Why...?

And how? How?

I'm waiting for the coup d'état.

Me too.

There's literally rioting in the streets. Oakland streets are on fire, thousands of protesters in large cities across the US.

Wrong forum. This should be in Off Topic Discussion.

You're right. So dead around here I forgot how to use this forum.

Rather happy that i don't live in the US right now. Question: if Hillary would've won would there be riots and protest in the states supporting Trump?

iZyren wrote:

Rather happy that i don't live in the US right now. Question: if Hillary would've won would there be riots and protest in the states supporting Trump?

Personally I'm actually for taking a water cannon to them all. Enough of this idiotic 'protesting' where people are allowed to burn things in the street and cause fear to people who don't even care about what's going on and just want to walk down the street without getting mixed up in it. Enough madness

Considering how high trump won against clinton, you could say americas people showed their true face? Then again, clinton and trump were terrible canditates. Clinton is corrupt to the bone and member of the old elite that lives in a different world than the common citizen, Trump an egocentric capitalist that makes promises he cant keep. But with nothing on the dinner table and no hope of something getting better with one candidate, empty promises do have quite some allure. Not to mention, the racism and anger present in currently most nations on the world. Capitalism has undermined the ideals of democracy, and this tendency to vote a strong leader in hope for them to clean up the mess is the inherent expression of that. Time will show how long people are willing to wait whether they see positive results or again try something else.

Because America,

We're not a democracy, otherwise Clinton would have won. Not by much - voter participation was quite low. But for now, she still has the popular vote - which is not the first time by any means this has happened. Especially in recent times. Tuesday voting days, Daylight Savings, the Electoral College, etc are all machinations of the one real guiding principle of America: we breed our contempt for change in the familiarity of our traditions. Amusingly enough, 100 miles is a long way in Europe, 100 years is a long time in the US *cough*cough*. Still, noone designs a human-comfortable toilet... but I digress.

On the plus side there were some good local changes. NC and AZ both saw a shift. And there's the cannabis thing, minus all jokes that have already worn thin.

As for a coup, that discussion is / was already underway. Currently people are talking about petitioning the college to get votes shifted to Clinton or have some college voters just refuse to vote. There was an 'interesting' military discussion with regards to obeying orders of CnC which currently borders on thought-police insubordination.

I think most of the current animosity / talk will amount to bluster, but what will not be bluster will be the fallout. Pence is basically a redo of Dick Cheney's evil. Trump's preemptive "cabinet"... well they're not nominations yet but close; makes the Texas Board of Education schoolbook writers look quite scholarly. And don't forget the Supreme Court is gutted atm. We'll likely lose 1 or 2 more in the next four years. Think we'll have to wait and see what happens in... oh say 6 months and 2 years. Those will be good analysis points.

Or the first time a crisis happens, real or contrived*. Whichever happens first.



*batteries not included

*Sigh* Well, I have my opinions about this, but I'm not going to touch this with a 10 foot poll. Instead, i'm going to enjoy the fact my stupid Liberal college is trying to make the rest of this semester null and void over butthurt. Good news, I can do more vore writing! (Not Liberal BTW, I just dont want a S#*% storm, not here.) My opinions are my own, and I dont feel comfortable sharing them publically.

I gotta admit I was more curious about Trumps winning than Clinton ... but I'm still rather surprised it actually happened ^^; ...
Damn the tension at the white house between Obama and Trump was palpable.

iZyren wrote:

Rather happy that i don't live in the US right now. Question: if Hillary would've won would there be riots and protest in the states supporting Trump?

Probably. Both sides wont listen to each other.

Granted in my ever so educated opinion, it was the republicans in office that froze the government, try to repeal any social net that exists to help the people, then twist the truth to making their constituents believe whatever bad happens is somehow the democrat's fault, and nobody questions it because of how laughably poor US education is (our education is VERY poor, this is not debatable). So the American people are fooled about what's really best for them, as the GOP really just want money in their grubby little fingers.

That's my reasoning. It creates such a big divide in the American people, nobody listens to anybody anymore or can be convinced of anything. Its going to reach a breaking point even further than it already has. If nothing is done to alleviate the people's concerns, there will likely be a second American Civil War. Exit polls show the vast majority of millennials in the US preferred Clinton to take office over Trump - for whatever reason they chose to use.

Trump doesn't deserve office anyway. There's so many things wrong with him he's an affront to National Security and is a walking violation of human rights. https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/4teoxl/a_final_response_to_the_tell_me_why_trump_is_a/

For people arguing about the popular vote I will answer with a so closed result it will still lead to protestation and lead maybe to a new election like the situation in Austria they have to vote again in December, of course it was due to some minor irregularities but due to the short gap between the two candidates it didn't help.

Claims it's not democratic is debatable because in some countries were the popular votes are in place there winners with a wide margin and it raises questions about the legality of the election.

The system is still democratic because there is a similar System in France even if we elect the President with popular vote and at wider scale the EU Parliament. The United States are made of 50 states each of them have their own economy, cultures and needs. They can count as a country as a whole, if the popular vote is applied only the States with the biggest populations will weigh more than the others, the candidates would have just to focus on them and to neglect the smaller ones. The smaller States would see no interest to remain inside the United States as their voices are ignored and form their own independent countries or unions.

Having the most popular candidate lost can give the feeling it's unfair when you take the United States as global and uniform group but it's not because at the scale of each state where you see the said candidate failed to win the majority of the different popular votes hold in each of them. As the goal is not to be the most popular globally to win but to have the most victories at the different popular votes on each local election.

The current elections showed Hilary Clinton is popular only on the biggest and most populated States where most of the major cities are located but failed to convince the countryside where Donald Trump had a better momentum.

You're wrong on a number of points gwada.

We're not a democracy, never have been - and we're becoming less of one as time goes on. FPTP leads to the basis of a constitutional republic and some silly -cracys based on the system setup. We had checks in place to prevent the re-establishment of a landed gentry, but those checks have by and large failed in the modern era. If they ever do finally repeal the Estate Tax, the last big check to prevent a landed gentry will be lost. We were theoretically a democratic republic at one time, but I would wager that shifted somewhere between the great wars.

As for 'states' and 'more votes count', examining that at all shows how hollow the theory is. The theory of the democracy as a FPTP system is that 1 person = 1 vote = all fair. But the reality is not equivocal. Even ignoring the old racist systems that were corrected by the later amendments ( ie women can't vote, slaves are worth a fractional vote, etc ), just examining it from a numerical standpoint illustrates that 1 person =/= 1 vote, which is one of the major driving factors for the low voter participation in the US.

Take Wyoming for example. Wyoming has a population of 584,000 people. Wyoming has 3 electoral college votes ( 2 senators, 1 representative, basically the minimum allowed ). This means that for every 194,667 votes you gain one electoral college vote in Wyoming. Now examine California. California has a population of 38.8 million people and 55 electoral college votes. This requires 705,455 votes for each electoral college vote in California.

Any vote in Wyoming is worth 3.5x more than any vote in California. Therefore, we have what you're discussing where a non-majority group can govern the majority group. So why care, if your vote doesn't matter? Why care, if your state always turns the same colour? Another disturbing trend with this election is that there were no cross isles; people voted by ticket and didn't vote by conscious. That's... a crazy precedent to be setting.

If you wanted it to actually be 'fair', you'd have to equivocate the population to the college ( which is how it's supposed to be ( the college is based on senators and representatives, and representatives are 1 min and max based on population by census with 1 representative allowed per 30k people... 30000. Can you imagine the House of Representatives with an actual # of representatives based on state population with that quota? THAT would be the situation where the smaller states need protection ( Wyoming would be 21 electoral votes in such a setup, California would be ~1300 ) - all of us would need protection from the madness of such a house ( House was fixed in size around WWI IIRC, can't grow any more )... ), but recall the college is old and like other old items in the US it has not kept up with the times; this btw is entirely ignoring jerrymandering ). The idea of the states rights and comparison to the EU, is discussion of a confederate government. We are not that either, despite the hollering and clamouring you may hear.

We're not a democracy. As we would say in the military, "We're here to enforce democracy, not practice it." And honestly, the majority of people don't want an actual democratic government. As Alcuin once told Charlemange, "Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." People like seeing some semblance of central control, it's why they rally around charismatic figures. Humans aren't good with grasping / remembering large quantities and large quantities of sapient beings is even harder to grasp; how do you keep tabs on the beliefs and intentions of so many? There's a reason why democratic governments get the shaft so often in fantasy / scifi books...

It's bizarre you complain about this system you accepted to play its rule and contest it when it doesn't go in your way. The last time I heard complain like this it was when George W Bush was elected for the first time when he was re-elected for the second time no one complained. Barack Obama was elected twice no one complained. Trump won riots. Before the election the people which argued the system was rigged was the Republican the democrats were arguing no it isn't and now we are assisting to spectacular turn of the tide where each sides switch their place in one night.

California has 55 electoral college is the biggest, after comes Texas (38), Florida and New York (29), the numbers can change according to the population and it doesn't change California weigh more than Wyoming. If you change the system it will make less people vote in the smallest states and concentrated all the votes only on the biggest states.

Where I live I have 6-5 hours than in France and we are smaller than the Wyoming in population and size until 2002, when we were asked to elect for the president by popular vote he was already elected before our vote were counted, it was was of the most undemocratic aberration in an election based on the principle each vote count. They decide to change all of this and let us vote one day earlier just because the far right was closed to win, the politics noticed we had the lowest participation rate and due to the drop of participation during the election they saw our vote could maybe change something. During all the previous French elections since creation of the fifth Republic, people in France were celebrating our new President when we were still voting. That's the biggest flaws of the popular votes because you have just to focus on the most populated places and started to notice the smallest only when you have an important drop of participation. That's why it works better on smaller scales than biggest one

You are telling me you're voting system based on the proportional size of the demography of the different states in your country allow the smallest part of your country to have a chance their voices to be heard.

If you argue France is less racist than the United States, you have to take in consideration it was practising Slavery at the same time and abolished twice because Napoleon reinstated it. With the Great Britain it was one of the two biggest colonial power. Bonus I am an African slave descendants like many of the African American in North America.

If you complain about the low voters participation it won't change anything because even in first world "democratic" countries with a popular vote system you can obtain the same percentage because politics start to annoy and disgust the people. The participation in US election start to decline before Bill Clinton was elected and continue to decline less voters elected Obama a second time than the first time.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

It's bizarre you complain about this system you accepted to play its rule and contest it when it doesn't go in your way. The last time I heard complain like this it was when George W Bush was elected for the first time when he was re-elected for the second time no one complained. Barack Obama was elected twice no one complained. Trump won riots. Before the election the people which argued the system was rigged was the Republican the democrats were arguing no it isn't and now we are assisting to spectacular turn of the tide where each sides switch their place in one night.

Accept it? I did not accept it. Nice straw-man mate, assume much? I was born here, and unless I want to go to another country, I have to deal with it. This forum wasn't even around for the Bush years so good job trying to assign me a category. Well, not most of them anyway and I certainly joined after. I complain against the electoral college system because in it's design it does not represent. The notion that you can win an election without a popular victory is against the very idea of democracy, and though our system is not at it's fundamental level a democracy we like to pretend so we should at least be good at the theatre of one by now.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

California has 55 electoral college is the biggest, after comes Texas (38), Florida and New York (29), the numbers can change according to the population and it doesn't change California weigh more than Wyoming. If you change the system it will make less people vote in the smallest states and concentrated all the votes only on the biggest states.

Except you don't know what you're talking about mate, and I tried to point that out without being an ass. Of those states you're bringing up in your example, two of them are part of NPVIC. Also, did you miss what I stated earlier? The numbers are supposed to change with population. They do not. The size of the House has been fixed in place since 1913 ( had to look it up ). It HAS NOT CHANGED in 103 years. ( Hawai'i and Alaska both got one added but they were later removed because it was always a 'temporary' measure ). The ONLY thing that can change is which states get what number of delegates, and it is clearly not balanced numerically. Again, that doesn't factor in gerrymandering and other postulation ( which has been basically allowed with certain Supreme Court cases ) preventing proper redistricting of the census.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

Where I live I have 6-5 hours than in France and we are smaller than the Wyoming in population and size until 2002, when we were asked to elect for the president by popular vote he was already elected before our vote were counted, it was was of the most undemocratic aberration in an election based on the principle each vote count. They decide to change all of this and let us vote one day earlier just because the far right was closed to win, the politics noticed we had the lowest participation rate and due to the drop of participation during the election they saw our vote could maybe change something. During all the previous French elections since creation of the fifth Republic, people in France were celebrating our new President when we were still voting. That's the biggest flaws of the popular votes because you have just to focus on the most populated places and started to notice the smallest only when you have an important drop of participation. That's why it works better on smaller scales than biggest one

You are telling me you're voting system based on the proportional size of the demography of the different states in your country allow the smallest part of your country to have a chance their voices to be heard.

If you argue France is less racist than the United States, you have to take in consideration it was practising Slavery at the same time and abolished twice because Napoleon reinstated it. With the Great Britain it was one of the two biggest colonial power. Bonus I am an African slave descendants like many of the African American in North America.

If you complain about the low voters participation it won't change anything because even in first world "democratic" countries with a popular vote system you can obtain the same percentage because politics start to annoy and disgust the people. The participation in US election start to decline before Bill Clinton was elected and continue to decline less voters elected Obama a second time than the first time.

It's not even CLOSE to the same. You're trying to place a setup of a state on a tier level. Nearly 50% of the US population eligible to vote DID NOT VOTE. You should already be familiar with this phenomena, since France went through several such selections in recent times where extremist party candidates cause abstention voting ( although, this election for the US only has one extremist viewpoint candidate, the other is a moderate conservative forced to be a moderate liberal to try and woo some of the Bernie crowd - who, btw, is certainly a liberal but he's considered a radical because the US hasn't had an actual liberal party in some time 'cause Red Scare 'yo ).

Of those who did ( a little over 50%, with <2% going to Johnson ), a slim ( 200000 ) majority voted for Clinton. The whole notion you're trying to put forward, that it's the people's vote, is run into the ground because the people DID NOT VOTE. They elected not to vote for some of what I discussed above, though there are other challenges and those challenges are present as you note in other countries.

FPTP means that whoever takes the most wins, so states rarely change colours without generational or paradigm shifts. Thus, if you live in a 'small' state where your vote matters more than a larger state where it doesn't matter, and you know your vote doesn't count as much and you know your state always goes a certain colour, why bother putting the effort in? We do not actually have an accounting of what the people want, because most of them didn't tell us what they wanted.

For some it is no doubt a 'protest' vote, trying to say we don't like it so we won't play the game but unfortunately this isn't Wargames and we're not Joshua. It is certainly always of note when a high percentage votes for one candidate as you note - it does sound the call of someone holding their finger to the scales. When people by mass also do not vote, the same clarion's call should be ringing in your ears. This is basically like when the people at my work tell me "we only work half the year". No, sorry, we work the same hours as everyone else we just work fewer days in a week. We do not work any less amount of time.

And people in the US are not voting. Obama was the last recent surge, and when the promised change didn't people really stopped caring. Personally, I'm not invested in any of the candidates. And I'm a lazy asocialite, so early / mail-in ballets for me. Bernie was the closest one to my setup, but he never would have gotten done what he wanted and I don't agree with many of his points; I can accept him though. The US doesn't have a social party, it has a moderate elitist party and a conservative elitist party. The landed gentry is back, and I currently see no shift in it. When people talk about the 99%, or the 49%, etc, these are all euphemisms for class debate which is not currently allowed in the US political theatre. We're not even allowed to discuss it, so poisonous the notion.

If you actually want a democracy, the best way to keep it a "fair" democracy ( based on current understanding ) is to have approval ( STV ) voting. The best way to determine what the majority want is to allow people to vote more than once - the majority vote of the many vote is the closest thing you'll get to an actual "fair" selection. The selection that the most people can live with / accept. FPTP and one person = one vote is not the way to go, and other countries do this better than the US does. Australia uses a limited STV system for their Senate as an example, and they're basically the only one that does so in a large scale manner. The UK has STV in some sections of it's members, and then it's basically the New Zealanders, Malta, and Ireland. I think one or two Asian countries kinda do it too.

The problem is not a matter of play or not but change the rules and make them fair before to play (I read the NPVIC). The Bush Example was the recent case when this kind of situation happened, I have never stated you were democrat or republican but just the complaints about the system being rigged switched sides in one night. I was not aiming at you in particular but the fact people are acting like they are surprised when this kind of situation already happened lately and more than once. Most of the possibilities of Trump's victories were denied and laughed the polls predicted Clinton's victory by a large margin it was ok, and now people are rioting, redoing the election, claiming it's unfair, arguing about the popular vote. We would hear this kind of complain from the loosing side no matter who won, everyone knows the system is rigged and unfair but it doesn't matter if I win. That's the problem with the whole US election.

In France the extremists doesn't cause abstention vote they benefit from it that's why they decide to make the place where I live earlier. Most of the time the fears of the Far Right is the only reason people vote, the Right and the Left played on that which make things worse because they know they suck. You will still have a low level of participation no matter the system you use because you have bad politicians. In France we can vote twice on the elections the first round you have many candidates and only the two (in some you can have three) who gets the more votes go the second round (you can win in one round if you have more than 60% of the population eligible voting for you) and even that we have low level of participations.

The American Model of election is exporting in France many major parties wants to organize presidential nominating convention because they want to have less candidates because in 2002 people thought they were too much candidates which allowed the Far Right to end in the second round of the presidential election of course it's not an obligation but they want to make it a mandatory procedure without having to change the constitutions.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

The problem is not a matter of play or not but change the rules and make them fair before to play (I read the NPVIC). The Bush Example was the recent case when this kind of situation happened, I have never stated you were democrat or republican but just the complaints about the system being rigged switched sides in one night. I was not aiming at you in particular but the fact people are acting like they are surprised when this kind of situation already happened lately and more than once. Most of the possibilities of Trump's victories were denied and laughed the polls predicted Clinton's victory by a large margin it was ok, and now people are rioting, redoing the election, claiming it's unfair, arguing about the popular vote. We would hear this kind of complain from the loosing side no matter who won, everyone knows the system is rigged and unfair but it doesn't matter if I win. That's the problem with the whole US election.

I apologise then. It definitely felt like you were targeting. But. Fact. It doesn't matter as long as you win. A benefit of dictatorships and monarchies is that they get to take the long view on projects, but such short lived governments always focus on short term personal gains. Which is a very specific mindset that capitalism feeds off of and Democracy definitely does not. Libertarians would tell you that the free market relegates itself, but experience from 1870-1930 would illustrate otherwise most definitively. And not fixing it just leads us to repeat the same mistakes.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

In France the extremists doesn't cause abstention vote they benefit from it that's why they decide to make the place where I live earlier. Most of the time the fears of the Far Right is the only reason people vote, the Right and the Left played on that which make things worse because they know they suck. You will still have a low level of participation no matter the system you use because you have bad politicians. In France we can vote twice on the elections the first round you have many candidates and only the two (in some you can have three) who gets the more votes go the second round (you can win in one round if you have more than 60% of the population eligible voting for you) and even that we have low level of participations.

They benefit from it, they cause it. You really think they don't know? The French election system is not STV, you're instant runoff. It's not the same thing. There's a whole series of educational videos on the different styles of election progresses that are rather illuminating if you're not familiar with the different systems and their pros / cons.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

The American Model of election is exporting in France many major parties wants to organize presidential nominating convention because they want to have less candidates because in 2002 people thought they were too much candidates which allowed the Far Right to end in the second round of the presidential election of course it's not an obligation but they want to make it a mandatory procedure without having to change the constitutions.

The American model is flawed because it allows for gerrymandering and provides the spoiler vote. The latter is one of our hugest cruxes. The benefit other systems have is that copy candidates don't spoil an election. In America, you have two major parties, and only one of them can win. If you vote third party in the US with the FPTP system, whichever candidate most resembles the third party loses their votes and the opposition party keeps the votes it normally would have. Because of this 'spoiler' effect, the only thing 3rd party candidates are good for is throwing elections.

Many countries have more than 2 parties. The US does as well, but outside of a local level you won't see it. There are at least five US parties - Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, and Constitutional. Are you familiar with the latter three? You've probably only heard of them because of the spoiler vote. That's all they can be with our system, and trust me it's not a benefit.

The current state of affairs forces a pyramid model. That is to say; imagine you have two people. Initially they have opposing viewpoints on a certain idea. They're on opposite sides of the top of a pyramid. Pretty close in ideal, but not necessarily together. As time progresses, they find other reasons not relating to this particular viewpoint to further distance themselves from that person. Eventually, we reach the bottom of the pyramid - they are so far apart they can no longer compromise. They can't even see the other side's point of view any more. This is a really simple example of the extremeist model, but it's a functional one. You can literally see it happening if you review the last 2-3 decades of US politics.

Ffoulkes wrote:

The American model is flawed because it allows for gerrymandering and provides the spoiler vote. The latter is one of our hugest cruxes. The benefit other systems have is that copy candidates don't spoil an election. In America, you have two major parties, and only one of them can win. If you vote third party in the US with the FPTP system, whichever candidate most resembles the third party loses their votes and the opposition party keeps the votes it normally would have. Because of this 'spoiler' effect, the only thing 3rd party candidates are good for is throwing elections.

Many countries have more than 2 parties. The US does as well, but outside of a local level you won't see it. There are at least five US parties - Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, and Constitutional. Are you familiar with the latter three? You've probably only heard of them because of the spoiler vote. That's all they can be with our system, and trust me it's not a benefit.

The current state of affairs forces a pyramid model. That is to say; imagine you have two people. Initially they have opposing viewpoints on a certain idea. They're on opposite sides of the top of a pyramid. Pretty close in ideal, but not necessarily together. As time progresses, they find other reasons not relating to this particular viewpoint to further distance themselves from that person. Eventually, we reach the bottom of the pyramid - they are so far apart they can no longer compromise. They can't even see the other side's point of view any more. This is a really simple example of the extremeist model, but it's a functional one. You can literally see it happening if you review the last 2-3 decades of US politics.

I heard about the libertarian and the Green before the election but less about the Constitutional.

Politicians want to apply in France the same model except you will have three major parties, the left with "the Socialist party" the Right which the major party changes lately their names for the Republicans and the Far Right to scare people to vote for one of the two Earlier. They reduced the President mandate from 7 years to 5 years (Reason Chirac was too old) of course it has no limitation to the number of time you can run for the presidencies even if I for a restrictions of two mandates.

It doesn't limit to France but to the whole EU which wants to be a wannabe United States but will fail at a spectacular level or turn into a gigantic mess.

If the United States manage to change their electoral system they will maybe save Western civilization (Located in the North Hemisphere) and succeed to apply democracy in foreign countries because you have no idea how your flawed political system is making its way in Europe.

If you're looking for the US to heal thyself, physician I'm afraid you'll find yourself wanting. After all, we're here to enforce democracy, not practice it. We are honestly not the best model, we're just really good at chest thumping. If WWII had decimated us like it did Europe you would not be looking to us for role models. This is basically Americapox in reverse - because we escaped the brunt, because we don't have to worry about running into land mines during construction projects, because we're geographically lucky - we get to play strongest hat.

At this point we're in a ratrace to the bottom though. Infrastructure failure, the environment, unrest, and automation are all currently competing to tear us down in another event similar to how the Industrial Revolution changed humanity.

In July of 2012 we barely missed being devastated by a Carrington event ( and the apocalypse cults woulda fucking loved that shit; if you're not familiar a CME nearly missed Earth in the last zenith and scientists estimate if it had actually hit the US - JUST the US - would've lost 2+ Trillion in resources ), in 10-25 years without serious help US infrastructure will collapse ( specifically dams and highways though energy is still in the running; highways are already doing so with multiple environmental events washing out bridges that are major land passes such as the I-10 collapse last year? I think it was ), we could spend hours going on about how long the Antarctic sheet ice lasts ( if it fails we're really fucked ) and that's not even talking about Russia's methane problem, and last but not least our capitalism keeps running after the replacement of human labour while politicians pretend it's not their problem and promise more jobs. 'Cause that'll happen as we continue to replace menial labour jobs with robots.

My grandfather lived through the Great Depression. I seriously wonder sometimes what I'll live through. 50ish more years to go I guess so we'll see.


*In the event anyone is curious because I know I've spoken about it before, here's a research article (link) that discusses the potential of the 2012 event had it hit. Worry not, we'll take no real measure to minimise the future damage so next time it'll still hurt at least as much.

To be fair, we've been replacing menial jobs with automation since we invented the wheel. I think the new(ish) thing really hurting the middle class is the depowering of unions. It doesn't help that a broken education system is making it harder for people to get the education they need for modern jobs; we really need to condense learning so everyone's had a full high school education by 15 or 16, say, and a college education by 18 to 20 years old, all publicly funded.

It's not the same though; the idea of the wheel's machination is rather simplistic. Even with the wheel, humans didn't move up in scope until the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. We've been in a lull period as of late... since oh 1960 or so. Yes yes lots of cool new items have come out computers have rapidly advanced but we're still in the scope of horizontal improvement; the next vertical ascensions are about to hit us and we're not really prepared for them. Not that that is anything new.

The current level of automation is going to breach another Industrial Revolution in terms of what it does to people's status, and this time you have out and out replacement occurring. In the past, skilled jobs remain the domain of humans. But when you combine Werner von Braun's proclamation with the emergence of AI - or even just the notion of computers that learn ( assuming you don't want to define them sapience ), the result is a little darker in nature. Humans refuse to recognize sapience outside of the human species itself despite evidence to the contrary; even though we ourselves do not pass the test of sapience until 1.5-3 years of age ( in a typical human ). That's going to bite us in the ass and quite a few scientists have been sounding that particular alarm for years now. I'm sure Ilceren can add more detail.

With four words I can undo the entirety of an economy: computer driven electric cars.

As to the other point, it's not learning that is the issue. It's what is being taught. The fundamentals of education in the US are... well, fundamentally flawed. We don't actually teach how to learn over here until you start getting into self study graduate level fields where people are learning for the sake of learning. Everything else is task-oriented rote memorization, and in the US we have no prioritisation or directives of labour. The American dream is to be anything you wish to be, but that doesn't necessarily involve walking your path as real life generally has a comment or two regarding such. That whole clinging to tradition bit from earlier. I'm not sure unions are the answer, I'd say regulation is and that is what unions and lobbies are built to accomplish. You can pull the thread of the tapestry and ask the chicken / egg question if you like, but the result remains the same.

There's some fairly sizable protests going on today. Turnout is pretty big. The one in LA is basically like a giant parade.

What would be the best government system tho?
For me i feel like a mix of democracy and dictatorship. As in:

Every party decides on the character they wants to steer the country. the person who wins will stay in charge of the country until he/she either abdicates or dies. Decided by vote. Every year there will be a checkup on the person in charge so he/she doesn't misbehave. Not sure if that is the word i'm looking for but i want the group to check him so he/she isn't corrput in anyway. An Independent organization of some sort. If he/she has misbehaved he/she will be removed and a re-election will be held. Another thing to do will be a populational poll to check if the people are happy with the person in charge. The person in charge will be kinda like a king of the old times. He/She will have a preset salary (politicans are paid way too much). He/She is however not allowed to change the govermental system. (Preventing full dictatorship.)

I'm sure this system would flop in some way due to the humans greed and stuff like it but it feels like it "might" be better than other ones.

Cheers.