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Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

Did you vote libertarian? Are you going to now?

Because both major parties are all in favor of this. Biden was the architect of the drug war that was the excuse for giving the police the power to steal property, and Reagan was the president who signed it into law.

In the past 30 years, thru administrations of both parties, nobody has repealed this law.

The abuse of that law started immediately, and has gone from highway robbery (cops simply pulling over people who look rich and taking their money, never charging them) to a massive $6M heist perpetrated by the FBI where they stole massive amounts of platinum and gold in a "daring" morning raid.

Did you vote for this? IF you really are just now finding out about it, then bully for you and please, consider voting for liberty next time around.

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Vote any third party. No third party, including libertarian, can win in the current environment. But it's still worth it as a "none of the above" vote. None of the above is probably the most important messages we can send, even better than not voting.

Even if you don't like the 3rd party on offer, vote for it. It won't win, and you've still taken a vote from the demreps.

>No third party, including libertarian, can win in the current environment.

It has nothing to do with the "current environment" unless by current environment you mean the first past the post voting system.

People who talk about "vote for X party" are just deluding themselves. Parties aren't based on ideologies, they're based on coalitions. To win you need to get a controlling majority of the seats in the legislature, not "be a small government conservative" or "advance the cause of criminal justice reform" or whatever thing you think would fix everything if people would just make decisions based on that. The only reason any party does anything is that they think it will keep them in power.

So that's how you fix problems. You make it so that the candidate who doesn't advance your cause doesn't get reelected -- and you make sure they all understand that before it happens, so that they do advance your cause.

Which is why the drug war has never been fixed. Because we haven't cared enough about it to move the needle. When things like this happen, do you all go out and write your Congressmen a letter that says "fix this or I'm voting against you"? Do media organizations whose lazy government-sources-only coverage favors prosecutors and law enforcement in cases like this get an explosion of phone calls from regular people complaining about biased reporting? No. Which is why it hasn't been fixed.

They all look human on the way up.

The moment they are voted into legislative and/or executive branch under current "democracy", they will become a part of the Status Quo.

Which operates on the following rule: Why bother about the spokes when you control the hub?

Having said that, a third party vote is the best option under the circumstances.

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