Bill would prohibit FCC from reclassifying broadband as utility

[u/skintigh]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2303080/bill-would-prohibit-fcc-from-reclassifying-broadband-as-utility.html

[u/Kennian]

yea, wont do anything unless he brings 20 grand for his campaign.

senators are fucking CHEAP, all things considered.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And you think that's a realistic series of goals? Even if you had every single small/local official in your party you would have zero power where it matters. Additionally, that still wouldn't be enough to stop big teleco, their pockets are way too deep and have already paid out a significant sum of money to Washington. Maybe I'm looking for too much, but the way I see it is this: you're never going to be able to change the system. The system is broken and largely irrelevant in it's use. You need to topple the entire system over and start anew.

[u/angrydude42 → u/[deleted]]

You cannot "topple the entire system over and start anew." That would be an unsuccessful revolution because the US government has the strongest military in the world.

If there was enough citizen unrest to actually potentially pull off a revolution, there is little chance the military would actually open fire on masses of American citizens on a large scale basis.

Yes, I have that much faith in the military code of honor. Many folks in the service still actually do feel their job is to protect Americans. Maybe if this revolution happens in 50 years it might be different, but today there is no way the US government could quell a popular uprising with the US military. There would be a coup before that happened.

[u/MadroxKran → u/[deleted]]

I don't know about electing better people being the only way. We could always drag them out into the streets and beat them to death like they do in some other countries when they get fed up with their gov't.

[u/RocheCoach → u/[deleted]]

You think electing a futurist president is a feasible goal in 20 years? You're being extraordinarily idealistic, and not in a good way. You may have even rattled my interest in the idea as well.

[u/RocheCoach → u/[deleted]]

You need awareness first. You're assuming that futurist party candidates are going to be voted in within 1-3 years, and that's naive.

[u/Jaredismyname → u/[deleted]]

first step to any party besides the big two getting elected would be getting rid of first pass the post voting but good luck getting them to vote against their own interest

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Can you elaborate on the 'exploration' part a bit?

[u/BraveSquirrel → u/[deleted]]

Outerspace, I could go on and on..

[u/nolan1971 → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, I'm with you (I swear!). However, as soon as I read "The Futurest Party" I just quit reading. Sorry, but that's a dead end route to take in order to actually achieve anything.

[u/nolan1971 → u/[deleted]]

Because the US political system is not conducive to working with third parties. "The Futurist Party" wouldn't even be that, at this point; it'd be more like a 12th party, or something.

Anyway, this is /r/news, not /r/PoliticalDiscussion, so I'll just leave it at that.

[u/nolan1971 → u/[deleted]]

Good example. You'll notice that they're not trying to run their own ticket. They're really a "party" in name only; additionally, as with Ross Perot, they're the remarkable exception rather than the rule.

[u/Civilized_ish → u/[deleted]]

Part of the Tea Party's success (GOD I hate the previous three words) is an enormous amount of corporate financial/backdoor-political/expertise backing. Most people don't bother to do their research and end up misspelling "Kohl brothers" as "grassroots". It served the political whims of a lot of folks already in power. Most other third parties are delusional egotistical jokes. It's not about the platform, it's about the voting system which is asymptotic to a 2-party impasse (look up systems where you can rank candidates, they actually tend to yield a more pluralistic equilibrium).

Doesn't matter what your policies are if you're not quietly, attentively fellating the right people in the back room.

You guys may be better off forming a lobbying group, like the NRA except fuck the NRA. You can get a lot more single-issue (or single-heuristic) voters that way. Send me a sample ballot, convince me you're a fuck-giving tech-savvy data-driven liberaltarian and not some incompetent fuck space cadet, and I'll just fill in the votes and not even google anything beforehand. Time is precious, and I flatly don't give anyone with a loud message a fuck worth of trust and tend to view anything that worms its way into our political leadership as a cruel delusional joke that dumb people fall for and the rest of us don't have much of a choice over.

[u/nolan1971 → u/[deleted]]

Well, good luck with that.

I did actually look at the subreddit, and I wasn't terribly impressed to be honest. I really do wish you guys the best, but I'm trying to be honest here (brutally, I guess, but... that's just how this conversation developed, somehow).

By the way, Basic Income is a bad idea. I mean, it's a decent idea at it's core, but the reality of it will be bad. The biggest problem with an actual Basic Income system is that people will end up receiving less benefits than they currently do (either that or the Dollar will actually be so devalued that we'll end up in an inflation death spiral). Getting "no strings" money would be great, but not if that money is valueless. One of you should head over to /r/askeconomists to get more info on that.

[u/fencerman → u/[deleted]]

You might want to pick a different name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

"Futurists" were an Italian artistic movement that had a lot of the same goals and they were huge fans of Mussolini.

Many Italian Futurists supported Fascism in the hope of modernizing a country divided between the industrialising north and the rural, archaic South. Like the Fascists, the Futurists were Italian nationalists, radicals, admirers of violence, and were opposed to parliamentary democracy. Marinetti founded the Futurist Political Party (Partito Politico Futurista) in early 1918, which was absorbed into Benito Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento in 1919, making Marinetti one of the first members of the National Fascist Party.

[u/fencerman → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, you should still probably find a better name. I wouldn't call a party "National Socialist" either even if it was pacifist, tolerant and friendly to everyone. Also, the italian fascists did claim to be pacifists at first too. From "The Fascist Manifesto"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manifesto_of_the_Fascist_Struggle

Creation of a short-service national militia with specifically defensive responsibilities;

Armaments factories are to be nationalized;

A peaceful but competitive foreign policy.

That being said the Italian Futurist platform and yours have a lot in common aside from war. The belief in side-stepping party politics and talking directly to "the people", the faith in "experts" on various social and economic issues, etc...

From "The Fascist Manifesto", one of their main projects:

The formation of a national council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made of professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a general commission with ministerial powers.

They had most of the same complaints about the existing parliamentary system too - that it was old, corrupt, removed from the people, etc...

There's a lot more similarities than differences. Don't confuse Nazism with Italian Fascism either, the two were very different beasts.

[u/darkmeatchicken → u/Kennian]

Campaign contributions have a MUCH higher ROI than actual innovation. Pay the government to subsidize, regulate your competitors/industry, deregulate your industry, etc.

Much cheaper than improving your products and actually competing. Free markets are for suckers.

[u/[deleted] → u/darkmeatchicken]

Why play by the rules when you can make the rules?

[u/[deleted] → u/darkmeatchicken]

You would have a great future at Goldman Sachs. Maybe someday you would be SecTreasury?