A declaration of war seems to propel financial markets a wee bit.

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This depends on how one defines "social skill." Too often, it is based on values praised by the general culture but considered by some undesirable, such as conformity, superficiality, exclusion of those who are different, etc.

I haven't read the entire thread and don't know if I'll have time, so I apologize if what I say has been covered.

I don't know if it's so much that people don't care, it's that the system itself is inherently inefficient. I don't mean just a little bit, like your average corporation, I mean really really ridiculously inefficient to the point that you sometimes just feel like throwing up your hands and giving up.

Take this past Tuesday, for instance. The weekend before, I learned there was an election because my girlfriend told me. Perhaps I should have known since they're at regular intervals, but I don't know what those intervals are. They were never covered in school, it almost never comes up in conversation for some reason, and I can't seem to find a good website or calendar program that will remind me of these things. That last one is critical; my memory is terrible and I rarely can remember what I did two days ago, let alone a yearly occurance. Without my Outlook calendar I doubt I'd ever remember anyones birthday.

So Monday evening I went online and spent four hours researching candidates. In the end I learned about 50% of the names of people who were running, and of those I knew where about a third of them stood on issues. This is information that should have taken me all of ten minutes to find from a central resource that compiled the information. I'll be the first to admit that I did not vote (entirely) intelligently. How could I? I have never seen information about any subject so hard to find. I could google instructions on building a nuclear reactor easier!

Granted, this was somewhat more difficult because it was a local election, but I have run into the same problem when voting for federal positions. There was a site listed on page one of this thread that helped you find a candidate by reading quotes. Helpful websites like that are few and far between, and even those are terribly inefficient. What we need is a comprehensive, neutral, essay format questionnaire answered by every candidate so we can compare answers side by side...in a central place so that they can't spin their answers for each crowd.

It's not apathy that keeps people from making a difference, it's ignorance and the unwillingness to address the causes of that ignorance. When we can research and compare candidates as quickly and easily as we can different brands and models of video cards, I think you'll see much higher voter turnout and much more consistent and intelligent voting. But while the average person needs to spend every second of free time for weeks on end just to get the most basic of data, it's just not going to be worth it to most people.

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Nicholas Bostaph
http://NicholasBostaph.com
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Nicholas_Bostaph, if it was covered, it certainly doesn't hurt to restate it.

Which way? There is the short term boost that war deficit spending can provide to the economy, but then there is the future drag caused by the deficit. And that's just for a guns and butter war. For a war that's just guns industries that can't convert to war production are in big trouble.

I find almost all the candidates qualified to woe me. I look at their qualifications and say "Woe is me, and woe is us."

Meanwhile it's easy to find fault with popular elections. But the alternatives are even faultier.

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The alternatives that have been tried so far are faultier. There's still plenty of experimentation yet to go.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

"Take this past Tuesday, for instance. The weekend before, I learned there was an election because my girlfriend told me. Perhaps I should have known since they're at regular intervals, but I don't know what those intervals are."

General elections are held nationally the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This means they are limited to the dates of November 2-8 (but not November 1 if it falls on a Tuesday since there was no November Monday preceding it). Using this formula, you can note in advance when Election Day will take place every year.

And heave a sigh of relief at the end of political ads.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Allow me to rephrase that:

Meanwhile it's easy to find fault with popular elections. But the alternatives are even faultier, including those that have been proposed but (thankfully) not tried.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Speculating without evidence? And overgeneralizing about a nonexclusive set, too.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

There you go, guys: The Candidate Calculator™.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire