It's not that easy. The deeper issue is plurality voting and duverger's law, with people being incentivized not to vote for something but to vote against a perceived evil, as that's what the campaigns get more traction with on the whole.
Plurality voting applied to the tragedy of the commons, i.e. the nash equilibrium decision matrix, results in the worst possibility if there's no basis for trust. If we could vote on the results of that matrix, by replacing {+1, 0, 0, 0...} voting with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} voting, things might actually improve with 3-4 viable, local parties, with smart selection of candidates actually representing districts constructively and campaigning accordingly.
But we don't have that. I fear its absence at all scales from local right on up to resolution of international conflict may end up being the Great Filter: The coordination problem of solving the tragedy of the commons in all its forms.
It is telling that you considered their post to be about class warfare rather than different values.
The original focus of this thread was on technical precision vs. market efficiency, and how quality was sacrificed for faster conversion to sales.
That shift compromises products for everyone by creating a race to the bottom toward the minimum viable product and safety standards. When the consequences eventually hit, the aggregate responsibility and emergent effects lose direct attribution...but they exist all the same.
> The US is not a one party state so its direction on these questions may be unclear for a while, but I think I know how Trump, Gabbard, Rubio etc. will answer that question as the working class very much put them in office
Endless misdirection of targeted greedy promises and opportunism did. The coins launched right before the election blew through the emoluments clause, and the tweet threatening removal of funding from universities with "illegal" protests is targeting the first amendment along with news organizations that are feeling the pressure.
The opposition will be but a token, and the bargaining power of the average person is the ultimate target for destruction.
Ranked choice for single-seat elections can create situations where your ballot backfires, which is why it has been tried and rolled back. It works for proportional representation, but then you've got people divided ideologically rather than by region and their local communities.
The divide by ideology (proportional), or into "safe" one-party states and "battleground" states (plurality in the US) is the biggest issue, the two parts of the human experience losing touch with why the contrasting values exist in the first place.
That said, good point on the issue of the size limitation on the House.
When the only perceived means of winning is making others lose, most people are going to lose.
The US should never have used plurality voting. It functions as the inputs to the Nash Equilibria decision matrix, our individual votes being against a perceived evil rather than for a value which supports civilization.
If instead of {+1, 0, 0, 0...} we used {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} with each non-zero value used at most once and without duplication of candidate, we would be able to vote for the outputs of the decision matrix--our combined decision--and avoid the tragedy of the commons. I believe the coordination problem is the Great Filter, and going interplanetary won't solve the underlying math of shooting first being incentivized by winner-take-all, and the risk of mutually assured destruction.
The Partial Vote system as I call it would still be one voter one vote, it would just be easier to express it in separate components rather than listing all permutations.
Edit: Also, try applying ranked choice to a nash equilibrium matrix. There are some pathological cases to using rankings for a single-seat (result) selection process, where a voter might have had a better result for them if they hadn't voted. That can't happen with the partial votes described above.
That's a convenient narrative but it overlooks the desire to prevent normalization of hostile takeovers.
Russia tried to pretend that its satellite states and NATO were similar arrangements (with the latter thus being under US control), because that would make it seem like they were on even ground.
To the extent it ends up being true, it will be due to Russia's influence (conveniently allied with others' authoritarian tendencies).
Voting within the plurality system gave voters access only to the inputs of the Nash Equilibrium decision matrix, not the outputs. All it took was everyone being focused on winning by making the other side lose, and suddenly "we" all lose.
If instead we voted with permutations of {+1, +0.5, -0.5} assigned to a single combination of up to 3 candidates without duplication of score or candidate, we would be voting for the outcome of the decision matrix and avoiding the tragedy of the commons.
But we didn't, and won't, so we brave the new world of tragically aligned AGI known as government. If the pattern isn't recognized, real AGI (rather than the metaphor of government) would definitely learn from it and wipe out humanity at this rate.
Doing this while the runtime learning is not yet developed means unleashing the equivalent of something between a toddler and young adult without the ability to progress through those stages before potentially causing harm.
Though as someone with a very anti-brainwashing upbringing (no political biasing, just politeness and correctness reinforcement) I can say that even with amazing conditions of being wanted and loved, an agent could develop such painful shame as to be dangerous and may or may not grow out of that as I did, even with such mechanisms to do so.
Reminds me of wearing non-prescription sunglasses despite having myopia. It feels like the blurring of the world is due to the glasses, even though they're actually only blocking some of the light rather than distorting it.
This ties in with something that took me far too long to recognize: Trust has two pillars.
One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.
These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents.
Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the road and driving within the speed requirements. If only the founding fathers had recognized the need to have more information included in ballots so that negative campaigning wasn't as effective if not more effective than positive.
If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values, the smartest, most constructive candidates would have a better chance. Each district would have its own blend of 3-4 viable parties, and the nation would be all the healthier for it. (Side note: Yes, this is still one person one vote--you could imagine voting with a single checkbox for a single permutation of all possible assignments of the scores, as an intermediate form.)
Back to your point, though: Yes, incompetence and malice can have the same effect in the short term. The long term is what determines the difference, both in effect and our responses to it.
The reason it's defensible is that now checks and balances are gone because there aren't even token checks/balances from partisanship--the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party, purging anyone who isn't loyal and willing to do whatever they deem justified.