@ktm5124 No idea!

@ktm5124 Well, I think there is currently little support for that system!

Maybe computers will rule us.

These are recent polls for the 2020 election.

It looks like they all have an edge on Trump, with Biden polling highest, followed by Sanders, then Warren.

Yes, and a big edge.

This is from just before the 2016 elections.

Hm, I see your point. The polls were tighter between Trump and Clinton.

Do you think Clinton was not the right candidate then? i.e. Bernie would have done better?

Clinton does inspire a lot of hatred even from Democrats. It's strange.

Trump got only 2.4 % more than polled, and Clinton got 0,8% more than polled.

So the difference then was much less than in current polls. And the difference between polls and reality was not so huge. Clinton even got more votes than polled.

@ktm5124 I think polls show that that was the case back then?

Yeah.

Of course that is no guarantee.

But it looks as though he would have easily defeated Trump.

It's too bad...

The world would have been very different had Bernie won.

For one, we wouldn't have a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

And it does seem like Trump's presidency undermines democracy world-wide, not to mention the UN.

I'll never forget when Ashar al-Bassad parroted trump by saying that a chemical attack was "fake news".

Yes, it would have been much better.

Ugh, Assad.

At least Trump isn't a genocidal murder.

He would probably murder journalists and Democrats if he could get away with it :)

Although he did order his cabinet to have Assad assassinated, I think...

Hah.

Haha yeah

I doubt that!

I read that. Not sure if it's true.

The thing about Trump is that he has a symbiotic relationship with his enemies. Both he and his enemies get more press and attention.

Like Stormy Daniels has profited from Trump, and he has probably profited from her.

All press is good press.

Heh, true.

The press have profited from Trump tremendously, in America.

Twitter has profited a lot from him, too.

He has elevated Twitter to the status of a major news outlet... even above the status of major news outlets.

Haha yes.

Such a pity.

Text without context, is what Twitter is.

The sad thing I have learned in the past few years is that world leaders and top executives aren't necessarily good people... in fact there is no correlation between their prominence and their character.

The worst kind of publication.

@ktm5124 Indeed not.

I suppose this is evident to a student of history, but I'm not a student of history, so I learned it from current events.

And in certain countries, I even think they're worse, because politics is all about collecting tons of money and status, and working unrealistically hard. None of those things make for a good person in that position, I think.

People who value character tend to be intellectual, and intellectuals tend to eschew money... I think.

Like a brilliant mathematician would not care so much about his net worth. He would care about his theorems.

Intellectuals do care about status, but not the kind of status you get through politics.

@ktm5124 Exactly.

I do think Twitter is a cool concept, though. Microblogging. It's funny and kind of annoying that the Chinese stole it from us like they steal everything else.

A famous technologist recently hypothesized that there will be three Internets: America's, China's, and Europe's.

It's a shame.

Each will have different censorship policies.

Heh.

I don't think Europe and America will separate, though.

Companies that don't have any servers and office on the other continent won't be affect by its policies.

And the two continents will not instate a firewall like the Chinese.

So we can still reasonably use most of the other's websites.

And VPNs won't be blocked anyway, so we can use those to access any blocked website.

Yeah, I'm not sure why they say three. Two makes more sense.

Here's the article: nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/….

Maybe countries like Russia will try to separate as well if doing so becomes much easier and cheaper than it is now.

But that is currently not realistic.

> In September, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and Alphabet chairman, said that in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split in two — one internet led by China and one internet led by the United States.

This seems realistic—that is, it is already partly in effect.

Yeah.

China is kind of scary.

Their ideology, that is. And their censorship regime.

It's scary because in 50 years they'll be economically more powerful than we are... and they'll be wielding an entirely different ideology.

Yeah.

And it's frustrating that they steal all our intellectual property :) Which is our biggest export.

I'm not sure whether China will ever become more powerful than the combined West.

Russia has been cozying up to China.

But it will become about aequally powerful, I should think.

@ktm5124 But that is in the end good for mankind!

When the internet splits in two, the world will split in two.

Russia has been cozying up to China somewhat, but I think they're still nowhere near an alliance!

It makes sense that the world will coalesce around two different ways of thinking/governing.

It's really too bad that the West didn't enforce its liberalism and tolerance more when it was still all powerful.

It could still do more in the present situation than it does.

The rich democratic countries still control about half the world's economy, I think?

That sounds right. I would imagine more, since China and US are roughly equal.

Africa and India have a lot of potential for the future, since they will have very large workforces.

I think the Chinese invest a lot in Africa.

From what I've recently read, China seems to be an elitist meritocracy, where the most talented citizens are selected for government.

@ktm5124 Africa, South America, India, Indonesia, Indochina—they all contribute quite a bit to the global GDP.

The Chinese population will decline rapidly in the intermediate future.

Wow, that's news to me.

Interesting that our population growth will slightly increase, whereas China's will decline.

Would not have expected that.

China is going the way of Japan.

Also because they have had their "one-child policy" for several decades now.

They have recently got rid of that policy.

But now it's too late: women don't want many children any more.

Hm, interesting.

Anything can happen!