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getmoheb

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Virtue signaling? That seems like an uncharitable reading.

The point, and the problem, is volume. Doing it manually has always imposed a de facto volume limit which LLMs have effectively removed. Which I understand to be the problem these types of posts and policies are designed to address.

I'm in the same position - holding out for a year in the hope that things change direction.

I've been in the apple ecosystem for 20 years at this point, because the ecosystem delivered real value for me. But that value has declined sharply - hardware is still good, but software quality has cratered while the drive for services revenue has become so relentless that I've now got one foot out the door.

To quote the late great Robert W Cox:

Theory is always for someone and for something. All theories have a pespective. Perspectives derive from a position in time and space, specifically social and political time and space ... There is, accordingly, no such thing as theory in itself, divorced from a standpoint in time and space. When any theory so represents itself, it is the more important to examine it as ideology, and to lay bare its concealed perspective

In this case it could not be clearer that the theory of 'trickle down'/supply side/neoliberal economics - that is, liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation - were for the wealthy, and they were for the purpose of capturing a greater share of wealth (upward wealth redistribution). That's why they acquired prominence and political support, and that's why they've been so hard to dislodge in spite of the overall harm they've done.

Personally I think it'd probably be ok to try something else

Actually the political logic on national security legislation here is a little more complicated and not really related to the electoral system or compulsory voting.

National security policy has been used as a wedge issue here in the last 20 years, like in lots of other places. So the raft of security legislation that's been passed since the conservatives took office in 2013 has actually been as a result of both major parties voting together. If the Labor Party (centre-left) opposes security legislation, they're painted as soft on terror, weak on border security, etc.

Security agencies have given a shopping list to the Liberal (i.e. conservative) government - data retention, citizenship, and encryption amongst others. The Libs have put bill after bill forward in an attempt to generate opposition from Labor and thereby get an effective national-security wedge. Some of them have been 'genuine' reforms but some have been less so. Labor knows this of course. But it's ahead in the polls and wants to be a small target come the election, so it has refused to bite. The result has been a bunch of shitty new security laws.

It can be wonderfully disheartening to watch, especially given that lots of people on both sides of politics know perfectly well that they're bad laws but can't say it out loud due to the the politics of it. They're not all idiots who don't understand tech.

So while the electoral system here has delivered slim majorities for successive governments (or indeed minorities at times), it's not really relevant here. When the major parties vote together the laws are going to pass.

Sorry if that's off topic but I find it very interesting, albeit depressing sometimes.