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UBI Cash Payments Reduced Homelessness, Increased Employment in Denver
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I agree the wealthy need to pay a lot more in tax than they currently do.
They also have disproportionate control over the electoral process in many countries, and most political parties are not even considering taxing them to the extent that they need to be taxed. Nor are most political parties challenging our capitalist society in any significant sense.
Voting is important, but don't expect voting alone to solve our problems.
No it does not. Sod off with that. Correctly identifying a major contributor to an issue does not take away agency.
What but voting should solve the problems? You won't stage a revolution.
Direct action.
How about direct action to make citizens vote in a coordinated way?
But you must have other direct actions in mind. Which ones?
Voting. Strikes. Mass protest. More, if ultimately required.
Why strikes and mass protests? Vote accordingly and let the law drive the change.
Because voting alone doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't worked over decades of us trying, you stupid wanker.
People have tried to fly for centuries. The nonexistance proofs nothing. It just indicates that it is not easy.
Voting doesn't work because voters are like internet users, they are a given. Citizens have to offer their votes like lobbyists offer money to have an influence.
Voting alone also doesn't work because the options provided and the specifics of the voting system are decided by people who have an incentive to rig them in their favour. You cannot vote for options that are not allowed.
Hence needing to vote, and do more outside of voting, rather than sheepishly just doing the same thing for decades while it fails over and over again.
I would like to believe in your approach but I don't believe in protests. That's transferring union tactics from companies to the state. It's valid in a monarchy but in a democracy, you can talk to other voters and have them support your cause. The citizens are the state.
Votes drive change. Believing in other means distracts from the real origin of power.
But votes have to be negotiated. Blindly voting for one's own team turns citizens into a product.
Okay, good luck being ignored and accomplishing nothing.
Good. Because those work.
Only if the democratic process accurately reflects the will of the people. And only if the rights of minorities are protected.
In many places, including the US and the UK, neither of those are true.
Votes are one of many "real" origins of power. To ignore the others is stupidity.
There are other origins of power but votes are special because they control the law.
Which protests are not ignored?
All origins of power will align when citizens coordinate their votes before an election.
It's a bit Leninistic. If voting is a race among teams, a state is created that stands atop the citizens.
If citizens debate before the election about what they want and coordinate their votes, then the state represents their will.
No votes do not control the law. They elect the government, who controls the law,
The government can be influenced by various means. Voting is but one of them.
Nobody cares if you do not like other methods, such as strikes and protests, they are still effective. And the owning class already uses other methods, such as lobbying and outright bribery, so to constrain oneself to methods that don't work is voluntary surrender.
Pretty much every civil rights and liberation movement around the world has been accomplished through a diversity of strategies, which almost always include protest.
Please pull your head out and observe reality.
One is in the past, the other is present.
I am arguing for using lobbying as citizens.