I am the journeyer from the valley of the dead Sega consoles. With the blessings of Sega Saturn, the gaming system of destruction, I am the Scout of Silenceā€¦ Sailor Saturn.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • OK this is just my unresearched opinion as an American but I really donā€™t know what Iā€™m talking about so keep that in mind and treat it as vibes more than research. Itā€™s messy and I havenā€™t learned about any of it since highschool (and my highschool left a lot of important parts out):

    A bunch of uninformed rambling

    US states arenā€™t thought of as countries for good reason, but in the countryā€™s legal framework that kind of how they work ā€“ just with a lot of work to make borders almost a non-issue, shared citizenship, shared economy, etc. This means that historically a lot of stuff that would be associated with a country (ID, driving permit, residency, military) either only happens at the state level; or happens at both the state and the federal level.

    In the constitution the federal government is supposed to stick to itā€™s lane as well: any powers which arenā€™t explicitly given to the federal government are reserved for the states (10th amendment). Though in practice the federal government has a lot of powers.


    Thatā€™s the background and helps explain both the lack of a (compulsory) national ID and how there can be state level election shenanigans:

    For national ID this was indeed a conservative bugbear. They were essentially worried about the government building a dossier on them or something. I donā€™t remember the details itā€™s been a long time: Conservatism 15 years ago was an entirely different beast than it is today. Itā€™s kind of hard to even imagine if the conservatives still have the same fears today, if the liberals donā€™t, or how it would actually play out. Congress being deadlocked for so long means itā€™s hard to get a vibe on how things would shake out if they started actually passing lots of laws again.

    Oh yeah did I mention congress is deadlocked? This both means that the US is essentially operating on decades outdated laws, and that the legislatureā€™s infighting has lead to a power vacuum that the executive and judicial branch have slurped up (which helps explain the current Elon Musk mess)

    Anyway election shenanigans: States were historically supposed to be, well, states as in closely aligned countries and this was all set up in the days before fast and easy long distance travel and communication (did I mention America is really big?). This means that each state runs itā€™s own election (which it can do in any legal way it pleases). The outcome of the election is one or more electors, and those electors are who actually send in their choice for president. There have been cases of ā€œfaithless electorsā€ who vote for someone besides the party they represent. Oddly this hasnā€™t really been seen as a big deal (since the parties choose the electors they tend to be pretty loyal).

    The point of the previous paragraph is this is a mess. Like a real mess. Itā€™s law that made some sense 200 years ago (and maybe not even, they were kinda #yolo-ing the constitution at the time) but is really dated. This means thereā€™s lots of room for shenanigans. Can a state legally disqualify voters? Maybe? Sometimes? Kinda? Theyā€™re not supposed to be like racist or anything, but determining that depends on a lot of details and shifting supreme court rulings.








  • Yeah I already have a lot of non-US stocks, and next week Iā€™m going to rebalance to make them the majority.

    Iā€™m not a finance person. My uncle whoā€™s in the world of international corporate law thinks things will be fine so maybe Iā€™m being a bit cautious but the way I see it there are a few big issues:

    • The US government is trying itā€™s best to implode itself.
    • There is a brain-drain effect (or heck, a worker-drain effect in general), it will pick up as things get worse.
    • The US government is becoming much more isolationist and detached from the global economy.
    • There is a small but real chance that the US government will start one or more major wars over the next decade

    All of this also increases the risk of ā€œblack swanā€ events like pandemics, hacks, the US ā€œinvestingā€ all the ā€œsavingsā€ they ā€œfoundā€ into cryptocurrency schemes, large-scale unrest, or god knows what else.