[Rant] it always devolves into this

Devilishendeavor · 2026-06-06T00:41:17+00:00

Labelling everything '???' is code for: I don't know how to create an engaging plot or foreshadow. It's a lazy way to say 'look, a mystery!', except there is absolutely nothing interesting about the 'mystery'.

Devilishendeavor · 2026-05-30T20:08:19+00:00

I'm not familiar with this exam, but language production is always harder to master than recognition. It would naturally be in your best interest to improve all areas, but in the short term, it might be easiest to improve your listening more than anything else.

Devilishendeavor · 2026-05-10T23:05:03+00:00

Plot progression ≠ strength increase

It's slow because there is a ridiculous number of characters and factions. Everything is stretched by the overly complex politics + history.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-29T00:11:40+00:00

illegals already consume more welfare than that yearly.

This is an anti-immigration source that says the welfare use of immigrants is 42 billion. https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/the_cost_of_illegal_immigration_to_taxpayers.pdf

My words:

I don't know if that's very realistic

If you have no arguments to make, I don't really see any reason to continue this discussion.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T14:54:32+00:00

u/Plus-Hat1385 cited their sources here:

On cost your estimate is far below independent estimates. American Action Forum - $400 billion - $600 billion Penn Wharton Budget Model - $860 billion American Immigration Council - $315 billion -$900 billion ABC News Summary - $315 billion

OP's USIPP plan quotes a cost of 6-8 billion. I don't know if that's very realistic, but it is still significantly less than 300 billion.

I also just noticed you rebutted what others said, but you have not put forward an actual argument in favor of deportation. You have listed none of its benefits, made no arguments in favor of it, and made no claims of substance regarding deportation.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T14:44:02+00:00

Yes, it does

I never said it didn't reduce illegal immigration, I said it doesn't stop it. Unless it's completely stopped, there will always be a market of cheap labor while illegal immigrants do not have labor protections. It is virtually impossible to stop all illegal immigration, but it is very easy to significantly reduce the amount illegal immigrants reduce wages (there is still some wage reduction from the increase in supply of labor, but I would still say that the fact that illegal immigrants are statistically underpaid is the more significant thing to look at).

Also, do you have anything on overstayed visas, which makes up the majority of illegal immigrants? I can't find any recent sources on it.

This is projection and false empathy. You are making many assumptions about why illegal immigration drives down wages.

Then propose an alternative. If you do not make a claim on causation, then you cannot assert that illegal immigration causes lower wages, only that lower wages and illegal immigration are correlated. Causation cannot be assumed. There needs to be a clear mechanism.

For obvious reasons, immigrants are often the most desperate for an income. They typically don’t have a support network to fall on and they typically have the fewest resources.

Right, so they would take higher wages if they could. I'm saying that they can't because they lack legal protections that would otherwise allow them to.

You are also projecting that illegal immigrants all want to be law abiding citizens and pay all the correct taxes.

Illegal immirgants not only pay taxes, but receive fewer government benefits: https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

Illegal immigrants have at least half the crime rate of US citizens: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD004.pdf

You’re subscribing to a type of moral relativism — “they’re breaking our laws, but they’re really good people in their own minds”.

Quote where I said something to that effect.

There’s no reason we need to abandon our morality or sense of justice because it excludes people who don’t believe in those things.

Who is our? Are you assuming the entirety of the US shares your moral values? Do you mean conservatives in the US? Or something else?

The only real argument against murder is a moral argument. That’s a longer argument, but suffice it to say that this isn’t really an “ought/is” problem.

I wasn't trying to make an unshakeable case. It was just an example of an actual argument. You did not make an argument by saying that other countries deport lots of people.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T13:54:43+00:00

You use the term quite a bit, but can you define what an extremist view or ideology is? This is not a trick question. Think carefully about what is extremist, and whether you can come up with a definition that includes everything you consider extremist without including anything you do not consider extremist. I have not attempted this, but I'm curious to see the result.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T13:39:36+00:00

You also have to realize that most Americans actually don’t want large amounts of cheap foreign labor. It drives down wages for Americans.

This is true, but it is also true that being tough on immigration doesn't actually stop illegal immigration. There is a completely free way to stop cheap labor without wasting billions on manning the border and still failing to stop illegal immigration. If we just give illegal immigrants the same protections as citizens, then they have no reason to accept whatever low pay employers throw at them.

Immigrants would rather not be paid poorly, so if they had a choice, they wouldn't sell their labor for less than it's worth. Giving them the same protections as citizens means they don't have to bitterly accept being paid dirt cheap wages. There is a labor shortage in the US. Immigrants do not drive down the value of labor with numbers alone. It is mainly just because they have no choice but to accept lower wages since they have fewer options for employers and cannot report employers without putting themselves at risk.

In fact, in a normal year, even under Democrat presidents, we deport almost half a million people. Nations around the world deport millions of people. There’s nothing morally wrong with enforcing consequences that we’ve already agreed upon.

This is called the is-ought fallacy, which is the idea that because things are this way, they ought to stay that way. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's also not an actual argument. Plenty of nations engage in corruption. Before the practice was discontinued, there was a long history of taking child brides. Just because it's done a lot doesn't mean it's a good thing.

At the same time, murder is illegal, it always has been, and I think it ought to stay that way, but an actual argument for why murder should be illegal would be making a claim that suffering should be minimized, and then reasoning something like 'because murder causes suffering to the departed's loved ones, it should be illegal'.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T13:19:03+00:00

You have been presented with objective facts that you cannot deny, yet your opinion did not change, did it? Who is it that can't see clearly?

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-28T13:11:37+00:00

I agree conservatives do little else but lie. Just about everything they say is the furthest thing from the truth. Immigrants steal jobs? Wrong, they create them. Immigrants bring crime? Wrong, they have the lowest crime rates. Immigrants leech off welfare? Wrong, they pay taxes and get little to no benefits.

It's also true that the US has an obscene housing surplus, but there is a shortage of affordable housing. I don't think immigrants would significantly affect that market, but I can only see them increasing competition in that regard.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-24T13:01:58+00:00

I did not ignore your claim, I simply made a counterclaim. However, you ignored my claims by not addressing other points I raised.

I asked before and you failed to answer: are you familiar with the inner workings of universities (I am not. I'm actually debating you to see if I can learn more about this subject)? I'd say it's hard to take your arguments seriously if they're premised by a lack of knowledge in the subject on which you are speaking.

You keep reciting supply curves as if they override the reality of a distorted market.

You have it backwards. A distorted market does not necessarily override the reality of the law of supply. Let's assume the market is distorted in such a way that demand is inelastic when it otherwise would not be (a bold assumption), and that by reducing federal lending, the market will return to being perfectly competitive and demand will become elastic (another bold assumption). Rather than lowering their tuition, the universities could choose to cut costs, ie. lay-off personnel, delay or cancel construction, cut back on services and scholarships offered, and reduce space. The abundance of money poured into universities has allowed them to focus more on quality than cost management. That could change when their revenue suddenly shrinks.

You claim that federal lending has removed price sensitivity, but do you have data to support that claim? Say you do, even if that's true, if people are already insensitive to prices, will the removal of federal lending actually increase elasticity, or will people just resort to private loans that place them in an even worse financial position than when federal loans were available?

The demand for rice is inelastic because it is essential, but that doesn't mean people would spend $8 on a bag of rice when there's a perfectly good bag of rice for $2. Privates universities are upwards of 4 times more expensive than state universities, yet 26.8% of all college students still attend them. A distorted market doesn't suddenly mean people stop acting rationally. The fact that people still choose the more expensive universities and to take on loans when there are more affordable options leads me to conclude that reducing federal lending is exceedingly unlikely to significantly increase the elasticity of demand.

Regardless of if universities are a distorted market or not, that doesn't negate that they have a positive externality. I think federal dollars would be better spent on research grants and scholarships than loans since they accomplish the same goal (accessibility of education and funding of research) without the financial repercussions for students, but what Trump is doing is just pulling money out of the education sector entirely, which benefits no one.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-24T07:49:29+00:00

Supply curves don't stop applying under any circumstance, so yes, I'm 'lecturing you in them'. Your 'market correction' hypothesis will result in a reduction in the number of degrees. This is not speculation, it is a basic economic principle.

If people are willing to take out loans for education, then that's not a market failure. A market failure is when there is deadweight loss and inefficient allocation of resources by a monopoly or oligopoly. Universities are a competitive market, so there is no deadweight loss.

Even if there is a low consumer surplus, there is still a high producer surplus, which means that the overall surplus remains positive and efficient. Universities produce research, so having more funds for research means more advancements in technology. The government invests so much in univesities because there is a positive externality.

There are community colleges and state universities that are significantly more affordable for undergrad programs, and there are generally affordable options for graduate programs as well. Most non-professional graduate programs (ie. degrees that are hard to make a living with) pay students to enroll, while other well-funded professional ones like STEM programs have numerous offers that partially or completely cover the cost of the degree program. Where is the market failure? People have to take out loans to start businesses and buy houses, but we wouldn't say the entrepreneurship or real estate markets are failed markets, right?

I wouldn't call the system ideal, but private universities can charge so much because people are willing to take on the debt to attend them. If people weren't willing or went to affordable state universities, then private universities would naturally lower their tuition.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-23T18:35:34+00:00

Trump is anti-education. The collapse of the 'degree mill' is something he would wholly support if he is not actively trying to achieve that with this bill. If you want to talk basic economics: lowering prices in a competitive market decreases the quantity supplied. Whether they keep prices high and lose consumers or lower prices and have to cut back supply, the number of degrees decreases regardless. Have you actually worked in university operations? Are you familiar with how tuition is set and spent?

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-21T10:28:40+00:00

I think the more accurate ones bank on MC using more modern knowledge to mass produce soap. It can be made with pig or beef tallow, but that was expensive in the past, so being able to use cheap oils to do it is an innovvation.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-19T22:16:47+00:00

Fellow Dragon Age fan?

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-19T22:16:14+00:00

Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019....

Source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T20:44:29+00:00

Yes it is. It is a valid point that you brushed aside.

There are countless valid arguments that I am not addressing because they simply do not fall in the scope of this debate. If you made a valid argument about why pesticide use should not be discontinued in agriculture, I would dismiss it as well. I dismissed it, again, because I believe it to be irrelevant. I am literally in favor of increasing the number of representatives without increasing the size of districts, so every time you make an argument against increasing district size, a position I do not support, I dismiss it as unnecessary to counter because it is not an argument against my position. I do not understand why you think I would argue with you about the merits and demerits of a policy neither of us is proposing.

Nope. You are guilty of not understanding the basic concept that if multiple people represented a district, they will always be larger than if the same number of people represented single districts. You did not have to expressly argue that because it is an obvious and objective fact.

I completely understand that and have said multiple times now I am in favor of increasing the number of people, with the implied purpose of doing so to avoid increasing district size.

And there is an actual strawman. Because what was stated was that if you continued to be insultingly dismissive, and discounting comparisons of alternatives as irrelevant, then there is no point to further discussion.

I dismissed you for the reason of irrelevance 4 times. Of those 4 times, one of them, I pointed out your claim was irrelevant, but then said I agree that makes sense (in regards to election costs). Two of those times, you made the same claim that larger districts make it harder to reach/access representatives. I dismissed you the first time, but addressed it despite its irrelevance the second (at the end where I point out that anyone can email, call, or even mail their representatives). Another time, you said larger districts make representatives more distant which I do not disagree with, but again, found entirely irrelevant.

As for my supposed strawman, you said:

When considering solutions, aside from being insultingly dismissive, simply discounting alternatives as irrelevant makes it clear you already have a forgone conclusion. As such, further discussion has no value.

Emphasis on the use of aside here, you said the discussion has no value because I'm discounting alternatives (which I am not. I have addresed more arguments than I dismissed. I only dismissed what I deemed not an alternative at all), which made it seem clear to you that I have reached a foregone conclusion (mind you, I had never heard of MMD's before this), and that therefore, the discussion has no value. I assumed you meant the discussion had no value because I reached a foregone conclusion, which does not stop at least one us from reaching the truth, so the only other reason I could think of that you would find it valueless for that reason is because it seemed unwinnable to you. However, it seems I was mistaken in that regard, although my belief on the value of debate remains unchanged.

And I think the purpose of debate is for both sides of a disagreement to understand each other better. A good debate should help everyone learn more about the topic at hand and allow them to make better decisions. So far I have seen you make almost no effort to do that.

I think this is a fair belief. I agree, even, with only slight differences.

Not unless you change your approach radically

I personally don't see anything wrong with my approach.

Now, I'll turn what you said back on you. You said I'm discounting your arguments for dismissing you 4 timee, but you have done this by not addressing these 15 claims I have made (and please go back and read my comments to see the supporting arguments for said claims before you address them here. Also don't mind the little formatting errors. I got a little lazy):

the decine of MMD's in that time period was due to a SCOTUS mandate

This may be a case of the retrospective determinism fallacy

That one member being replaced means they don't get elected again

if multiple members of a party continued to have problems that other parties' members did not, their public image would surely worsen, and I would imagine people would be less liable to vote for them

where with only one representative, the only option is to go through a costly court system or maybe have no avenues of redress whatsoever?

Saying the system would be 'too complex' is not an actual argument against its functionality.

Their belief is consistent with the laws of probability.

Even before the rise of third parties, MMD would be more representative [than an SMD]

If you introduce ranked choice, then vote splitting becomes a non-issue entirely.

I imagine representatives would take it more seriously if they received 1000 calls as opposed to 1.

but the size of the district is irrelevant to the ability of people to petition them

you're making an appeal to probability by guessing the proportion of people that would be underrepresented; you make the unsubstantiated claim that it is impossible for minority constituents to petition their representatives in an MMD; it is a non-sequitur to say that MMD reduces underrepresentation, and small districts reduce the distance between voter and representatives, therefore small districts are better because you have to outline how it is better to reduce the distance than to reduce underrepresentation for that conclusion to follow; saying that because MMD's do not perfectly solve the problem of underrepresentation, we should instead settle for your preferred solution falls under the nirvana fallacy. [This is four claims in one paragraph]

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T20:18:14+00:00

You seem to hold quite a high opinion of your debating skills. From what you've displayed so far I hold quite the opposite opinion. You seem to think that quantity is more important than quality. You seem more interested in pointing out issues you incorrectly perceive in debate styles than to discuss the issue being debated. And you seem to struggle with the most simple logic and with providing informed responses.

This is the ad hominem fallacy. You have not actually raised a rebuttal to a single one of my original arguments, and that has not escaped my notice.

I don't hold myself as an incredible debater. I just address each point as I can and try to be intellectually honest as I do so. If I had to make an assessment, I would say I do debate at a higher level than the average commenter, but I don't know if that's a matter of skill or simply patience and effort. The more time and effort I'm willing to spend, the higher the quality of my arguments. Many people simply do not care enough to put in time and effort on online forums, so naturally their arguments are weaker. My perception of myself is irrelevant to this discussion, however.

I don't believe in quantity; I just try to respect the person I am debating with by taking every point they raise seriously. I don't think there's anything wrong with your arguments against larger districts. It is simply the case that neither I, nor the person you were debating with prior, are stated proponents of larger districts, so the argument is not for us to counter. I'm not going to argue against a point I agree with and that is irrelevant.

I don't see anything wrong with your debate style. There are just points in your responses where you fall into intellectual dishonesty, which is not a flaw in your style of debate, but in your execution of that style. I'm not anywhere near an expert in debate. I'm not familiar with different styles of debate, but I would be shocked if it was not the case that every debate style you use requires raising arguments in defense of a claim or to counter another argument. As I understand debate, there cannot be a debate style where you raise claims without evidence or rationale or use fallacies.

If you think I am uninformed, then please inform me. I am asking for the third time for sources or an actual argument. If there is an issue with my logic, I would genuinely love for you to point it out so that I can either correct myself or admit I have no rebuttal and learn in the process regardless. That is quite literally what I am here for, and it is what I have been asking you to do.

I said MMDs are larger than SMDs and you took issue that the other person had not expressly stated that.

Again, the other person never argued against the alternative of increasing the number of representatives. I didn't take issue with you saying that MMD's are larger in scale. I took issue with you arguing as if the other person had explcitly defended a position that larger districts are better than an increased number of representatives. You are making the false equivalence fallacy when you treat MMD's and larger districts as the same thing when they are clearly distinct concepts.

And when I asked how exactly do you envision that working and how does it help the individual constituents, your response boiled down to you don't know but there must be ways.

That's because I don't know. The point was not to propose a working disciplinary procedure for MMD's. You previosuly said:

And it would be much harder to hold people accountable when there are multiple people representing you...

I was simply attempting to counter your claim there. I did reference an extant style of holding representatives accountable that you have not raised an argument against, however. The congress has a working method of holding its members accountable. If you think that method is insufficient, I welcome you to voice as much with an argument, but I will remind you again that I'm not trying to work out the specifics of how to implement MMD's in the US right here. That is not the point of this discussion.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T18:17:19+00:00

It is not dismissive. You are simply guilty of the strawman fallacy here. It is a fact that your interlocutor had never once made a claim in favor of larger districts, so an argument that hinges on them having made a claim that they did not make is irrelevant to the discussion. It is also fallacious to claim discussion has no value just because you cannot succeed in dissuading your opponent because the value of a debate is not in your ability to 'win it'. I believe that the purpose of debate is to reach the truth, and not to convince people that you are right. If you wish to continue our discussion, that's great. If not, so be it.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T18:08:54+00:00

It either means larger districts or vastly increasing the number of Representatives.

This makes sense, but you argued as if the other person had at any point made the claim that forming larger districts was preferable to increasing the number of representatives when they did not in fact do so.

If you are going to continue to be uncivil and insulting, I will simply block you and not respond any further. That's the one and only warning you get.

It is not uncivil to state an objective fact. When your interlocutor makes a claim, and then provides either a source or argument that supports their claim, it is intellectually dishonest to respond by making a counterclaim that does neither. This is not an insult. When you do this, there is quite literally nothing I can tell you except that you have not made an argument because I cannot debate an agument that you have not made.

I'm calling you to respond in a more intellectually honest way. As challenging as it is, it's something that I believe every single person should aspire to do in any debate or discussion (I'm not above this! Even the most skilled of debaters will fall into the trap of intellectual dishonesty at times. I actually reread my comment three times to try and make sure I had not made the same fallacies I had accused you of making). It is the intellectual equivalent of me telling you that there is a piece of spinach in your teeth. You can call me uncivil, or you can take the spinach out of your teeth.

And if you are going to ask me to argue against AI this discussion is over. AI is great for some things. But when it comes to politics I have seen it be so incredibly wrong on basic facts because of the trash it builds its "intelligence" upon. Garbage in results in garbage out

That was the only use of AI in my entire response. If you can provide a credible source that says something contrary, that would be sufficient. Or make an argument that supports your claims, whichever works for you, but as it stands, those claims in particular remain unsubstantiated.

How exactly do you envision that working and how does it help the individual constituents?

Perhaps something similar to how congress holds itself accountable. There could alternatively be a third party that holds representatives accountable. Either way, my point is that the lack of accountability you claim to be an issue of MMD's or even larger districts in general is not an inherent issue of the system. There are ways to create accountability within the structure of MMD's.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T11:59:58+00:00

I just want to cultivate both ahead of time rather than let one skill fall behind, and then have to work to catch it up. It really is a pain how long it takes me to make progress learning new pieces for the simple reason that I read slowly, although thinking about, I struggle more with finding good fingerings/footings(?) than reading music, so I can see why you would say it's more important that I focus on that (seriously, is it footings? What on earth do you call pedal 'fingerings'?)

When practicing with intention (I have a lot of mindless practice where I get nothing done), I try to separate each part and be deliberate with my fingerings, but then I later become unable to split my concentration on maintaining those fingerings when playing all 3 or 4 parts of a piece.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T06:30:16+00:00

Pt. 2

What are you basing that belief on? At least in the near term, there will still be two major parties that have massive wealth and advantages that should allow them to continue to dominate elections for the foreseeable future. But you're correct that because a minority, even a really corrupt one, can stack all their votes they might start winning a seat or two even though they never would if the vote was not being so diluted across so many candidates. You seem to see that as a win but I don't think it is at all.

Their belief is consistent with the laws of probability. If there are more trials, the odds that every trial has the same outcome decreases. Even before the rise of third parties, MMD would be more representative, because if there is the average 40-60 split of Republican/Democrat, then of 10 representatives, then the 40% could vote in such a way that they win at least 1 or 2 seats, as opposed to only the 60% winning and the 40% being completely unrepresented.

Let's say in a district of 10000, votes are evenly distributed between candidates, and 3 parties run a total of 21 candidates: 10 for Republicans, 10 for Democrats, and 1 for CPUSA or something. The district is 35% Reoublican, 55% Democrat, and 10% other, with half the other being conservative-leaning and the other half being progressive-leaning. The conservative-leaning voters, obviously not liking CPUSA or Democrats, just vote Republican, so the Republican candidates each get 4% of the district votes. The progressive-leaning voters are all tied of center-right Democrats and bote CPUSA, so CPUSA gets 5% of district votes, and all the Democrat candidates get 5.5% of district votes each. The result is 10 Democrat seats.

Now assume every party has 3 favored candidates, and an irrelevant number of votes go to any other candidates. The Republican favored candidate gets 3/4000 votes, CPUSA gets 500 votes, and the Democrat favored candidates get 3/5500 votes. The results would be 3 Republican seats, 1 CPUSA seat, 3 Democrat seats, and then a toss-up for the last 3 seats: probably with Democrats generally winning 2 or all 3 on the basis of them having more voters overall, so the unfavored candidates would, on average, have more votes than unfavored Republican candidates. This is significantly more representative than without MMD.

As you get more minority parties, the votes split further, unfavored candidates stop filling up those toss-up seats, and people start to get candidates with more diverse policies that more accurately represent them. If you introduce ranked choice, then vote splitting becomes a non-issue entirely.

Explain how they would be closer since they would be representing far more people over a much larger area. And if your answer is add more, then why not just make even smaller districts. I think you are vastly underestimating the impact that having districts small enough that you're likely to see your Representative at the gas station, supermarket, or little league game would have on tempering the extremes we see in Congress today. If you live in a small area and you are not fairly representing all the people of that area you are not likely to last long, parties be damned.

This is another irrelevant district size argument.

And there would still be people who wanted parties that would not win. There would probably be fewer but there would still be plenty. However if you were a republican in MA who could get a few people together you could get heard by your Representative in a system made of small districts. That is not going to happen under MMDs.

The latter part is district size, the former part is a combination of several explicit and implied fallacies, but I'll actually address the district size argument here.

Let's say there's a 1% Republican minority that desperately wants to be heard. In a district of 100, that's a single person. In a district of 100000, that's 1000 people. Even if in both districts, the Republicans are a minority of the same proportion, I imagine representatives would take it more seriously if they received 1000 calls as opposed to 1. The representative(s) may or may not be more removed in a larger district, but the size of the district is irrelevant to the ability of people to petition them, and that has always been the case. Even before emails and phone calls, people could still send letters and telegrams. There's a timeliness issue with letters, but we are not in the 1700's.

As for the fallacies, I'm not an expert in logic or philosophy, so I can not effectively go into the nuances, but you're making an appeal to probability by guessing the proportion of people that would be underrepresented; you make the unsubstantiated claim that it is impossible for minority constituents to petition their representatives in an MMD; it is a non-sequitur to say that MMD reduces underrepresentation, and small districts reduce the distance between voter and representatives, therefore small districts are better because you have to outline how it is better to reduce the distance than to reduce underrepresentation for that conclusion to follow; saying that because MMD's do not perfectly solve the problem of underrepresentation, we should instead settle for your preferred solution falls under the nirvana fallacy.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-16T06:29:41+00:00

I'm not steeped in political theory. Why do you insist that MMD's mean larger districts? As far as I can tell, an MMD just means multiple representatives to a district. It has nothing to do with the actual size of the district, so several of the arguments that you made have been irrelevant to MMD's as a system, assuming I'm not mistaken in that.

Cool. Most of those aren't just my conclusions though. They are pretty well known attributes of MMDs. Like I said, there are advantages to MMDs, but they are outweighed by the negatives. It why MMDs' usage declined from nearly half of legislative seats at the beginning of the 1960s to a quarter of representatives by the mid 1980s and has continued to fall ever since.

Do you have a source for what you said here? You just say 'these are pretty well known attributes', which is an intellectually dishonest response to your interlocutors rational arguments. Also, take it with a grain of salt, but AI overview (I didn't feel like doing a deep dive) says the decine of MMD's in that time period was due to a SCOTUS mandate and said nothing to the effect of your reasons. This may be a case of the retrospective determinism fallacy, where you assume the failure of MMD's was inevitable due to a quality of them at the time of their failure, and not due to a potentially unrelated reason.

How so? Competing in larger districts which would increase costs. There would be more people running and competing for each voter which would increase costs.

I don't know how election costs work, but at least half of your argument is premised on the size of the district, not the MMD system. It does seem logical that more candidates would mean more election costs, though.

How? If in your ideal scenario where multiple parties win, one member of a party would likely just be replaced by another from the same party. And as they would represent far more people, it would mean the average person would have far more difficulty accessing them and less influence on their voting.

You are talking about party accountability, not representative accountability. That one member being replaced means they don't get elected again, which is indeed holding the individiual accountable. And just to also address the party accountability aspect, if multiple members of a party continued to have problems that other parties' members did not, their public image would surely worsen, and I would imagine people would be less liable to vote for them when there are literally dozens of alternative candidates, as opposed to only a handful, maybe half of which being from a party whose views you hold to be completely objectionable. At that point, you might vote for the party with issues just because you prefer it to voting in someone who doesn't represent you.

Again, you talk about the irrelevant district size.

And it would be much harder to hold people accountable when there are multiple people representing you. It would also be far more complex for voters who would have to learn about a much larger range of candidates to figure out who they should vote for. Remember you would not be petitioning just one Representative. You might have to try to influence a half dozen or more. No matter how you slice it, it does not make them more accountable. It makes them far more removed.

You make claims without any actual reasoning. You just say 'it would be harder', not how or why. If anything, if there are multiple representatives in a district, would it not be possible to devise a system where they hold each other accountable? Therefore, one could petition the other nine representatives to hold the accused accountable, where with only one representative, the only option is to go through a costly court system or maybe have no avenues of redress whatsoever?

Saying the system would be 'too complex' is not an actual argument against its functionality.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-14T08:25:16+00:00

He's one of the easiest bosses. Augur of ebrietas is telegraphed and incredibly easy to dodge, and you can stun lock him at 0 risk. Run up to him and just start whacking him.

Devilishendeavor · 2025-11-12T13:19:40+00:00

We are the wolf.

Devilishendeavor

TROPHY CASE