And snakes

Honestly I kinda stumbled into my specific career. I've known I enjoy working with computers for a while, so I took digital tech class all through high school. I went to uni thinking I'd do mechatronics engineering, but that needs chemistry so fuck that. I then switched to software engineering, but then I saw the timetable of some second year engineering friends I had, then said fuck that. Then I switched to computer science for the next year, planning to go into researching ai (this was in 2020, don't judge too hard), but dropped out for my mental health. Then a family friend at my church offered me a position doing automation/efficiency programming, which was better than the pool attendant job I had at the time. I've been there since.

Also, if you're not sure what to do, don't feel guilty about taking a gap year. Take that year, earn some money, figure out what you enjoy doing. And don't feel like you have to go to uni. Polytech and trades are just as good as uni.

Playing devil's advocate here, a lot of the refuse to vote crowd see the democrats as also unacceptably evil, and in almost any other context I would agree with them. A lot of democrats are failing to push back against Trump and his bullshit, either out of cowardice or acceptance. Not to mention they're encouraging the whole Isreal situation.

The immediate problem is that the US has roughly the worst voting system. Gerrymandered to shit, FPTP but even worse because you're not voting directly. The solution (at least for now) is to change the voting system to something that allows third parties without the spoiler effect. Unfortunately there isn't an easy path to reach that as far as I can see, because both democrats and republicans would be long gone if not for FPTP.

Fritz Haber has entered the chat

advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers

I am advocating for using your vote to reduce human cost as much as possible. What that means depends on the context.

If you're in America, the decision right now is between one genocide, two genocides, or refusing to have an impact on that decision with how impossible the system is for third parties. One less genocide is the least bad option, unless you have a better one.

If you're in New Zealand (where I live, so I'm more familiar with the politics here than anywhere else), there are multiple options because of MMP voting. That means I won't be advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers.

citation needed

Labour coalitions have historically been the governments that have had the best impact on workers rights. At least far more than national coalitions.

Also, don't think I'm saying you should vote for labour next year. Labour is shit, vote for someone better

OK maybe I read that wrong. The way I interpreted it, I read "electoralism" as using voting as a primary tool. Using that definition, I agree with that paragraph. Voting alone is nowhere near enough to produce real change.

But if the definition of "electoralism" is using voting in addition to direct action, I don't think that paragraph gives much reasoning behind itself. It's a good statement, but it needs more backing it up

Mate, I read the whole thing. The only claim I saw as to why voting is counter productive is that "voting convinces people that they've done all they need to" idea, which I think is flawed. All the other arguments are talking about voting having low impact and it can't fundamentally change things.

Please, if there is another part that I missed, tell me what it is, whether that's something backing up the complacency claim or another claim entirely. I'd love to be proven wrong here.

Let the man cook

Nowhere in that does it really explain why voting is counter productive. Voting is a tool, and a very cheap one. It only costs at most an hour once every 3 years and requiring knowledge of current events and politics, which is stuff you will know about anyway if you're involved in any kind of direct action.

The only potential argument there is the psychological one, where people are lead to think voting is enough to do their part, but I don't think that's a strong enough argument to pass up choosing your opposition. As shit as Labour is, National and Act are worse, and by any logic other than accellerationism (which is a terrible idea of you care about the human cost), Labour will make fighting capitalism that little bit easier.

I understand not running for office. That article gives good reasons that actually joining politics is a wasted effort. It takes a lot of time and money, and almost always ends up making people slide towards the "reasonable politician", not the radical that they promised to be.

The issue I see here is, and I believe I'm speaking for the entire rest of the world here, we don't want him

Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes

Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk

So, the situation remains unchanged.