TheHiddenCatboy

…killing my consumption addiction…

This is the key right here. Do more with less. Keep that phone a year or two longer. Don’t spend money into the pockets of the billionaires lining up for Trump’s new fascist country. A 7 day boycott can show you you CAN go longer than a day without buying from Amazon. And if you can stay away for a week from them, maybe you can do without the unnecessary stuff they’re throwing down your throat.

The first day is the hardest. You NEED that thing that Amazon has made easy for you to get with just a click from your couch. You drag yourself off the couch grumbling and get on the bus/on the bike/in your car (if you have to) and go out and buy something just as good (if not better), from the local store. You repeat this a few times. By day 7, you realise…you can buy the stuff locally, not supporting a knee-bending billionaire, and the world hasn’t ended. Even if you still buy things you just can’t find from Amazon after the 7 day boycott, you find many things you can buy locally without funding Nazis. Your total sales goes down, and you’re more inclined to shut down Amazon Prime. Eventually, you are only using Amazon as a last resort.

And that’s how you go from a 7 day boycott to changing your life. ;)

Let’s put it this way. I have been shadow-banned on Reddit. Got an e-mail saying my account appeared to be hacked after I responded to an apparent call for violence with an observation that we’re generally not violent as a group but as time goes by, things might change, and a warning that you have to be careful with what you say because Reddit has a rule against calling for violence. I did the steps to secure my account, but while the message wenty away, I have verified that all my comments disappear into the ether. Sure seems like a ban there.

And now, you can be banned for even LIKING a call for violence? And Reddit’s admins basically black-hole you if you have support questions of any kind. So, you like someone saying, say, “If this crap keeps going on, I might need to do something more than holding a sign, if you know what I mean,” and some Reddit power-tripper with a hardon for Trump clicks the ‘ban ur account’ button, and then you are stuck in read-only mode in reddit.

You want to bury the image of Trump being a Nazi shithead? Why for would you ever wanna do that? Your above stated answer rings hollow because you can just RTFA.

You new to politics?

1000 people vote in 10 districts. Their choices are a Hard-Right party, a Centrist Party, and a Left coalition, representing the Left-Centre, Left, and Hard Left. PS: This is what the French had going on.

Let’s say 373 people wanted the Hard Right party, 269 people wanted the Left-Wing Coalition, 223 wanted the centre, 51 picked a minor libertarian party, 50 picked from a slew of minor parties not on the Right, and 35 picked from other Right-Wing parties.

In a proportional representation system, you’d expect 37.3% of the representatives be from the Hard-Right party, 26.9% from the Left-Wing Coalition, 22.3% from the Centrist party, plus about 14% being from minor parties. But France uses a First Past the Post system and so does our hypothetical nation. So here we go:

Riding 1: 95 people voted Hard Right. 3 vote Centre, and one each vote other Right and Libertarian. Hard Right wins this riding. Riding 2: 90 vote Hard Right, 5 vote Centre, 2 vote Other Right, 1 votes other Non-Right, and two vote Libertarian. Right wins this riding. Riding 3: 85 vote Hard Right, 10 vote Centre, 1 votes Left, 3 vote Other Right, and one votes Libertarian. Winner is Hard Right. Riding 4: 15 vote Hard Right, 65 vote Centre, 10 vote Left, while 2 vote Other Right, 5 vote Other Non-Right, and 3 vote Libertarian. Centre wins. Riding 5: 12 vote Hard Right, 60 vote Centre, 12 vote Left, while 4, 8, and 4 vote for minor parties. Centre wins. Riding 6: 20 each vote Hard Right and Centre, while 3, 4, and 2 vote third parties. Left gets 51 votes and wins the riding. Riding 7: 22 vote Hard Right and 11 vote Centre. 2, 9, and 4 vote Third Party, and Left wins the riding with 52 votes. Riding 8: 15 vote Hard Right and 21 vote Centre. 3, 5, and 5 vote Third Party, and Left wins again, this time with 51 votes. Riding 9: 10 vote Hard Right and 14 vote Centre, while an amazing 8, 10, and 8 votes being sent to the Third Parties. However, Left once again takes the riding with 50 votes. Riding 10: 9 people vote Hard Right, while 14 vote Centre. Another 21 vote Libertarian, with 7 voting minor right-wing third parties, and 7 voting for non-right-wing minor parties. Despite these 50 people likely having more in common with each other than with the Hard Right or the Left, because they couldn’t agree on one candidate to vote for, their votes get split, allowing the Left to win the riding with 42 votes.

End result: 3 Right, 2 Moderate, and a whopping 5 Left. It didn’t go this badly for the non-Left parties in France, but it illustrates how a party with a lower vote share can get more representation in a First Past the Post system. It illustrates why Gerrymandering is bad. If those voters in the first three districts are packed there because some partisan power broker got into the redistricting process, they’ve basically been defanged by political shenanigans. Doubly so if the left-wing coalition managed to spread all their voters out so that they had a solid lock on 5 of the districts.

This is a fundamental problem with FPTP, so that’s why many of us advocate for RCV or Proportional systems.