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What is your solution to the problem in the world you're the most vocal about?

Browsing social media, it’s apparent that people are quick to point out problems in the world, but what I see less often are suggestions for how to solve them. At best, I see vague ideas that might solve one issue but introduce new ones, which are rarely addressed.

Simply stopping the bad behaviour rarely is a solution in itself. The world is not that simple. Take something like drug addiction. Telling someone to just stop taking drugs is not a solution.

103 comments
  • Voting for people that are closest to want I think is good.
    Volunteering in non-profits.
    Pushing for progressive ideas at work.
    Trying be an example of what I defend and explain to people around me it if they ask me, without pushing them to change, hoping that I can slowly change the culture around me without triggering mental blockers. For example when a colleague asks if I'm vegetarian, I explain that I am rather flexitarian, which means I don't have forbidden food but I favor food with smaller ecological impact. If they seem not receptive, I'll listen politely and not try to change their minds. If they seem receptive, I'll show them the Poore & Nemeck studies. Sometimes just a bit of neutral information is enough to trigger a change.

    In short, I don't want to be someone who just blames the governments or companies, and make no efforts otherwise. I think we need a cultural change at every stage of society.

  • The two-party system. Regardless of where you live, if it's under a two-party system, you probably agree that it sucks.

    Assuming we're starting from "choose one" single-winner elections, you need to first switch your elections to Approval Voting. This would make it always safe to vote for your favorite candidate, and the full support for every losing candidate would be reflected in the vote totals. This will weaken the two party system, but no single-winner system can dismantle it.

    After that, switch as many single-winner elections to multi-winner as you can (like city council or a legislative district) and use Sequential Proportional Approval Voting to award seats. This will enable minor party candidates to get into office after the major ones, and the seat totals will look a lot closer to the vote totals.

    A few places already use approval (Fargo and St. Louis) and a few places are just begging for SPAV (Cincinnati City council).

  • Being as that we have the tools now, any person who wants to run for a public office in a position of leadership, I.e mayor, vice mayor, sheriff, judge, Congress person or president, should have to undergo a psychological evaluation and if they show any of the three dark traits they should be rendered invalid and unable to participate in politics.

    We don't need any narcissistic psychopaths running the government, but narcissistic psychopaths are the ones that are the most likely to get elected because they're the best at manipulating people into voting for them in popularity contests.

    • The reason psychopaths aren't diagnosed frequently is that it's simple for a psychopath to fool the test. They have to WANT an accurate diagnosis to get one.

      Also, these tests would be gamed to keep specific people out of power. That's why the restrictions on public office are so low. To prevent gaming.

    • What tools are these? As someone who has frequently been evaluated, I've found I get different results depending on the bias of the evaluator, ranging from, functional: able to work to a danger to themselves or others, should be supervised or committed.

      Now I totally agree that there is a problem with elected officials when Feinstein is still a senator when she is no longer coherent. Or when Trump's lawyers and principal staff see he has diminished capacity (the finale of Fear: Trump In the White House by Bob Woodward) they leave him in place because he remains a useful idiot. But I know our psych assessment methods are not yet able to yield consistent results, and it would be easy for political interests to game the system to keep those they like, and flunk those who are too much of a nuisance (say, those who actually want to serve the public).

      (President Wilson had a stroke, and spend the end of his tenure in bed with his wife faking his signature. The US is no stranger to staffers faking it when elected officials were to incapacitated to function. )

      Sadly in 20-fucking-24, mental illness remains enough of a stigma that anyone who relies on public approval just won't take the test if they can opt out.

  • The answer to the majority of problems the world is facing is community - we need to rebuild real physical communities, participate in them, and nourish them. We can do this by simply getting more involved in existing ones, staring from things as simple as local gardening groups, litter picking/beach tidy groups, community celebrations, local markets, etc. We need to hold on to, strengthen and rebuild arts groups and help local arts and music scenes to grow.

    We can all participate on some level in some aspect of physical community building, and it will enrich us in a way social media never can. (Put on a gig, attend an arts show, donate to a community group, talk to neighbours, support the vulnerable). I believe people feel so isolated and depressed by the way greed has ruined the web, jobs, the economy, etc.that the time is right for many more people to start investing time and effort in real communities.

    We need to build and grow communities in a local, regional, national and international spirit. We need to learn how to share, and how to get rid of greed and selfishness in ourselves and in our societies - participating in and building welcoming, non discriminating communities is the path towards this. We need to remove competition in education, arts and science (and ultimately economy), and focus on cooperation and improving things out of the joy of helping yourself and others. Communities can bring this about, and digital communities (as opposed to competitive social media) can support this, too.

    Ideally, we want to grow communities in a way where people start thinking first "how does this help my community?" - especially when looking at political and business decisions. We need to feel something positive to stand up for (not old fashioned ideas of 'country' or political groups) - we simply need mutually supportive groups (communities) that fight power, greed and selfishness to defend people, animals and nature.

  • There are bigger problems that I agree need to be solved but I'm not personally that verbal about them. But the one I complain about the most has got to be potholes.

    In the UK farmers are responsible for maintaining the hedgerows between the road and their fields so I feel like they should also be responsible for filling in the potholes caused by their heavy machinery and the cow shit left behind when they're moving cattle.

  • You can't actually solve them. Depends on which problems of course, but most of them have to do with our societies not being fair whatsoever.

103 comments