[ExI] Is the USA doing too much to prevent COVID-19?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Mon, 4 May 2020 at 15:04, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On May 2, 2020, at 5:55 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 9:24 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> *> Trump isn't the problem, it's the people who elected him.  Why do
>> suchpeople support him?  It's rooted in our evelutionary past and not
>> hardto explain.  I have done it several time on this list.*
>
>
> That's not entirely fair, the American people never supported Donald
> Trump, not before the election during it or after it. The American people
> made it clear they wanted Hillary Clinton to be the next president, but
> under our system the wishes of the American people don't matter. Only the
> 538 members of the Electoral College are allowed to vote in the only
> presidential election that matters, and 304 of them decided that what this
> country really needed was a president who was an imbecile; and so like it
> or not that's exactly what the American people ended up with in addition to
> unconventional suggestions on where to place Clorox to cure viral disease.
>
> Meanwhile the German people picked somebody who has a doctorate in Quantum
> Chemistry,  Angela Merkel, to be their leader, and because Germany is a
> more democratic country than the USA the people got what they wanted. And
> today only 80 people out of a million die of COVID-19 in Germany but in the
> USA 199 die.
>
>
> You must know more about the current German political system then me
> because I was under the impression that like in many parliamentary systems
> the prime minister (or, in this case, chancellor) is not chosen by direct
> election of the “people,” but us instead is chosen by members of the
> parliament (or, in this case, Bundestag). And I believe this is how Merkel
> was chosen.
>

In such systems, the people still effectively elect the leader, because the
leader has already been chosen by the parliamentarians whom they elect. The
parliament can change the leader by vote at any time.

If the US adopted something like that, it would be more like the Congress
> choosing the president. (And maybe the president only serving as long as
> they had majority backing in the Congress.)
>
> Also, another wrinkle on how the US president is chosen. They must first
> go through their party choosing them. And that often involves popular
> elections in primaries (usually limited to party members). I bring this up
> because Trump didn’t just go straight to the Electoral College. He was
> vetted via a nomination process that did involve a popular vote (amongst
> his party members in most places) at some points. Though later on what
> happens is delegates vote in a convention.
>
> I’m no saying this because I agree with either having Trump in office,
> with the specific presidential election process, or with having a
> president. (Clinton, by the way, went through a similar but slightly
> different process mainly because of superdelegates.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>
> http://author.to/DanUst
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