Readit NewsAlex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
In the U.S. (from what I've seen - I'm envious of those with commanding knowledge of the situation) there are occasional elections with very limited, pre-chosen slates of candidates that most people don't know personally. The last time I tried to contact my district city councilperson (albeit in a fairly large city), a secretary answered my email.
There's also the assumption (not to deny the stated correlation) that satisfaction is tied to economic welfare. My opinion is that while this is necessary, it's hardly sufficient, and a major issue is not only economic inequality but a general inequality in opportunities to have any sort of influence in societal operations. I think it would be better if more people could be big fishes in little ponds. The professional class that makes up the media is defacto big fish and has a bias and blind spots to this.
Furthermore, I believe a better description of what exists in the U.S. at least is that we have a representative oligarchy - elected officials primarily representing and serving rich business interests.
Please understand that this is not really a moral judgement on my part - it seems entirely predictable and probably unavoidable for this to happen in an age of breathtaking material and technological abundance coupled with confusion about larger social questions.
Think of some politicians claiming they stand for "freedom". Freedom from what and freedom for whom. My freedom to do anything I want, carry a machine gun for instance, interferes from the freedom others want to be free of gun violence. So when talking about freedom we have to always consider freedom for whom to do what? Similarly "free will" must be qualified by: free of what?
I think a good answer is "free from coercion by others". Now, you can coerce me to do anything, to say anything, and really to WANT anything you want me to want, by threatening my life with a gun. So, we only have free will in as far nobody is infringing on our basic freedoms.
And in this case, is the issue weakness of will, or is the will determined to do what seems best based on its available knowledge?
This has to do with the point about agency in the article. Everything in your "light-cone" can and will affect what decisions you make. But there are so many butterflies in your light-cone that you cannot say any one of them (alone) decides what your decision is. They cannot force your decisions and thus you have free will. No other actor can control your decisions. You are free of their will, thus your will is free of their will. Thus you have "free will".
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Roughly 2,500 years ago two giants of ethical philosophy appeared on the scene in the form of Socrates (who can be learned about best through Plato's dialogues and Xenophon's underappreciated Socratic works) and Siddartha Guatama (I would recommend Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds as a reasonably unified source of his life and thought).
I know bringing those guys up probably seems sentimental, but I have lived experience with poverty, and political "realism" is only beneficial to those who have not as yet suffered the consequences of harmful patterns of behavior.
I think Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol illustrates a pretty good path for the exceedingly wealthy to become heroes, but there's this problem of sentiment, isn't there? And yet sentiment is constantly appealed to in all forms of commercial advertising!
People don't even know why or how they are here. Siddartha and Socrates' responses were basically that the answers are difficult to articulate or fathom, but the real pressing issue is how best to live life, and their answers were basically to moderate and do no harm or wrong, at least as much as possible, because the real goods are non-material, and to do wrong actually harms the perpetrator more than the victim.
E.g. if a $1000 voucher is available for an apartment, why not a $500 one for a relative's room?