The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.
And the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security definitely gave the literal thousands of submissions due consultation before recommending the original, un-split bill pass.
Currently minimum 4% of formal first preference votes, which gets you $3.499 per a first preference vote (indexed to inflation every six months)
Then you automatically get paid the first $12,791, and the rest of the funding is by reimbursement of substantiated election expenses.
This is per a candidate (lower house) or per a group (upper house). And this is just federal elections - state election funding is up to each state, but I believe the states have broadly similar funding systems.
Note the US also has public financing for presidential campaigns, which is available to minor parties once they get 5% or more of the vote. But in the 2024 election, Jill Stein (Green Party) came third on 0.56% of the popular vote. The only third party to ever qualify for general election public funding was the Reform Party due to Ross Perot getting 18.9% in the 1992 election and 8.4% in the 1996 election. There is also FEC funding for primary campaigns, and I believe that’s easier for third parties to access, but also less impactful.
In the U.S., I feel like the primaries are the place to vote for and work for the best candidate possible. That's the time to be idealistic and pursue the perfect candidate.
At the general election, you need to be pragmatic, and decide who is the least worst and vote for that candidate, because the nominee will probably never be someone who is your ideal choice. But in a two-party system, a vote for a third candidate at that level ends up being an effective vote for candidate you _don't_ want. That's not politics, that's game theory.
There's a lot more subtlety to it in a parliamentary system, and I can see some advantages to it, but at least here in the States where it's First Past The Post with a Two-Party system (which is mathematically inevitable with FPTP), sometimes you need to place strategy or ideals.
Probably nothing.
The idle rich and trust fund kids aren’t exactly know for producing, well, anything of value, really.
Getting paid to sit around all day and do fuck-all isn’t exactly character building.
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