BankOFganja
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2010–2024
4:20 · 3.7M views · Aug 29, 2008
A four-minute clip of George Carlin arguing that voting is a way of keeping people in a distracted bubble, and that non-voters have as much right to complain as anyone.
Mostly dropped in as a quip or reference in threads about politics and cynicism, not recommended as something to watch.
5 comments from Hacker News
Blaming people who didn't vote is a strange thing. For one, it ignores any practical barriers to voting. Maybe someone was working an hourly job with no flexibility to make it to the polls that particular day. Also, the status-quo of our political system is also in play. What about someone living outside of one of the 6 swing states and their vote wouldn't have likely made a difference. Consider New York State: a Democratic voter may skip with the knowledge that the state will absolutely go blue, and a Republican voter may feel their vote is in vain because the state will go blue anyway. Shouldn't it be the people who cast their votes who are held accountable for the individuals they put in office? For this I leave you with George Carlin's explanation on the matter [0] [0] this video
Here's the problem with Scott Adams' article: it doesn't lay out exactly what the problem is. He says that "the system," by which he means the Constitution, no longer functions because it was designed too long ago. His proposed course of action is to redesign "the system." This presumes that "the system" as it currently exists reflects the original design. Which it manifestly does not. Not only was the Constitution amended 27 times, vast parts of the federal government are not even close to constitutional in a way that the Founders would have recognized. And if the system no longer works as designed, that doesn't actually pinpoint what the problem is. What is causing it not to work? If a system no longer produces the desired outputs, is it because the system is broken or because you're feeding it garbage inputs? As George Carlin said about American politics, "garbage in, garbage out" this video So, Adams is calling for people to design a new system that will accept garbage inputs and produce desirable outputs. Moreover, he ignores that the current system-as-is-operated is not a reflection of the system-as-designed. Asking for a redesign of the original spec and blaming the original spec, when current practice flouts with contempt the original spec, simply misses the point and will produce an embarrassing misdiagnosis from which an embarrassingly incorrect solution will be derived.
I am reminded of the bit by George Carlin: "I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”, but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created." this video
That's the rule rather than the exception in the US as politicians go. Campaign finance reform failed because most (not all) politicians are indeed crooks who accept gold bars from foreign governments, embezzle from their campaign to buy luxury goods, or pay hush money to porn stars. Let me refer you to George Carlin's approach: this video
GIGO or, if that's too short a TL;DR, I'll let Carlin explain: this video Politicians, dating pool, same mess. Also relevant: [LINK]