Comment by nimbius

Comment by nimbius a day ago

13 replies

Chinese scientists under the steadfast leadership of the communist party of China will gladly undertake this important scientific research.

rbanffy a day ago

There is a point to be made in favor of political stability.

One of the great things in Ireland is the list-based voting that punishes extreme viewpoints and policies. OTOH, sometimes we need politicians willing to make unpopular choices, and our system makes that more difficult.

China, IIRC, has a different concept, one where a person can't be a candidate to a position more than one level higher than the highest one they were previously elected for. This prevents anomalies like Trump, and seems to be a very sensible approach (if coupled with a couple extra freedoms and multiple parties).

  • wkat4242 a day ago

    Xi Jinping has removed many of those protections though like the maximum term count so he could stay in power.

    And Ireland politics got me pretty sad. It just seems to pingpong between two equally inept parties (fianna fail and fine gael) and nothing new ever happens. They just keep piling problem on problem without ever solving anything. I remember there being a lot of fuss about patients in hallways during mary harney's reign in the mid '00s and I don't think that was ever solved. Last time I ended up in hospital there I ended up in exactly that situation. The post-2007 housing crisis is another one. Does anyone actually expect that to be ever solved? And the strange thing is, this country has no shortage of land whatsoever.

    What happens is that one party blames their predecessor and wins the election and then next term things switch back again through exactly the same mechanism.

    I think something more left like sinn fein would be good for the country but they have too much image baggage due to their past. And labour seems to really just sit at the sidelines forever.

    • TechDebtDevin 8 hours ago

      >What happens is that one party blames their predecessor and wins the election and then next term things switch back again through exactly the same mechanism.

      This is literally the United States for the last half century.

  • jimbob45 a day ago

    So you have to work your way up from the bottom? Surely there’s a mathematical impossibility to get to the presidency here unless you’re making astronomical progress year over year?

    • ceejayoz 13 hours ago

      There aren't that many (11) levels.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_of_the_People%27...

      Functionally, the US mostly works the same way - people start in small local roles and move to county, state, and national levels over time. It's just not enforced as a hard rule, just a practical thing.

      • jimbob45 10 hours ago

        That makes more sense then. The US probably has around that number too and you’re right that we do mostly work up from the bottom. The most common method of avoiding the ladder is through military service but that’s basically a parallel ladder requiring very similar work.

        • ceejayoz 9 hours ago

          Yeah. If you're a somewhat senior officer in the military, you know how to do things like budget, manage, lead, etc. that all come in handy running an organization like a campaign or Congressional office.

  • colechristensen a day ago

    The unpopular choices that need to be made in America are the centrist ones.

    One of them being "whether it's left- or right-aligned, let's not engage in your social agenda on the federal level for a while"

    >where a person can't be a candidate to a position more than one level higher than the highest one they were previously elected for

    For much of the time in the Roman Republic they also had this

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum

ajuc 21 hours ago

The only 2 countries on Earth - USA and China.

You don't have to choose between oligarchy and communism. There's normal countries out there.