Stidmatt

Reason 1: The Electoral College makes some votes worth more than others.

This one is pretty obvious and a common complaint. Presidential candidates campaign mostly in swing states while mostly ignoring other states. Shouldn’t we live in an America where each person is equally important? Campaigning for votes in Los Angeles or Boston should have as much value as campaigning for votes in Detroit or Philadelphia.

Reason 2: Minority winners

Four times in American history, the candidate who won the most votes did not win the presidency, and we don’t have ranked voting so this makes it unrepresentative. No candidate who has majority support should be able to lose the presidency. It’s undemocratic.

Reason 3: Slavery

The reason the Electoral College was created was to protect slave power. The structure of the Senate was designed so we would have an equal number of slave and free states, prolonging the agonizing torment of slaves across the South. The House increased slave power through the 3/5 compromise, which meant slave owners were overrepresented while slaves had no representation. If it was not for the 3/5 compromise the South would not have had nearly as much influence in early American politics.

If the President had been directly elected by the people starting in 1788, the South would not have received any electoral benefit from slavery, and the North would have dominated presidential elections. By making slaves count for the presidency while not having the votes, the South would have been more powerful than it would have been. The electoral college was a way of ensuring the South had power without having a prime minister. This is enough reason to abolish the system and move to a direct popular vote.

Reason 4: Small states don’t matter in the Electoral College

As this map demonstrates, if we divide states by population, shade all the smallest states red and all the most populous states blue. The state in the middle is Virginia, the 12th largest state in the country. Even with the Electoral College, small states don’t have enough votes to matter more than large states. There have only been three states in American history where a state with fewer than ten electoral college votes could have flipped the election alone. That’s how democracy works. Campaigning in any state with under ten votes is pointless under our current system, whereas under a direct popular vote every vote will count equally.

If Texas became a swing state, and it sure looks like it will soon, with Trump only winning a 5% margin of victory in 2020 versus Bush win, it’s possible Texas could become a swing state with shifting demographics. If this happens, Texas alone will decide as long as we keep the electoral college, but not with a popular vote.

Texas flipping in the elections where it voted for the winner would have flipped the overall result in every election since 1988.

Even though the Electoral College increases the percentage of the overall vote in small states, it only increases the power of large states.

Reason 5: We will become a unitary state if we abolish the Electoral College

This is one of the more absurd arguments. The Electoral College has nothing to do with the separation of powers between states and the federal government, which is based on the 10th Amendment. Plus, power has gradually moved more towards the federal government ever since John Marshall was chief justice, and all of this has been with the Electoral College. It’s a nutty argument.

In short, even though repealing the Electoral College will be difficult, it should still be repealed because it is undemocratic.

If you have ever been on Facebook or most newspapers, you probably notice that they push depressing media. People are more likely to stay engaged if they feel like something is threatening them, which means more scrolling and ad revenue. It’s a vicious cycle for the user.

It’s easy to walk away from this and feel like the world is horrible. Crime is at an all-time high; everyone is out to get you, the government is corrupt, and the world is a horrible place. So, there is no point in trying.

You stop engaging politically, or even worse, start voting for parties that make the world a worse place. Either way, that’s the goal.

While it is important that the news media writes articles about events, that is their job; it is our job as citizens to ensure that the constant flood of negative news stories does not capture the whole picture.

The enemy is our brains. Even after being trained, we are naturally bad at statistics. It’s easy to watch the news, feel like cities are overrun by crime, read message boards, and feel like everyone is a doomer.

However, the problem is that this is not a random sample. It is a biased sample since people are more likely to comment if they feel something is wrong than if they agree. This is where we need to pull ourselves out of our base mindset and push ourselves towards seeing the bigger picture. While we live in a world with more access to news from everywhere, we are also in an era where we have more access to big-picture statistics than any time before, and the amount of big-picture data that becomes available grows daily.

What I wish people would do more is look at the big picture when you look at an unpleasant news story. It doesn’t minimize the suffering in places like Gaza, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, which are truly horrific. Still, the trick is recognizing what is happening in those places while understanding the big picture.

That’s hard. Really hard. No one can do it all the time.

The ironic part of it is that while people fall for doomer narratives of how the world is worse than it was, we also won’t do everything possible to ensure Ukraine wins and negotiate a workable system to bring lasting peace to Israel and Palestine. Plus all the other conflicts in the world today.

We need to understand our world in a way that doesn’t lead to despair but instead leads to action. This requires a clear mindset, which is more difficult than shutting down but also far more rewarding for the practitioner and society as a whole.

• Understand where we have been. Study history as much as you can.
• Understand the current situation, good and bad. Do not bury your head in the sand.
• Dream about how to make things better. Do not despair.

If you do these three things, I have found it leads to a much more meaningful life.

The only thing you need to block out are people who deny the humanity of others and doomers.

In my opinion, Uber and Lyft’s problem is not that they have a computer that sets prices. Every company does that nowadays. That’s normal, and enables more flexible prices.

The problem with Uber and Lyft is that they pay their drivers less than minimum wage. There are two ways this can work:

1. Drivers for the platform are classified as employees and they get all of the rights afforded to them by law, including being paid at least minimum wage with mandatory benefits if they work sufficient hours.
2. Drivers for the platform are independent contractors and they can set their own prices automatically.

When I did some driving for Uber Eats and Postmates, I would often not be told the amount I would make or how far I would have to drive in order to pick up a delivery before I would end up being driven for free to the other side of the city and then only be paid a few dollars when I finally made the delivery. It’s impossible to make enough to live with such a system. They will then stop paying you enough to survive and push you into poverty if you turn down too many jobs.

In this way, they have found a way to maximize profits while taking advantage of everyone illegally.

Another illegal action by these companies is predatory pricing. They enter the market and offer extremely good deals. People who used to be taxi drivers lose business and are forced to become employees of these companies instead of running their taxi businesses. The wages start by being high enough for everyone to get a good deal. Once their competition is gone, they jack up prices and reduce wages for their drivers. This is illegal.

Part of their anti-competitive nature is also fighting against public transit. When Uber enters an area, bus ridership drops, starving routes of funds. Read more in this newspaper.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for fast, frequent, high-quality mass transit for getting around cities.

In the Ukraine war, after the war had been won, the only stable solution to this conflict is Ukraine being a member of NATO. Ukraine then can focus on reforming institutions to bring themselves in line with European Union acquis in preparation for membership.

Any time a conflict ends, the most important thing is what replaces it? How will the situation resolve in a way that does not just bring a respite but a lasting peace?

Freedom is an essential ingredient, along with equality under the law.

Ukraine had this before the war and they will have it after. All people in Ukraine are free. This means there is a very high probability that Ukraine will be able to join the European Union sooner than most people think.

Israel however is in a fundamentally different situation. While Jewish Israelis enjoy a high quality of life and protection under the law, the same cannot be said for Palestinians.

The reason why a ceasefire needs to happen is Palestine is because civilians are being targeted like Ukrainians are today. Terrorists need to be taken out and civilians need to be protected. Without this, there will not be reconciliation after the war is over and I fear there will only be more violence which does not solve the conflict.

There needs to be a political solution to any conflict.

The political solution to Ukraine is NATO membership and the end of Russian occupation of Ukraine. This is what Zelenskyy is working towards.

I do not see a sincere plan from world leaders to solve the political situation in Palestine.

That needs to change.

Radical Islamists gather in Hamburg to call for caliphate

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir_in_Deutschland

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/10/08/pro-palestinian-protest-erupts-in-frankfurt-despite-city-ban

https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-pro-russia-rallies-discrimination/31795983.html

Germany is failing the Paradox of Tolerance.

While anti-Semites can freely protest in Germany, people calling for freedom in Palestine and an end to the bombardment of Gaza face the full brutality of the law.

Supporters of Putin are allowed to rally in the streets freely while peace activists are tear-gassed.

Calling for Palestine to be free and a peace agreement in Israel/Palestine is not anti-Semitic.

Muslim Interaktiv is an anti-Semitic organization that wants to reestablish a caliphate and has called for the eradication of Jews and denying the Holocaust. This is fundamentally different from calling for a solution in Palestine!

Vladimir Putin wants to reextend the borders of the Russian Empire to include former East Germany at a minimum.

There is a tremendous difference between ceasefire activists and supporters of Putin or a caliphate.

While the far-right AfD is allowed to win seats in the Bundestag and is not outright banned for being Neo-Nazis, Germany has been weak on Ukraine and unhelpful in resolving the crisis in the Middle East.

While Scholz is doing more for Ukraine than Merkel ever did, his Middle East policy has not significantly shifted. There is still a long way to go.

The whole situation is absurd.

I believe it is important for democracies to act as locations where refugees can find peace and safety.

But one of the necessary restrictions needs to be intolerance of hate speech. Supporters of terrorist organizations and mafia states need to be deported if they are aliens and heavily fined if they have only one citizenship.

Most refugees live peacefully in their new homes and do not cause problems. A ban on refugees should never be imposed. It would be immoral and violate international law. However, when anyone in a country demonstrates that they are unwilling to follow the social contract, they must be deported on a case-by-case basis. Hate speech is one of the early warning signs that is now used to catch future terrorists in the United Kingdom, as I described in an earlier post. As a result, there have been no terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom for four years. Anyone supporting Nazism or Sharia law is violating the social contract from which democracies are designed. It is a clear red flag that they will do more in the future. It cannot be tolerated.

Freedom of speech does not mean all speech is free. The paradox of tolerance comes into play. Protesters who call for a caliphate, idolize Hitler, or support monsters like Vladimir Putin are trying to get into power and demolish freedom of speech, among other rights. For this reason, allowing them to demonstrate freely violates the paradox of tolerance and the social contract.

This makes it very easy to determine which protests violate the Paradox of Tolerance. Are they advocating for a system of government that will abolish freedom of speech? That is the key difference between the movements.

Ceasefire demonstrators have never advocated for any organization that desires to abolish freedom of speech. They must be allowed to demonstrate since they do not violate the Paradox of Tolerance. Calling for all Arab Israelis and Palestinians to have equal rights is the right thing to do. It is the opposite of calling for a Holocaust.

Vladimir Putin hunts down journalists and dissenters both in Russia and in other countries. He has all but eliminated freedom of speech from Russian life. If his supporters got what they wanted, freedom of speech would be eliminated. The same goes for anyone who supports a Caliphate. Shariah Law is incompatible with freedom of speech, so anyone advocating for it violates the Paradox of Tolerance.

That’s what Karl Popper was talking about. It’s time for people to listen.

Having some fun drawing maps this morning. I hope this is helpful in seeing long-term political trends in North America.

It’s travel and frequent communication between countries.

The way this would work, in order:

1. Debt-free college. Educated citizens are less likely to fall for populism.
2. Abolish eVisas between democracies.
3. Implement eGates for your citizens at airport customs. It will tremendously improve everyone’s speed through airports.
4. Extend eGate access to other countries where the risks are minimal and criminal records are shared.
5. Make it easier for people to work between countries. Work visas should be easy to acquire, and they are necessary for tax reasons.
6. Make airport security fast and efficient.
7. Join open border agreements like the Schengen Area with other democracies.
8. Free trade between democracies. Extend the EFTA outside of Europe. Complex interdependence works.
9. Extend the Schengen Area outside of Europe. Start with the US and Canada.
10. Make it legal to build dense housing, keeping housing costs low.

Travel and intercultural communication are critical for increasing friendships across cultures.

Here are the major changes that need to happen in the next year:

• Ukraine must win the war and be accepted as a full member of NATO. For this to happen, Ukraine needs to be able to strike all Russian military targets.
• Accept Georgia as a full member of NATO.
• Israel needs to stop bombing civilian targets. A solution to the crisis in Palestine needs to be adopted. Netanyahu will then go back to court and likely be impeached.
• Romania and Bulgaria need to be accepted as full members of Schengen.
• Kamala Harris needs to be President.
• Priorities for the next congress:
  • Universal health care
  • Add long-term care coverage to Medicare
  • Set the stage for the gradual public buyout of private railroads
• Reverse the trend of eVisas being implemented globally.
• Move the War on Drugs from a primarily supply focus to a demand focus through healthcare. This will reduce violence across the Americas.
• The United Kingdom needs to apply to rejoin the European Union.

I was doing some reading this evening and wondering why the Andean Community and MERCOSUR don’t merge. I thought about the intricacies of that relationship, which led me to look at how Brazil is now going to implement a new visa for “security reasons.” That made me think: What is the actual evidence on visas between democracies deterring crime?

That duckduckgo search led me to this document. https://www.sita.aero/globalassets/docs/white-papers/the-role-of-electronic-travel-authorizations-paper.pdf

Most of what this document says is not important, but what is important is that they boldly claim to their investors that they are the leading global partner of governments in implementing eVisas and, without saying which countries they are operating in, claim to be operating worldwide.

That made me wonder: Who is operating the eVisa systems that have been popping up worldwide? Is it SITA? They claim to be doing so to their investors, but the Wikipedia pages for such systems do not say anything about it.

While I do not know for certain that SITA is why the US and EU are implementing visas on each other, open secrets prove that SITA has been a consistent lobbyist since 2001, when the 9/11 Commission report was written.

SITA operates ESTA in the US and ETA in Canada, among others. This company, without a useful product, is fearmongering politicians to implement its technology so it can collect a stable paycheck into the future by harming relations between allies.

The best part of the entire policy is the database that ETIAS is going to tap, which supposedly will improve security, is the Schengen Information System, which is the database that has recorded entries and exits of the Schengen Area since the agreement came into force. It doesn’t improve security; it just adds another level of bureaucracy and enriches a corrupt corporation.

When it comes to terrorist attacks in Europe, there has not been a terrorist attack in Europe from a citizen from a visa-free country to the Schengen information since… well… it’s never happened.

Is ETIAS necessary to improve the Schengen Information System?

According to the European Union, the Schengen Information System has been continuously improved and updated since its launch in 1995. Its last significant upgrade was in March 2023.

Advocates of eVisas frequently claim ETIAS will allow the EU to monitor travelers’ criminal records. Did they not already do this? What was the point of meeting with a customs agent at the border, then? I have trouble believing this.

The Schengen Information System already does this.

They claim that ETIAS will improve security and speed checks. But when I went through Schengen security in Wroclaw last year, I don’t think the guard asked me any questions. The reason is simple: they already have access to criminal records, and my record is blank. I was through customs in less than 5 minutes while standing in a line from a full flight. I don’t know how you can make that faster. Even an eGate would not speed it up by more than a minute. The process is already extremely efficient, and I do not believe ETIAS will make security faster.

The only thing ETIAS does is require people to pre-register. It does not add any functionality for criminal records that does not already exist, and it also does not automate customs by removing the need for border guards.

The only reasonable conclusion I have is the company that runs the technology behind these systems is a parasite.

Let’s make a testable hypothesis. A country with not just visa-free entry for over 50 nationalities but even eGate access for over 40 nationalities should then see significant levels of terrorism from foreigners.

If visa-free travel and eGates for select foreigners were a common cause of terrorist attacks, we would not have to imagine a country with such a policy. We could just study the United Kingdom. If that theory were true, the United Kingdom would be the most vulnerable country to terrorism in the world. They offer eGate access to over 40 nationalities. If the theory is correct, the United Kingdom should be bursting at the seams with terrorist attacks every second Tuesday blowing up every other apartment in London! The United Kingdom offers us a clear picture of the horrors of visa-free travel and eGate access and the dystopic hellhole such a policy will create. As we can see in the data:

There have been no terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom in 2024.

There were no terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom in 2023.

There were no terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom in 2022.

One person died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2021. The perpetrator is a British citizen.

Three people died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2020. The perpetrator was a legal refugee.

Two people died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2019. The perpetrator was a British citizen.

No one died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2018.

Forty-six people died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2017.

One member of parliament was assassinated by a Neo-Nazi British citizen in the United Kingdom in 2016.

No one died due to terrorism in the United Kingdom in 2015.

If we investigate the attacks in 2017, the first one was perpetrated by Khalid Masood, who was a British citizen. The second and worst attack was by Salman Abedi, and he was a British citizen as well. There were warnings about Abedi, but intelligence ignored them. Khurum Shazad Butt was also a British citizen. Darren Osborne is also a British citizen.

Everyone who has committed a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom in the last ten years was legally living in Britain. All but one were British citizens, and the other one was a legal refugee. None were tourists.

Maybe my hypothesis was wrong? It seems we are being misled that the solution to terrorism is the mass surveillance of tourists. Tourists are not a source of terrorism.

The appropriate methods to counter these terrorist attacks, which appear to now be used by British intelligence, is to listen to tip-offs and follow up on leads. It has worked. There have been no successful terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom in 3 years.

You can be a safe and free society while not just having visa-free travel but letting some foreigners even use eGates, and you won’t see an uptick in terrorism!

We need a new tourism and economics lobbying group to provide a balanced viewpoint on these issues, namely:

• Visa-free travel needs to be the default. eVisas should only be used when there is a serious security threat, not as a default.
• Follow up properly on reports that someone is dangerous. Properly following up on tip-offs and using probable cause is the most effective tool we have in fighting terrorism, not unwarranted surveillance.
• Work visas need to be available so people can work here legally.
• The reasons behind these false promises are the very real threat of terrorism. Visa-free travel has never been used widely by terrorists to harm democracies. We need a comprehensive policy to fight terrorism with the following planks:
  • Proper funding is needed to counter money laundering globally. Countries that do not comply will be sanctioned. Countries that cooperate will receive massive economic and travel benefits.
  • Severe visa restrictions on countries that are found to foster terrorism. Visa-free travel for countries that cooperate.

I believe there is a lot we can do to fight terrorism more meaningfully, targeted, and efficiently. I am an American, and I believe in the Fifth Amendment. Implementing high levels of security for everyone without probable cause is contrary to American values and fiscally irresponsible. We need a system that accurately targets real security threats without wasting resources on non-threats.

It must be easy for a country to prove it is not a threat, for which it will receive travel and trade benefits.

The punishment for not cooperating by supporting terrorism needs to be severe.

We do not have to choose between security and freedom; we can have both or neither.

End ESTA. It is political snake oil. Implement visa-free travel for our partners.

It’s time to refocus our efforts on methods that work and follow our American values.