
March 13th of this year is when I first heard about it:
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,
Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat.
March 13th of this year is when I first heard about it:
Of course it’s not a good reason, but it’s also not the main complaint. That’s a disingenuous argument.
The problem is that the locations that offer IDs become political footballs.
Imagine that you change the law to require a certain type of ID in order to vote (even though you already have a social security card, it doesn’t count for voting purposes), and that said ID cannot be acquired via mail.
Imagine, then, that the place you go to get the necessary ID is closed down, or intentionally understaffed via defunding/budget cuts. Hours reduced to 10am-4pm Monday through Friday, perhaps, when most people work. The next nearest location may be hours away. It may not be accessible via public transit. It then becomes incredibly burdensome for someone with limited time, transportation, or income to get the necessary ID. Now you’re able to control access to the IDs in lower income areas by shuttering or defunding locations.
This isn’t just a theoretical situation. This occurs.
Now, I think you’ll find that most people are onboard with requiring ID to vote, provided that the barriers to getting the ID do not have a chilling effect on low-income voters.
But that’s not the way things tend to go.
Present a plan that expands access to the ID printing services and watch the resistance to these sorts of policies disappear. Or better yet, mail one to every eligible taxpayer the first time they file a tax return. It’s not particularly difficult.
Cooperation and sharing are just as much “human nature” as selfishness. We contain lots of “natural” impulses, but people will prioritize and grow into those impulses which society most rewards.
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state.
(…)
Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before. In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for.
There’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that wealth, power, and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
When you don’t need to cooperate with other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.
Humans have a strong need for egalitarianism; without it our brains malfunction and turn us into the worst versions of ourselves.
Some sources:
Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
Hoarding Disorder: It’s More Than Just an Obsession - Implications for Financial Therapists and Planners
On the evolution of hoarding, risk-taking, and wealth distribution in nonhuman and human populations
From the APA’s “Journal of Experimental Psychology”:
“Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs” (2019)
(Abstract) or (Full Text PDF)
Further reading on this subject:
“How resource sharing resists scarcity: the role of cognitive empathy and its neurobiological mechanisms” (2022)
“Empathy moderates the relationship between cognitive load and prosocial behaviour” (2023)
“Cognitive load and moral decision-making in moral dilemmas under virtual reality: the role of empathy for pain” (2025)
(Abstract)
“The Influence of Cognitive Load on Empathy and Intention in Response to Infant Crying” (2016)
At first glance, from the thumbnail… I thought it was Christine Weston Chandler.
What a twist that would have been.
You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!
I should have been more precise.
Absolutely! Thankfully. Just tipping their hand with regards to the ridiculous bullshit they’ll try use to prevent a Trump vs Obama situation.
Unfortunately, the legislative policy that’s being floated in the House is that a president can seek a third term only if their first two terms were non-consecutive. (Source)
The whole thing is worth watching, but here’s some timestamped links to a couple of parts of the presser where he discusses this:
There’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that power and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:
Have reduced empathy and compassion.
Have a diminished ability to see from someone else’s perspective.
Are more impulsive.
Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.
When you don’t need other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.
Some sources:
Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years
Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention
The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement
Give it another 60 or so years. It took the US Justice Department over 100 years to “Review and Evaluate” the Tulsa massacre.
Seems a bit reductionist.
If the only two people running are Mr. Magoo and Adolf Hitler, and a voter thinks it’s acceptable to let Hitler win, that voter is a fascist or a fascist enabler. End of. And that is not some minor thing, some little oopsie, but a major problem.
What if they’d been subjected to a “Fascist propaganda” campaign, as you called it?
Left and Right wing liberals, it would seem… if 2020 was any indication.
Yeah, politicians have been manipulating rubes forever. Nothing new.