Seriously, I've decided after reading this. I just want to vote for a party that supports abortion rights, gun rights, a open Internet, and a generally smaller government (focused more on research and education).
FYI Ill be moving to Champaign, IL if anyone is interested.
The first thing you'll need to do is engage in activism directed at replacing the current electoral system with one that supports more than two viable parties (or, alternatively, convinces enough people of your set of priorities that it replaces one of the two major parties or becomes the platform of one of them.)
This activism will, necessarily, need to be a lot more than just voting.
electoral system that supports more than two viable parties
Explanation of USA's FPTP count as root cause of a two party system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
It's very nearly the worst actually proposed single-member ranked ballots system; I can't imagine any way in which it is optimal. It's better than FPTP, but that's a pretty low bar.
(For very small numbers of voters, such as for elections within an academic society, Rating Voting is even better, but its advantages fade as the number of voters increases. AV is just the limiting case of RV with only two values.)
This problem still exists in FPTP where some voters may opt not to vote for any candidate for a position.
Note that choice of voting systems don't matter so much if you only have one representative per electorate.
Canada uses the shitty FPTP system and while at the federal level it's mostly been two parties, several other parties have held significant clout over the last century. It's not impossible for it to work, it's just difficult. At the provincial level you see a lot more variety because they don't need to appeal country-wide, they can focus on local issues (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_Québécois, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildrose_Party)
Sadly electoral reform here has recently been put on hold much to the frustration of many as it was an election platform issue.
I'm sure part of the problem with reform is there's too many options and some of them are so dizzyingly complicated to explain that most people prefer the "simple but busted" FPTP method to something more mysterious and formula-based.
There are many versions of it, but let's go with Maine for now, since it got acceptance and will soon have a track record.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ...
(It also shows that IRV is only marginally better; while "worse is better" sets my teeth on edge, if IRV is the doable option I'll take it rather than wait for people to come around on score methods).
Most simulations assume consistent mapping from preferences to ballot markings, which is reasonable for ranked, but not score, voting.
For example, if the scoring range is 1-10, it's better for me to use the full range even if none of the options on offer is really a 1 or 10. Using the full range gives my opinion more weight in the result.
I strongly suspect score voting tends towards ranked voting when people vote tactically, which they always will, just with extra noise and randomness. (I don't know of any studies on this, though.)
Since the latter is what is empirically shown in real democracies to be strongly associated with both satisfaction with government and ability of a system to support multiple viable parties and multidimensional debate on policy in the public sphere (see, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy), I'm as disinterested in wasting time with the former as I am with wasting time with any other method of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic of American democracy, like fiddling with how district lines are drawn for single-member districts.
Of the people I asked, the older more politically conservative people opposed it because of the perception that it would make it more difficult for their party of choice to win (I heard this argument on both sides of the political spectrum) and the younger, more liberal voters opposed it because it "wasn't good enough". Less than half of the population even bothered to participate. So we're still stuck with FPTP.
The only chance we've had to completely overhaul our election system and people voted overwhelmingly against it. Ho hum...
Here are a couple of small tweaks that will help a bit:
1. Ditch the electoral college, elect the president by popular vote. There's a concrete proposal for doing that, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
2. Fix gerrymandering in congressional districts and state senates. Again, there's a concrete proposal, which recently won an important legal battle in Wisconsin (Whitford v Gill): http://www.fairelectionsproject.org
Neither of those helps bust open the two-party system, but they'll at least help level the playing field so that the big two parties don't have artificial incentives biased towards special interests.
Fixing voter suppression is very important. Anyone know of any good efforts afoot there?
As for third parties, I think that's probably best done first at the state level. If one or more states adopt a more proportional system internally, and show it can work well, that would provide a blueprint for implementing it nationally.
I guess Trump could get away with some really radical proposal, like using PR for the Senate. Both parties would almost certainly resist that though. He would need substantial popular backing, whereas every bungling decision he makes right now is making him less popular.
What does this even mean?
The way presidential campaigns are funded for example, by voluntarily checking a box on your tax form is perfectly libertarian.
In fact I might go as far to say that corporatism is the natural state of the world. The wealthy and powerful will always use their influence to gain even more wealth and power. It is a state that we must constantly fight against regardless of whether we call ourselves anything from libertarian to socialist.
Request denied. Join a side and conform any of your conflicting ideals with theirs. Too much effort letting people decide each issue for themselves.
Edit: /s [sorry I forgot to put that, I know sarcasm can be confusing on the internet]
Im just super liberal. I think you should be able to do what ever you want as long as you don't hurt (or overly annoy) others.
The thing is, almost everyone I talk to agrees with me. I don't understand the current political system at all...
because you're trying to view it through the lens of "rational, beneficial policies that are supported by a democratic majority" whereas our current system is "niche issues of low utility but high tribal divisiveness used to distract the democratic majority while we secretly empower monopolist corporations"
If everyone you talk to agrees with your particular political ideology which doesn't match well with either of the major parties, then you have an extraordinarily strong and narrow filter bubble, which you'll need to get out of if you want to achieve any of the goals of that ideology.
Does not compute. Mutually exclusive desires. Unchecked gun ownership leads to loss of life at a shocking scale.
edit: i see downvotes, but I don't see counterarguments. Parent post says "everyone I talk to agrees", if nothing else I'm trying to point out that while it may seem like common sense to you, others will see other things as common sense.
Further, I can kill more people with a truck than I can with a gun. People use guns because of the fear, the spot light, and the ability to target.
I don't disagree people see things as common sense. I also don't disagree in having some laws governing weaponry. That doesn't mean I don't think we should be allowed to own them, nor that it isn't benificial. Honestly, I'd like research done to prove it one way or the other and be rational about it.
Statistically it does. I.e. this particular gun might not kill anyone, but for every 100 guns there is n deaths, so adding another gun means another fraction of a death added to that number.
> gun rights are literally part of the foundation of the U.S.
The interpretation of the 2nd amendment has changed radically within the past 50 years. The idea that government doesn't get to regulate even slightly the right to bear arms is a new interpretation.
Free speech is literally part of the foundation of the U.S., but we mostly all agree that slander is a thing that should be illegal. Separation of church and state is part of the foundation of the U.S., but churches are tax exempt.
These rules all have nuances. Why shouldn't "right to bear arms" have nuances.
> Further, I can kill more people with a truck than I can with a gun
Trucks are highly regulated and licensed.
> Honestly, I'd like research done to prove it one way or the other and be rational about it.
Well we agree there, but in my view the research that has been done has already pointed in the direction of more regulation than we have now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm...
I'd like to see percentage of households with one or more gun. That, to me, would be representative.
That's not how causation works. If you add more guns in one culture you may get more violence because people do the same violence with more lethal weapons. If you add more guns in a different culture you may get less violence because perpetrators are less likely to initiate violence when there is a higher likelihood that their victims are armed. In a third culture there will be negligible difference because people commit the same violence whether with guns or IEDs or other weapons.
And nothing exists in a vacuum. Something like mandatory firearms safety training in high schools will reduce the number of deaths without reducing the number of guns. In other words, you can determine the culture.
> These rules all have nuances. Why shouldn't "right to bear arms" have nuances.
The nuances that have historically made it into gun laws have no relation to reality. A law banning rifles based on cosmetic features scores political points with the gun control lobby but saves no lives. And the stated end goal of the gun control lobby is to repeal the second amendment and ban all guns, which is not a nuanced position.
Also, this:
http://hsgca.net/2013/10/21/illustrated-guide-to-gun-control...
> Trucks are highly regulated and licensed.
You can own a truck without even having a driver's license, and the regulations are unrelated to intentional use to do violence, which is covered by the general laws against murder and violence rather than anything specific to trucks.
Is it possible that the right place to be lies somewhere in between?
I find the American mentality is that all slopes are slippery. In Canada, where I live, we have some gun control and we have limits on free speech and it seems to be working pretty well.
I refer you again to this:
http://hsgca.net/2013/10/21/illustrated-guide-to-gun-control...
The compromise you are asking for has already happened.
> If on one side you have the nra, who lobby against ANY gun regulations, such that only the most control-in-name-only "cosmetic" laws can get passed (then later repealed).
The NRA is not lobbying to repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934. It's not that we're at the top of a slippery slope, it's that we're 3/4ths of the way down it already and you're asking to keep going.
The problem is that there is no coherent compromise here. You can't have millions of guns in the hands of millions of gun owners and at the same time not. It's zero sum.
> And on the other side you have... idk the parents from sandy hook?
The parents from Sandy Hook are the people they put in front of the camera. The money behind the gun control lobby has the same motives as the money behind the other side's pro-life lobby -- it's a hot button issue that drives votes, so if you want a particular party to win and your real reasons are unsympathetic, you can beat the "think of the children" drum to get your party into office.
That is one of the reasons why the compromises are so ineffective -- and why real solutions like addressing the root causes of violence are never even considered. The funders (as opposed to the public faces) are not actually interested in fixing anything, they just want their party to get credit for Doing Something, and then have the problem continue to exist so they can get credit for Doing Something again tomorrow.
Congress is undoing Obama's restriction on people who have someone taking care of their finances due to mental disability buying guns. The restriction wasn't that they couldn't own guns it was that they needed a bg check because idk maybe they are unfit to own one?
Your view of gun control advocacy as a drum to get people into office? Seems highly cynical and mostly untrue to me. Look at the democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders basically changed the subject whenever he was asked about gun control. The two top candidated were not of the same mind when it comes to gun control. That says to me that it is not simply a rallying cry for the left, but an issue americans are deeply conflicted about in both repub and dem camps.
As for addressing the root causes of violence: my view is that gun ownership actually is one of the root causes of violence. Not the only one, not the biggest one (thats poverty), but one.
"Not able to own a gun" is the bottom of the slope. It's the final 1%. What we have now is an ineffective mess that does nothing but interfere with honest gun owners, particularly at the state level.
Different state prohibit different things. If you live on the East Coast and legally own a particular pistol, and you want to travel to Maine where it is also legal, you have to drive hundreds of miles around Massachusetts where they will arrest you for it.
Acquiring a permit can cost more than a hundred dollars for each renewal and require you to come in person to a government building during work hours on a weekday, raising the barrier to low income people or anyone without flexible working hours. Blue states do this knowing it will have that effect.
States require permits not only for purchasing but also possession, so low income black men are commonly charged with a felony because they live in a bad neighborhood and acquired a gun for self-defense, and either didn't know a permit was required there or couldn't afford one or let it expire or moved from one state to another or owned it before the law changed. Even though they were entirely eligible to own it -- and now they're not. And have just lost their job and are going to prison. If poverty is a root cause of violence, what are we doing here?
> Congress is undoing Obama's restriction on people who have someone taking care of their finances due to mental disability buying guns. The restriction wasn't that they couldn't own guns it was that they needed a bg check because idk maybe they are unfit to own one?
If you have a diagnosis by a mental health professional that someone is a danger to themselves or others then they get institutionalized and they are obviously not going to have access to a gun in a psychiatric hospital. If that isn't the diagnosis then on what basis are you justifying a background check for someone with e.g. dyscalculia?
Laws like that are also inherently dangerous because they discourage people with mental health issues from seeking treatment for fear that they will be penalized for it. Then you have more people with untreated mental health issues and yet they still have access to firearms. Doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing for a reason.
> Your view of gun control advocacy as a drum to get people into office? Seems highly cynical and mostly untrue to me.
Explain the focus on mass shootings, and especially mass shootings of white kids, which constitute a very small minority of all gun violence, juxtaposed with the high death toll from drug and gang-related gun violence, none of whose victims are commonly individually held up as a reason to pass gun control laws.
> Look at the democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders basically changed the subject whenever he was asked about gun control.
Bernie Sanders is from Vermont. It's like a New Hampshire Republican being pro-choice. Not a representative example.
And his needing to change the subject rather than defend his position, and Clinton's revisiting of it to damage him in the Democratic primary, is only proving the point.
> As for addressing the root causes of violence: my view is that gun ownership actually is one of the root causes of violence. Not the only one, not the biggest one (thats poverty), but one.
You believe that people not otherwise prone to violent crimes, given guns, would commit more violent crimes?
Very little cleanly private money exists to study the issue. Universities are tainted with public funds, NGOs are tainted as well, and so on.
So what studies we do get are NRA-funded.
This is a horrible way of thinking. Times change, just because something made sense in the 1700's doesn't mean it makes sense today. Every generation has a right to change the laws it lives under to better reflect the reality of the world they live in, the Constitution is not a sacred text that can't be disagreed with, it's just laws, and it's changeable. There is every reason to fight that which no longer makes sense. The second amendment was written in an era where muskets were state of the art; unrestricted access to arms hasn't made sense in a hundred years.
Probably because you aren't interested in a discussion.
> Unchecked gun ownership leads to loss of life at a shocking scale.
The tendency toward loss of life is known and acceptable, much like the cost of having vehicles. You think it's a shocking scale and I think it's marginal. Vehicle deaths still outpace in the US, so your bias is transparent.
Maybe gun deaths could drop more if CDC and other researchers were allowed study their effects on health more and if gun safety regulations were handled more like car safety.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/17/guns-...
What makes you say that? Why would I delve into comment threads if I wasn't interested in a discussion.
> your bias is transparent
I also strongly believe cars should be heavily regulated. Lucky for us all, they are. I'm down for more regulation, if well thought out, to continue to bring this number down.
But libertarianism isn't easily defined on the Left/Right spectrum. Two people can hold completely different views on virtually any issue and both could hypothetically fall under the libertarian umbrella.
That's not really true. The thing which is a natural monopoly is the last mile, which is inherently local. You could literally have the city government own the fiber and lease it to competing private companies without any federal involvement whatsoever.
The main impediment to this is that the incumbents are too large, which allows them to overpower city governments in terms of lobbying and prevent anything like that from happening on a widespread basis. But if you had some hypothetical state government with the will to stand up to them, that would be the end of it.
And then, when the state government can't stand up to them, we could use the federal government to do so!
If only someone suggested doing that in the first place.