[bumby]

>Carmel borrowed money to buy amenities that attract a higher socioeconomic class of people.

Yes, that's what I was saying. I took your previous statement "Expecting a city or state to go bankrupt trying to solve a national problem" as an implication that Carmel's debt was somehow trying to solve a poverty problem. It isn't. As you say, it's about attracting wealthy people (and to a certain extent, expelling poor people).

>I do not think I should sacrifice and possibly sink my community

Utilitarian thinkers may disagree on this.

>At some point, I have to prioritize me and mine.

Kantian thinkers may disagree on this. If you logically extend this, it becomes a prisoner's dilemma and results in worse results for everybody. (which brings us back to the issues I have with applying game theory as your original post stated.)

The real argument is defining that "point" where sacrificing for the group devolves into worse outcomes. If you have succinct ideas on that, I'd be curious to hear them. But too often it becomes a fuzzy, abstract concept that just rationalizes otherwise selfish behavior.

[lotsofpulp]

The first thing that needs to happen is ranked choice or approval voting. This first past the post nonsense means I’m always voting against someone, not for someone.

The second thing is making the presidential election a popular vote election. This is almost done if a few Republican led states switch to Democrat led states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

And the third is reducing the power of the Senate.

Then we can finally get some movement towards what we want, rather than just try to avoid going backwards.

[bumby]

Some local municipalities are moving to ranked choice (I live in one, and I think it's a better system, too).

Despite what many people intuitively think, there is no right to vote for the president guaranteed by the Constituion. There's been something like 1k proposed amendments to change the electoral college and, given that they haven't been adopted, I'm not holding my breath. I'm curious why more individual states don't adopt a different way other than "winner takes all" to their electoral votes. I believe it's in their power to do so, and that seems like a much more likely route to having electoral votes reflect popular voting.

It's interesting that you would want to reduce the power of the Senate because there seems to be a lot of people who think the House is the more dysfunctional arm of Congress. Given the nature of terms and demographics, the House feels like has more members taking more polarizing stances.