[mandmandam]

Useful political discourse is hard. It really is; now more than ever. There's just so much to it. It's hard enough just to wrap your head around how fucked politics is.

Money insulates you from the worst effects of regressive policy, and warps your incentives toward assholeness.

Education isn't producing many savvy, media literate critical thinkers. My class rocked a D average in Civics, and it was pretty basic stuff. We didn't have any media study. We never looked at how ads work, or where money really comes from, or where it's concentrated.

'STEM' and 'politically savvy' almost seem poles apart; no offense y'all. I don't agree that things ought to be this way, but can you deny it?

Anyway, I suspect media literate critical thinkers without much money do exist on HN - but they're elusive.

If you want useful political discourse, try Scandinavia. Might learn Norwegian myself.