Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.
Luckily you don't have direct democracy in the US, as this list can attest.
You know, it's funny: before Trump was elected, it was all about piling power upon power into the federal government. We can't have everyone consulting state and local governments every time they want to do something, too burdensome. Inefficient. Moreover the people at the federal level are smarter and better at their jobs. They have advanced degrees from better schools. Who has Seattle got? People with degrees from State U?
Then overnight, it went to inefficient burdensome regulations written by the poorly educated for everyone. Suddenly it was good? You realize one of Trump's "things" is that we don't need a federal government to do everything and state & local governments can do for themselves? You're just falling for his con man act. I thought you were smarter than that. Resist!
When the federal government is failing, the local government takes the necessary measures to protect the population. Still, that's a government failure and it is not something to rejoice about.
And this includes building systems in poorly covered areas where private capital doesn't see the ROI to justify the service.
Why a half-assed solution? Either you are okay with government intervention and you nationalize everything, or you let the "invisible hand of the free market" coming up with a solution.
Having the government taking care only of poorly covered areas ends up costing more to the tax-payer, since it cannot use profits from high-ROI areas to subsidize other places. And it also means that users in dense areas pay twice: once for themselves through their contract with telecom companies, and once for people in less-dense areas through taxes.
The planet is warming. Yep. has been for a while now. CO2 is increasing due to people. Yep, probably not a good idea, but negative feedback cycles clearly dominate - a look into atmospheric history shows that clearly
How can there be warming if negative feedback dominates?
For the entire 8 years of Obama's administration "Merry Christmas" was in the banned list.
That's strange... Obama has said Merry Christmas in many occasions. I guess that the only thing that's in the "banned list" of Trump supporters is critical thinking.
Macron doesn't strike me as the brightest bulb, but if the Democrats had put up anybody like him, they would likely have won in the US as well.
Not the brightest bulb? The guy graduated from two of the most prestigious universities in France, has worked in several high profile positions both in the government and in the private sector, created is own political movement, and got elected president at 39. I don't know what you need.
Besides, if you speak French, you may want to look at his interviews on mediapart (paywalled). The guy is reactive, has well-thought ideas on complex issues, and explains them clearly. But yeah, you have to go beyond soundbites.
If only we could get this kind of competitive pressure to occur in the healthcare market!
Competition (or lack thereof) is not the issue. Countries where healthcare is publicly funded pay less for healthcare.
I have lived and worked in different countries with (mainly) public healthcare (Germany, France, Japan), and I cannot say that I felt that healthcare was of lower quality than in the US. But it was cheaper, and simpler.
He's just restoring half of the cuts that Obama made to defense spending.
Cuts that were made as the country was going out of Iraq and Afghanistan, so one could argue that it was not actually a "cut" in the military power of America. Shall I also remind you that Trump promised to make our allies pay to finance our military? I don't see this happening
Plus, that's not answering the concerns of reducing the deficit.
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton to 1 meter per second
