Comment by comex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by comex | Hacker News Reader

I suspect Gary Johnson getting chosen by a Borda count isn't as weird/surprising as the number of question marks implies. Caveat: I didn't see a raw distribution of preference orders on the Vox survey; if it's linked somewhere, I missed it. But I think Johnson is effectively acting as a compromise candidate: a lot of Clinton voters really hate Trump and a lot of Trump voters really hate Clinton, enough that they'd both prefer Johnson over the other candidate, even if they don't actually know much about him, or even mildly dislike him. Borda count tends to choose compromise candidates, so that's what you end up with. Now, Johnson's policies are fairly fringe and weird, and so are the other third party candidate's (Stein), but that's because serious candidates don't run on third party tickets that have no chance of winning. If the election was actually conducted using a Borda count, you'd probably see a number of relatively boring centrists running, and one of them would win instead of Johnson - which is a perfectly reasonable result. Well, except that that would also fundamentally change the coverage of the race, so there's no reason to expect the election would go anywhere near the same way overall (it would probably be less polarized), but the point is that to the limited extent the survey results reflect this hypothetical world, they don't cast it in a bad light.

Edit: Also, I like Clinton, but her being the Concordet winner doesn't mean much in terms of that world either. When almost all of the ballots give the top rank to one of two candidates, whichever of the two gets more votes is the Concordet winner. But that's only the case because of first-past-the-post, both because there aren't any good third-party candidates (neither centrist nor extremist), and because the structure of the race strongly encourages voters to sign up for one bandwagon or the other .

  But I think Johnson is effectively acting as a compromise 
  candidate: a lot of Clinton voters really hate Trump and a 
  lot of Trump voters really hate Clinton, enough that they'd 
  both prefer Johnson over the other candidate, even if they 
  don't actually know much about him, or even mildly dislike 
  him.

That, and a lot of people were voting less for the man and more for an independent ticket. And not even with the expectation that it would pay off in this election, but that it would encourage more (and more mainstream) third-party candidates to run in the future.

The greater the number of votes a third party gets, the more the mainstream candidates will move towards the third party positions.

That means that voting for a third party is not a throwaway vote, even if the third party has zero chance of winning.

I may be reading into this too much, but I'm picking up a little bit of mild dislike for Johnson. I voted for him, and while that was easy when I looked at the other choices of Trump and Clinton (I don't dislike Stein, and I would have voted for Bernie had Clinton's team had not rigged the DNC and allowed him through), I also do strongly support him.

I realize I'm a bit biased because I like the libertarian principles: prioritizing individual civil liberties, stopping human rights abuses and unnecessary wars, and streamlining government.

I'm curious though because outside of disagreement with those, there's only one thing that I understand people disagree with: TPP (Johnson claims it isn't a crony capitalist deal and it does foster free trade).

I guess I don't really understand why people have a mild dislike for him, especially when I see how some people adore Clinton or Trump -- it doesn't make sense to me.

He doesn't come with the plutocratic baggage of Trump and Clinton (https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/trump-makes-america-gold...), which in itself is a great thing to like about him.

Most people don't agree with libertarianism. That's basically it.

That seems like a broad stroke. Libertarianism is just a collection of different ideals, the same way socialism and capitalism are, around a few central values.

The primary tenants are the importance of civil liberties and autonomy (as opposed to authoritarianism).

Beyond that, you could be a libertarian and promote laissez faire capitalism, or you could be a libertarian and promote socialism. Saying you broadly disagree with libertarianism just confuses me: you don't agree with civil liberties and you want authoritarian government? (it's a rhetorical question)

Libertarian socialism aka anarchism isn't really related to propertarianism. And again, most people agree with neither.

any form of libertarianism != anarchism!

propertarianism is a libertarian philosophy

> I realize I'm a bit biased because I like the libertarian principles: prioritizing individual civil liberties, stopping human rights abuses and unnecessary wars, and streamlining government.

I think those are completely reasonable things to like in his policies. And as a caveat, I don't personally dislike Gary Johnson (the man) himself. I just haven't heard a compelling argument for what he'd do to address corporate overreach, which I (personally) find the biggest problem average Americans face today, whether it is O&G companies destroying our environment or financial institutions causing global financial crises. I'm not saying (by any means!) Trump or Clinton would do any better, but I don't see how rolling back oversight on the private sector really solves the problem. I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments but I don't see how that would help us, as it's our only (very flawed) leverage. I think doing so would decrease the little leverage we have. So to answer your concern, I think the reason people don't like Johnson is because he was running for a political office where they believe he would act against their own best interest.

> I wish solving our problems was as simple as dismantling our governments

I can understand that. It's certainly a topic for debate, not one where one side has proven to be right or wrong.

Johnson wasn't really in favor of dismantling government oversight on everything. He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment, health, water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where they will work better than heavy handed regulation.

> He has stated he's in favor of agencies which protect environment, health, water, etc. He wants market-based solutions like a carbon tax where they will work better than heavy handed regulation.

I could theoretically get behind some of that. However it doesn't look like Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:

http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/gary-johnson-no-to-carbon-...

Perhaps the hard political position libertarians put themselves in is between the "no taxes, no regulation, ever!" conservatives and people who aspire to only have regulatory institutions where it makes sense (perhaps such as yourself). Moreover, at a certain point, it seems like market-based solutions and heavy handed regulations become essentially the same. Imagining an extreme scenario: what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned? It would certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.

> However it doesn't look like Gary Johnson actually supports a carbon tax:

> what if you had a carbon tax of $1M per cubic meter of CO2 burned? It would certainly seem a lot like a regulation at that point.

Wow, good point. I swear I heard him say he was in favor of it, and so I looked at the article and it mentioned he had said he was, but he changed his mind. Hmm. I remember him talking a lot about market-based solutions to environmental problems, but I guess he wasn't as committed to that idea as I thought it sounded like.

So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it would be of great burden to business with a high tax?

The thing about a tax is that it is extraordinarily more efficient than heavy-handed regulation. In-between concepts like cap-and-trade actually have actually rewarded polluters by subsidizing them, which also isn't right.

People should be rewarded for doing good things, and given disincentives for doing bad things. That's a powerful concept and I think the world would be a better place if people would get behind it in politics.

> People should be rewarded for doing good things, and given disincentives for doing bad things. That's a powerful concept and I think the world would be a better place if people would get behind it in politics.

I remember seeing a clip from Bernie criticizing Trump after the news broke about him "saving" (there's obviously a lot to be discuss about what actually happened) the Carrier jobs, basically saying, American companies should want to keep their jobs in America because it is the right thing to do. After hearing that, I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, you know, sure. You're right Bernie. Companies should want to do that because it's the American thing to do, but why is it such a bad idea to give companies incentive to stay?" And for the most part, I believe that's what Trump has been talking about with regards to keeping jobs in the US. It sounds to me that he is just trying to make it more expensive for companies to move their jobs overseas than to keep them here by the way of this import tariff he keeps touting. Now, of course, I have no idea how any of this plays out and turns into actual law, but the basic idea makes sense to me.

> So 1 million per cubic meter of C02 = a regulation? You mean, because it would be of great burden to business with a high tax?

I guess what I'm saying is that a tax becomes a regulation at the point where you can't afford it anymore. Also you have to realize that a carbon tax is usually on everyone -- not just corporations. In most cases that affects the lowest people on the totem pole more than the higher ups. You have to realize that for certain people, what you say is "disincentivising" is actually materially affecting their ability to live. If you were to try to distribute that disincentivizing evenly across the totem pole, I'd be on board with it.

Ya for that reason most pro-carbon tax economists already are saying it should come with a rebate to lower income groups. That solves that problem (it is well-known).

Gary has quite a bit of collectivist ideals, to the point he's basically a democrat in the books of many, including myself. It is perhaps this "betrayal" of the party ideals that makes him unfavorable. It's true also that he as a candidate sits well between the R/D camps. IMO true (truer) libertarians such as A Petersen or Rand Paul would have been great.

This is the exact reason why I think it might be even better to vote for 'Where should our resources go to?'.

For example rank the following subjects:

  * Health care
  * Security
  * Climate

Because now you might agree with Trump except for his climate policy. With the current system it's very hard to express this.

I've suggested something similar numerous times. Along the lines of what the Humble Indie Bundle does. That way, people can decide what has priority over what, and how much to allocate to it.

Unfortunately, this'll open up a can of worms for the state and its proponents. It does not sit well with them that people can "via taxes" influence what gets funded or defunded. E.g. Rich people could reduce their "welfare group" contribution to 0.1% of their taxes, and bump up say infrastructure to 99.9%.

> Rich people could reduce their "welfare group" contribution to 0.1% of their taxes, and bump up say infrastructure to 99.9%

If it happened, we would quickly see "infrastructure" legally redefined in the loosest possible way (e.g. hospitals would become infrastructure, homeless shelters would become infrastructure, tax-processing offices would become "infrastructure'... and these things need people to work so their salaries would also be classed as "infrastructure", etc etc).

You can't effectively implement technical solutions to political problems. Elites will do what elites want to do, unless they are politically pressured every day not to do it. Technicalities won't stop them.

Because this is not what our system of government is meant to express.

We are not a democracy: we are a democratic republic. Many people forget this. The intended way for us to make our voices heard is to democratically select somebody to represent our wants and needs accurately.

However, with the current state of lobbying, career politicians, and how much the world has changed since this system was put into place, whether this is still a valid idea is up in the air...

Nothing has changed, that was the way it was when the system was implemented. I would even say if you break things down to people's wants and needs, the world hasn't even changed that much.

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