If you'd be slightly more precise in your wording, you'd see that the overloaded use of the word "you" results in some problems here.
If by "you", you mean a poor individual living in the United States, then I guess your reasoning is absurd, because one individual cannot change the laws. If by "you", you mean all individuals lumped together as the people making up the United States, then the argument makes slightly more sense, but then still, they can't, because they can't seem to agree on how to divide all wealth properly.
So, no, "you" cannot fix this via laws. You can hope for it to be fixed, you can lobby for it to be fixed, you can pray for it, even go to war for it, but I don't think it's as easy as you make it seem.
Moving to Europe might be an option, but even that is not an option for most people outside of Europe, mostly thanks to the laws that "we" put in place to stay rich.
> by "you", you mean a poor individual living in the United States
That is a very uncharitable interpretation, not sure why you would read it like that. "You" can refer to governments or countries in general and not just individuals.
And that was the entire argument of your post, please don't make strawmans like that.
I apologize for the harshness and sarcasm of my previous reply. I should have taken some more time to find a way to explain my personal gripes that were triggered by your remark. Please allow me a second chance:
I am often a bit disappointed that in common language, it is very easy to suggest that one can change the world for the better, but in reality it is not an option for nearly everyone.
I think that the problem leading to this is that most people believe that a group of people has similar traits as a single individual. A lot of reasoning goes awry by mixing the two. In my personal opinion, the way an individual makes up their mind is completely different from how a group of people makes up their collective minds. The first can be attributed to freedom of choice, agency, gut feeling, rational thought, etc. The latter lives in the realm of sociology, group think, religion, politics, marketing and communication.
Another example of where I think this goes wrong is in the idea that we can rescue the climate by starting with ourselves. This is simply not true, unless nearly all people do this. Another one is the idea of contemporary voting in democracies. It simply does not help at all to put out just one vote.
Change requires the opinions of many people to align. Sometimes, only sometimes, does a change by one person incur change in others. Most often, if you are not a leading figure, your change does not do anything at all. Ignoring this results in falsehoods and make-belief. I find this counterproductive in discussions.
It may well be that I made up the strawmans, but I tend to believe that they're already there.
But perhaps, and given your response, this is probably not at all the direction you'd want the discussion to go.
Yeah, I don't think individuals can fix society by themselves.
USA is a special case since the poorer 50% somehow failed to organize politically and form a party to represent them like they did in basically every other democracy. I think they still can organize, but there has to be massive barriers that are hard to overcome or they would already have done so.
Notably, getting out of the bipartisan stalemate is step one. Coming from a country where 3-4 parties make it to the parliament, you probably wouldn't believe how much of the dysfunction originates in a two-party politics.
It seems to be fixable with changes to the electoral law.
i don't feel like this makes much of a difference, if any. the primary hindrance to any change and progress is NIMBY, as far as i can see in the US and in germany (and probably elsewhere, but those two i am most familiar with). multiple parties don't help there at all. multiple parties enable coalitions, but all that does is force parties to compromise on their goals. in the end they all just fight each other anyways without being able to progress much.
for real progress a complete overhaul of the electoral process is needed. i'd abolish the concept of parties wholesale. instead each representative is elected individually, and there is no party association that limits any of them on which issues to support. think of it as each representative being their own individual party.
fair point. it should be a goal though. and to be realistic, i am thinking in decades or even centuries to achieve that. it takes a large scale rethinking of democracy. the current state leaves the majority of the population unrepresented (because they feel that none of the existing parties are able to represent their interest) and drives the resentment and lack of interest in becoming politically active. in short, we all feel helpless because the politicians only do what gives them votes, and not what we really need.
There are a hundred absurdly impractical comments for every half-practical when it comes to US politics (or global politics which US could/should lead). I habitually scroll over ideas so brilliantly revolutionary that they wouldn't even qualify for bad sci-fi literature.
as individuals our power to change is small, but it is not zero. what it takes is to live with conviction that change is possible, and slowly get others to follow your example. the problem is not that change isn't possible. the problem is that many have given up trying.
change is possible, but it takes time and effort. which means patience. and it requires picking your battles. you can't fight all the problems at once by yourself. you have to pick a few issues that matter to you the most, and focus on those. and then instead of trying to make a visible change focus on a few people and try to win them over.
If by "you", you mean a poor individual living in the United States, then I guess your reasoning is absurd, because one individual cannot change the laws. If by "you", you mean all individuals lumped together as the people making up the United States, then the argument makes slightly more sense, but then still, they can't, because they can't seem to agree on how to divide all wealth properly.
So, no, "you" cannot fix this via laws. You can hope for it to be fixed, you can lobby for it to be fixed, you can pray for it, even go to war for it, but I don't think it's as easy as you make it seem.
Moving to Europe might be an option, but even that is not an option for most people outside of Europe, mostly thanks to the laws that "we" put in place to stay rich.