March 6, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.12 has been released.
News: February 3, 2024: The February '24 Report is up.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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I think likening it to the Holy Roman Empire would be more entertaining, with the EU eventually being just Cyprus, or possibly extending to a country explicitly not in Europe before everyone flees.It could happen. EU's old rival EFTA is still floating around, after all.
The problem is that they think BNW, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc. only apply to the other side.Yeah... some folks just kinda' never turn the TV off. Some of those default to fox, and so...I have an idea: in high school, BNW should be required reading.
If Trump somehow does a complete 180...His cabinet is filled with hangers-on and has-beens whose only claim to fame - and possible claim to safety - these days is their willingness to ride on his coattails. I mean, is Chris Christie really going to bail on Trump when his only payoff will be to be prosecuted for that bridge deal? I don't think so.
Well, I hope his prospective Cabinet isn't getting very used to their offices?
If Trump wants to do what he says, and deport 11 million immigrants, he will have to deport over 7500 people per day, if he wants to get it done before his term is up.Obama deported 2.5 million. 11 million is a lot more, but it's not an order of magnitude more, either.
For that amount of people to be processed, you'd need a lot of trains, camps and even more staff. Ask the Germans, they have experience with setting up the logistics, because you can't be doing it like with the native americans. That took you 3 centuries to get rid of 20+ million of them.
Here is a question. Let's say someone is corrupt. Not a member of Congress, but a lobbyist is bribing people. How does this system handle this? Does it?Isn't is already flat out illegal to accept bribes? Why would you expect this system to be different than the current one in this regard?
All bills with enough support become laws after all, no matter how marginal, and there are conceptual, legal, and most importantly, practical issues behind the entire legal force of a law "flickering" on-and-off depending on the day or the week or the month. This is a question of practice.I'll point again at the 60% rule I proposed.
Fair enough, but I will say that 60% is not enough to totally insulate it from the tyranny of the polls and focus groups. More generally: This still means that the system still has the "Whoever owns the media owns Parliament".If it's "totally insulated" from the polls, it's hardly a republic of any sort, now is it?
My point here is simply that Congressional culture matters, and you can't just argue it away. This system could have activists, professional politicians, university professors and everything in between fighting for influence.My Congressional Culture refused to pass a budget for years on end. Years. I do not see the second part as a bad thing given how thoroughly the experienced legislators. After all, the activists and professional politicians are already fighting for influence and the professors are teaching the lawyers who round out the bunch.
Believable enough. Still didn't answer how to prevent Omnibus bills from occuring.They'd be less likely to be drafted in the first place. Look, the reason you get an omnibus bill is because of the horse-trading. I'll vote for your interests against mine in a field where my constituents care little in exchange for you voting for my interests against yours in a field where mine care a great deal. You get these deals because of single interest voters choosing a candidate who they only want one thing from. I would hope that vote forwarding would defuse the single interest system by allowing voters to compromise less when choosing a representative.
How do marginals figure in? If, say, the minimum is 15,000 votes and a guy has, look at that, 15,000 votes, does he get kicked out of the chamber immediately? If not, when? If so, does he come right back as soon as a new person votes for him? What if he hopscotches back and forth? That would make workin very hard, since he'd never know whether he'll have voting privileges or not at any given time. A minor issue, but there's more.The most obvious way to solve this problem is to have the top X people rather than a threshold. I mean, the chamber only physically has so much space; it'd be better to keep the crowd at a constant size. Timewise, the obvious solution is to reallocate at fixed intervals. It could be a day or a week or a month or whatever. The hopscotchers are going to be the ones with the fewest votes in the chamber anyway, so it shouldn't have that much of an impact anyway.
Second question: Isn't this system vulnerable to opinion swings? Suppose an article comes out that lambasts Rep. So-and-So (who was a very popular guy) for cheating on Mrs. So-and-So. He was working on a bill with a group of other people. Now he loses the votes to pass this bill. Maybe they were working on this a while, and now all of the Parliament sits on its hands until he gets better. Do they start working on a new thing until he gets better? Does that imply a world of alternative laws just floating about, waiting for the number of votes to come in? Isn't this just rule by media? Another issue.It's a democracy. Vulnerability to mood swings is inherent in the system. There has always been the risk of votes suddenly not forthcoming when public opinion is against it; the first attempt to bail out the banks in 2008-9 failed when Representatives got cold feet after being inundated by angry mail. If a bill fails due to this it only had marginal support anyway, so I'm not worried too much about it. And there have always been phantom bills floating around waiting for their time to come.
Third Question: What about repeal? You said a minority is needed to enact. What is necessary to repeal? Does repeal require the same number? Presumably, then, the number of votes necessary to pass laws would need to be such that there could not exist two seperate-but-opposed blocs can enact and repeal the same law infinitely. Are there limits on repeal? Can the bureaucracy be in the middle of bringing about some law, only for the number of votes needed to repeal fly up because of a single day's unflattering headline? Do they keep working on it? For how long? If it's scrapped, what if the next day, a flattering news cycle leads to it being re-enacted? And related: imagine a Parliament of many single-issue activists. If the law-making barrier is too high, will it be possible to pass laws without making some omnibus bill in order to garner the necessary votes (this is similar to the old Congress habit of "earmarks", but for special issues)? All this leads up to my main point:The obvious solution is to require a threshold for passing above 50%. If it's 60% than there are 40% against it and public opinion would have to shift by twenty points to repeal, which seems like it wouldn't happen overnight.
How is this parliament supposed to do its business? With members dropping in and out at will, votes going up and down depending on the daily media cycle, laws enacted and repealed at will, it seems very difficult for members to actually work. How is the business of making laws supposed to happen in this stock-market democracy of yours? Where is the power of institution? How would these people handle crisis? Or budgeting? What failsafes are there beyond voters recognizing the issues inherent in the system and acting to prevent them? For some of these, that may be easy, but, say, people deciding to actively avoid changing their votes in budgeting season is unlikely to catch on. There are a lot of questions.
If the population of a region is, say, split between 70% blue people and 30% green people, why is there a problem if the region's news business has fewer green people applying for work/training and fewer green people involved in writing scripts compared to blue people?To jump in just a bit, people can have a background that gives them insight. If I need someone to tell a story about being homeless, someone who's actually been homeless can do that better because they know the ins and outs of it. Having people of various backgrounds is useful and being able to tell stories from all walks of life is important.
Speaking of which... Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump.Anyone want to guess on how long before Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck and the #nevertrump folks cave in and follow suit? Trump may never be Mr. Perfect, but as the election drags on, sooner or later he'll look like Mr. Good Enough.
1) Employment in a company requires integration into the organizational hierarchy and absolute submission to the authority of your superiors. The exploitative capitalist arrangement wherein the owners of the company appropriate the surplus value of your work is regarded as the "proper" and "time-honored" way to do things. The worker gets paid according to the proper market value of his contribution, and the profits belong to the shareholders rather than the employees. You are not allowed to question these basic principles, and if you do, your employment will be terminated.Every organization ever works this way. The Catholic Church, a hippie commune, and the US Marine Corps will all police your appearance and behavior if you are a part of them and boot you if you buck the system. The concept of group cohesion is not an invention of capitalistic enterprise.
2) It is not enough to only maintain your own loyalty towards the company – you are also expected to police the behaviour of your co-workers and report all possible deviations to your superiors. If you are employed in middle management, you are personally responsible for the productivity of your inferiors and the smooth operation of the organization from your position downwards. If the management demands aggression towards a particular employee for a lack of productivity, you must comply or your own job is in peril. The enemies of the company must be punished – that is the proper way to do things. Also, keep in mind that since the company is now your primary in-group, the rest of the world belongs automatically in the out-group as long as you are on their payroll. This includes malnourished children in Bangladeshi sweatshops as well as fat judges in federal courtrooms. The laws of society mean nothing within the walls of the corporation – there is only loyalty to your superiors and servitude to your paycheck.
3) Although all co-workers are essentially enemies and competitors in the company structure, the continued smooth operation of the system also requires co-operation among the employees. Maintaining a co-operative environment is facilitated by authoritarian group cohesion, also known as "team spirit" in consult-speak. In other words, absolute conformity and conventionality is required from each and every employee, and the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. It is very important that all workers "fit in" with the company culture, and optimally the misfits who cannot stomach the right and proper ways should be winnowed out during the hiring process. If a maladjusted miscreant does make it in by chance, it is possible to pare them down to size by way of company picnics, casual fridays, and workplace bullying. If that does not help, firing is always an option. Unproductive personalities must be nipped in the bud.
If you really want to avoid Elite Marksgobbos plinking away from distance and scoring easy hits while taking none in return, you might want to think outside the box. One way of dealing with them is to make sure they can not stand at range and pewpewpew away with impunity. To do this, I often dig out or construct an archway with the fortifications featuring my marks-dwarves on the inside edge looking backwards towards the interior of my fort rather than the outside. This forces the marksgobbo to path towards, underneath and beyond them without being able to see them, and they cant shoot what they cant see. Elite marksgobbo passes into thier LoS under the arch, and dies in a hail of short range fire. You could do the same with ease in a number of ways - basically, do not offer them the opportunity to shoot at fortifications from range.In a similar vein, you can build an entrance cavern multiple Z-levels high with a elevated bridge at the same level as the fortifications. When invaders try to dodge the bolts, they often fall off.
I think you're both going to be disappointed. That's because we've made it to the part that I've been waiting for for months and several times feared wouldn't happen: the kowtowing of the entire Republican/Conservative sphere to the will of Trump. I fully expect every pundit, politician, pastor to suddenly forget that they've spent the better part of the year demonizing the man and move straight on to holding him up as the apotheosis of all thing presidential and how dare you suggest they ever felt otherwise.I can't wait to see how Glenn Beck responds to all this.
Neither can I. Glenn Beck on literal suicide watch?
That's easy: anyone who realizes that there's a market for the things and wants to cash in.My sister went to Iceland last week and found that one gift store had stuck those "Tax Free" stickers on all their postcards of the ex-PM
Who on Earth makes postcard of the PM?
