emergencyfood

Counterpoint: 'The Brooks's Law analysis (and the resulting fear of large numbers in development groups) rests on a hidden assummption: that the communications structure of the project is necessarily a complete graph, that everybody talks to everybody else. But on open-source projects, the halo developers work on what are in effect separable parallel subtasks and interact with each other very little; code changes and bug reports stream through the core group, and only within that small core group do we pay the full Brooksian overhead.'

Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s05.html

Because (1) lithium contamination is a much, much, smaller problem than climate change and (2) we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. Of course, if the EU is combining taxes on EV import with an equivalent investment in public transport or cycling / walking infrastructure, I wouldn't be complaining.

Subsidizing production does not … from China anyways (eg. batteries).

I'm asking why the EU isn't subsudising their domestic EV industry and starting a competition in electric propulsion technology. That would benefit everyone, except maybe the oil lobby.

one should disincentivize internal combustion vehicles by adding taxes to them

Why not both? And preferrably better subsidies for public transport / cycles / footpaths, etc.

avoid misusing words like "terrorist" because, when misused this way

If killing a handful of people is terrorism, what would you call trying to kill the entire human race (along with thousands of random other species)? 'Terrorist' is, if anything, too mild a word to describe such filth.

China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general)

And that's a bad thing? Any sensible government is going to subsidise renewable energy and electric vehicles. It makes both economic and environmental sense. Anyone not doing this is an idiot and a climate terrorist.

With Sri Lanka's ranked ballots, they didn't need consolidation. Working-class voters could have had this, at any time, with no risk.

Ah, you're talking about SLFP voters second-preferencing the JVP. (I thought you meant UNP voters supporting the SJB.) That is more plausible, except the SLPP leaders and hardliners would attack it tooth and nail, fearmonger that it would split the vote and help the UNP win, and so on. No one wants to let go of power.

this new plurality-winning party is going to trounce the split alternatives, until one of them disappears, or both of them disappear.

Hard to predict. Depending on how many seats his coalition gets in Parliament, Dissanayake might have to get support from one of the other blocs to get bills passed. But if he can get a majority, he has a great chance to destroy both the established parties simply by appointing an honest auditor and letting them loose on the previous government's files.

When voters only get (or only use) one choice, and there's two parties on the same side of a divide, one of them has to utterly dominate the other, to stand any chance against a popular third party.

What the new party did was to challenge the old poor Sinhala vs Tamil+Muslim+rich divide, and turn it into more of a common people vs political / business class divide. Obviously, there aren't enough businessmen or politicians to form a party by themselves, so we'll have to see what they do. Maybe they'll negotiate with the new powers, or maybe they'll run smear campaigns, or maybe they'll wait for it to get corrupt and unpopular.

Either these voters start using their ranked ballots properly - or they're going to keep getting a two-party system.

The other possibility is a de-facto one-party state, like Mexico or Japan. I really don't see hardline Sinhala nationalists and hardline Tamil separatists co-operating.

Sir this is a meme.

Jokes aside, I'm Indian. Sri Lanka has a much better education system than we do.

But as you point out, they're acting like they have America's elections, where this schmuck who got 17% is now a massive liability to the runner-up who got 33%. If those two presumably-liberal blocs got together, they could handily oppose the leftist bloc.

It would be useful if you tried to understand Sri Lanka's political system before you made such comments. The SLFP / SLPP was historically supported by working class Sinhala people. The UNP was supported by Tamils, Muslims and richer / more urban Sinhalas. In 2022, the SLPP collapsed due to an economic crisis and widespread corruption. The SJB was an attempt by a section of the UNP to win over former SLPP voters by adopting centre-left economic policies and Sinhala nationalist rhetoric. The UNP base - largely Tamil and Muslim - are not going to vote for them! This is why the JVP was able to win - they consolidated the working class Sinhala vote, while not threatening Tamils and Muslims.

Their voters just aren't using it, for some goddamn reason.

The reason being that, for many people, there is only one choice that is acceptable.

Every single person who wanted him, last time, could have listed him... also. They sure didn't. His support was three percent. That's not a viable path to power, that's a punchline.

That's a viable path to getting your face in the public consciousness, so you can win next time. As you said, losing a prior election isn't a pre-requisite. But the posters you printed, the speeches you made, and the fact that one in thirty people took you seriously enough to vote for you, are a pretty strong boost when you run again.

Anyone who voted for only him, "last election," was a fool.

Or they were the people who made this year's result possible.

If you can't rally a shitload of people behind your guy... you lose.

Yes, but you show that so-and-so's platform has x amount of support, putting them in a better position next time around.

The winner of this election was not decided by everyone seeing through The Matrix or whatever and deciding to defeat a broken electoral system. It sounds like 95% of them are functionally unaware of which electoral system they have.

It's incredible how one can see some piece of evidence that contradicts their pet theory with their own eyes and say, no, the reality is wrong and my theory is right. I mean, it makes sense sometimes - the discovery of Neptune is a famous example - but in general, it is better to adjust theory to fit the facts, rather than the other way around.

Given the system you're voting under - you should vote for someone who has a chance of winning.

The problem is that who 'has a chance of winning' is decided by who people vote for.

Voting for a third party with single-digit support is not much better.

Uh, that's what the Sri Lankan voters just did? The winner this time had 3% of the vote-share in the last election.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots! What the fuck? They're not even using Plurality, they're doing RCV!

In theory, yes, but so few (~2%) people use it that in practice it is first past the post.

Duverger's law is about how there tend to be two parties.

Emphasis on the 'tends'. It's a probabilistic observation, not a law of nature. Treating it as the latter leads to people acting against their best interests.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots. It's not a Plurality voting system.

You are right, in theory, but please check how many additional votes the winner (or the runner-up) got as second-prefrence votes. It was around 2% of their totals. This is because in practice, most voyers didn't bother putting second and third preferences.

The new guy won despite winning <5% of votes in the last election. If people vote for the candidate they like instead of trying to game the system by calculating who they'd rather not win the most, then maybe we can kick out corrupt incumbents and get in fresh faces (they'll get corrupted over time too, at which point you rinse and repeat).