[ropetin]

While I 100% do not support violence against Sam Altman, or anyone else for that matter, what are people without billions of dollars and without the ear of the president supposed to do to affect change in this modern, post-capitalist hellscape? And I am genuinely interested in ideas that people think will work, not just trying to be combative.

[refurb]

Organize, petition your representative and vote.

The people saying it doesn’t work are the same people who can’t must the effort to even contact their representative.

I had a professor in college who was big on entrepreneurship. So he formed an organization, got others involved, went to Washington to lobby his rep. His rep said “let’s do it”, and sat him down with her staff to write a bill. That bill was brought to the floor for a vote and passed.

Until you’ve done that, dont complain the system doesn’t work.

The issue with politics today is the level of engagement of the average voter. Few people ever get involved, so the vacuum gets filled with whichever power-hungry mediocre person who puts some effort in.

[mbgerring]

I have worked on electoral and initiative campaigns, and traveled thousands of miles to knock on doors. I’ve donated money. I’ve called my congresspeople. I’ve gone to and spoken at public meetings. I’ve protested, been tear gassed, beaten, and thrown in jail. I’ve been doing all of this continuously for about 20 years. I can tell you, from extensive experience going through the official channels, that the formal mechanisms of our democracy are fundamentally broken. We need to seriously face this problem and fix it, or things are just going to keep getting worse.

[refurb]

If you don’t have large support for your ideas then it shouldn’t be a surprise it’s hard.

But that’s the intent of the system? Represent what most people want.

[ethbr1]

> Represent what most people [and capital] want[s]

Fixed.

[vkou]

> But that’s the intent of the system? Represent what most people want.

It would be great if the media channels that manufacture wants weren't co-opted by the very people who are the problem.

[estimator7292]

And what happens when your government heavily restricts who is allowed to vote?

[mbgerring]

> But that’s the intent of the system? Represent what most people want.

Thankfully, there is a paper on this that you can read, so that we don’t need to argue about this.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

[Cytobit]

Sam Altman and the other billionaires don't have to worry about "support".

[Imustaskforhelp]

Yeah, America as a whole voted for Trump, and later atleast reading online I am seeing people be like: "I didn't know he was this bad" when reading his policies, he was exactly this bad :-/

People don't vote for their own gains but rather the gains of the few and to be honest, one can argue that within America this is a both-party problem and sometimes you are just picking for the less wrong politician and then you have these biases which blind them.

if this is the case, I have seen American people online say that "But, people know that the American govt and american people are different"

It is almost as if people are saying whatever is convenient at the time. This can only be one or the other.

If the average American's intent is of the system which is current administration, then forget about the trust within the system. I find your position with a bit of irony.

The system isn't working and that's a fact. You can say that people are to be blamed for that, sure, but then the people will be blamed entirely.

To be honest, The americans I sometimes talk online to don't share this ideal of the govt. and are fighting against it in some way or another but they are tired and hopeless, for the most part. I really take a deeper offense to your statement as that makes all the problems persist longer and thus to many people who have nothing to lose, violence feels like the only option which might be what GP might be referring to.

Either America needs to fix itself or violence will keep on happening. To be honest, I am not that much hopeful that America can fix itself though in the sense that the corporate influence is so immense with the two party system and the trust is still lost in some ways in America and times in future are gonna be even more harder yet America is completely polarized. These problems are also existing in other countries to be honest but America is at another magnitude and at these levels of inequality, violence to many people feel like the only way to share their voice which has been suppressed by the system for far too long. From my time reading history, this is a very repeating phenomenon and in a sense, history is messy but when people got really pissed at the system failing, mass scale revolt and violence was always picked as the last resort and we are in those times now.

I feel like we can either condemn or do anything as a society but if people (and humans just like you and me actually) get so frustrated within the system that violence seems like an good choice, then that is upon the fault of the system and I feel like the condemnation of act just does nothing in the long grand scheme of things.

TLDR: People should really act together to solve these things peacefully but its very far from happening in reality and reality is messy and always has been in some regards, we just read it from the line of statistics and history.

[refurb]

I would be very careful drawing any sort of conclusions based on “what people say online”

It’s hardly a representative sample of the country, and in many instances isn’t even an American citizen.

[mbgerring]

77 million Americans voted for Trump. That’s:

- 32% of the citizen voting age population

- 44% of eligible voters

- 49% and some change of the people who actually voted

“America as a whole” did not vote for Trump

[Imustaskforhelp]

Yes many people couldn't vote (say youngsters) and many people didn't vote on the election day and from that sample who could and did vote did Trump win and within the election itself Democrats had gotten 75 million people.

In a similar fashion, my point is, I actually agree with you sir @mbgerring and your original comment. you tried your best to raise awareness and there are people who do the same and there are many who reach the support of millions but still no change is enacted because of the way system is enacted.

Yet the system can make someone like trump with maybe even sometimes far fewer people supporting it and billionaire's capital flowing into propaganda etc. too thus the people saying "we didn't vote for this"

My point was that the system is ultimately rigged by some people at the top against the average person and @refurb saying to you that oh this is then what the people must want, is a factually wrong statement.

I think you yourself have put it right: "We need to seriously face this problem and fix it, or things are just going to keep getting worse."

And I also agree with your overall statement that if the system continues on being as hopeless as it is, then for some people violence would become the only option for their voices as their voices get shutted from every peaceful way.

I think we are in agreement sir. Have a nice day.

[michelb]

Because so many people are being ground down. You have time to organize something, instead of making rent? Well now you have to fight to even get your voting rights back, that you were silently stripped off because of your skin color and demographic, or social status. Then you need to see if you can ever get the gerrymandered border back to where it should be so the other party will ever have a chance at winning in your area, instead of losing by default. Pretty sure the next election is only about two swing-states again.

[bluefirebrand]

> I had a professor in college who was big on entrepreneurship. So he formed an organization, got others involved, went to Washington to lobby his rep. His rep said “let’s do it”, and sat him down with her staff to write a bill. That bill was brought to the floor for a vote and passed. Until you’ve done that, dont complain the system doesn’t work

This is a sign of the system not working. A well connected professor, with plenty of free time to form an organization and go to Washington to talk to his rep

Might as well be an industry lobbyist.

Could a worker from Walmart do the same thing? In theory sure. In practice unlikely, for any number of reasons. Not least because people are unlikely to take a Wal Mart worker seriously enough to join their organization.

[saligne]

And because workers at the bottom with no rights and no money are fired as soon as they try to organize anything beyond their continued immiseration

[AlecSchueler]

> A well connected professor, with plenty of free time

And not only that but one who was "big on entrepreneurship!" Guy wasn't really rocking the boat, was he?

[refurb]

Well connected? A professor at a small college from a town of 15,000?

Nope. She had been working on entrepreneurship for a while so had met her reps years ago. No money involved. Hell, not even from a very big state.

[brimwats]

This seems like fantastic fantasy or fanfic, but unless you have a citation or some actual names, I think I'll put it down to fiction

[bluefirebrand]

Even at smaller institutes, professors have access to way more networking events than many other people would ever even come close to

[refurb]

I mean this professor does because they put the work in to build a network.

Nothing stops the average citizen from organizing and getting similar access to representatives.

Instead we get people who don’t even know who their representative is claiming they’re sure the whole system is rigged.

It’s not that different than people who claim there are no jobs when they haven’t even applied to any.

[bluefirebrand]

> Nothing stops the average citizen from organizing and getting similar access to representatives

I disagree pretty strongly. There are tons of soft power social levers and bureaucratic structures designed exactly to prevent your average Joe from getting access to representatives

Even a comparatively powerful person like a wealthy CEO of a big company often experiences friction trying to get access to public servants. That's why they hire lobbyists whose job it is to get past the friction

[chownie]

This system totally works so long as you can take time off work to form a lobbying group -- this does not pass the sniff test to me.

Reminder that even in the scenario that constituents 100% support or 100% reject a policy, their opinions hold almost no statistical sway to their elected representative. It's actually worse than a coin flip.

It's only when you restrict your constituent demographic to just those in the top 10% of wealth (...like a professor in college for example...) that suddenly their voting decisions align to constituent opinions.

Look up "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens", this has been known for some time.

[palmotea]

> what are people without billions of dollars and without the ear of the president supposed to do to affect change in this modern, post-capitalist hellscape?

The honest truth? They're supposed to do nothing and take their licks with a smile. If that's not good enough for them, they are allowed to occupy themselves with ineffectual political activities, preferably on issues that are exhausting and do not disturb the power of the elite (e.g. abortion, transgenderism, etc.).

[JumpCrisscross]

> what are people without billions of dollars and without the ear of the president supposed to do to affect change in this modern, post-capitalist hellscape?

California has a referendum system. Get signatures for a policy and put it to the voters.

[abenga]

The billionaires will blanket the airwaves with bad-faith argument ads and you will lose.

[JumpCrisscross]

> billionaires will blanket the airwaves with bad-faith argument ads and you will lose

This is a long way to say you don’t have the votes. Airwaves affect turnout. They don’t flip people on positions.

[vkou]

> They don’t flip people on positions.

They absolutely do. On September 12, 2001, ~nobody in the United States was interested in starting a war with Iraq.

Two years of propaganda later, and all of a sudden, half the population had acquired keen geopolitical insights which necessitated an invasion and occupation of a country that had exactly fuck-all to do with 9/11.

A decade later, all of a sudden, nobody wanted to fess up to wanting anything to do with that mess.

Public wants aren't discovered in some interference-free democratic vacuum. The people who own the press put a millstone on their side of the scales.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Two years of propaganda later, and all of a sudden, half the population had acquired keen geopolitical insights which necessitated an invasion and occupation of a country that had exactly fuck-all to do with 9/11

There was desire for vengeance on 12 September. Reporting and politicians channeled it. That’s very different from driving consensus against something people would otherwise support.

[vkou]

You're proving my point. The thumb was put on the scale, he public was bombarded 24/7 with self-serving false dichotomies and viola, you've just manufactured mass public support for insane bullshit.

It works the same way in other countries too. Look at any country that you believe to believe in insane shit - most of those beliefs aren't organic.

Neither are the insane things you believe in. It's just that you can't even see that they aren't the product of your own reasoning. Fish don't have a word for water.

[tptacek]

I read this comment as saying that you (100-k)% do not support violence against Sam Altman, for some positive real number k.