The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first
This is de facto true. But, the law is that passenger traffic gets priority. It's just not enforced because the companies have more power than the government is willing to spend on this issue.
Before exiting, I wonder if I could get a message to my 10-year self. I think he has a bank account, but he'd be an idiot with that much USD.
I could probably convince him I am him from the future, but I wonder how to have a conversation with him.
I was disappointed I had to scroll this far for an "Only Connect" reference.
I think in series 1 it was Greek letters and people complained it was too academic, so they switched to hieroglyphs to spite the feedback.
I don't think a socialist revolution (or any other sudden overthrow of capitalism) can save South Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
RCV experiments have gotten a lot of backlash from establishment parties, usually because they lost and they want to blame the "new process" instead of their platforms, policies, or actions.
Due to Poe's Law, I think you really need one of these: /s
Also, substantially fewer incumbents. ;)
I honestly don’t think much is going to change for you guys if all you do is vote.
As an American, I agree. That said, I find it hard to do more due to my situation.
But, voting is the beginning of political engagement, not the end. It's probably time for a general strike, but even failing that, finding primary challengers (or being one), drafting voter initiatives and gathering signatures for all of the above, communicating with your representatives, legal protest. It's also possible to work outside or even against the system, founding or being active in non-governmental community organizations, illegal protest, sabotage.
Even if we had a "perfect" voting system (Arrow's Impossibility Theorem aside), there are going to be times when the majority compromise is just wrong, and "getting political" is how you change/survive that.
(I'm all for voting system improvements. I'm a big fan of Condorcet methods, and I'd like to see more direct democracy. We could even adapt a system like Debian's "default option" of "more discussion" so that issues could remain open while a quorum was gathered / the voters suitably engaged to decide one way or another.)
It would be a poor idea to introduce a coin that couldn't be easily accommodated by coin-op machines. The Sacajawea was specifically designed to be the same size and magnetic signature was previous dollar coins so that coin-op machines that has taken "silver dollars" would also take Sacajaweas without updating.
When I was implementing penny-rounding for Canada in Point-of-Sale software, I was told we were legally required to round in a specific way.
I would imagine the U.S. probably will do something similar. Tho, we might follow the model of some of the other countries that have eliminated their pennies. Executive orders are a poor way to cover all the knock-on issues that some with eliminating the penny.
Tom! Save the hammer for The Man.
;)