On this subreddit we often talk about labor mobility and academia has a huge dearth of it. Tenure, I think was created with very noble intentions. It is true that research at the end of the day is not necessarily meant to be profit driven, is very risky, and a professor shouldn't be penalized because their research doesn't work, or because they don't get a few grants. Tenure gives them that sense of security.

However, the funding model for academia has made it that once a university finds a "golden goose" professor, that brings in a lot of grant money, they go out of their way to keep them around, despite slipping in other responsibilities. This has led to abuses of power, where professors get away with treating their graduate and undergrad students poorly. Sometimes it gets so bad that they don't fulfill even the bare minimum responsibilities on teaching (i.e. not providing grades, not showing up for office hours, not announcing exams in a timely fashion, etc.), and are allowed to keep staying around.

Even the good professors who may want to seek better opportunities in Academia have a "golden handcuffs" situation. They can't leave their current tenured profession for another tenured profession barring very exceptional circumstances. So if they'd like to relocate it'll often involve having to start over as an Assitant Professor and working their way up again. This again restricts labor mobility which lowers productivity. This doesn't begin to include the "publish or perish" mindset that's in academia which puts pressure on professors to keep cranking out publications. This incentivizes sloppy methodology in the interests of speeding a project along, and getting publications.

Isn't it a neoliberal concept that bad labor should be discarded so that more qualified employees can be brought on? Doesn't the way that Tenure is structured throw that in a tailspin?

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Around 2020 I remember watching a Vice News documentary regarding the rise of Domestic Terrorism in the US, and saw some de-radicalization program that was implemented by the US Military to screen out any extremists in their ranks. There were several domestic terrorist or pro-insurrectionist orgs around 2020:

1. Three-Percenters

2. Proud Boys

3. Oathkeepers

4. The Base

5. Atomwaffen Division (though this appears to be active??)

However, I barely hear about any of these in 2024. Have these movements more or less fizzled out?

Follow-up question: Is the MAGA-wing of the GOP using the "Hezbollah" strategy, wherein they'll elect politicians to effectively legitimize these extremist organizations and give them a say in government?

Would you be for reforming the voting system to allow third parties to gain more power?

Some ways to do this are:

1. Get rid of the winner take all system and make voting proportional. For example if a state has 100 electoral votes and a party gains 51% of the vote they don’t just get all 100 votes. Similarly even if a party only gets 5% of the vote they get those 5 votes added to their total.

2. Allowing coalition governments. Essentially if a party doesn’t get a majority they can create a coalition with another party to give them their electoral votes in return for concessions. To prevent controversy the party would have to announce it pre election (I.e. “in the occurrence the Green Party does not gain a majority we will be transferring our vote to the democrats in return for having our party head the EPA” etc).

3. If the coalition thing sounds too complicated we can also do ranked choice voting and let the voter decide. Essentially “libertarian is my first choice but if they don’t get a majority give my vote to the democrats”.

4. This one would be nearly impossible to pass but would be the best way to improve the voting system. Getting rid of the electoral college and making voting proportional to the population like in Europe. If you get 15% of the vote you get 15 seats in the senate.

I also asked this in the democrat sub but I think that’s mostly bots lol. Also as an aside the attached picture is pretty outdated now so how would you change it.