ktalm
I'm of the opinion that high voter participation is critically important because if you're not voting, you're not being represented, and if you're not being represented, those who are will benefit (likely) at your expense. In the U.S. however, people are understandably unenthusiastic about voting, because it almost doesn't matter.
Imagine what would have happened in 2016 if we had ranked choice voting and Bernie ran as an independent. Many on the left would have been energized to actually vote because they could vote for the candidate they actually wanted (Bernie), but would have been able to say "well if Bernie doesn't win, I guess Hillary is better than Trump". Bernie wouldn't have won, but neither would Trump. More importantly, though, those that supported Bernie would have been represented. You could point to the actual election results and see that X% of voters supported Bernie's ideas above the other candidates'.
The problem with the U.S. is that we don't get to vote for the best candidate, we get to vote for the least worst.
And don't get me started on the over-representation of low population states in the senate and electoral college.
The goal of technology is to make our lives better and easier. What's the endpoint of that? What's the goal? I'd imagine it's something like sitting on our asses all day doing whatever we actually want to do while robots tend to our needs.
The issue is, though, that so much of who we are and how we're seen in society is tied to our job - especially in the US. Those who don't have a job (often because they can't find one) are dismissed as 'lazy' or 'moochers'.
But what happens when there are actually significantly fewer jobs that need to be done than people to do them? What if we only need the engineers, scientists and mechanics to keep our robot slaves up and running, while everyone else can just reap the benefits?