GregHowley.com

I don't often write about political stuff on here. I mean, I have, but I don't want this to be Greg's politics blog. But recently it's been Greg's MCU blog, so what the heck?

There's a bunch about America which bugs me. And it's no secret that in these divided times, probably everyone could say the same. But I've got five issues which are important to me that I really feel are not partisan issues. At least most of them aren't, I guess. Or shouldn't be. I know our country has other existential issues to deal with at the moment and probably can't focus on any of my issues in the way they deserve, but I'm sharing because I think about this stuff. I could probably write an entire post about each of them, but in the interest of avoiding Greg's politics blog, I won't. I'm going to list them here, from least to most important, (to me) and try to keep each relatively brief.

5 - Gerrymandering - If you don't know what Gerrymandering is, it's when the party in charge of a place redraws voting districts to favor their own party. It's bullshit, and both sides do it. It should really be illegal. I mean, look at the map in the photo here. Does that ridiculously-shaped district look normal? It was drawn to marginalize the votes of specific people. If you enjoy John Oliver, I recommend his piece about gerrymandering.

4 - Broadband as a Utility / Net Neutrality Because the former could solve the latter. I've presented the thought to people often that broadband internet is basically the same thing as electrical service or city water. But whereas the last two are run by your town and regulated, internet access is a monopoly controlled by a single company. And due to that, they can charge whatever they want and have no incentive to provide anything resembling customer service. In the (very few) areas that offer municipal broadband, it's lower-priced and generally very well-received by the public. In the end, it's just really hard to argue that internet access isn't a utility.

Consumer Reports wrote up an article recently showing that with the exception of Google Fiber, everyone hates their cable company unless it's municipal broadband or a tiny mom-and-pop ISP.

And as far as Net Neutrality, you're likely aware of the Tom Wheeler surprise dingo turnabout that led to the Net Neutrality ruling. You're probably also aware of the more recent Ajit Pai retraction of that ruling, which as its justification used two million public comments that were submitted with stolen identities, and later admitted as such. You may not be aware that amongst those stolen identities were those of two United States senators. So yeah, they're not happy about that. But it may not matter. Time will tell.

3 - Campaign Finance Reform This ties in pretty closely with my #1 below, but it's the folks who can raise the most money who end up on the ballot. So if you're rich, you've got rich friends, and you'll get elected. This also means politicians will court special interests and lobbyists because that's where the cash is. This is an issue, and certainly not a new one. Corruption is as old as politics.

This issue could easily be the number one item on my list. If you got rid of lobbyists, laws would in theory be written for the benefit of The People rather than written by the corporations that stand to be enriched by those laws passing. Politicians would be elected on the basis of what they can do for their constituents rather than on how much money they can collect from wealthy campaign donors, to whom they're later endebted.

If this topic interests you, look up a guy named Lawrence Lessig. He's written a ton about the topic and has some very good ideas. I agree with nearly all of them.

2 - Third Parties / Runoff voting Although I've obviously got a preference between the two major political parties in this country, I'm not a big fan of either. I often find myself wishing for more options. But because of the way our voting system works, a vote for a third party is usually just an extra vote removed from the candidate you'd rather see win. Voting for third parties just isn't viable at present due to the spoiler effect.

Runoff voting would change that. There are a number of runoff voting systems in place already, some of the more notable ones being ranked choice and two round voting. These voting methods not only allow for viable third parties, they encourage more moderate candidates. I'm not sure why runoff voting methods aren't more of an issue - I can only speculate that those in the two main parties won't allow it to become an issue, as they want to maintain their chokehold on American politics.

1 - Wealth Inequality

The big one. Income inequality. The powers that be are working to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. The endpoint of this trend is a system known as feudalism.

The middle class is slowly disappearing. What I can't understand is how nobody sees that a robust middle class is the primary thing that allows for a strong economy. When people have more disposable income, they spend it. And the great-again America that Trumpism would have us move back towards is one where America's greatness comes out of Rooseveltian New Deal reforms. A time when taxes on the wealthy were at an all-time high, and programs like social security and worker's compensation were new. It was a time when monopolies were actually broken up. So if they want to go after great-again, maybe they should start with those bullet points.

Automation has been costing jobs since the industrial revolution, from assembly line robots to ATMs to self checkout counters. The next big thing is self-driving cars. They're already being used along certain California highways to transport goods. When they come into more common use, lots of people are going to be losing their jobs. It's going to be a significant unemployment/job crisis, and I'm surprised that it's not discussed more. Just look at the most common job period on this 2018 chart. Driver. A large portion of those jobs won't survive the next decade.

In the past, one of the primary things keeping the powerful few from ruling over the masses is the fact that the masses are more numerous. We see so many depictions on science fiction of robots taking over. To me, a more frightening possibility is that a small group of the wealthy and powerful would take over using not human armies for defense, but rather automated systems and drones.

Okay, I've slid dangerously close to a ranting conspiracy theorist, so just disregard that last paragraph as an interesting movie pilot idea. I'm done talking politics for now. Oh wait, no I'm not.

Go out and vote next week.