actually, voting for right wing parties anywhere's a dumb idea unless they're you're only option for an actually conservative (that is, wary of change and willing only to change things slowly and with solid proof that the change is for the better, as opposed to progressive (change for change sake because it's new and damn the consequences) or reactionary (the old ways, even if they were never how we're presenting them at all, were better in every possible way. pay no attention that we were the privileged class under that system, it was better for everyone, really!)) option.
and even then that assumes that the current status quo is relatively good and their right wing leanings not too radical in an absolute sense. (it's possible to seem radically right wing in an extremely left wing environment without actually being problematically so.)
best bet seems, generally speaking, to be mildly progressive, economically slightly left of center, and just barely authoritarian enough to allow the government to actually function usefully (the ends of that scale are 'anarachy' and 'controls Everything')
I'd also make the case that any party that has consistently been in parliament/it's equivalent and even Intermittently been able to form a government either on it's own or as the head of a coalition, is highly suspect after it's first couple of terms.
i dunno. sometimes i think NZ's parliament could do with that rule.
given the amount of stupid things that get passed because one party agreed to support another party's stupid thing to get their stupid thing passed, when the Idea is that if it's stupid they Won't...
then again, technically it needs a unanimous vote of... one (the governor general)... to become law (on top of getting through parliament itself.). problem is that our GGs tend to assume that if it got through parliament in the first place it's fine, completely ignoring all the political horse-trading (and thus their job.)
nevermind the would-be-PM's basically selling the ministerial positions for support for their own harebrained plans. (the GG is supposed to be limited to selecting only from parliament to prevent them just picking their buddies, but a 'tradition' has developed of choosing whatever party leader can get a majority backing from parliament behind their party and then appointing whoever that person wants to all the other jobs, leading to even Worse croneyism...
and there's that pet rant again. oops.
though i can certainly understand the objection to one person being pointlessly obstructionist, i can also see the point in requiring unanimity to change things.
(seriously, our government here seems to delight in changing things that aren't broken, often breaking them in the process, purely to justify their pay-cheques. needing unanimity would prevent that. it's amazing how much less Stupid our government gets when something big happens they have to deal with rather than their random pet projects... though this current one seems to prefer to use the big things to ram through their pet projects instead, in what really should be seen as a massive abuse of power.)
though actually remembering Some of that stuff is still worth it. i mean, i can't do anything but really basic addition in my head anymore, but give me a pencil and paper and i can do a lot more.
anything other than long division that's complex enough to need a calculator i'd probably have to look up the equations for as well at this point, mind you.
*ponders* wonder what the computer analog for that is? ... maybe that trick where part of the harddrive is used as temporary RAM or something?
i've never, Ever been good at memorising stuff (so bad at spelling, and not that great at typing, until i started haning out in a chat room with 20-30 people where the text disappeared off the screen very quickly ... ended up learning to spell a lot better by memorising key patterns. turned it into muscle memory rather than memorised 'this is how you spell this word'. seems to work better.)
ok... rambled badly. i had a point when i started, i'm sure.
true. which is why the re-he-he-he-heally important stuff is either memorised in the primary as well or never backed up in the first place, depending on what it is.
i seem to remember a book or article or something about how humans were 'always already cyborgs'. (seriously, even just throwing a rock rather than punching something can count if you look at it from the right direction) this is just another example of that :D
to me it looks like one of those things where it Really comes down to knowledge about his personality that we don't have.
it's either strong evidence that he should be kept (though probably still not assigned tech cases until he's done some study on the subject)because he's willing to do the right thing in such situations rather than the typical government reaction of attempting to reject reality and punish dissent, or strong evidence that his decisions can be swayed more easily by public opinion than fact, and that he should be removed from the job as quickly as possible.
which it is depends on information which, to the best of my limigted knowledge, we do not have. (i certainly don't.)
representative 'democracy' in any system with parties is a form of oligarchy. elections are not about representing the people, they're about maintaining stability and, by extension, the status quo (on a larger scale than the petty term by term back and forth they use to distract the citizens)
without parties it may or may not be any better for any length of time.
i find it very easy to agree with your (evidence? logic? point of origin?), not so much your conclusion.
step one of 'doing something about it' is exactly this sort of thing, which raises awareness of the issues. which leads to more people willing and able to do something more substantial.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just somethign to flatten your clothes with
dunno if it's immoral or not, but it rarely works. certainly you can't legislate to enforce morals that the bulk of the population don't agree with, because you can't enforce the resulting law, so you just undermine the whole system.
actually, a completely free market naturally producies monopolies all by itself. anarchy leads to dictatorship, both in politics and in economics.
what you want is a Properly Regulated market. (that 'properly' is incredibly important) something the USA's not-at-all-democratic/completely-plutocratic system is not capable of producing.
On the post: Australian Attorneys General Still Feel The Need To Think About The 37-Year-Old 'Children'
Re:
and even then that assumes that the current status quo is relatively good and their right wing leanings not too radical in an absolute sense. (it's possible to seem radically right wing in an extremely left wing environment without actually being problematically so.)
best bet seems, generally speaking, to be mildly progressive, economically slightly left of center, and just barely authoritarian enough to allow the government to actually function usefully (the ends of that scale are 'anarachy' and 'controls Everything')
I'd also make the case that any party that has consistently been in parliament/it's equivalent and even Intermittently been able to form a government either on it's own or as the head of a coalition, is highly suspect after it's first couple of terms.
On the post: Australian Attorneys General Still Feel The Need To Think About The 37-Year-Old 'Children'
Re:
given the amount of stupid things that get passed because one party agreed to support another party's stupid thing to get their stupid thing passed, when the Idea is that if it's stupid they Won't...
then again, technically it needs a unanimous vote of... one (the governor general)... to become law (on top of getting through parliament itself.). problem is that our GGs tend to assume that if it got through parliament in the first place it's fine, completely ignoring all the political horse-trading (and thus their job.)
nevermind the would-be-PM's basically selling the ministerial positions for support for their own harebrained plans. (the GG is supposed to be limited to selecting only from parliament to prevent them just picking their buddies, but a 'tradition' has developed of choosing whatever party leader can get a majority backing from parliament behind their party and then appointing whoever that person wants to all the other jobs, leading to even Worse croneyism...
and there's that pet rant again. oops.
though i can certainly understand the objection to one person being pointlessly obstructionist, i can also see the point in requiring unanimity to change things.
(seriously, our government here seems to delight in changing things that aren't broken, often breaking them in the process, purely to justify their pay-cheques. needing unanimity would prevent that. it's amazing how much less Stupid our government gets when something big happens they have to deal with rather than their random pet projects... though this current one seems to prefer to use the big things to ram through their pet projects instead, in what really should be seen as a massive abuse of power.)
On the post: No, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
Re: We Are All Doomed—Yet Again
On the post: No, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
Re: disconnected from the source
though actually remembering Some of that stuff is still worth it. i mean, i can't do anything but really basic addition in my head anymore, but give me a pencil and paper and i can do a lot more.
anything other than long division that's complex enough to need a calculator i'd probably have to look up the equations for as well at this point, mind you.
*ponders* wonder what the computer analog for that is? ... maybe that trick where part of the harddrive is used as temporary RAM or something?
i've never, Ever been good at memorising stuff (so bad at spelling, and not that great at typing, until i started haning out in a chat room with 20-30 people where the text disappeared off the screen very quickly ... ended up learning to spell a lot better by memorising key patterns. turned it into muscle memory rather than memorised 'this is how you spell this word'. seems to work better.)
ok... rambled badly. i had a point when i started, i'm sure.
On the post: No, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
Re: backup brain
i seem to remember a book or article or something about how humans were 'always already cyborgs'. (seriously, even just throwing a rock rather than punching something can count if you look at it from the right direction) this is just another example of that :D
On the post: No, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
Re:
which is annoying, because i want to hit insightful but also realise it can be read in such a way as to make that the opposite of what i want to do :S
On the post: No, Google Is Not Rewiring How We Remember
Re: Re: Re: Re: typo
given that there's no edit function.
On the post: Lawyer Trying To Trademark Bitcoin Threatens Techdirt With Bogus DMCA Takedown
Re: Re: Re: Re: 18 USC § 512(f)
gets him off for the fraud ... and into a nuthouse, if i remember rightly.
not sure if it applies to this sort of thing, but it's an amusing thought.
On the post: Judge Agrees That Perhaps It Would Be Best For Someone Else To Review His Claim That WiFi Isn't A Radio Communication
Re: Re: Public Derision
it's either strong evidence that he should be kept (though probably still not assigned tech cases until he's done some study on the subject)because he's willing to do the right thing in such situations rather than the typical government reaction of attempting to reject reality and punish dissent, or strong evidence that his decisions can be swayed more easily by public opinion than fact, and that he should be removed from the job as quickly as possible.
which it is depends on information which, to the best of my limigted knowledge, we do not have. (i certainly don't.)
On the post: Woman Faces Felony Charges For Groping A TSA Agent
Re: Re: Re: Government oversteps its authority
without parties it may or may not be any better for any length of time.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Related doublethink
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re:
though i'll admit it Sounds like it should be :D
On the post: Rich Fiscus' Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Keep Out
On the post: TSA Agents Continue To Lie And Say You Can't Photograph Or Videotape Checkpoints
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
step one of 'doing something about it' is exactly this sort of thing, which raises awareness of the issues. which leads to more people willing and able to do something more substantial.
I'll grant you 'little yet', but not 'nothing'.
On the post: Zero-Sum Economics
Re: Re: Charge Eunice with assault .....
On the post: Zero-Sum Economics
Re: Re: Exclude everyone else, so they have no money to spend-- on your 'thing'.
On the post: Zero-Sum Economics
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just somethign to flatten your clothes with
On the post: Zero-Sum Economics
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just somethign to flatten your clothes with
On the post: Guy Kicked Off Comcast For Using Too Many Cloud Services
Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
On the post: Guy Kicked Off Comcast For Using Too Many Cloud Services
Re: Re:
what you want is a Properly Regulated market. (that 'properly' is incredibly important) something the USA's not-at-all-democratic/completely-plutocratic system is not capable of producing.
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