Nephyo

When you start using the internet a funny thing happens. It starts to become hard to be an optimist about humanity. You read what people are saying. You see what people are willing to type out and put on record. You see how different people think than you and how many people there are out there that think that way. You see how terrible people are willing to treat one another in this weird social space called the internet. You see that people seem in capable of acting as if the other person on the keyboard is a real human being. And you can’t help but think, damn, I’m surrounded by secret monsters. I live in a world full of reprehensible human beings with twisted thought processes. 

But perhaps you say no, people aren’t really like that. It’s things like their ability to post anonymously, the context collapse taking place on the internet, and the proliferation of sock puppets and people even being hired to troll online that causes this. It’s the fact that there are a bunch of 12 year olds that don’t know better and some people with mental illnesses. Sure some people are jerks, but it only seems rampant because basically because it’s the internet. In real life, we think, I interact with people all the time and they AREN’T like that. Not by and large. People just treat the internet like it’s a game with no real consequences. They wouldn’t be able to look me in the eye and treat me like that.

Only now we’re seeing something else. Now that we have access to cheap easy and quick video technology (and it’s only getting better) we’re seeing videos posted to the internet of real people in the real world almost as soon as events happen. And lo and behold (as ought to be a surprise to no one) people are equally if not more obnoxious in physical space. We see people doing terrible things. Violent things. Cruel things. Humanity is rough. And it has little to nothing to do with the fact that we are online or anonymous. Take as case in point the recent McKinney Texas, pool party event. That story was enough to make me lose a great deal of my optimism about humanity, especially when coupled with some of the truly repulsive things being said about it online and I’m a pretty strong optimist most of the time.

It’s hard to retain optimism about humanity in the modern era. It just is. It’s even hard to retain neutrality. Lots and lots and lots of people suck. And now we’re seeing it. More than ever. I don’t know what the does to our psychology but I can’t imagine it’s good. If it seems like a lot of people are really angry and upset all the time online and otherwise, maybe there’s a reason for that beyond just individual circumstances. Maybe the modern technology is starting to break us in a way. We now all are exposed to the worst that all of us can do and maybe we don’t yet have, and may never have, the coping mechanisms to be able to deal with that exposure.

But if we are to learn to cope with this I think we should try to keep three things in mind. 

One is that there are also lots and lots and lots of people who exist. The fact that many of them suck is less relevant than what PERCENTAGE of them suck. And the reality appears to be that unless you define ‘suck’ in the most exclusive terms, (i.e. something like only the most brave and honorable and always just are the ones who don’t suck) then the vast majority of people in fact do not suck. What the vast majority of people are is neutral. They don’t comment, they keep their noses dry, they’re concerned with their own business and want to live as  best a lives they can and take care of their own. But if an opportunity arises to do wrong that is too tempting to pass up they will, and if an evil is too egregious for them to ignore they will fight against it. But most of the time they aren’t leaving comments on the web and they aren’t coming to the rescue of the bullied in real life because they won’t put their own reputation and livelihood at risk. Remember with over 7 billion people on the planet, even if there are a million terrible human beings out there that’s still only 0.014% of all of humanity. If there are 7 million that’s only 0.1%. That means 1 in a thousand people who is rotten and in the vast majority of cases one rotten person isn’t enough to cause too much harm (unless they are granted extra power by the State, are running powerful organizations or countries, or are I dunno allowed to easily get a hold of powerful fire arms and carry them around wherever they please).  Evil works best in groups. That’s why you can see so much hate in videos online yet many experience so little of it in their own lives. If you’re lucky you might never have a run in with evil Bob, the one asshole on your block. To you the world might look downright sunny. At least until Bob recruits Jenny, Joe, Lenny, and Tracie from neighboring areas and they all start going around the neighborhood causing problems for everyone. Then things don’t look so great.

The second thing to keep in mind is that we have an inherent negativity bias as a species. That means we tend to see things in the worst light and we tend to see the negative things while ignoring the positive. There are all kinds of positive things happening in real life and online that just don’t go viral. They don’t get teh attention. How often does someone say “wow that’s really nice what’s happening there, let me get out my phone and record it!”  It just doesn’t happen. But if something violent, unjust, or immoral happens we quickly reach to document it. And that’s a good thing. It’s one of the things that brings us a little closer to having a civilization that does NOT suck. Or at least does not suck as much.

Which brings me to the third thing we should keep in mind when we start to despair about humanity. And that is that even though we suck and even though it’s far more obvious than ever before how MUCH we suck it’s also the case that we undoubtedly suck LESS than we have in the past. We actually have progressed as a civilization. We generally treat people regardless of our individual characteristics or situations more as equals than we ever have in the past. We’re far from perfect and we have an extraordinarily long way to go but you can’t argue that we aren’t better today in most respects than we were 100 or 500 or 1000 years ago. We have fewer slaves and fewer warlords and more people who can vote and are allowed to speak their mind and determine their own destinies. And that’s something.  I’m not saying we should rest on our laurels or anything, but I am saying that we can as a though experiment imagine what things would have been like if there was an internet in the 1200s or the 1930′s and see that it’s entirely possible things could be a lot worse.

And when you think about it what that means is that people can change. It may be that nobody can convince anyone in a particular argument here and now but over time people’s perspectives shift. Those rational arguments do take root in people somewhere. And some racist, bigoted, or cruel people don’t pass on their cruelty, racism, and bigotry to their children or their grand children. Some greedy people decide that their greed is not more important than people’s freedom and happiness. Some bystanders decide that more things that are wrong are worth sticking up for against than they did in the past. It’s the only rational explanation for improvement as a species. People can change. And they do. Just not necessarily right away. (Of course let’s not dwell on the fact that logically means we can change BACK too and become worse as a species.)

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about voter turn out in the US and how abysmal it is and whether it was justifiable to require people to vote. This is a pretty complex issue and it’s unlikely to ever get resolved as long as people strongly believe that one side would greatly benefit over the other from implementing any changes that result in higher voter turn out. And that will likely remain the case as long as we have a two party system.

This got me thinking though in the abstract about voting and what I would do if I were able to effect any change I wanted in the way the world worked. What would I create as the ideal voting system? This is the kind of thing I love thinking about.

First let me note that I think voting is probably the most important thing in a system of governance and I believe in it deeply. I consider myself a democrat not in the sense that I give a crap about the Democratic party but in the sense that I think the closer a society can get to being an absolute democracy of extremely informed educated citizenry the more Just said society would be. 

In other words I prefer it if we are self determined even if that results in negative outcomes. That is to say in an ideal world things would be decided by vote except for things related to basic human rights. In particular what can never be left up to a vote ought to be things with respect to who is allowed to vote since that way leads to gradual disenfranchisement until you no longer have much of a democracy. But all else I’m pretty much fine if people determine it on their own even if the results are bad or not to my liking. Destroying our chance of survival as a species on planet earth due to climate change would be a far more tolerable outcome to me if I were convinced that this was just what the people wanted rather than the idea that some small percentage of money makers are making the decision for us. Sure it sucks but you know what? People suck sometimes. And just as it’s totally legitimate for an individual to choose to live a totally destructive life and enjoy doing it even if it leads to an early end of that life, so too is it legitimate for a society to choose to do so provided they are making that choice with full agency and cognizant of the consequences.

 Or take an issue that I would be likely not to get my way on. I deeply believe that gun rights need to be curtailed. Were it up to me we’d probably repeal the second amendment and replace it with something better worded that did not guarantee everyone an irrevocable right to whatever level of weaponry they so desire. I believe that we can save an enormous number of lives by simply reducing the quantity of guns out there and gun buy back programs and extremely strict background checks make a great deal of sense, as does areas where guns are not allowed like schools, government, buildings, hospitals, malls, events, stores, and restaurants. I even feel it would be a good idea to reduce the amount of weaponry held by the police and not have officers walking around armed the vast majority of the time. Likewise the military when not deployed for serious matters would not hold guns. And I feel it would be a good idea if we had really strong consequences for those who are careless with their guns in ways that result in accidental shootings. Basically I think we should have a stigma associated with holding guns, miss using guns, treating guns as toys or fun and we should cultivate a seriousness with respect to guns that make them less likely to be used.   But I recognize that most Americans do NOT agree with me on much of that. And many people whose opinions I greatly respect would consider me a bit crazy for saying all of this. Others whom I respect agree with me on some of it but would not go nearly as far as I. So very little if any of this is likely at all to happen any time soon even if we made it so everyone voted. And that would be ok by me if I was sure that was why we weren't doing it. And I’d just try to change people’s minds. To convince people. And if I couldn't oh well, them’s the breaks.  That’s how a democracy is supposed to work anyway. But the situation we have now is very different. Basically we have a powerful gun lobby that’s in the pocket of a very wealthy gun industry that has so much power in government that there is no chance no matter who is elected of even making the tiniest most universally agreed upon changes in current gun laws and are in fact pushing to loosen even current restrictions. And that’s just intolerable.

OK so all that’s just preamble. Now onto the meet of the subject. Designing a voting system that will make me and hopefully most people feel that society is self determined enough to be able to accept the even possible disagreeable outcomes. 

I absolutely think that it would be better if everyone voted. I don’t know if it’s Just to require it or not but if I had my druthers everyone WOULD vote just because they felt it was deeply important. No requirement would be necessary. And indeed it would probably be the case that a decent size percentage of the population say 5-10% or so ran for some kind of office at some point in their lifetime. 

But in order to get there, there needs to be a huge number of changes. The system we have now just won’t work. 

First let me say that in reality even if I had ultimate power I would not do any of the things I’m about to propose. I would not, that is, until I had consulted with a large quantity of experts in Math and Game Theory, Psychology and Sociology and Philosophy. I’d speak with experts who study voting laws around the globe and get their thoughts on what does work and what doesn't, what makes sense and what’s just bat-shit insane and I’d use their input to craft a proposal. The things I’m about to suggest would just be the suggestion I put before said panel of experts first to get them thinking along these lines. 

Ok so here’s what I’d say we should do. First and foremost we have to understand that if everyone votes whether that is because of social pressure or a flat out law requiring voting or a law strongly incentivizing voting something is lost. We lose a sense of who is fete up, disgusted or rejects the system altogether. You see what we don’t have now is any way to distinguish non-voters who are lazy from those who don’t have time from those who believe the system is fundamentally flawed and unfair and think that voting is perpetuating a broken system. And all of that is useful pieces of information. If voting is too daunting and difficult and time consuming a process to a large quantity of people we want to know that so we can fix it. If most people think our system is broken and they have no confidence in it we need to know that too so we can affect meaningful political change to regain the people’s trust and confidence. IF most of our citizenry is becoming too lazy to vote maybe we should know that too so we can try to think of a way to invoke social change to get people excited and motivated enough to vote again. Maybe people not voting could be a sign of an epidemic of depression or a sign of people becoming overly enamored with some form of entertainment to the point where they are losing track of reality or maybe it could be a sign that people are so angry they are about to break out in massive riots. Whatever the case if you are running a society you NEED TO KNOW. And a nation wide event where everyone or near everyone participates is a good place to try and tease out some of these distinctions before things get out of control.

So I would propose at the top of our poll we have a couple of check boxes. You can check NO CONFIDENCE. OR you can check I OPT NOT TO VOTE.  You can check one or both of these.  If you do then you don’t have to fill out the rest of the form. You can still choose to fill out the rest of the form if you want but you have already met any obligation you might have as a citizen to vote just by checking one or both of these boxes. IF there are any positive incentives for voting you get them and if there are any disincentives for not voting you avoid them.   

If you checked NO CONFIDENCE and continue to fill out the rest of the form your votes still count, you’re just saying that even though you have no confidence in the system you’re still not going to pick just because maybe you think not picking is a worse outcome.  If you check I OPT NOT TO VOTE and continue to fill out the rest of the form your other votes do NOT count. Instead you are just saying  that if you HAD wanted your vote to count this is what you would have voted for.

Beneath these check boxes if either of them are checked there is a small text box that you can fit some 500 words or so in to describe exactly what you think is the problem. This is optional but all of this is saved and compiled and put anonymously online so anyone can see exactly why people have NO CONFIDENCE or are not voting. Statisticians and social analysts can compile the data into nice buckets so we can get a read on the temperature and temperament of the population.

In later years we might take the most common reasons and put them down as check boxes you can check for why you are voting NO CONFIDENCE so long as we also always allow a free form entry of reasons.

Now beneath these check boxes we get to the bulk of the voting. Candidates run against other candidates. And they also run against NO CONFIDENCE. That’s right. NO CONFIDENCE is an option for every single vote. So it’s like Hilary Clinton, Jeb Bush, No Confidence.  But we need more than those 3 too. Generally we need to have more than 2 parties that are taken seriously and we should usually have  I don’t know like 4-10 candidates plus NO CONFIDENCE for every vote? That sounds about right to me. And after each election the two candidates that get the highest vote total have a special run off election if not candidate got above a certain percentage of the vote. The percentage that has to be met may well be based on how many candidates are running. This INCLUDES no Confidence. So you could even have a run off between Hilary Clinton and NO CONFIDENCE.

What happens if NO CONFIDENCE wins? Well the election has to be done over. And none of the prior candidates can run again. We have to get a whole new batch of people. Doesn't that increase the power of incumbents? Yes it would that’s why regardless of the outcome the incumbent does not stay in office rather whoever their immediate successor who is NOT running in the election will be in power until an election produces an outcome. So Joe Biden would become Acting President if he did not run should NO CONFIDENCE beat Hilary Clinton in the run off while we have another election to say between Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul and No Confidence. The Acting President’s, Acting Vice President or Lieutenant would be the next in the chain of command who is of a different party than he. So it would be John Boehner. After two such elections where No Confidence wins, Acting VP and Acting President must both be put on the ballot for the third election. Thus if they lose also to No Confidence then two people further down the chain of command become acting President and Acting VP. So in that way no person can retain power indefinitely just because the people continuously choose No Confidence.  No candidate can run in two successive elections. But candidates can run in every other election if they so choose.

Anyway all of that is just worst case scenario. Ideally we are going to create a world where w don’t have No Confidence winning a whole lot. If we are in a situation where No Confidence is winning all the time then we have a BIG problem and we should have a strong incentive to fix the problem.

Also on every single vote you have the option to check an opt out box by virtue of Ignorance. That is to say I can check “I don’t feel informed enough to pick between these candidates”. That’s perfectly legitimate. You can do that and not vote or you can do that and also vote. In the later case you are probably voting for a party but still feel as if the system has failed you in terms of giving you a good sense of who these candidates are. This doesn't effect the outcome of the election but it does provide data that would be openly published so that society can decide how good or badly they are doing at educating the public in the differences between political candidates.

Next the mechanics of voting. It’s going to work a bit different than you think. With 4-10 candidates plus No Confidence you don’t just pick one. Rather I think we need a kind of point system or ordering system. That is to say what you pick is your top three candidates and order them by preference. Your top candidate gets 3 points, your second place candidate gets 2 points, and your third place candidate gets 1 point.  You can also opt not to have a second or third place candidate in which case your first place candidate gets 3 points and you forefeit the other 3 points. Likewise you can choose only a first and second place candidate or you can choose only a second and third place candidate in which case you are saying that well none of these options seems good enough to earn my full 3 points but I guess these two are worth a couple of points.  We will also compile statistics on how many points are left on the table unused and that will provide another data point as to voter interest in the election and of course we will publish such statistics openly.

At the bottom of the ballot we introduce two more additions.  You can check a box that says THIS PROCESS WAS TOO COMPLICATED. This is again a way to grab a signal as to who is having trouble with voting and whether we need a simpler process or a better user interface or we just need ways to provide help for those who need it. Again these statistics are published openly. Lastly we provide a public comment box about 500 words long where people can say whatever they want about the election again to be published openly.

Ok, phew. No we need to talk more about the logistics of this system. Just having the system laid out in this way is one thing but it will make very little difference if we can make signfiicant strides in getting people to vote. This is why I propose the following changes.

1. We reduce the minimum voting age to 16. I think 16 year olds are intelligent enough to make informed decisions about voting and since they are substantially affected by the outcome of elections in the very near term they really need a say. In particular I think 16 years old need to be able to vote so they have the ability to stave off the possibility of a war that they may well be drafted or coerced into in just a couple of years.

2. The voting period lasts 3 weeks. Every single day the polls are open at least 10 hours every day and on at least 2 days in each election polls are open 24 hours. Polls are open on weekends. 

3. Free transportation is available to anyone who wants to get to the polls to vote on particular days especially weekend days. That is bus fair is completely free and we may even have special buses that go around for the sole purpose of taking people to the polls to vote. 

4. You can vote easily online. We have a website that you can go to to vote. 

5. You can change your mind and your vote during the 3 week period but whatever your vote is on the last day is final. WE also keep statistics on who changes their mind.

6. Mail in ballots are accepted as well and are counted along side all other votes.

7. Same day voter registration is mandatory for all states. You can register and immediately vote.

8. Every single voter is given a unique random ID at the time of voting that only they know. That ID matches to a website that is published after the vote that lists everyone’s vote by random id. This allows a double check to make sure that there aren’t fake votes or stolen elections. Everything is transparently visible to all. Every state house, library, dmv, and post office, will also have computers available for anyone to go look up and ensure their vote is accurate.  If there is a dispute where you think the system counted your vote wrong you have recourse. If a large enough percentage of people believe their vote to be in error and file a form saying so then there must be a new election though the person who appears to have won the election does take power until the new election is held and resolved.

9. Exit polling by news media organizations is allowed and required as a double check of the process.

10. Every means of balloting produces a paper ballot that can be used for recounts.

11. Going to prison does not revoke your right to vote even while  IN prison no matter the crime. Nothing revokes your citizenship. The idea here is to prevent perversions where large percentages of a particular population are locked up simply to prevent them from voting which can distort political outcomes.

12. We have a public help hotline and online chat that will help people who need figure out the ballot and how to vote effectively. These will have to be highly trained individuals who are heavily monitored and all of their call and conversations would need to be recorded to ensure that no one is using their position to manipulate voters.

13. We also have a computer-to-your home setup where people in the hospital or unable to leave their house for whatever reason but do not have access to a phone or computer are provided them temporarily as a means to vote. 

14. The voting period could be extended for inclement whether and in areas hit by natural disasters or plagues.

15. The time of year we vote is moved to the summer rather than November which is cold and a terrible time for people to vote. 

16. IF we have a system where everyone requires some kind of photo ID to vote THEN we ALSO have to have a system where every single citizen can trivially easily get a photo ID. We need to make it a crusade to make sure 99.99999% of the population has such an ID before the new voting system goes into place.

17. AT polling places we provide other useful services to people. Such as providing homeless people information about where to get help and boards up to help people get jobs who are looking for work. 

18. Every single eligible voter who has an address is provided a month before an election with a basic print out booklet that describes the election process and a short blurb about every candidate explaining in as neutral a way as possible where they stand on important issues with nice charts and graphs and things and also lists all the party platforms.

19. Two weeks prior to each election we have a period where the government organizes discussion panels around the country to get together and talk about issues and candidates and how the voting process works. These are completely voluntary. Citizens can interest groups can also host their own get togethers. Candidates are not allowed in these discussion groups. This is just for the people to talk among themselves.

20. Elections always host debates prior to the election and these debates have to be extremely open to lots of candidates. The mechanics of ensuring that are too complicated to get into at this time. Suffice it to say we’d need to have big debates with a minimum number of X candidates participating and then break off into smaller one on one debates between particular candidates.

21. Lower the required age to run for various offices. Like to be President I think 30 is a good enough age.

22. All candidates are given equal amounts of public air time on radio, television and a twitch-like website for live streaming which they can utilize for free.

23. We need strong laws that are carefully enforced against voter intimidation and dishonest political ads.

24. We should probably look into setting up something that looks a lot more like what other governments around the world have. Some sort of parliamentary system where sets of parties work together to form a new government rather than a one party wins all or a gridlock situation between two parties that block all that the other party does which we have now.

25. We need to greatly expand the size of the House of Representatives so that representatives ACTUALLY represent reasonably sized districts of relatively small sets of population. The idea that you can get to know your representative should not be inconceivable.

26. We need to flat out abolish the senate. It just doesn't make much sense for Delaware and Wyoming to have the same number of votes in any system with California, Texas, and New York.   We COULD if we wanted to be kind of honest-ish have a separate house where representation is based on economic impact of states rather than population, or on natural resources and land. I wouldn’t like it but at least I could understand it. That would be embracing our capitalistic tendencies.  But having it just 2 per state based on arbitrary anciently determined borders is just dumb.

27. We have to have some kind of universal districting standard that is based on Math with the goal of being as fair as possible and not based on parties drawing lines where they see fit. Illegal districting should be a crime and states that do so should face severe consequences.  Or better yet just take it out of the hands of the states altogether.

28. We need to implement a voting rights act that is both more universal than the one we currently have AND has greater teeth. All States should be subject to this law and no futzing around with who is allowed to vote should be tolerated.

OK I think that’s about it. If we did ALL of that I think we’d probably have most everyone voting. And I don’t think we would really need to do mandatory voting. But also I would not care too much if we did all of this if we DID make voting mandatory. My libertarian streak would probably make me say we probably shouldn't but there are a lot of things that are required that I’m not overly keen on that I wish we could find a better way to handle, like for example, mandatory health insurance. I think we’d get used to it if it were required. If it is required we absolutely should not have the penalty be particularly harsh. It should be something simple like a small fine for not voting assessed through your taxes or alternatively you can opt for an hour of community service. Also there have to exemptions for those who are homeless or have disabilities that prevent them from easily voting.

I would prefer instead though if people aren't voting that we start with incentives. That is to say give everyone who votes $20 for voting and provide cake and cookies and coffee at voting places. Vegan snacks too. At least on the last few days. Let’s make voting places a nice and social place to hang out. We can also incentivize people to attend discussion panels as described in #19 above. Maybe you can earn $20 for each you attend, maximum of 5, no more than 2 of which can be self organized or organized via a non-governmental interest groups.

Last but absolutely not least. Actually the MOST important thing. I would of course implement the usual suggestions people have for Campaign Finance Reform. This is essential and needs to be done before we do all the rest of this. What that means in general is that we need to limit the spending of corporations, unions, and political parties as entities on elections, limit the maximum amount the super rich can give to particular candidates, and provide vouchers so that all citizens can contribute a small amount to any candidate that is then matched in equal amount by the government to encourage small dollar donations to provide parity with the wealth of the powerful. If a constitutional amendment is necessary to affect some of these changes then we absolutely should do that.

One other possibility, maybe we should have some kind of contingency for the scenario where more than 2/3rds of the population votes NO CONFIDENCE on the OVERALL ballot at the top.  Maybe then we should not only have a complete overall election do-over but we should flat out just hold a constitutional convention immediately. Clearly if that much of our citizenry has no confidence in our form of governance then we need that form of governance to fundamentally change and the easiest way to do that is take a good hard look at our constitution and see what needs to change.

In an article today on NPR about the repulsive expansion of wage and bank account garnishment as a means of forcing people to pay off debt even when they can't afford it, they found, as they always do, as sympathetic a figure as possible to be the face of the problem. Reporters perceive that what Americans want to hear is about a hard working down to earth American doing their darnedest to make ends meet but just can't keep up but isn't throwing around any blame or looking for excuses or anything like that. Someone who sufficiently humbles himself and abases himself before society declaring that it was all his fault and that he willingly takes his just punishment as decided by the powers that be but just wishes please that things could be just a wee bit easier.

Fuck that. Mr. Evans didn't crash the economy. Mr. Evans didn't engage policies to ensure that our "recovery" was as slow and anemic as humanly possible. Mr. Evans didn't make the cost of college and medical expenses and housing so exorbitant that it's likely to bankrupt people. Mr. Evans didn't personally dismantle the social safety net and corrupt our bankruptcy laws to make them nearly useless to the average citizen. Mr. Evans didn't create predatory lenders who charge sickeningly high interest rates predicated on a single mistake.  Mr. Evans didn't create the deceptive and sneaky tactics that credit card companies use to get default judgments on people who didn't even know they were supposed to show up in court. Mr. Evans didn't create a society that shames people for daring to even ask for help or to need to receive assistance of any kind.

All Mr. Evans did was engage in the system exactly the way it was setup for him to engage in and like so many other people out there he was screwed by the system and continues to be screwed by the system over and over again because the system has decided he's a sucker and they can do whatever the hell they want to him.

Maybe Mr. Evans SHOULD be blaming his situation on somebody else. There's a lot of people to blame out there. To be sure Mr. Evans shares some of the blame for his own outcomes. But the others are far MORE to blame. The ones who built this system. The ones who continue to profit vastly from it at his expense. So why do we act like every single ill that ever befalls us is solely and completely of our own doing even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary right before our eyes? 

We need people to stop blaming themselves and start blaming others. If not specific individuals than at least blame the system as a whole. It's a screwed up deadly cruel and harsh system that certain people deliberately (whether they were fully aware of the inevitable consequences or not) built to make it so. Until we come to true grips with that how the hell are we going to get that system to change?

You might expect that all else being equal that if you are an average human being than of all the things out there there'd be some things you are good at, some that you are bad at and a large number of things that you are average at, roughly, clustering around the middle of the bell curve.  Then since roughly 50% of all things that you can engage in you would be better than 50% of the people out there it would be relatively simple to go out there and do one of those things with your life. Easy peasy.

Only that's not quite accurate. The problem is three fold. One when you engage in an activity you don't know if you are one of the people who is good at it and indeed can't know until you've spent a substantial amount of time on it. Two, the distribution of things you are good at and the things you both like and want to do are not likely at all to  be aligned. Indeed more often than not you are likely to engage in an activity you want to do and enjoy doing and spend far more than the amount of time you might normally expect to spend on it trying to get good at it even though you might never be good at it. Lastly in every activity there will be over time what I call for lack of a better word drift.

Drift occurs when as people engage in an activity people get discouraged or bored and drop out. This happens when the environment is very negative or when the competitiveness is high. Over time a greater percentage of those who do poorly or averagely at an activity will drop out than those who do well. In competitive activities no one enjoys being the punching bag for the other players even if one enjoys the activity at its base. And of course communities tend to be very hard on activity members who lack the requisite skill or knowledge that they expect community members to have. In effect they engage in a kind of exclusionary practice essentially exiling those who want to engage in the activity but don't meet their standards. And on top of this there is the effect of one's mental state on one's skill development. A constant string of failures may well lead one to fail to develop their skill to their potential due to having a shot confidence. In effect every unit of effort produces less of a return in gained skill meaning a person who starts off bad at a skill or doing poorly at it could require two or three times as many hours of practice to maximize their personal potential at that activity than it would someone who starts off average or above average. Or it may never be possible. The marginal return on effort may well reduce to near zero if one's confidence is low enough.  And then there's luck as well. A certain percentage of users in luck affected skill based activities will simply have a prolonged period of unluckiness that results in a shot confidence or quitting even before once can develop the level of skill to reach their potential. That is guaranteed to happen to some due to the nature of randomness.

Over time all of this essentially shifts the bell curve to the right meaning the average activity member ends up having a higher and higher skill level (and confidence level). This can continue until there are a very tiny number of activity members left all of whom are either too arrogant or too deluded to realize their lower skill level, too stubborn to quit despite their lower abilities (perhaps because they've devoted so much time to the activity already that they are unwilling to give up), or are actually the most skilled in the population set.

There is no great solution to any of this. If you create amateur level activities, the bell curve just drifts to the right within those amateur levels. If you try to encourage activity groups to be more tolerant and accepting of new activity members or less skilled activity members it MAY slow down the amount of drift but it also may just make those less skilled activity members feel patronized (and in many cases they likely would be correct in feeling that way). Spreading free knowledge may well help people meet their personal potential a little faster but that just pulls a few more people into the elite pool a bit faster and doesn't solve the problem at its core.

Sophisticated matching algorithms and reduced barriers to entry can help ensure that people find the activities that they are good at. But that just leads to a question. Should society care more about what citizens are good at or more about what citizens WANT to do. Doing something that one is good at but that makes one miserable may well result in reduced output, greater stress levels, and an early death. On the other hand doing something that one is not good at but that one enjoys may well result in the same outcome as drift results in one losing whatever joy they might have received from the activity after repeated failure. And even if it doesn't, it doesn't seem like an optimal solution for further human advancement.  

Presumably we could hope that there is some kind of sweet point where one has a maximal enjoyment to skill ratio sufficient to lead one to work hard at an activity to improve their skill without them losing interest or becoming discouraged. Some will get lucky and find an activity that they both highly enjoy and are highly skilled at and the more time they spend on it the more skilled they get and they are always able to stay ahead of the drift. Others will get unlucky and never find any activity for which they find themselves sufficiently skilled that they enjoy to stay ahead of skill drift. They can either make a choice to suffer through an activity that they don't enjoy very much but they are skilled enough to stay ahead of drift in or accept being behind the drift but at least know they are doing something they enjoy and try not to get discouraged or burned out. Everyone else will be somewhere in between.

In any case we should do everything in our power to ensure that the barriers to entry to try activities are low, that we do our best to match people up with the activities that they most enjoy and are best at so they can at least try them, that we make as much knowledge about activities open and available to everyone so they can ascend the curve as quickly as possible and that communities are as accepting and tolerant of differences in skill level as possible. And on top of that we should create as many stepping stone levels that insulate groups from engaging in an activity with activity members who far exceed their current skill level. We should also reduce as much as possible barriers to exit as well as exiting an activity once one has established that they don't enjoy it or aren't good at it can reduce the number of wasted hours and ensure that one find the activities they enjoy and are good at faster. We should do all of this and more because all of these things, although they don't solve anything, do mitigate these problems at least a little and can make life a little more tolerable for everyone.

But if you are trying for, purely hypothetically a true and complete solution there are several more radical proposals one might examine.

One radical proposal might be to try and essentially cripple the skilled. That is reduce the top of the curve to try and induce a leftward shift. You could do this by trying to introduce a kind of cultural shame upon skill level or trying to deliberately put up barriers to slow down or reduce the capabilities of skillful activity users. But besides being completely morally repugnant this also would not be anywhere near an optimal solution for society. It would result in a lot of disgruntled angry skillful beings out for vengeance in the best case. In the worst case you get kind of a societal drudgery wherein everyone wonders at the pointlessness of striving since no one is ever able to accomplish anything of note or substance and in which no one has role models or even much in the way of hopes or dreams.

Another way to induce a left word shift might be well to force top skill level activity users to essentially retire with accolades. That is once you achieve level X you can't do activity Y anymore. So the very top actors no longer act, the very top football players can't keep playing.  This is less repugnant than the above but certainly could still reduce the overall skill output of society (unless retired entities all find other activities that they are top skilled at, meaning it increases skill activity diversity, not overall output). We would have to ask ourselves if it's worth it.  We would also have to be aware that sometimes it might be difficult to determine where that rational cut off is. Somethings it's easier to measure excellence in than others. How would you determine for example who the very best person at being interviewed is? And what would it mean to tell that person that they can no longer go on interviews exactly? The accolades part of this would have to be rather substantial too in order to ensure that skilled entities don't just reject the scheme altogether. That could get expensive. Also you can expect that people will skill hop between related activities winning accolades in each and every one before retiring. That might not be a problem though.

Another even more radical crazy idea would be to use modern technology to create for every individual essentially their own environment wherein they can be faced only with carefully calibrating artificial intelligences to compete against. In this artificial world you can find the activity that maximizes your absolute enjoyment and then the AIs would calibrate around you so that you are provided with sufficient challenge to keep up your enjoyment but in which you always come out on top. In essence you become the most skillful or near the top of the skill chain at all time. You're always ahead of the drift and you remain blissful and happy. 

Of course everyone is going to have varied opinions on the morality of such a setup with most probably being appalled. Though utilitarians ought think it optimal I think. However, I suspect it would not work in practice for one simple reason. If you are aware that the universe around you is not real then you will inevitably feel less substantive joy out of that universe. If anything you will sort of go through a kind of psychological rejection of the world around you. Your accomplishments wont feel like accomplishments. Your pleasure won't seem like real pleasure. You won't be able to take things seriously that are happening to you. In the end I suspect you would start to act out against the simulation sort of as if you were a parasite trying to reject your host simulation tearing it down from the inside.   So if this is going to be viable at all you would have to make everyone utterly ignorant that they are even in a simulation of this sort. 

But there's a bigger problem here even with ignorance. That is a question of can you truly trust the simulation? It would be in such a world trivial for someone who codes up the simulation to change a few variables and create what is in essence the greatest psychological torture device ever devised by humanity. What's more, what about bugs? A slight tweak and you could find yourself not living your own personal utopia but some kind of miserable farce that leaves your cynical or depraved or even drives you mad.  Also the simulation creators could just get it wrong, especially if they don't have first hand knowledge or understanding of the activity you want to be best at or they lack a full and complete understanding of your psychology and mental states.

And even if the simulations could be perfect in theory who would monitor these simulations? Who would develop them? They would have to be self generating, that is AI creating AI or else you have a problem wherein the creators and maintainers of the simulation still being human still experience the very same problems described above. And these AI creators and maintainers would have to be sort of emotionless or otherwise be somehow programmed to not be like humans in order to avoid having their same problems themselves. Say for example they could be programmed to most enjoy building and maintaining simulations for humans and to all operate at precisely the same skill level. In any case I think it's likely to be a mess.

The last radical idea I can come up with is that we do some kind genetic ninjitsu to essentially make us all maximally skilled at absolutely everything or at least maximally skilled at one thing and then match our enjoyment up with that thing. I'm pretty sure that's impossible but even if it were it would raise pretty deep and profound moral questions and questions of about identity and soul. I suspect people would reject even voluntary and free manipulations of our genome like that. 

The categories I think are these:

A. Conscientious Actives

B. Conscientious Neutrals

C. Conscience Losts

D. Ass holes

I'm not the best with naming things.  But let me explain.

The largest group by far is those of us in Group B. This is the group of people who largely believe they are good people and are probably more or less correct about that. But their principle motivations are to keep themselves safe and the ones they love safe and seeking stability and happiness in their own lives. 

Group C is the next largest group. These are largely people who have to some degree or another given up on following the rules of basic Justice and morality. They aren't particularly evil people but they see for whatever reason a need to give up on ideals sometimes because they think that that is the only way to survive and find happiness. Other times they've become cynical and come to believe that everyone is a Category C or worse so they think they might as well be.  

Group A's are those who are trying to fix things that they perceive as moral wrongs. They are trying to solve the problems of the world. They are trying to help people. They haven't given up on their ideals. Or they developed a degree of rage and anger at injustice to the extent that they feel they can't help but do something. But Group A's still have rules. They still have consciences and there are some things that they will not do even in the pursuit of their ideals.

Group D's are well ass holes. They have no boundaries. Sometimes it's because they think like life is a game where nothing else is real and they are just trying to win. Sometimes they are people that perhaps simply don't have a sense of right and wrong or empathy that most other people have. And other times they are people who believe in something so strongly that they feel that there is nothing more important than that thing.

Actually come to think about it, this isn't a linear list, it's a circle like this: 

A < ---- > B 

^             ^

|             |

v            v

D < ---- >  C

    Moving from Group A to Group B usually involves being tired and deciding that you just want your life, often finding out that you have too much to lose by fighting the good fight or finding out that the good fight is just too damn hard. Sometimes it's because you just become disappointed in other people or despairing of ever seeing any real change. Sometimes it's because you're having a hard time supporting yourself and you just feel you need to focus on yourself for a while get your own house in order before you try to save the world.

Moving from Group B to Group C is usually something having to do with a hardship so great it penetrates one's personal moral code. 

Moving from Group C to Group D is usually a more gradual process. The more you try do things beyond the scope of your moral code the easier it gets. 

Moving from Group D to Group C is usually a matter of expedience. One sometimes realizes that there is actual advantage in not being a total asshole all the time or one starts to develop some degree of consciousness of the experiencies of others. Sometimes people have no empathy because they haven't really come to understand who other people are and once they do they can't stay as douchey as they were before.

Moving from Group C to Group B is usually when you find a sense of shame in the moral code breaking things you've done and want to return to normalcy. Often you won't move all the way to Group A because you feel you don't deserve and are unqualified to fight for good things but you think you can maybe hang low and have a normal life.  

Moving from Group B to Group A usually entails getting just so very angry about some injustice that you can't take it anymore without acting. Or it could come just from feeling restless and wanting to do something. Sometimes it happens when you've just got nothing better to do and you care about things. 

And lastly,

Moving from Group A to Group D is perhaps the easiest transition of all. Once something matters so much to you that you need to do something about it, it's not hard to start to believe that it's so important that you need to do more to fix it and pretty soon you think that anything is justifiable to get the thign done.

Moving from Group D to Group A I think is the hardest least likely transition. You'd need to build boundaries four yourself even when you've been acting without them for, possibly a long time. That just doesn't happen that often and when it does it's almost indistinguishable from a self serving pretense of morality. Usually a Group D has burned all bridges and will not be welcomed happily into Group A whereas the reverse is easy. Group D's having in boundaries will take all the help that they can get.

I'm pretty sure younger people are the most likely to be an A or a D, older people most likely to be a B or a C.  B's and C's are more risk averse. A's and D's are more risk taking.  I believe that most people are naturally B's and it takes shocks to move them out of the B equilibrium.

Societal oppression and propaganda are techniques to preserve the equilibrium so it's trying to keep people in B's. The more oppressive the society the fewer A's there are likely to be, the more B's. Corruption is when a society provides benefits for breaking one's moral code. The more corrupt the society the more C's and D's there are likely to be.  I think our current society in the United States is somewhat oppressive and VERY corrupt so we have way more C's and D's then we ought to have and most other people are B's with not nearly so many A's as we might normally have. A well functioning democracy depends on having a largely than average number of A's in the population and that's why it is so difficult to have and maintain.

I'm about half way through what I am deeming my year of comic books, mostly DC, mostly Batman.  Why am I doing this? Well why not? I've got time and the library has a truly awesome collection. Why DC and Batman? Well because I, like 99.9% of the planet,  love Batman and want to be a greater expert in Batman lore. And to do that I feel I need a better understanding of the DC universe and comics in general.  In future years maybe I'll read a bunch of comics from another part of the Comic Book universe and label it a different year of Comics but for now it's Mostly DC, Mostly Batman.

So far I've read a ton, inflating my good reads count of books a lot. I'm mostly planning on trying to get through all of the comic books in several online lists of the top 25 Batman comic of all time and also some of the related Batman comics and other comics that I stumble across that look interesting. I also wanted to read ones that were particularly connected in theme to the movies and video games so I could understand them better and I wanted to read a lot of modern current (or as close as our library gets to current) New 52 Batman so I know what's happening with the character now.

I'm also reading some of the major DC arcs like Blackest Night and the original 52, plus as much of the recent New 52 stuff the library has so I can feel up to date on the modern incarnation of their universe.

Everything else I read is basically whatever I stumble upon. I've read some Ultimate Spiderman, both Miles Morales and Peter Parker, got some Constantine in, gonna read some X-Men.  I'm starting buying some comics from the local comic book shop too and those will come in next month, in particular the new Teen Titans and the New Suicide Squad and Grayson and something else I can't remember.

I've been to two comic book related cons this year for the first time too. One was a disaster and the other was great.

So far my main take away from reading comics is that one has to learn to be ok with not knowing everything that is going on. These Universes are so large and interconnected and so based on so much history that only comic book afficionados will understand that if not fully knowing what's happening really bothers you, you won't be able to read much without going crazy.