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366 points gniting | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Previously: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160315 (1333 comments)
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renegade-otter ◴[] No.46201465[source]
Jared Kushner's firm? I am pretty sure about who is going to win....
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digitaltrees ◴[] No.46201953[source]
the fact that this is credible should scare every entrepreneur. If you cant compete on an even playing field because some people have direct government involvement in tipping the scales we are neither a free market economy nor a democracy.
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trymas ◴[] No.46202380[source]
Since the beginning of the year - USA is just a shell of market economy. Small government indeed…

Also some say it’s “flawed democracy”, IMHO - for last ~3 decades (or even more) it’s just a charade of democracy. Probably soon you won’t even have that.

First-past-the-post two party system, bizarre primary elections, electoral college, land votes instead of people (how many senators are from california and how many from wyoming, they also say it’s “to balance the tyranny of majority”), abhorrent and disgusting gerrymandering (so states could also force tyranny of the minority in congress too :) ), voter suppression (voting on Tuesdays, employers can control if you can go vote that day, voting booth count is getting smaller, voter registration shenanigans in marginalised communities), etc.

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kakacik ◴[] No.46203139{3}[source]
The fact that in US you can win the most powerful seat in the world while not even voted for by majority of its own population is properly ridiculous. Yes we all heard about historical this and that but that doesn't matter, thats not a democracy at its core and at the lowest, most important layer of building a resilient democratic society.

Then on that questionable base you build a shaky empire that is supposed to work if people behave nicely. It works till somebody comes around who doesn't care about that and it all falls down. Lets not forget current government was voted by +-half of US population, for second time. Nobody should be shocked by direction its taking again, maybe surprised by intensity of it but thats it.

I am a minority in the fact that I openly welcome the visible consistent hostility of USG towards whole Europe and Ukraine conflict when russia attacks whole western world including US and our philosophy of existence, as much as it can (luckily for us not that much). We are waking up from our deep comfy slumber, not in ideal fashion but we already have a bigger combined military than US has in many, for us the most important aspects (since we don't want to drag ourselves to remote wars unlike you guys so ie aircraft carriers are rather unimportant).

Green deal will be soon gone (good idea in vacuum but not in world where literally nobody else cares about it and we just destroy our economy and future trying to make our 10% part count), social services will get cuts to bring them to more sustainable levels based on unavoidable demographics and more focus on more practical and military manufacturing, like it or not.

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_heimdall ◴[] No.46204227{4}[source]
I also take issue with the electoral college system, but to claim that a representative democracy is not a democracy based on the intermediary representation seems like a fairly hollow concern.

My bigger issue with regards to how democratic we are would be more related to campaign finance laws, corruption, and the immense power wielded by those in charge that can be pointed at political challengers if the politician is so inclined.

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eddd-ddde ◴[] No.46204835{5}[source]
The electoral college system wouldn't be nearly as bad of a system if you couldn't just rearrange some borders and suddenly change the results.
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1. _heimdall ◴[] No.46212548{6}[source]
Unless I'm mistaken, electoral college representatives are assigned based on state borders and individual state laws - usually either winner take all or proportional. The electoral college itself can't be gerrymandered in the same way congress can.
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2. dragonwriter ◴[] No.46212579[source]
Electoral college representatives are currently elected on a statewide winner-take-all basis except Maine and Nebraska, each of which assign two electors (corresponding to the votes due to two Senate seats each state gets) based on the statewide winner while assigning the other electors based on the winner in each Congressional district.

So, in those states only, electoral votes can be gerrymandered in exactly the same was as Congressional seats, because they are exactly the same districts. (Of course, both states are small enough that the gerrymandering opportunities are fairly limited, and would have limited impact on Presidentual elections, as Maine has only two CDs and Nebraska only 3.)