I live in a democracy. Voting is compulsory. Some people will take the monetary fine and abstain, but for many it encourages them to at the very least become informed about the policies of each party on the big ticket issues. It’s not perfect but it means everybody has a say.
Your democracy allows one party to use the strategy of “erode confidence in the very political system we are a part of” to convince people that not taking part in their freedom is a smart choice.
What?
Do you know how elections work in your own country?
The US is First Past The Post. Whoever has the most votes wins, even if they do not have a majority of the vote. Splitting the votes of one party, or abstaining from voting only gives more power to the opposition. It is an absolutely shit system, and election reform needs to happen, but it’s what you have to deal with now, and being ignorant of how it works is going to hurt everyone.
Hypothetically there are 100 people voting between the “stubbing your toe” party and the “hot poker jammed in your urethra” party. The urethra party runs a campaign about how horrible stubbing your toe feels, and gets 40 votes. The Toe Party runs on a platform of “the choice is obvious” and gets 35. A small subset of Toe-ers break off and run their own “hitting your funnybone” party because they don’t like feet and get 10 votes. The remaining 15 voters really do NOT want to have their pissholes sealed shut by a piece of red hot iron. But at the same time, stubbing your toe or hitting your funnybone really hurts as well. They equate “pain” as an absolute value, deem both sides equal and abstain from voting.
The number of people who do not want a blistered pisser outnumber the opposition 60/40. But in the end, the numbers come out; Funnybone : 10 Toe : 35 Urethra : 40 The next day, everyone is lined up to get their pissholes branded.
Are you telling me that the abstainers hold no responsibility in the hurt that is bestowed upon the whole group? Or that Funnybone can blame Toe for not marketing themselves better?
You can’t vote against Trump, you are correct on that point, but abstaining from the vote reduces the numbers of literally the only other option.
If your only requirement is that a man once existed by the name of Jesus and was crucified, then the bar is on the floor. Jesus was not a rare name, and the Romans crucified many, many people. It is not out of the realm of possibility that these two common data points would overlap and give us a crucified Jesus.
Is there proof that it was THE Jesus though? Do we have corroborating evidence of a man travelling the countryside with his posse, changing the minds and hearts of the masses?
Some of my local supermarkets have these already. The worst part is that they use real shitty, dark displays. It was always easy to see the price when it was black ink on white or yellow paper, but trying to check the price on what amounts to a calculator screen at ten paces is horrid. Doesn’t help that the displays are so much smaller than paper tags, and the stores like to put the “3 for $10” as the priority, meaning the actual unit price is millimetres tall.
But is Android doing the on device LLM already? Because it sounds like they aren’t…
Another “The gardener of the cousin of the mechanic of the uncle of an aide to a staffer for a satellite office of the Democratic Party says” article.
It’s manipulative, and I don’t understand how so many people can be okay with what this means for the world.