Is it strong leadership?

Good institutions?

Competent civil servants?

Or simply having leaders who are willing to make unpopular decisions when necessary?

I keep thinking about this because elections can change governments, but institutions are what remain.

Even when we think about a fixed tax, for example 10%, if you take someone who makes 100 he will pay 10, someone who makes 500 will pay 50. The higher income person already pays 5 times more, meaning he contributes 5 times more to the budget, and in case of the emergencies, whether it would be something like natural disasters or war he will be significantly more valuable for the cause to keep the state functioning, yet in democracy he should be viewed as equal when it comes to decisions to the ones who contributes less. So, without getting any benefits, that person gives more and gets nothing in return.

And it gets even more interesting with an additional progressive tax, where the majority of people of lower incomes can dictate the amount of income that should be enough for the higher income earners that are usually an absolute minority in the number of individuals despite contributing more.

And I don’t understand the argument, that they are getting taxed more, because they already have more than average. I mean it doesn’t sound that bad, but on a more personal level it sounds a bit discouraging for the people with ambitions, the people that are willing to put more effort, take more risks or just people who were born into high income families. No matter how hard you try, you will be dragged back to average more and more higher your income gets.

Every few months, the debate over student debt forgiveness resets to the same starting point: should the government wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, or should borrowers simply pay back what they owe? Framed that way, forgiveness looks like a radical departure from how debt is supposed to work. It isn't. It's already the system's default setting. We've just built it to be slow, opaque, and miserable, so that almost no one notices it's happening.

Every federal income-driven repayment plan on the books today, IBR, PAYE, ICR, and the new Repayment Assistance Plan rolling out this year, ends the same way: borrowers pay a percentage of their discretionary income for two or three decades, and whatever is left over gets cancelled. That's not a hypothetical. It's federal law, and it has been for years. The only real questions are how long someone has to wait, how much interest capitalizes in the meantime, and how much of their twenties, thirties, and forties get spent paying down a balance that the government has already decided, structurally, it does not expect to fully collect. A one-time cancellation isn't a break from that logic. It's a faster, less punitive version of a policy that already exists.

The argument against forgiveness usually comes down to a fairness claim: people took out these loans voluntarily, so they should pay them back, full stop. It's a clean argument. It's also one that conveniently stops applying the moment you look at how debt functions for people with real leverage.

Corporations restructure and discharge debt through bankruptcy routinely, as a normal cost of doing business, not a moral failing. Congress authorized nearly a trillion dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans that were, by design, forgivable, and the overwhelming majority were forgiven. Banks and their creditors were made whole after 2008 rather than left to absorb their own losses. None of this required an appeal to individual hardship. It required leverage, and the ability to structure a transaction so that a "loan" behaves less like debt and more like a grant with extra paperwork.

That's the part the "just pay it back" argument leaves out: the surest way to never have to pay something back is to make sure it was never structured as debt you were personally on the hook for in the first place. Wealth doesn't just mean you can pay your obligations. It means you have the legal and financial architecture to make sure fewer of your obligations are structured as debt that follows you personally. Telling an individual borrower to simply pay up, while entire categories of institutional debt get restructured, forgiven, or absorbed elsewhere, isn't a principle. It's a rule that only binds people without the leverage to get out of it.

The other piece of context missing from "you signed up for this" is what changed underneath borrowers while they were signing. Public university education used to be substantially subsidized by state governments, keeping tuition low without students needing to borrow much at all. Over the last few decades, states have steadily pulled that funding back, especially after recessions, and rarely restored it afterward. Public colleges responded to shrinking state appropriations the only way they could: by raising tuition and shifting the cost onto students.

Federal loans were supposed to be a backstop for the gap, not the mechanism that let the gap keep growing. But once loans were freely available, colleges had far less incentive to hold the line on price. There's real academic disagreement about how directly federal aid dollars translate into tuition increases, but there's much less disagreement about the basic sequence: state investment fell, tuition rose to cover it, and federal loans expanded to cover that. Students didn't choose that sequence. They walked into it already in motion, and then got told the debt was a personal decision made in a vacuum.

Strip the moral framing away entirely and forgiveness is still a good idea, because of where the money goes. A dollar sitting in loan servicing, moving from a borrower's bank account to the Department of Education, is a dollar that isn't being spent on a down payment, a car, childcare, or a small business. Cancel that debt and the same dollar starts circulating: rent, purchases, investment, formation of new households. That's not a subsidy that vanishes into the ether. It's money redirected from debt service into consumption and investment, which is exactly the kind of stimulus policymakers usually have to manufacture through far less direct means.

If the objection to forgiveness is the national debt, that objection needs to be applied consistently, and it currently isn't. Gross federal debt crossed $40 trillion in August 2026, having grown from roughly $36.2 trillion when the current administration took office in January 2025, an increase of nearly $3.8 trillion in about a year and a half, driven by tax cuts, tariff refunds, and rising entitlement and interest costs. That is a debt increase on a scale that dwarfs any realistic estimate of what loan forgiveness would cost, incurred with essentially no political price. Fiscal discipline as a reason to deny relief to individual borrowers, while trillions in deficit spending pass with a shrug, isn't a principle. It's a decision about whose obligations are allowed to be inconvenient and whose aren't.

It's worth asking why loan forgiveness draws this much resistance from the right in the first place, when the dollar amounts involved are small relative to what gets approved elsewhere without controversy. Part of the answer is straightforwardly electoral, college-educated voters, and particularly recent graduates carrying debt, lean away from the GOP, and there's little incentive to hand a financial win to a demographic that isn't voting for you anyway.

The other part is the belief that universities function as ideological pipelines, that students arrive one way and get talked out of it by professors. That story gets the mechanism wrong. What actually changes people in college isn't usually a lecture. It's proximity. College is one of the few remaining institutions that puts young adults from different regions, income brackets, religions, and political households into the same dorms, classes, and social circles for years at a time. Sustained contact with people who are different from you tends to be the thing that erodes caricatures, not curriculum. Students don't leave college "liberalized" because someone indoctrinated them. They leave having discovered that the people they'd been taught to see as the other side are, mostly, not that different from them. That's a much harder thing to legislate against than a syllabus, which may be exactly why the response has shifted toward making college itself less accessible.

None of these arguments depend on debt being erased by magic. They depend on being honest about what already happens slowly, who else gets debt forgiven without controversy, how we got to prices this high in the first place, where the money goes when debt is cancelled, and who benefits from convincing borrowers that any of this is unprecedented.

The war is spinning out of control, and I'm worried we are approaching a point where Iran won't want a peace deal, if we haven't reached that point already.

The US has already rescinded many peace deals, and even used them to make surprise attacks on Iran. In all fairness to Iran, who would make a deal with people as untrustworthy as the US government, particularly the Trump administration?

Also, the US has killed children and their teachers, negotiators, bombed civilian infrastructure, killed the current Ayatollah's family, and more war will only lead to more anger. And as we know the war is still going, Iran and the US bombed each other over the weekend.

The best hope for the US is that the Iranian government has the most power hungry people ever in charge, to the point they would make a deal with the US no matter what happens just to preserve their power. Considering how evil the Iranian government is, that wouldn't surprise me. But even if this is the case, the Iranian government still has to keep legitimacy among its population that is currently furious at the United States.

If the Iranians decide to not make any deal with the US, can we still leave the war anyways? What if they refuse to open the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely, or start a massive toll system?

First of all, I'm talking secularism as a separation of church and state, although this idea came long before the coining of the word itself. It's just useful as a word to wrap up all the similar ideas.

Separating church and state protects religion because it, ideally, stops a government from imposing any *Correct* state religion on anyone else. Which stops people from trying to use government to simply oppress their religious rivals or force people to convert to what they believe is true. This idea came about after the on going religious turmoil in europe after the protestant reformation. Even after the 30 years war and peace of westphalia, where states were given the ability to choose their own state religion, civil war and state tyranny continued.

The alternative was that religion should become a private matter. You can believe in everything you think is right. You can even go out of your way to persuade others of your view of life and religion. But you'll never have to fear that the government will impose its religious views onto you. And you wouldnt seek to use government in this way.

Even on matters like gay marriage and abortion, its not the matter of the state to choose which view is morally correct or religiously correct, it should only be used to achieve a civil peace. Yet the individual themselves is free to think about these issues however they want and can persuade people as much as they want to try. You cant just use the government to force everyone else into a view you think is correct. And the government wont force you into gay marriage or force an abortion.

So in simple: The religion continues to exist and be practiced by people. The government doesnt suppress or impose any religion so that people can continue practicing.

All of this is to avoid religious turmoil and protect individual consciousness.. or freedom of thought when phrased another way.

~ ~

There was a post the other day expressing that hardcore religious folk are a threat to democracy and I found it surprising, but not completely surprising, that so many people interpreted this post as an attack on religion entirely. That it was actually trying to advocate for religious oppression.

It was a surprise because so many governments today are secular. They do separate church and state. They do allow for individuals to practice their own religions and do with them what they will. And generally no one has a problem with this.

But it goes the other way that if someone is hardcore religious and begins to build a power bloc to impose their religious beliefs, through government and law, over the wills and beliefs of everyone else.... this IS a threat to democracy. What is the purpose of free thought if im being told that there is a correct world view and that im demonic if i dont believe in that? What does my representation and worldview matter if the law outlaws it?

If democracy is a government by the people, the will of the people, then it would make sense that ideally free expression is upheld and the state sticks to matters of civil peace and well being. Not as a battle ground for ideology and religious view.

~ ~

And yet when its said that hardcore religious folk are a threat.... this doesn't all the sudden mean You need to stop believing in what you do. It just means you cant use the government. And you can trust the government wont be used on you.

Your religion is kept safe. And civil peace is maintained.

I'm new here, paste article here I assume.

When Johannes Gutenberg introduced movable type in 1450, he didn't just automate transcription; he inadvertently fractured a centuries-old monopoly on information, sparking generations of political and religious realignment across Europe. Four centuries later, the rapid industrialization of the Gilded Age concentrated unprecedented economic leverage in a new class of corporate titans, triggering decades of friction before society could establish basic labor standards and antitrust rules.

Today, it feels as though we are experiencing both historical disruptions simultaneously. The digital age has combined the rapid information shifts of the printing press with the immense wealth and logistical concentration of the industrial era.

As we approach the 2028 election cycle, this convergence is moving from a theoretical debate into a direct question of economic survival for the electorate. When automated systems begin entering the daily workflows of both blue-collar factory floors and white-collar office spaces, tech governance stops being a niche issue. It becomes a universal concern about livelihood, security, and the future of work.

If hyper-partisanship continues to reduce these complex challenges into standard culture wars, we risk passing reactive, short-sighted policies that either stifle innovation entirely or leave the public exposed to unmitigated displacement.

This is where we might consider a different approach: The Tech Contract.

Instead of treating the state and the technology sector as permanent, gridlocked adversaries, the concept focuses on how a tech-literate, pragmatic leadership can align private enterprise with the public interest. We see early blueprints of this at the state level—where leaders in tech-heavy hubs like California and Washington must balance the economic engine of Silicon Valley with the immediate needs of local communities.

A modern "Tech Contract" wouldn't seek to dismantle innovation. Instead, it proposes a stable framework for co-existence: transparent guardrails for workplace transitions, mechanisms to ensure productivity gains help fund continuous workforce retraining, and common-sense rules that integrate advanced technology into our shared civic fabric rather than isolating it in private fortresses.

History suggests that whenever technological shifts rewrite the rules of wealth and power, a period of deep societal friction is inevitable. The question heading into 2028 isn't whether we can stop the technology, but whether we can build a collaborative framework to manage it—or if the systems we've created will simply outpace our ability to govern them.

The U.S. inherited its “winner-take-all” voting system from Britain, but the U.K.’s 2024 general election produced an interesting example of what winner-take-all voting can do.  Labour received about 34% of the nationwide vote but won 63% of the seats in Parliament.   https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2026/jul/22/how-britain-would-look-proportional-representation-local-mp 

As a result, a post-election survey found that 60% of Briton’s support changing to a proportional voting system.  https://electoral-reform.org.uk/support-for-proportional-representation-hits-record-high-according-to-new-research/ 

So now Britain's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, openly supports proportional representation.   https://electoral-reform.org.uk/in-andy-burnham-we-have-the-first-prime-minister-who-openly-backs-proportional-representation/ 

And Britain's Liberal Democrats are pushing Burnham to change the voting system before the next general election.  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79y9qy9y2go 

If the U.K. thinks its own voting system needs an upgrade, should the U.S. consider the same? 

Religious freedom is something of a false premise.

By singling out “freedom of religion” as a special category, we almost seem to take it for granted that people are supposed to have a religion in the first place. It is only when you specifically look up what the term means that you discover it also includes the freedom not to believe in any religion.

But is religion really something objective and impartial? Is it not, in fact, an entire worldview built around excluding those who reject its beliefs?

A secular government may recognize and accommodate religion, but devout believers will not truly recognize secular authority on the same terms. At most, their attitude toward it can be one of non-interference or tolerance, but not genuine acceptance.

Religion itself has monopolized a great many things. For example, when people think of beautiful architecture, churches and other religious structures are often among the first things that come to mind.

And by monopolizing beauty, religion reinforces its own nonsense. We should remember that the foundation of religion lies in faith, not aesthetics. It lies in the claim that those who reject its beliefs will go to hell, not in charity, psychological support, or anything of that sort.

Religion exploits people’s fear of death to expand its influence. A person not only has to face the fear of death itself, but also has to be threatened by religious believers with the idea that if they do not believe now, they will go to hell later.

Religions without a hell tend to build their appeal on the appropriation of certain concepts. Buddhism, for example, appropriates the ideas of serenity and inner peace. The implicit message is that a Buddhist will be more serene and peaceful than a non-Buddhist. That is the advertisement they are selling.

I think atheism should be the default position for a rational person.

Do you agree with me?

If someone walked around believing that the feelings of fairies and gnomes was important to people's everyday life they would be medicated and sent to therapy. Yet we accept that deeply religious people have a high influence in everyday politics. Again and again their beliefs stand in the way of the development of a humane society, hindering individual freedom. How can we still accept this?

I don't care what you do privately. I have no clue if there is a god on the other side of the big bang, but again and again organized religion has stand against human development and again and again religious people have tweaked their stories to fit a modern narrative. Superstition doesn't have a place in a modern society and definitely not in the decision making that influence our future.

Am I wrong?

This isn’t an argument against immigration. I’m talking specifically about **open borders**, where essentially anyone can move to a country permanently, combined with a large taxpayer-funded welfare system.

My concern is pretty simple: welfare programs depend, at least to some extent, on limiting who qualifies for benefits and how many people are drawing from the system.

The U.S. already spends well over **$1 trillion a year** on major means-tested programs. If anyone who moved to the country could immediately qualify for the same benefits as citizens and long-term residents, the cost could rise significantly.

Gallup surveys have also found that **around 150 million adults worldwide say they would like to move to the United States if they had the opportunity.** Obviously, saying you want to move somewhere is very different from actually doing it. But even if only a fraction of those people came under a true open-borders policy, that could mean population growth far beyond what current housing, healthcare, schools, and public-benefit systems are built to handle.

There also seems to be an incentive problem. If newcomers can immediately access generous public benefits, that makes moving to the country more attractive and puts additional pressure on the system. But if newcomers are excluded from those benefits for years, then you’ve created a system where a large part of the population works and pays taxes without having access to the same safety net.

That may be workable, but it’s no longer a fully universal welfare system.

This also seems to be reflected in how countries actually operate. Countries with large welfare states still have immigration controls. Even countries that are relatively welcoming to immigrants generally regulate who can settle permanently and when newcomers become eligible for public benefits.

Again, I’m not arguing that immigration is bad. Immigration can grow the economy, fill labor shortages, increase the tax base, and bring plenty of other benefits.

My claim is narrower:

**Truly open borders and a generous welfare state don’t seem sustainable together over the long run.**

As far as I can tell, the main ways around the problem are to either:

Allow very high levels of immigration but restrict welfare eligibility for newcomers, at least for some period of time or Maintain immigration controls and decide who can legally settle in the country, while offering a more generous safety net to people who are admitted.

I’m open to being convinced otherwise. What would a sustainable system with both genuinely open borders and a generous welfare state actually look like?

Has secularism systematically extinguished the human spirit? Every monumental leap in human history; from building the Great Wall, splitting the atom, to landing on the Moon all required rallying millions around a shared, transcendent cause, whether rooted in faith, royalty, or nationhood. Today, God is sidelined, monarchies are relics, and nationalism is swapped for passive globalism.

When you strip away the grand mythologies that once united and drove us, what is left to inspire the next great achievement?

Average millenial is 57k in debt

Average gen Z is 94k in debt

Average gen A may be less in debt than gen Z, but that may simply be because they will not qualify for loans.

The US is 40 trillion in debt. The UK is 3 trillion in debt. French debt is 116% of its GDP. Italy's is 137%, Japan's is 260%.

The job market is ravaged by AI, oil shock and recession.

Interest rates are climbing, a new wave of defaults is on the horizon and with it, more foreclosures, evictions, asset confiscations. War is raging in the Middle East and Ukraine. There's no money for interest payments, rearmament and obligations the state has to its citizens. The citizens increasingly have no disposable income to tax at higher rates.

Meanwhile the ultra rich pay effectively no taxes. The Duke of Westminister has $12 billion in a trust fund, he does not pay inheritance or CGT on any of it. Every 10 years a trust tax of 6% is levied but the meticulous legalistic structure of his enterprise makes it so he pays 60-80 million in taxes every 10 years. That's 0.8% of his net worth, equivalent to you paying $800 on a $100k salary. Once every 10 years.

Bezos has no salary, does not get a dividend or sell stock. His taxable income for several years is zero. Yet he can miraculously conjure up $5b to fly around in a rocket. Musk is paid in stocks he borrows against. A loan is not income, he does not get taxed on it. Meanwhile you're on a salary trying to make ends meet slaving away under 30% taxes. Nothing in your country works anymore, and you now have to fasten your belt because the goverment spent too much and is fighting wars and needs you to contribute.

The % of 30 year olds still living with their parents has doubled in the last 20 years

The % of 30 year olds married and with a house has fallen from 50 to 10%.

nobody is having kids anymore

it is now normal for 40 year olds to move back with their parents

it is now normal for people to take out payday loans

doomspending is a new thing

flock cameras are going up all around

The strongest El Nino on record set global temperatures to 1.79 degrees above 1850s level, far ahead of schedule for global warming. out of the 12 times the temperatures hit 40 degrees (103F) in France in the last 100 years, 7 were this summer.

Where is this all going? Where will we all be in 10 years time if these trends continue

I am not particularly political or read much but I was always fascinated by Anarchism from a cultural/vibe perspective, the idea sounds alluring in specific context but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing from my limited understanding at least, when answering me please keep in mind I am not well read I just know surface level information or lack of.

Assuming I have the correct starting points;
- No Hierarchies
- No Rulers, No Ruled
- Voluntary Association
- Direct Action
- Spontaneous Change

So by extension I assume this means no borders, no monopoly on violence, no currency since community owns everything you just grab based on your need or the community judges you for excess? This is where my confusion starts;

P.S I write as I think so if I accidentally repeat myself or ask same questions, forgive me lol

Question 1
If "governance" (preventing people from slaughtering each other, lack of contribution to the community, another community does something that harms this community, so on) is supposed to be horizontal instead of vertical so the community votes collectively, what stops it from simply devolving into mobbing? or one person very good at convincing everyone else makes his say go every time? and if the answer to that is to make a group of wise people who vote only or a specific elder or a standard such as a theological/civil codex...then isn't that an authority that's vertical? and since legitimate violence isn't under control of a single person, what happens when the community splits on a decision and one side decides the other is a danger? and if other communities are a potential danger then why wouldn't you have armed people who only do train as their service to community and fight when it's time? that's a soldier caste who will likely form their own sub-community and will have a say that the community they are in would feel pressured to accept because that soldier caste can leave.

Question 2
What is a "Community" when do you start being part of this community or that one (just association? geography? religion (if any) language?), if it is by voluntary association, can't a single entity just lure everyone into their association and then all other communities crumble or get absorbed by that same association, isn't this sort of like globalism where you will end up with one big community? if that's the case then what happens when I don't want to associate with this one big community and want to start my own or join a different one, where would I go if it ends up being one huge singular entity? because it is communal rule or sort of, what if the rules of the majority do not fit me and that's why I want out? And if there is a "max" size of a community, who enforces that? What makes my community safe from that bigger one who might have wants that collide with mine?

Question 3
If I understood "Direction Action" as solving problems yourself by bypassing others including authority (before achieving the anarchist society at least) then..what stops it from being vigilantism? and what if what you think is correct is a danger to others but you are not aware of it? What if your wants harm everyone else? I think this can be used to moralize/justify a lot of bad actions even with good intentions, if you give the individual the validation to do anything then that's just rule of the jungle isn't it? whoever one person sees right and is strong enough to accomplish is what the others should accept and act on?

Question 4
Spontaneous Change, If I understood that correctly as well, to achieve an anarchist society everything must change at once everywhere all at once, before we get into the logistics of achieving that, would the aftermath be truly worth it? (the previous questions) because this would likely cause years or decades of lawlessness because if the average person sees the the authority body that was the government, monarch or religious authority gone poof, then that average person is going to be afraid of his neighbor, is going to worry about water, food, and security that "good intentions" will not enough to carry everyone through the transition period, disorder, sacking, murder, group violence, whatever dislikes people had against each other from the old world are going to explode, what community is going to suddenly keep order like that? because the government is not likely going to step down nicely even on hunger strikes or peaceful protests, even if it makes the country cease functioning momentarily, what stops the elite from coming together and using their resources to stop it OR incentivize people to not follow along? I don't know, I would need someone to explain the transition to me.

I am open to learning about what I misunderstood! I hope I wasn't too confusing.

What would be some policy ideas or directions we could go in?

I am trying to learn more myself about these issues and different solutions.

To those of you working in economics, finance, or policy/government what would be good ideas?

Why is he getting so much media attention?

Partly, yes—because he's the governor. The governor is one of the most powerful and visible political figures in Nebraska, so government decisions, campaigns, interviews, and advertisements naturally focus on him.

But it isn't simply because he has money. Political attention also comes from what policies a governor supports, the legislation they sign, public approval, upcoming elections, and political organizations advertising their record. The advertisement you saw may have been a campaign or political message rather than neutral news coverage.

So what has Pillen actually done about taxes?

There have been real tax changes during his administration:

Nebraska's top individual income-tax rate is scheduled to fall to 4.55% in 2026, with a planned reduction to 3.99% in 2027 under legislation signed earlier in his administration. �

Nebraska Governor's Office +1

The state has expanded programs that provide property-tax credits, including large amounts directed toward reducing school property taxes. �

Nebraska Department of Revenue +1

The administration has also pushed spending limits and changes to how local governments raise and spend money. �

Nebraska Governor's Office +1

But—and this is the important part—your tax bill can still go up even while the state advertises “tax relief.”

How can taxes go up if politicians say they're cutting taxes?

Because Nebraska has different types of taxes, and property taxes are especially complicated.

For example:

Your state income-tax rate can go down.

But the value of your home or land can go up.

Local governments and schools may still need more revenue.

Your property-tax bill can therefore increase even if the state gives you a credit or lowers another tax.

Even Pillen's own property-tax website acknowledges that local spending and property-tax collections have continued to increase and have outpaced the relief efforts so far. �

Property Tax Hotline

So you're identifying a real distinction:

“Tax relief” does not necessarily mean every Nebraskan's total tax bill goes down.

Nebraska has historically had relatively high property taxes compared with much of the country. Recent estimates still place the state's average effective property-tax rate above the national average. �

Kiplinger

And what do farmers have to do with it?

A lot, actually. Agriculture is a huge part of Nebraska's economy, and farmers and ranchers can own large amounts of land. Property taxes on agricultural land can therefore be a major political issue.

The basic problem is that agricultural land can become more valuable, which can cause its assessed value—and potentially the owner's property-tax burden—to rise. Pillen and Nebraska lawmakers have pushed proposals and policies intended to address agricultural land valuation and property taxes. �

Nebraska Governor's Office +1

But farmers aren't the only ones affected. Homeowners, renters, small businesses, farmers, and ranchers can all feel the consequences of Nebraska's tax structure. Renters may feel property taxes indirectly when landlords raise rents, while homeowners see the costs more directly. �

Nebraska Admin Services

My straightforward take on your question

It's reasonable to question an advertisement that says “tax relief” when your own experience is that costs or tax bills are rising. Both things can technically be true at once: the government may have reduced one tax or created a tax credit, while another part of the tax system—or rising property values—causes someone's overall bill to increase.

The biggest question isn't just “Did the governor cut taxes?” It's:

“After all the income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, credits, and rising assessments are added together, are ordinary Nebraskans actually paying less?”

Under the original Madisonian model of our constitution, Senators were supposed to a reflection of their states legislatures. They were supposed to be the members of an upper house that could bring more temperance to our political environment. More importantly, as representatives of their State, the could not vote to increase the power of the federal government without risking the wrath of their own state legislatures who, one could argue, had and still do have much longer memories then the general voting population at large.

As national tensions continue to rise in our country, repealing the 17th amount could bring more power to state levels and weaken the power of our ever growing federal government.

What are your opinions?

I don’t support the progressive ideas of billionaire stock wealth taxation, CEO pay ceilings, or confiscating fortunes over a billion dollars. I view tech and billionaires as very important to the economy and our quality of life. I am a capitalist at the end of the day.

I would support things like closing certain tax loopholes and banning lobbying (capped layman domestic donations only), and making government more efficient with spending (having a AI based tracker of how every tax dollar is allocated that is public knowledge). I wouldn’t want government corporate bailouts to go towards stock buyback or ceo bonus schemes. I would only support corporate welfare schemes for key economic or national security purposes. I would be open to a Land Value tax system as well.

I see government inefficiency, artificial productivity barriers, debt, and corruption as bigger problems.

In political spaces and conversations most people either support the wealth redistribution policies in my first paragraph or want to leave things as is with large fortunes.

Any other middle ground approaches to this?

One of the more disturbing things about political conflict isn't simply that governments can persuade people to support a particular policy. It's that, over time, they can change the moral framework through which people perceive that policy in the first place.

Take a society living under a constant sense of existential threat. If people are repeatedly told that their survival is at stake, “security” can gradually become a moral trump card. Actions that would normally be considered unacceptable can be reframed as necessary, unavoidable, or the lesser evil.

Then comes dehumanization. When an entire population is repeatedly described as terrorists, collaborators, threats, or collectively responsible for the actions of an armed group, individuals can stop being perceived as individuals. Once that happens, harming civilians becomes psychologically easier to rationalize.

Language plays a role too. Terms like “collateral damage,” “neutralization,” or “relocation” can create distance between the words and the human reality they describe. The more sanitized the language becomes, the easier it is to discuss suffering as an administrative problem rather than a moral one.

Repetition also matters. Something that initially shocks people can become familiar. Familiarity can become normalization, and normalization can eventually become acceptance.

And this isn't necessarily the result of some master propaganda operation. Politicians, state media, commentators, social media, peers, and institutions can all reinforce the same worldview. Eventually, people may no longer need to be persuaded. The surrounding culture does the persuading for them.

There is also a powerful identity component. When political beliefs become tied to national identity, admitting that your own side has crossed a moral line can feel like betraying your country or community. People therefore have an incentive to rationalize what happened rather than reconsider the underlying premise.

The result can be a feedback loop:

fear → threat perception → exceptional measures → normalization → dehumanization → greater tolerance for violence → even greater threat perception.

None of this requires everyone in the society to become cruel or immoral. It only requires a political environment capable of repeatedly pushing the boundaries of what some people are willing to accept.

And that's why I think political systems should be judged not only by the policies they produce, but also by the kind of moral environment they cultivate in their population.

A society can become accustomed to almost anything if it is repeatedly told that it is necessary.

For some given context, I'm someone who's admittedly Western (& progressive) in his beliefs (Rule of Law, Queer & Gender Rights, Parliamentarian, etc.), and I somewhat regularly end up in hot debate with someone in my family who happens to hold staunchly different views (I'm pro-Ukraine & he's pro-Russia, for example) in visits to his.

Now, tonight I'd been mentally drained & just found myself lying there on a bed in a spare room after some harsh thoughts about a close family member of mine, particularly whether I'd mattered to them or not, were plaguing my mind; and I was legitimately thinking how I'd rather be debating him & his positions instead of just laying here.

In a way, it's made me realise there's something to these heated debates between me & him about who's in the right with their own viewpoints that... truthfully, actually feels stimulating for me; a challenge for the mind, to use my knowledge of the history between Russia & Ukraine in an attempt to convince him of my own reasoning (as much as he believes otherwise).

This brings me back to my question; "why is there this thrill in having a political debate with someone you're ideologically opposed to, even if you're aggravated with their points?"

I welcome any discussion below.

If the goal of a justice system is to reduce crime, the current American prison system (and punitive "justice" systems in general) is clearly the wrong way to go about it. The US prison system accounts for 20% of the entire global prison, and despite that fact that US has a significantly higher crime rate than the rest of the first world- clearly, this system of mass incarceration is not working.

Justice systems that focus on rehabilitating prisoners rather than punishing them have significantly better recidivism rates- 20% compared to 70% in the US. Again, if the goal of a justice system is to reduce crime, it's obvious that rehabilitation is significantly more effective than punishment.

To preempt the expected responses of "but criminals deserve to be punished" or "but then criminals are just getting away with crimes", keep in mind that those arguments are not based of of the facts of what is and is not effective in reducing crime, but are rather emotional arguments about what you want to happen to criminals, or what you think criminals "deserve". My argument is not about what criminals "deserve" to have happen to them, rather it is about what is most effective at achieving the stated goals of criminal justice systems- the reduction of crime rates and turning people from criminals into law-abiding citizens.