[jmward01]

I think ideas like campaign finance reform are in the right direction, but how do we actually accomplish that? The people that can do it are the people blocking it because it isn't in their interests. How do you get the country to a place where this is possible? My top 'if only' (after you remove campaign finance reform) are: - Some form of ranked choice voting. - Fixing gerrymandering. Of those I think ranked choice has some momentum and could lead to positive change. Gerrymandering is, again, an issue with the people that can change it won't because it is against their interests.

[leashless]

How does a corrupt society become less corrupt?

https://web.archive.org/web/20200428230447/https://northatla...

I used to work on failed states for a living.

This is what I had to say. It absolutely applies to America today too.

If you really want to scare yourself, read this.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7748252/

We are out of the flight envelope for civilisation on a number of fronts right now.

[leereeves]

> If you really want to scare yourself, read this.

That kind of alarmism (in this case about the CDC failing during the pandemic) is scary, but needlessly so, and best avoided. In contrast, according to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...

The US death rate, at 3500 per million, was not much worse than the UK (3400 per million) or EU (2800 per million).

[leashless]

If America had the same covid death rate as Canada, nearly 700,000 less Americans would have died of covid.

Alarm by the Epidemic Intelligence Service officers is not "alarmism." It was an accurate forecast that the system was going to fail, which it did, then killing roughly 10 times as many Americans as the Vietnam War did.