You new to politics?

1000 people vote in 10 districts. Their choices are a Hard-Right party, a Centrist Party, and a Left coalition, representing the Left-Centre, Left, and Hard Left. PS: This is what the French had going on.

Let’s say 373 people wanted the Hard Right party, 269 people wanted the Left-Wing Coalition, 223 wanted the centre, 51 picked a minor libertarian party, 50 picked from a slew of minor parties not on the Right, and 35 picked from other Right-Wing parties.

In a proportional representation system, you’d expect 37.3% of the representatives be from the Hard-Right party, 26.9% from the Left-Wing Coalition, 22.3% from the Centrist party, plus about 14% being from minor parties. But France uses a First Past the Post system and so does our hypothetical nation. So here we go:

Riding 1: 95 people voted Hard Right. 3 vote Centre, and one each vote other Right and Libertarian. Hard Right wins this riding. Riding 2: 90 vote Hard Right, 5 vote Centre, 2 vote Other Right, 1 votes other Non-Right, and two vote Libertarian. Right wins this riding. Riding 3: 85 vote Hard Right, 10 vote Centre, 1 votes Left, 3 vote Other Right, and one votes Libertarian. Winner is Hard Right. Riding 4: 15 vote Hard Right, 65 vote Centre, 10 vote Left, while 2 vote Other Right, 5 vote Other Non-Right, and 3 vote Libertarian. Centre wins. Riding 5: 12 vote Hard Right, 60 vote Centre, 12 vote Left, while 4, 8, and 4 vote for minor parties. Centre wins. Riding 6: 20 each vote Hard Right and Centre, while 3, 4, and 2 vote third parties. Left gets 51 votes and wins the riding. Riding 7: 22 vote Hard Right and 11 vote Centre. 2, 9, and 4 vote Third Party, and Left wins the riding with 52 votes. Riding 8: 15 vote Hard Right and 21 vote Centre. 3, 5, and 5 vote Third Party, and Left wins again, this time with 51 votes. Riding 9: 10 vote Hard Right and 14 vote Centre, while an amazing 8, 10, and 8 votes being sent to the Third Parties. However, Left once again takes the riding with 50 votes. Riding 10: 9 people vote Hard Right, while 14 vote Centre. Another 21 vote Libertarian, with 7 voting minor right-wing third parties, and 7 voting for non-right-wing minor parties. Despite these 50 people likely having more in common with each other than with the Hard Right or the Left, because they couldn’t agree on one candidate to vote for, their votes get split, allowing the Left to win the riding with 42 votes.

End result: 3 Right, 2 Moderate, and a whopping 5 Left. It didn’t go this badly for the non-Left parties in France, but it illustrates how a party with a lower vote share can get more representation in a First Past the Post system. It illustrates why Gerrymandering is bad. If those voters in the first three districts are packed there because some partisan power broker got into the redistricting process, they’ve basically been defanged by political shenanigans. Doubly so if the left-wing coalition managed to spread all their voters out so that they had a solid lock on 5 of the districts.

This is a fundamental problem with FPTP, so that’s why many of us advocate for RCV or Proportional systems.

I don’t believe for a second that you actually believe this. I think you’re just a concern troll trying to hide behind the inequity that allows kids to go without food and water while pushing the false narrative that every actor earns millions of dollars a year and thus doesn’t “deserve” to strike. If you really are concerned about kids, then perhaps stand in solidarity of the hundreds of thousands of people NOT earning seven figures so THEIR kids may be guaranteed food and water, and pressure the folks who ARE earning seven figures to show a little charity for the kids you’re so concerned about.

Excellent comment. I’m just going to add some numbers ans a source to it.

If you’re in the United States and are working as an actor, your income is closer to Minimum Wage than to the big names in the entertainment industry, with wages (not salaries, these people are paid by the hour) ranging from $7.75 up to $36.00, averaging at $15.29. We talk about the big names, but these are the people really being hit. Hollywood execs don’t even want to pay these wages. They’d rather give you a month of wages in order to have access to your voice and face for all time. This is even worse when you factor in that your image might get big…imagine being a fresh face right out of acting college, going in for your first audition, and they say “We like you. We’ll give you $3000 if you just enter our scanning booth and spend an hour saying nonsense lines.” That pays your first month’s rent (barely), but lo and behold, down the road, your likeness is earning the studio execs a cool billion, and you ain’t getting a penny of that, because you signed a contract saying your likeness and voice could be used by them at no compensation for you for all time.

THAT is a big part of what this strike is about.

https://www.indeed.com/career/actor/salaries

Sure. The leading actors in a production are crazy rich. But according to indeed.com, the average actor earns between $76.25 and $36.00 an hour, averaging at $15.29. For every lead, you’ve got countless little people backing them up. Strikes aren’t just about the crazy wealthy leading actors. It’s also about the dude pulling in $15 an hour. In fact, the leads aren’t going to license their likeness and voices to the studio execs, so they really have nothing to worry about. But they’re here standing in solidarity with the people who don’t have that luxury, who will go in, get a $3000 cheque, then never work in the industry again.

Just to be clear, you’re busy simping for the billionaires who run the media industry, pointing to the millionaires who are saying they are being nasty to everyone in industry. Says a lot about you, buddy!

Indeed! But it still is useful to put the lie to his nonsense, if for no other reasons than to point it out to others.

Try 1912. https://bigthink.com/the-present/1912-climate-change-prediction/

There’s actually a news article from the March 1912 edition of Popular Mechanics warning about how ‘the furnaces of the world’ are ‘burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year’, and how ‘when this is burned, united with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly.’ They conclude that adding 7 billion tons of CO2 per year ‘make(s) the air a more effective blanket for the earth and raise its temperature’ and that ‘the effect may be considerable in a few centuries’. Their only mistake was underestimating how much CO2 future generations would put in the atmosphere. They estimated a few centuries for 7 billion tons of CO2. I’m wondering what they’d make of 43 billion tons.

Capitalists ignored the clear warnings from scientists about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for over a century because it wasn’t economical for them to do something about it. It was always somebody else’s problem. Until it wasn’t. Where do you live? New York, that has recently had some of the worst air quality in history thanks to Canadian wildfires? Or Denver, where it was our turn in April and May? Or when we got the horrible DECEMBER wildfire that burned into Boulder? Man, wildfires in fucking December. NOW it’s fashionable for Capitalists to at least pretend to care about the environment, but shit, if there could be a dollar made burning down the last forest, you fucking better believe that capitalists will gleefully play a Captain Planet villain while they do just that.

Edit: A fun link: https://bigthink.com/the-present/1912-climate-change-prediction/