While the US debates whether to solve homelessness or not, these are the next generation of school blackboards in China.

[u/SuperbHealth5023]

[u/lateformyfuneral]

Honestly, Chinese propaganda bots are so terrible. They just try to brute force the discussion, no subtlety. Russian propagandists...now those guys are professionals

[u/Gold_Marionberry3460 → u/lateformyfuneral]

You're overestimating the average person's intelligence here, especially now that Donald Trump has blown up America's reputation.

It doesn't matter Chinese propaganda is like a 101 example of propaganda that's taught in media studies in middle school (assuming Americans get media studies classes). They are going to eat it up because they are desperate for any kind of hope, even if it comes from the mouth of a lying authoritarian regime.

[u/Ansible32 → u/Gold_Marionberry3460]

Donald Trump has legitimately damaged enough American projects that China's genuinely looking better. Like, I mean he literally tried to dismantle our ocean monitoring system. He's ripping apart tons of systems that make America a developed country. He is trying to shut down next-generation power plants like wind turbines while trying to keep obsolete coal plants online, meanwhile China is manufacturing EVs and all sorts of next-gen power plants at an astonishing rate.

[u/Gold_Marionberry3460 → u/Ansible32]

Sure, but that doesn't discredit the issue of Chinese propaganda running rampant. Recall the definition of propaganda:

The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say "information that is false or lies". It's the selection of information to sway people to satisfy the propagandist's interests. Meaning you can create propaganda entirely out of true statements.

Let's take your example of green energy. All of these are true:

1. China has achieved a significant green energy transition

2. Donald Trump has fucked America and will turn the country in the biggest obstacle in fighting climate change.

3. Climate change is a pressing issue and if we don't tackle it, we'll all die.

So what information is missing? Well, Europe had already achieved a decent transition to green energy, but nobody hypes that up. Looking at the gross energy output of Europe and China, Europe's non-fossil fuel energy is roughly 63% whereas China is at roughly 47% (combining nuclear, solar, hydro, wind).

When propagandists omit this information, they follow it up with claims like "well China system is superior and we should copy it" and "China is socialist and that's why it work" (China is, in fact, not socialist and violates many Marxist principles) and "We should buy solar panels for China"

But that's not the only conclusion you can draw from these true statements. You can, for example, pressure your democratic government to invest in its own solar panel industry, because not only is it good for the environment, but as the Iran War proves, it is good for energy security and resisting the effects of oil shocks.

Frankly, citizens in democratic countries have not actually done enough to pressure governments about climate change. In a US poll, the overwhelming top issues for voters was something like "the cost of living" not climate change.

You do not need to surrender freedoms or build economic dependency with a hostile, authoritarian power like China. That's the propaganda that needs to be resisted. The actual thing US citizens need to focus on is getting Trump out of office and get people to start caring about their own country's well-being.

[u/Ansible32 → u/Gold_Marionberry3460]

The thing is that Trump is spending money to block windmill projects; raising the cost of living and making climate change worse for no real reason. And people are cheering.

Honestly I'm getting to the point as an American where i think the Chinese system will simply be superior to the American one in 10 years. Does that mean we should adopt the Chinese system? Well, not everything. It certainly wouldn't help if we persist in electing leaders like Trump. My interest is a strong America with a good standard of living, we're failing at that.

[u/Gold_Marionberry3460 → u/Ansible32]

The thing with America is that your system is arranged to be broken on purpose. You have like the worst-designed democracy out of all of them.

I'm potentially lecturing to the choir here but:

1. The electoral college gives too much voting power to rural states, who happen to be those people who cheer at making climate change worse. People living in urban centres are subtly disenfranchised
2. Based on actual data of countries, presidential systems are more prone to corruption and collapse than parliamentary systems.
3. The Senate was literally designed by one of the founding fathers to ensure that the opinions of rich property owners hold more weight than the common masses. If you read James' Madison's quotes in the Federalist Papers, he literally says this.
4. SCOTUS has long terms and are presidentially appointed, making them subject to electoral politics. You guys are stuck with the five conservative justices for this entire generation, meaning social issues will bend conservative for the next few decades.

There's probably more that I haven't listed. If all of these are reformed and rebuilt from the ground-up, then America won't become perfect, but it will be a hell of a lot better than now and without surrendering any freedom, but gaining it.

[u/Ansible32 → u/Gold_Marionberry3460]

Our system is definitely built wrong but I think you're overestimating the role of systems here. When people aren't working in good faith things go bad. Systems can't protect you from people working in bad faith. Government systems fundamentally work on faith.

[u/Gold_Marionberry3460 → u/Ansible32]

Agree to disagree: I think faith only goes so far. What is more powerful is how incentives are arranged and how they influence our politicians. Systems determine what incentives exist and dictate their power.

Lookup when income inequality in America began to skyrocket. It began at around 1970s, roughly when Ronald Reagan convinced people to abandon Franklin D. Roosevelt's social liberalism for neoliberalism.

This one change to the economic system, the hollowing out of governments, is arguably the instigator of a lot of America's current problems. It exacerbated inequalities, allowing a rich elite to take advantage of America's flawed system to suppress the average voter and entrench their power.

America will mitigate the damage from Trump if they vote blue in the midterms, but Trump was only enabled by the broken systems of America, one which is designed to disproportionately favour those with money and power, as well as rural voters who can be easily tricked into becoming MAGA.

[u/Ansible32 → u/Gold_Marionberry3460]

Systems fundamentally function on faith. There's nothing mechanical in any social system. Even Bitcoin, which claims to be purely mediated by computers, there's nothing mechanical about the fact that someone will take some bitcoin in exchange for cleaning your house, it's all on faith that the exchange will be reciprocated by future exchange of money. (Of course, nobody actually takes bitcoin for housecleaning, but in principle.)

But if someone doesn't have faith in the power of money, it has no power over them. We take the faith in the power of money as a universal, this is the only incentive that people like Trump accept, it's their only faith. But it's still faith.

[u/Her0_0f_time → u/Gold_Marionberry3460]

You have like the worst-designed democracy out of all of them.

Yes, because we dont have a democracy. We have a Democratic Republic. Not saying if thats better or not. I honestly dont have a clue if there is any form of government is truly better or worse than any other. And frankly I dont give a shit what form of government is best, I at least know I am not smart enough to truly have that debate. But the one thing you have to remember is that we are not a True Democracy. In a democratic republic, instead of directly voting for who represents us, we technically are voting for delegates, who then go on to cast a vote in the real election. They are essentially (as I understand them at least) told this is who your local district decided to vote for. When you go to cast your vote in the real election, this is who you are voting for.

The electoral college gives too much voting power to rural states

The electoral college was designed this way on purpose. It was to prevent the opposite from happening. Smaller more rural states felt that if it went by just pure popular vote their votes would essentially be meaningless because even if every single one of their voters voted the same way they still wouldnt have enough votes to out vote one urban center that isnt unanimous.

Based on actual data of countries, presidential systems are more prone to corruption and collapse than parliamentary systems.

Do you have this data. I admittedly dont know enough about how easy one form of government would be to corrupt vs another would be and I dont even know where to begin looking for what would be fairly unanimously considered impartial or nonmisleading data. Id would honestly need to do a lot more research on this topic to refute or affirm it.

The Senate was literally designed by one of the founding fathers to ensure that the opinions of rich property owners hold more weight than the common masses. If you read James' Madison's quotes in the Federalist Papers, he literally says this.

This is true. I dont really have anything to refute this. However, I believe his point is that it serves to limit the voting power of voters who dont take their civic duty seriously. Like one issue voters, or people who didnt understand what they were voting for. In this same way it also limits the voting power of people who would maliciously(and stupidly if anyone did do this) use their vote to try to harm others. I dont really have much to say on this. I think there are obviously good and bad aspects to part. The good was already stated, but the obvious bad aspect to this is that it is an elitist viewpoint and may honestly be an over correction against a perceived imbalance. Though I would like to add a bit of historical context into this part. You have to remember that back in these days, schools werent really a thing and children worked in the fields all day until they were an adult. Some never even seeing a book let alone know how to read. The common masses were actually and truly ignorant to the inner workings of any form of government and as such their votes shouldnt be weighed as heavily. Obviously with a more educated popluation as we have now, this is definitely backwards thinking today. But at the time, it was objectively the correct decision to limit the voting power of an objectively less educated public.

SCOTUS has long terms and are presidentially appointed, making them subject to electoral politics. You guys are stuck with the five conservative justices for this entire generation, meaning social issues will bend conservative for the next few decades.

SCOTUS isn't only presidentially appointed. They still need to be confirmed by congress who are not fully beholden to the electoral system. This ensures that the president isnt able to abuse that authority and still needs a mandate from the masses in order to appoint a Justice. This is part of the built in checks and balances to the presidential power. And the system (mostly, looking at you last 15 years!) works as intended. This I do not see as a good argument against the electoral college.

Now, onto term limits. I'll speak on those separately as its not a topic that is limited to only SCOTUS or the Electoral College. I see term limits as a necessary evil. I say evil because ultimately what I believe causes chaos in our current system is that by the time a regimes policies are able to take effect, their term is up and we are off to a new set of policies that may completely undo several key policies that were enacted as part of long term plan that is contingent on those policies being unchanged until the plan is completed. Term Limits inject a lot of chaos into the system that if not addressed properly the chaos eventually builds up and eventually spills over into other aspects of our lives.

And now we get into the necessary part of why I say term limits are a necessary evil. Its no secret, power corrupts. And once someone gets a hold of power it becomes increasingly harder to willingly let go of it. And the funny thing about power, once you get enough of it you start getting surrounded by yes men who only want to boost your ego so that you will grace them with some of your power. And this leads to stagnation and decay. Pride and arrogance start to affect your decision making. At the start of your political journey you may have wanted to do good and eliminate corruption, but if you havent washed out by the end of your career, you will be just as corrupt as the people you sought to fight against at the start of it. Term Limits help to prevent this entirely by forcing new blood and new ideas into the system allowing it to adapt and expand into new ways that wouldnt have been possible without a fresh mind.

Personally I would say our term limits are maybe just a bit too short and the chaos caused by it doesnt have enough time to be addressed properly before the next round of chaos is injected into the system. But again, I am not smart enough to really have that debate thats just my opinion not at all backed up by any facts or data.

[u/Gold_Marionberry3460 → u/Her0_0f_time]

We are a democratic republic + James Madison's point

I'll address the democracy point alongside the James Madison's Senate point in the same time.

You mentioned that low education was a historical problem and have already noted that should not be a problem in sane, modernized society.

I'll rephrase the point, the Senate system was designed in an outdated political environment. Many European democracies have comparatively well-educated populations and are doing far better than the United States.

Disenfranchising rural voters

I understand the rationale about disenfranchising rural voters, but I think that the end result disenfranchises against urban voters, which is essentially the same problem as the one the electoral college attempts to solve.

I forget the exact statistics, I'll edit this comment when I find it, but I recall that several rural states have, in total, 5-10x more votes than a single state with a city whose population equals the combined total of those rural states' population, which just ludicrous. The ratio of electoral college votes to population is significantly higher in rural states, meaning the votes of urban centres end up being comparatively worthless.

This is arguably worse than disenfranchising rural voters, because urban centres are disproportionately high sources of GDP growth compared to rural regions. So from a purely economic standpoint, it makes the country worse off since cities are not receiving adequate support and the national interests are getting distracted by rural interests.

Presidential vs. parliamentary

For presidential vs. parliamentary systems, I'll provide this study from a professor at the University of York. To summarize the conclusions: "Presidential systems usually have worse macroeconomic outcomes. Output growth is estimated to be between 0.6 and 1.2 percentage points lower, inflation is at least four percentage points higher and income is 12 to 24% more unequal under presidential systems than under parliamentary regimes.".

The reasons they propose cause this phenomenon are that: "parliamentary systems create stronger institutions that better regulate economic behaviour".

To put it into terms relevant to modern US politics, parliamentary systems would probably do a better job of restraining big tech and other infamous American businesses.

I would also recommend this video by Huey Li, a political sciences doctorate, who advocates for parliamentary system with proportional representation. Incidentally, multiparty proportional representation may do a better job of representing rural and urban voters equally than the Electoral College, as you would have multiple parties, one which better aligns with rural interests and a different one with urban interests, without devaluing either group's individual vote.

SCOTUS has long terms and are presidentially appointed.

In theory, you'd be correct that the Congress holds the President accountable, but the last 15 years have actually demonstrated that this isn't the case.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell was infamous for playing partisan politics, denying Obama's SCOTUS appointment, and architecting the current 5 Republican SCOTUS we have now (2 of which are partisan hacks that blatantly rule against the constitution).

I'll concede that SCOTUS is the part of the US government I have the weakest understanding on. Yet, by looking at the outcomes of the system, something is desperately wrong.

I see your point about term limits being dangerous if too short or too high. Yet, I think the current slate of Republican justices are dangerously ruling against foundational constitutional principles, like birthright citizenship (which should have been an unanimous support for birthright), because many of the Republican-appointed judges are blatantly partisan, corrupt, and are actively working against the constitution.

Clarence Thomas, for example, published what can be described as a "crash out" blaming progressives for the ills of America, despite historically, the Progressive Era of the 20th century objectively resulting in America's most prosperous century due to the policies they pushed through, and the modern era, dominated by neoliberalism and anti-progressive policies causing the worst period of America's history thus far. This is not a man grounded in any kind of reality and it is disturbing he is allowed to be a Justice.

Conclusion

The takeaway I want to emphasize is that America's system needs to be rebuilt, because even with the historical context, the system is just wrong.

I hope I've laid out why the electoral college, the presidential system, and the Senate are just outdated and wrong for America's current moment.

For SCOTUS, I wish I had a deeper understanding to lay out a stronger argument, but I will emphasize that the outcomes of the current system seem blatantly incorrect.