical. What you need is a dynamic sexual framework. One component of that is the foundational, physical fall-back layer: the astronauts need to be able to get off. Hence they need to be provided some privacy, and tools to that end as needed. Another component is that the astronauts need to be able to get along with each other. This latter is interesting because it will exist outside of sexuality, unless we lobotomize them - obviously not a possibility. On the other hand, we're talking about a community that is physically isolated, not one that is socially isolated. (Though, long missions will run up against the restraints of the speed of light.) For instance, one solution might be to develop the long-distance intercourse body suit and virtual reality environment, so that the astronauts can 'be with' their partners on earth. Another option is that you could develop an Eliza program for sex; something that simulates that sexual intimacy enough to take the edge off. But even more than this, we can look at providing, across space, the ability for astronauts to talk with professionals about problems as they arise - and hopefully, if they're good astronauts, they're creative and will have enough tools at hand to work through problems.
Why is it that we can train a young child to control their bowel movements, yet expecting an adult to control their sexuality is somehow considered oppressive?
Much like bowel movements, it is healthy to engage in sexuality. Men who ejaculate often, for instance, are less likely to get prostrate cancer. When your leg cramps, everyone suggests you stand up and walk it off. Generally speaking, if you find yourself with any physical issue, the best treatment includes, well, use.
But, really, no one ever tells you to hold your bowels in more than a few days at best. And if they do, chances are you won't be able to. Control isn't about denial; it's about choosing the whens and wheres. We don't teach children not to pee. We teach them not to pee in their pants.
And, for the record, people who have sex regularly live longer. Likewise, people who hold their bladder too long, get bladder infections and die.
Alright, I agree that human - and in particular American - culture is a little screwed up about sex. People have sex. It is a natural part of life. It should not be swept under the rug. Astronauts - at least at this stage - should have birth control, and we need to not get all hysterical about that idea. A baby conceived in space is unlikely to ever be able to come to earth, meaning it will probably die of suffocation. Etc.
And I agree with the point that sexual desires should be monitored consistently and professionally, but I do not think mandatory sex is a good idea. It is probable that in some relationships this would work, but in most relationships it's going to be giving one partner or the other a degree of power that is unhealthy. Suppose, for instance, one of a partner pair doesn't want to have sex, but has to for the sake of their duty to NASA and nation? It is not hard to see how this could quickly send that person down a road to lessened self-esteem and depression; it happens all the time on earth. In space where you have little to no other human contact it could be devastating.
"What, I went to college, got a higher degree, trained real hard and became an astronaut so I could become someone else's sextoy?"
It is a bad idea. And there are alternatives; such as masturbation. NASA should at the very least be providing for materials that the astronauts they hire for their qualifications need in order to satisfy sexual urges. Pornography, dildos, what have you. Those astronauts also need to be well-trained on how to cope ultra responsibly with an adult relationship (and, for that matter, I think this has the potential of being another great technology brought to us by the space race), so that they can choose to get intimate with each other, or chose not to - but they have the choice. And not just the first time, but every time such conjugation might occur.
But, yes, it's an incredibly important matter; one that we tend to ignore because our culture is bound up in the idea that sex is bad. Let's abolish that soon, eh?
I wouldn't categorize knowing that a prime number is only evenly divisible by itself and one as "Higher math".
I agree. It's not like Jewelers aren't pushing an entirely created market, anyway - and one with blood on it's hands. When the diamond industry stops killing Africans (and, I'm sorry, "Less than 1% of our diamonds are blood diamonds!" is simply not good enough) and comes up with a good reason that their earth-grown diamonds are better than cool synthetically grown ones, I'll start to feel pity for them.
Sensors require a minuscule amount of power to run in comparison to lights. Seriously, this is a huge problem; that people who use 'some' technology think that it is sufficient. It is never sufficient. Make no mistake; the only reason humans exist as a species is our ability to offload work onto things not ourselves. When we stop doing that we start getting owned.
While I think it is important to illuminate the shadow support that crickets give to the megacorps, we're talking about Fire Alarms here. And where there are Fire Alarms there are Fire Trucks. And Fire Trucks are cool. And red. And they matter.
WooWooWooWooWoo!
Plenty of our emergency equipment only comes on when there is actually an emergency; alarms, strobes, etc. If a computer system is monitoring where everyone is, and knows where the problem is, it can more expediently guide those people out using special lights. It wouldn't in any sense replace the "Emergency Exit" stencils on doors and lit 'Exit' signs, just allow for the Ender-like wall light pointing "This way to salva^H^H^H^fety." And this way, emergency workers have a better idea where people are.
The reason gerrymandering is an issue, though, is because it entrenches the politics on the top level by reducing the value of the vote. What I think people keep missing is that the reason for, say, Federalism is much the same reason that we have three separate branches of government; it spreads out the power. If the states don't agree with the nation, they withhold power. If the people disagree with their leaders, they vote them out. If the Executive branch does something illegal, the Legislative impeaches them. But in recent years we've put a lot more faith in the three branches to balance each other, without worrying overmuch about those three branches being balanced against the power of the people. When corporations, PACs and other high-money, high-influence organizations can sway that end of things more than the common people, we're in big trouble. We're in big trouble.
Centrists don't waffle; that's a myth of extremists who use alternating perspectives on the actions of centrists to get people unhappy about them, and therefore more willing to go with the extremists. The problem with those same extremists is that it's their way or the highway - they're not willing to take compromises and see where it goes. The solution to a conflict is therefore never quitting the field, but escalating; and we see where that gets us.
First of all:
The Civil War, when we decided that the Federal moral responsibility to abolish slavery outweighed the rights of states to institutionalize the ownership of people of a different race.
You're being inaccurate here. The Civil War was not about abolishing slavery. It was about an economic divide between the northern industrialist and the southern agrarians. The south revolted and the revolt was put down. You're not wrong in that this dealt a firm blow to federalism, but lets not say it was because of morals.
In ideal conditions, it seems reasonable that a little bit of desert would yield an enormous amount of power. But conditions are rarely ideal. Your power arrays out there in the desert need to be maintained by someone - do you also build desert communities? You have to pipe the power from the desert out to where it's going to be used. Efficient? A 3% loss over a thousand kilometers means that sending power from Albuquerque, NM to Washington, DC would result in nearly 10% energy loss - assuming an absolutely straight route, which it would by no means be. Maine would be much worse off. Also, heat exchange is a notoriously lossy activity; the article suggests using gas when sunlight isn't available, in no way reducing the energy you need for shipping fuel there.
Further, there is a societal implication to concentrating power production. Power plants have to be protected, maintained and upgraded. Failure to do so can affect large swathes of people; why not focus on creating more spread out, more maintainable plants? The fact of the matter is that land we don't use abounds; desert isn't the only one. And deserts do serve important ecological functions; just because they're not generally inhabited by humans does not mean we don't benefit from them being there. This sort of one-sided approach to the matter smacks of Special Interest, and I don't know that it should be taken as The Solution.
It may not be a superpower, but given that it has a tenth of the population of the U.S. it's in a very good position to leverage strategic oil reserves to concessions by America. We can't invade them; the U.S. populace would never stand for a war on their own territory. We can bring a staggering amount of economic pain down on them, though, and by stockpiling oil, they're in a very good position to tell us to get lost even in the face of that threat. I think it's wise of Canada to hold onto the one thing their huge neighbor is addicted to; it will allow them to maintain autonomy from us should things turn seriously bad in the world.
I think you're overestimating the government's desire to catch international criminals. Everyone's election systems are warty - internet voting is not going to be particularly wartier. But it hasn't really been done before. This is a way to publicize it, and it stands a decent chance of not having any show-stopping holes showing up. But even if it did, guess who comes off as progressive? This is publicity. Occam's Razor suggests it's not much more than that, and trying to read in Machiavellian intent is only serving their basic purpose, and making all those now-backward nations look worse by comparison. After all, why hasn't the U.S. with it's wealth and it's democracy done this yet?
If only truths sprung from what we would design...
I think you overestimate people's willingness to disrupt stability for the sake of a political statement. A job is livelihood. It may not be the only path to supporting yourself, but it is the primary one, and most people won't even quit jobs they hate - why would they quit a job they even marginally like just because the CEO has a different political viewpoint? Especially when, in all likelihood, they will be replaced by someone who wants the job and is willing to at the least ignore the political issue? It also seems to me like it is not better for corporations to give money to candidates to advertise, wherein only the candidate need take responsibility, rather than they themselves having to take responsibility for their own corporate stance. The obfuscation of the source of support is the direst of threats to democracy. You're always going to have advertising - though if you can think of a reasonable way to avoid that, I'm all ears.
I'm not talking about sticking it to the man, nor of banishing corporations. I'm simply saying that corporations should not have an inordinate say in our government. The say they have should come from the people who are invested in them, not by them spending money to invest the government in them. If a corporation of a hundred people donates a thousand dollars to a political campaign, if 40% of those people disagree with that campaign they can't say, "Dude, don't fund that campaign." Only the people in charge of the pursestrings can say that; and they may be as few as 1% of the corporation. But you're not going to see people give up their livelihood for the sake of political protest of corporate policies. It is an evident reality that money influences campaigns. If corporations can muster more money than the individual, and only small groups of individuals control that contribution, then you're undermining the idea of democracy. Resources not privately owned should not be allowed to be contributed to a political campaign. What is wrong with letting corporations run their own advertising, and marking it as such, just like politicians have to?
Corporations are citizens of a locality.
They're really not, though.
A) They're not citizens
They cannot vote. They're not People in the sense that our government is For the People, By the People and Of the People. They are a framework for commerce, but they do not magically gain meta-citizenship simply because they involve a lot of people.
B) They're not of a locality
Take Amazon. If it sells books to a certain region, is it of that locality? Or do they have to employ someone there? How many someones? If a company chooses to open ghost-offices in a locality for each of their people, are they part of that locality? What about businesses that have jobs that move, like trucking? Suppose an employee spends time in two localities? Can one employee therefore cover multiple localities? What about a Real Estate agent who might one month spend the vast majority of their time in a given locality, and the next month in another locality?
First, I think it is an incredible mistake to continue to build new economic systems based on locality. Gerrymandering has long since corrupted that thinking, never mind the fact that we currently have highly mobile populations. Secondly, I think that it is against the idea of "One Person, One Vote" to allow a few people in charge of large companies to pool the resources of those companies - against the potential interests of all the employees, nevermind the customer base - and spend it to influence the political process. This nation started off with the idea of separating Church and State for a very similar reason; the influence of a select caste (the clergy) over both a populace and their secular political interest led to too great a concentration of power. It was abused. Corporate influence is in a similar category, and truth be told, I would not oppose the banning of all corporate contributions - for campaigns or otherwise. I see it as undermining my vote.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a certain untaxed amount. In fact, if all taxes were done this way, I would leap for joy - as it would truly show that math would be applied to the economy, rather than some simple accounting and hacked solutions. Personally, though, I would pin that 'baseline number' around the region it would take to have an 'adequate minimum staff' and 'reasonable advertising'. I think that would have the effect of coralling salaries and advertising costs, which get egregious. Why, after all, should the media networks be the primary profiters of election season?
Take a look at pure math. Provided that space is continuous, we can model position (in one dimension) as a real number. In two dimensions, we need 2 real numbers.
I'm not an expert on topology, so I'm not going to be able to keep up with your numbers, but suppose space is continuous, but it is also curved such that if you continue on a straight line in one direction, you eventually return to a point an infinitesimal distance to the 'right' angle of where you started. Thus, a movement along a 'y' axis is in fact a movement some unknown distance along the 'x' axis, resulting in a two-dimensional space in fact being shaped like a one-dimensional line in a spiral. (In fact, this is not unlike how bits and data is managed in a hard drive.) For that matter, you might be able to explain such things as why an electron in an electron cloud can jump orbitals without apparently crossing the intermediate distance if all such matter worked on a similar principle, simply with a different movement length along your one axis. Anyway, I figure someone must have wondered this before and shown why or why it wouldn't work.Matching funds is based on an ethically and mathematically unsound idea. Say I give $10 to a candidate that supports my viewpoint. Now the U.S. Government cuts checks to two or three other candidates whose views I do not support - indeed, that I am not willing to even give $10 to. Worse, now, assuming that there are two basic methods of campaigning - building yourself up and tearing your opponent down - I'm suddenly in a conundrum. If I give $10 to the candidate I choose, I have effectively caused my candidate's opposition to earn a collective $20. Let's say they each use half the money each to tear down my candidate: My candidate has $10 to build himself up, and $10 tearing him down. Each of my opponents are left with $5 to build themselves up. I have succeeded in sinking my candidate.
But lets take that a step farther; suppose I start fielding straw-man candidates? Does the government have to pay them, too? Suppose I field twenty candidates from my party to one from yours? I probably don't even need to do anything substantial with their campaigns; just collect money to tear yours down with. Mathematically speaking, matching funds works against the system, encouraging people to engage in tear-down campaigns with straw men.
There is a more insidious problem, though; namely where that money is coming from. It is not the people's burden to provide for all electoral campaigns. As a citizen, I certainly do *not* consent to giving my tax dollars to any candidate for the purposes of getting them elected. This has an entrenching effect; the government pays itself to elect itself. It flies in the face of democracy.
I recommend a far, far simpler plan. I'll even skip over the idea that greater (indeed complete) transparency of where money comes from would eliminate much of the corruption from the process. Rather, I will suggest we remove all restrictions to how much money you can raise. Indeed! All restrictions. Save one. The government - nay, the People - get's it's take, and gets it in a graduated fashion. I won't suggest a particular formula, but for illustrative purposes will use f(x) = 1 / x, where f(x) is the part of the next dollar you earn you get to take back to your campaign, and x is the count of the dollar you've earned. The first dollar you keep all of. The next dollar you keep fifty cents of. The third dollar you get a third of. The fourth, a quarter. The tenth a dime. Obviously you would not want such a severe progression, but any function whose f(x) goes to zero would work. That way, someone could have raised $10 to your one, but is only getting (not quite) $3 out of it. At a certain point diminishing returns sets in, and you *have* to turn your attention to being the sort of candidate people want to hire, rather than being the sort of candidate that people mindlessly hire. And in the process, the government has profited - perhaps paying for that oversight and transparency that would help root out the rest of our problems.
No linear algorithm will work. Hillary raises $36,000,000. I only need $360k? I'll just mortgage my house... and instantly pay that back for a profit of $35,600,000. (You know, $40k in expenses.) All of this at the expense of the Government.