I think they both have their place, for the many reasons people have mentioned. But my neurodivertent self HATES whole conversations over text. I do not know what tone to read anything in. If there’s no punctuation it’s a thousand times worse. Texting is for quick stuff that’s not time sensitive. Phone calls are for anything longer than three sentences or anything time or emotionally sensitive. Drives me nuts because the majority of my friends prefer texting for everything.

While that’s true for the legislative branch, the executive is different, or at least it’s supposed to be. The point is to get the president to represent all Americans, not just those in cities. I’m not agreeing with the idea, I’m just trying to answer so OP can get some insight into the argument.

Personally I think the EC was a bad idea but so was the 17th amendment. Of course, without the 17th amendment there would never be a dem majority in the Senate so you win some you lose some I guess.

This is the correct answer to OPs question. What’s the real, human, and arguably logical defense of a system that ignores the popular vote in a “democracy”.

The idea is that you have to weight the system to ensure leaders have to pay attention to everyone, not just focus on winning NYC and LA and maybe a couple other big cities, completely ignoring anyone who lives outside a densely populated area.

Source: raised by a conservative who believes this very thing. Not saying I agree personally but I definitely grew up hearing this idea.

I’ve used free tax USA for years. I don’t pay for filing my fed, just my state. But my taxes tend to be pretty simple, so I guess ymmv

My dad was in the Navy (submariner) in the 80s and he loves that movie. He told me they didn’t do the thing with the string like they do in the movie … Instead they strung it up when they were at depth and took bets on when it would break on the way back up.

You couldn’t pay me enough to be that far underwater.

I mean, anecdotally, I do know someone that bought a new build in mid 2008 for about 60k-ish less than what everyone else in the neighborhood bought for (earlier or later). The company building out the subdivision was pretty desperate and he had a solid stable job as a trucker. He managed to get all kinds of perks and stuff too.

The missing reason is that you should just buy less anyway and if you avoid Amazon it is slightly harder to just buy stuff.

That being said, if you need it cheap, quick, and you cannot source it locally, just buy it on Amazon. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. You are not guilty of a moral crime by using them when the need exists.

While this is indeed a list, it pales in comparison to what you can do in or near a large city.

I enjoy a ton of things on your list but there’s stuff you just can’t easily do outside of a metro area. Especially stuff you need a specialized teacher for.