Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else.

I'm much happier being completely unaware of whatever may be happening with the world.

I think quite the opposite — Geopolitics is impacted all the time by your actions. What you buy, what you say on forums like HN (where potentially tens of thousands read your comment), how you educate your kids, how many kids you have, how you influence co-workers.

The reality, is the world is smaller than you think. What’s the phrase, “everyone with 6 connections away from anyone else”. If you can have a major or even minor impact in your local region of the graph, it’ll expand outward.

I’m a cynical person by nature; but my cynicism comes from the lack of action / belief in action around me. You and everyone you know can really change the world in some way, if you push out your ideas and product(s) (like you are here btw, I’m not trying to claim you don’t)

That said, I always focus locally to build the community I want to see. It influences geopolitics, but that starts at the coffee shop, book store, school, home, etc.

Sorry for the short reply, I don’t mean to be dismissive; I hope that this makes sense.

Ironically:

>> I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else.

You'll make a bigger impact on geopolitics by doing this than ten people who incessantly post on social media about Ukraine, #MeToo, and spy balloons ever will.

— Daddy, which camp they are taking us to? — I don't know, son, I am not interested in politics.

America is the most powerful civilisation in the history of humanity. In almost every election, nonvoters could swing the outcome. On almost every issue, practically nobody reaches out to their representatives.

Participation is hard. Many of us have more important matters to tend to. That’s fine. But don’t characterise participation as sour grapes.

Also for most Congressional and state elections, as well as referenda.

Every year more of my friends and family abstain from voting.

The system is broken, many choose not to play a fixed game.

Voter participation has almost monotonically increased over our country’s history [1], and presently stands near a historic high [2].

> many choose not to play a fixed game

The fix is how many believe this.

Which is fine. I don’t think everyone must vote, and if someone doesn’t even understand the system, I struggle to see how their vote adds information. That doesn’t change that shockingly trivial organization and deliberateness can yield results.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_Stat...

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2022:_Analysis_of_...

This is an insidious assertion, that is more about population increase than suffrage. Participation is always measured as a % by whomever is eligible, regardless of the political characterization of eligibility. The suffrage element incidental, rather than causal.

Populations have increased to historic highs, so "near historic high" participation is not interesting or relevant. As populations increase, the number of elections increase due to simple population bifurcation. eg City population grows, city splits in City and City-West and despite sharing utilities and proximity, there are now a bunch of new positions to elect for. Same thing happens when counties incorporate into formal cities due to growth. This has also added to "participation".

To limit the discussion from some of these factors, we can look solely at federal elections. That first wiki link displays incorrect totals, which can be verified multiple ways. ie Other wiki citations, the second link, etc

The increase of the total is not sloped upward, by % of the population. It's been roughly 50% with a variation of 10% regularly in the US, for all recorded data afaik.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elect...

Edit: Had to edit as some of the language was inappropriate and overly broad, which did not add to the conversation.

Huh, someone should fix that. Do you have a good source?

That said, I was observing over long timelines. Decade over decade, participation goes up.

> second assertion (near a historic high) can be attributed to population increase

That increases the denominator. Participation is measured as a fraction. We’re about flat for the last two decades on the tail of broad increases.

Then don’t. Vote the primaries, specials, referenda and local elections held, deliberately, on a random Tuesday in May.

Just remember, there are those for whom this is an explicit strategy. When less people vote, they are advantaged, so they try to make you cynical, hoping you won't vote.

If you think about it, this is actually one of the few strategies that can work for a small minority to maintain power over greater numbers against their own interest. It's hard to get you to actively vote against your own interest. So the next best thing is to convince you not to vote at all - so then they still have a chance with their smaller numbers.

Management has a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of inevitability.

Shareholders have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of powerlessness.

It works in both parties’ interest, in a way, but only shareholders complain.

How can every supposedly independent CB pursue the exact same goal if they are not under the direction of one nexus?

Elections indeed swing, but do the outcomes matter if the key national politicians are operating under duress? Food for thought.

Today's story is just another day of, "Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania."

Explain, for example, how both the Fed and ECB implemented Basel III. Why do these two "independent" organizations adhere so closely to the policy recommendations of some unelected NGO?

Who do you think is on the committee that writes the Basel Accords [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Committee_on_Banking_Sup...

I'll give you a big hint, both the first and second presidents of the ECB previously were part of the same small and obscure NGO concerned with the history of banking.

You’re describing the leaders of the G-10, their central banks’ governors and the world’s most powerful legislatures, who pass the Basel Accords into law, as “stuffy bureaucrats.”

If you’re looking for conspiracy theories, the FOMC is far less elected, and arguably far more powerful, than the committees passing non-binding regulations on capital requirements and leverage limits.

You only need a few first principles to see absolutely everything, like seeing the matrix code: 1) The world society is entirely made up of individual people, 8B pairs of feet on the ground. Abstractions like 'the government' or "China" are red herrings. 2) Power is relational. Vito tells Tom what to do, and it behooves Tom to carefully follow orders. 3) There are no regulations and human laws in the state of nature, only in the social reality. You alone on Mars would be free to do whatever you wanted, but here on Earth you must file with the IRS, or else.

They don’t. There is correlation because of interdependence; lowering rates when everyone is raising will trash your currency and juice inflation.

the handful of times i’ve been impassioned enough to write or call my rep, i’ve felt ashamed for doing so.

polling and voting is the only system we have deployed that lets near every individual exercise equal influence. to call my rep, and participate in this side channel that’s used by only 1/1000th the population — and far from a uniform sampling of it — is to demonstrate that i don’t value the egalitarian ideals that my nation and most of its citizens espouse: that i think my opinion actually is more important/valid than the other 99.9% of ordinary voters.

i don’t know how you reconcile this. i can see how sharing “unopinionated” factual information — if such a thing can really exist — with your rep could be generally good, but calling to share my opinion seems a blatant contradiction: curious if anyone has an explanation for it that doesn’t feel so icky.

No less than voting when not everyone votes.

More pointedly, not everyone is equally knowledgeable on every issue. And not every issue can be brought to a vote.

? it absolutely is less so. roughly 1/2 of eligible citizens vote; the proportion that call their reps is 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of […]. however you chop it, it’s significantly less.

i can’t but read you as saying that any system that fails to achieve 100% representation is equally flawed: that a system where only 1 person votes is “no less [egalitarian]” than a system where all-but-1 vote. you can’t honestly believe that.

Some places have a culture of civic service. Many do not. I’ve canvassed for New York City elections with single-digit turnout; the last primary barely scratched double digits [1]. Would you castigate those who exercised their right to vote? Of course not.

More pointedly: democracy doesn’t work with disengaged citizens. This is true for pure democracies; moreso for republics. Shame for civic participation is the opposite of responsible citizenship. If there are folks who lack access, help them. It takes a perverted reading of the history of democracy, of its formation and failures, to conclude engaging one’s representatives is anything but good.

[1] https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/8/24/23320921/turnout-new-york-...

But being completely apathetic about politics is a bit like not getting vaccinated for measles. It might work out ok for you, but it gets really dangerous when a majority of the population has that mindset.

It’ll be months before I feel normal around the populace again.

This seems like a tough mindset to find yourself in, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.

You don’t really need to be that plugged in. The people commenting on every issue aren’t really helping anything.

Ultimately, the only interesting conversation I got from it was why it might be hard to shoot down:

A standard 50cal as used circa WW2 to shoot down balloons would be sufficient but too short ranged

A fighter jet with an 20mm autocannon would easily deal with it but they also shoot 2000+ rounds a minute which would result in tons of dangerous rounds going right through then possibly hitting the ground near civillians.

Modern autocannon bullets that will safely auto-destruct in the air but there wasn't an US airforce craft that had them available.

etc, etc, etc.

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632

So even totally wasteful stories can generate interesting thought experiments. Even when the total sum of human attention is a million times out of whack of the IRL value of caring in the first place.

I agree, replace the time wasted on feeding various outrage machines with building.

It's a serious warning that the U.S. is dangerously behind China when it comes to balloon technology. Note also, balloons are one way of colonizing Venus (floating high in the atmosphere without having to approach the dangerously hot surface).

Clearly we need a Venus Balloon Program to show who's the technological leader on this planet, just like with the Apollo Mission. Mars is for wimps, real explorers go to Venus! Now's let's put $50 billion into it. The prototype is already here (2022):

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpls-venus-aerial-robotic-ball...

[edit: to be clear I am absolutely not joking. Spending huge sums of money on space exploration is a much better use of government funds than getting involved in ground wars in Asia]

You just ruined Venus for me. Thanks.

Not being a leader in this tech is not a bad thing IMO. And earth balloons don't translate to venusian ones.

Ps would you really be happy living in zeppelin city knowing a leak would drop you into acid inferno?

What if you are able to save tens of thousands of human lives by getting involved in that ground war?

Mr. President, we must not allow a balloon gap!

*gentlemen! You can’t fight here! This is the war room!

IMO the news is little more than a sales pitch for antidepressants, life insurance and "retail therapy".

Might be time to talk to a therapist about it.

News is often intentionally devicive, misleading, and salacious for a reason. Being affected by propaganda does not come anywhere near a need for therapy. In fact I'd say it is a sign someone has critical thinking and a likely a fair base of information. In the face of the facade of trust clearly lying or engaging in rhetoric, hyperbole, or passive language, the only rational response os to be bothered by it. The contrary runs the risk of being manipulated by whomever for whatever reason. I've switched to a nonpartisian news source and its had a simialar benefit for me.

If someone struggles to apply that to the consumption of news media, I worry about their ability to apply this skill to events in life that are much more impactful, like a speeding ticket or the loss of a job.

If, for example, I took the three hours a week I dedicate to news consumption and gave that time to my wife, and if I have fewer worries and distractions, of course I would be more pleasant to be around. You give some more of your time and attention and they'll think you're more pleasant too.

No need to call names or be rude, maybe your media consumption is detrimental to your wellbeing :)

The fact that you believe I’ve called anyone a name or insulted anyone by saying that is a good example of what I’m talking about, as I did no such thing.

Even in this convo you’re struggling to not get emotional; that’s not great! You don’t have to live like that. Don’t avoid therapy to spite a random person on the Internet… at least consider it.