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[nenjin]

Yeah I was just too lazy to go dive into the internets.

[smjjames]

We do have to do something about the really low voter turnout.

One place to start would be to ask why people DON'T vote in general rather than this specific year or some specific election year.

As for the mandatory voting, I suppose it could release the GOP stranglehold or something.

[Darvi]

Making voting day a national holiday is one thing that I can remember.

[Morrigi]

Mandatory voting could potentially violate the First Amendment, as choosing not to vote can be considered a form of political protest in some cases.

[nenjin]

One place to start would be to ask why people DON'T vote in general rather than this specific year or some specific election year.

I'd look to local voting habits in city and state elections, which have the lowest turn outs versus Congressional or Presidential elections. What always gets me when I go to vote and local issues or elections are on the ballot is the amount of things I don't know to make an informed decision. Like, Judges up for re-election. I really should care about the judiciary, maybe even more than the legislature. But I almost know nothing about judges and their rulings and records. So I feel bad voting for anything at all.

To be a truly good citizen when you vote, I think you have to be informed, and to be informed to the degree you know something relevant about each contender and ballot initiative can amount to a part-time job. So I guess my answer is, I and a lot of people are just lazy and we're not passionate about engaging the process and becoming educated until something has pissed us off. Which by that time, shit has probably slid farther than it would have if more people were paying attention.

Mandatory voting could potentially violate the First Amendment, as choosing not to vote can be considered a form of political protest in some cases.

As long as there's a "None Of The Above" option I think that qualifies for most except the people on the furthest fringes, who believe even having to deal with any government on any level is a violation of some right of theirs. State and Federal government tend to not be very fond of those folks.

[smjjames]

Yeah, theres always those judge stuff, city council related postings, state level postings (besides governor and congresspeople), of which I know nothing about unless they've put out some sort of ad.

[Frumple]

Yeah... shifting the day (monday or friday would probably be significantly better, if not the weekend outright) and making voting day a national holiday would probably help a fair bit. Whoever thought setting it on a tuesday and not giving people a legally mandated excuse to get off work for it was a good idea was an idiot at best. That'd be a nice and easy first step, in any case. Wish I could remember why we're still, well... not doing that.

... its worth noting re: the article FJ posted that obama didn't actually suggest mandatory voting, though. Just more or less said it'd be pretty neat. Transformative, I think the exact word was?

[SalmonGod]

Competition in health care lowers prices, eh?

... how's that been working for us, over here in the US where we've been mostly trying that for the last ever?

I mean, other than horrifically :V

Ah. Wait, wait. You said good for prices. Well, that's kinda' been true. Just not for the consumer, ha.

The US hasn't had competition in health care for about fifty years. Doctor licensure is very strictly limited, there are less hospitals in the US now than there were fifty (or, indeed, a hundred) years ago, states basically require that all insurance plans cover such a wide variety of procedures that paying for "insurance" is basically just pre-emptively paying for regular medical care (except the costs aren't passed onto the consumer unless you don't have insurance, so there's no incentive to cut costs), and the FDA basically regulates the pharmaceutical industry in such a way as to ensure it operates like a cartel and to prevent any competition arising.

The only thing "free market" about American healthcare is that it nominally isn't operated directly by the government but by a network of politically connected corporations. Even that ignores those exemplars of American-style universal healthcare, the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Administration, as well as indirect government interventions such as Medicare and Medicaid.

My head explodes every time I read stuff like this.  The ability to buy influence that allows circumvention of good faith free market competition is a natural consequence of the free market.  To prevent this from happening requires controls on financial behavior of a kind that free market proponents claim to be of an anti-free market nature.  Perhaps the reason libertarianism is such an alluring ideology is the comfort of knowing you can so easily distance yourself from its consequences.


As for the voting issue, I agree with nenjin.  Platforms can't be taken at face value.  To be an informed voter, you have to research the political history of the candidates you're voting on.  This is work enough for federal elections, where that information is usually readily available.  I don't see how it's supposed to be possible for a working class person with a family to have the time to vote on state and local elections without just shooting in the dark.  Might as well roll a fucking die.

[Darvi]

Might as well roll a fucking die.

But I don't want to fondle a senator!

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ah, okay, so. Urist, the ACA is the opposite of what you understand it to be. Sorry. It adds additional layers of bureaucracy by making health insurance mandatory and maintaining the private system. It in no way provides universal healthcare, because there was no way to make that politically acceptable (if you believe the Dems) or because the medical industries in general pony up way too much dosh for campaigns (if you don't). Competition in the industry is hypothetical.

The efficient option would be to scrap the entire insurance system and the infrastructure that goes with it and instead implement universal healthcare, which would ideally mean that you walk into a hospital, get treatment, end of story. That may not be the exact model they used. But the point of the article is that free riders and everything else that could go with it are apparently significantly less of a cost than the overhead we employ to keep those costs down.

That is, the article is very much for universal healthcare, which is antithetical to the bureaucracy that the ACA propped up.

Ok, this pretty much clears up everything. So ya.

EDIT: I am also strongly against mandatory voting. I believe that not voting is just as strong a political expression of opinion as actual voting is. On the whole, I believe it represents a lack of faith in our government and also a lack of faith in the quality of the character of the available candidates, so when people don't vote I don't expect the government to make it mandatory I expect them to DO BETTER. Don't take that too literally, as it's entirely philosophical. I don't vote partially on those grounds and also because it's a bit of a hassle while i'm at college and I don't feel like mailing my vote in (i'm talking voting for all political office here).

[Frumple]

Do remember that with mandatory voting, you're entirely allowed to just turn in a blank ballot, if you don't want to vote for whoever.

Still, making voting day a holiday and a saner day, along with a bit better on the social pressure to vote, would likely help a fair amount. S'fairly doubtful we'd see such at the moment, though... GOP, at the very least, has been pushing the voter suppression thing pretty hard the last handful of years. Lot of people in power really don't want more people voting

[Bauglir]

"You don't have to vote, but you do have to take this ballot. Also, eat this bowl of eggs."

[Helgoland]

My head explodes every time I read stuff like this.  The ability to buy influence that allows circumvention of good faith free market competition is a natural consequence of the free market.  To prevent this from happening requires controls on financial behavior of a kind that free market proponents claim to be of an anti-free market nature.  Perhaps the reason libertarianism is such an alluring ideology is the comfort of knowing you can so easily distance yourself from its consequences.

That's a grave misrepresentation: An oligopoly - which is what you're describing - is contradictory to the existence of a free market. A free market is precisely a market in which each participant is too small to influence the whole thing.

What you describe is the transformation of a free market into an oligopoly by conglomeration. That certainly is a thing, but not in and of itself a consequence of a market being free. The real consequence is not that free markets are bad, but that some markets need government interference to become free.
Rule one of criticizing capitalism should be intellectual accuracy, if only to ward off reactionary criticism.

[FearfulJesuit]

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics...the "free market" is just as much of a pointless pipe-dream as letting people be "free" from the bounds of the law. Sure, people can theoretically act as they want, but other, more insidious authorities inevitably arise. An unregulated market is "free" from government intrusion in the same way that the hinterlands of Afghanistan are "free" from central authority. Petty warlords, oligopolies and robber barons create their own pseudo-regulations, which are much worse.

It may be better to stop thinking of "free markets", which are mostly a buzzphrase for right-wing politicians, and instead start talking about efficient markets, in which consumers, regulators and business interests act as checks on each other to produce the most efficient outcome. The conflation of the two is one of the more insidious traits of modern political discourse in modern America.

[misko27]

Rule one of criticism should be intellectual accuracy, if only to ward off reactionary rebuttals.

FTFY.

Anyway, on mandatory voting: The issue with voluntary voting (hell, voting period) is that the people most interested in voting tend to be specific types of fringe who view voting as patriotic to their cause (as opposed to the fringe types that consider it a waste of time). In the political climate of America today in particular, this hurts democrats (this used to not be the case). In an ideal world, interest in elections would be higher, similar to Presidential election years. When that interest is gone, either you do nothing or you force people to vote, but either result is inherently flawed from the get-go. The issue with interest is that it's a very fickle thing, and very much dependent on the nature of the campaigns (and the election itself).

Interest drives everything. If people are really interested, they will make time to learn about issues. If they really aren't, all the time in the world is not enough. The thing about bringing the horse and water and drinking.

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics...

It's ALWAYS semantics. No exceptions. Descriptivists are so popular, yet they alone are responsible for 90% of arguments.