The myth that panic, looting, and antisocial behavior increases during the apocalypse (or apocalyptic-like scenarios) is in fact a myth—and has been solidly disproved by multiple scientific studies. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, a research group within the United States Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), has produced research that shows over and over again that “disaster victims are assisted first by others in the immediate vicinity and surrounding area and only later by official public safety personnel […] The spontaneous provision of assistance is facilitated by the fact that when crises occur, they take place in the context of ongoing community life and daily routines—that is, they affect not isolated individuals but rather people who are embedded in networks of social relationships.” (Facing Hazards and Disasters: Understanding Human Dimensions, National Academy of Sciences, 2006). Humans do not, under the pressure of an emergency, socially collapse. Rather, they seem to display higher levels of social cohesion, despite what media or government agents might expect…or portray on TV. Humans, after the apocalypse, band together in collectives to help one another—and they do this spontaneously. Disaster response workers call it ‘spontaneous prosocial helping behavior’, and it saves lives.
It’s surreal that “if we take away the thing making people grovel for their lives, then how are we going to make them grovel for their lives?” is an honest to god argument that more than half of the us population finds compelling
no offense but squidward saying “nobody cares about the fate of labor as long as they can get their instant gratification” is more woke than anything wendy’s twitter or any liberal has ever said
Hey, remember when environmentalist cartoons from the early 90s used to get criticised for oversimplifying complex issues because they depicted the primary drivers of pollution and climate change as a tiny group of power-mad billionaire industrialists who deliberately promote unsustainable business practices for absolutely no reason other than satisfying their weird garbage fetish?
reactionaries: we are going to elect a far right leader to stick it to the unaccountable elites who control our lives via financial institutions
unaccountable elites who control our lives via financial institutions: please do
[ image description is screenshot of tweet by @omanreagan that says, “As jair bolsonaro rose in the polls, so too did brazillian stocks. investors saw the far-right candidate as a safer pair of hands…” ]
The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.
You, ah, don’t think it’s unfair to judge people’s morals based on their finances?
I, ah, think that it’s perfectly fair to judge people’s morals based on the amount of money they pour into neo-nazi political movements, yeah actually.
[image: a quote tweet. @ DineshDSouza, quoted: Fake sexual assault victims. Fake refugees. Now fake mail bombs. We are all learning how the media left are masters of distortion, deflection, & deception @ Hbomberguy: Note that as Conservatives get what they want, their paranoia only increases – despite coming up two full years of government control, the ideas they support don’t seem to be making anything better. So these failures must be attributed to an ever-powerful ‘media left’ control.]
ugh.I hate this so much… leaving aside the fact that “the centre” is a statistical fiction and not an actual position, say you just want to argue that compulsory voting makes political parties reflect the majority views of Australians (a common assumption) – there’s really no evidence for it.
For example – Australia is one of the most pro-choice countries on earth, has been for ages, massive support for legal abortions from voters of all parties. In New South Wales abortion is illegal unless a doctor says there’s a threat to the mother’s life – and that’s Australia’s most populous state, 7 and a half million people. Abortion has literally just been decriminalised in Queensland, comes into effect in December.
The majority of Australians supported marriage equality in every poll since 2007, compulsory voting didn’t stop politicians ignoring “the centre” for ten full years on that one.
The majority of Australians are opposed to privatisation, has compulsory voting stopped every single government, regardless which party is in power, pushing it through? Nope. Australians are actually in favour of re-nationalising a lot of things, and it’s not even a lefty thing, the majority of Liberal-National voters (the mainstream right wing party, current government) actually want to re-nationalise Telstra, the largest telecommunications company in Australia. Has compulsory voting made this prime patch of centre-ground real estate attractive to any party? Has it fuck
The average Australian is pro-euthanasia, they’d like the public transport system to be good (they’re all shite) they’re not up for massively subsidising the mining industry or bailing out banks. They believe in climate change – up until 2015 we had a prime minister who thought climate change is “probably doing good” for the planet – did compulsory voting save us from that wanker? nope
All compulsory voting does is allow them to manufacture a larger mandate for whatever shit they were going to do anyway.
No amount of voting will ever make public opinion matter more than the various vested interests of the powerful, because politicians only need your support on election day – every other day they need the support of a bunch of rich and powerful scumbags and the institutional forces they command…which suits politicians fine, because they understand rich and powerful scumbags, that’s their mates, their colleagues, their school friends… they don’t need to do an opinion poll to know what plays well in that, their true and only constituency. They are fundamentally, permanently, constitutionally unable to actually give a fuck what you think – and compulsory voting makes that easier for them, not harder.
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