Does America need a Pirate Party?
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This still happens, sure, but it's isolated to the parties themselves, where they are incentivized to appeal to a larger base, which minimizes factional influence from the get-go.
And yes this means that we get idiots like Wilders (and similarly idiotic parties before him, though not as popular). But on the other hand, we have a Pirate Party, an Animal Party (that I'd be more supportive of if they knew to choose their battles better, IMHO), Green Party, Socialist Party, Party for the Elderly, a couple of Christian Parties (different ones, from very strict, to relatively sane but right wing mainstream, and even a leftist one), Labour Party, Liberal (right wing conservative) Party, and many more.
It works, also because if a smaller party gets a seat, what that means is they can voice their standing points, but only really have a good chance of changing something if a larger party also picks it up. However, they are more likely to do that with a smaller party advocating it, because it's a clear signal of popular support for such a point, and it steers the discourse in a particular way.
Another plus is that the extreme crazy (often bigoted) ones, tend to blow up on themselves, because of the evaporation effect (I forget the exact term, it means that moderate people leave, and it becomes an in-fighting echo chamber), because there's always feasible alternatives to vote for, so you don't end up with two parties that are really not representative of whoever would vote for them because it's the "lesser of two evils" (or worse, I've heard some people word it recently as "the equivalent of two evils").
The partial saving grace of the existing system is that even though niche parties will never get elected, their aims can still be achieved-- enough votes to a 3rd party can scare the main players into changing their policies. No one ever won an election for women's suffrage, but the policies still got adopted.
Read Williams Hugues bio of pitt the younger to see what I mean.
I won't be holding my breath for Congress to vote itself less power.
They told a story about Democrats in one state putting up a (national) candidate for the House with a poor environmental record. Republicans in that district consistently got 45% of the vote. The environmentalists went Green Party that year, and the Republican candidate won with the usual 45%. Two years later, the Democrats learned their lesson and picked a strong environmentalist candidate. The Republican got his 45% again and the Democrat won handily.
To use this strategy you have to be willing to put up with some short-term pain, but if you're successful once you'll be in a strong negotiating position for a good while to come. The voters with power are single-issue voters willing to switch parties.
Unfortunately, the problem in the US isn't that we don't have enough parties. We have tons of political parties in the US, ranging from the Libertarian Party, to the Green Party, to the Pirate Party, to the Worker's World Party, to the Prohibition Party, to the Modern Whig Party. No, the problem is plurality / first-past-the-post voting. As Duverger's Law notes, a plurality / FPTP voting system almost always results in a two party dominated system (like we have).
Switch voting to Approval Voting, Range Voting, or a Condorcet method, and we might see some meaningful change.
But in any case, what we need to do is get a party going who's only platform is voting reform. The only goal that matters right now is the end of FPTP and the two party system. Once that's done having all these "fringe" parties will be a good thing because my "progressive" parties will agree on a lot of policy with your libertarians (e.g. surveillance, world police force, etc.).
I agree that voting reform is crucial. Everything else really hinges on that.
The fact that the "libertarian party" is a "thing" in the US is a large sign of what the problem is.
Could you elaborate on that a little more? I think I get the gist of what you mean, but I'm not sure.
FWIW, I'll just point out that the "libertarian movement" (or whatever you want to call it) in the US is bigger than just the "Libertarian Party". There are, for example, the "little l libertarians" within both the Republican and Democratic parties, who espouse and advocate for libertarian views. There are (or have been) multiple "libertarian" parties in the US. There's obviously the "Big L Libertarian" party, but there was also the "Boston Tea Party"[1], for one.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party_(political_par...
The Libertarian movement is an extreme right wing movement. They're correct with their international policy, and I agree with them on their stance on e.g. abortion and gay marriage (i.e. get rid of the religious concept of "marriage" in government). But they also have a lot of dangerous right wing stuff like massive deregulation, gold standard, etc.
Having said that, I've voted Paul pretty much every time I had the chance because while I think his right wing stuff is dangerous and crazy, I don't think that stuff would get through. If we had actual representative government (i.e. the party make up of congress really reflected closely with the populations ideals instead of the red/blue setup we have now) it would work fine because we could get through all those things that your party and my party agree on.
Everybody seems to think that, but I don't believe it to be the case. A better statement is that "Libertarians are right of Right and left of Left". So depending on your existing world-view, you would probably see the Libertarians as either radically Leftist or radically Rightist, and - in either case - you'd be partially correct and partially wrong.
For example, Libertarians align with the left, and would go further than the standard American Left on many social issues:
Abortion - Libertarians tend to be pro-choice and the LP platform specifically says that the State should not be involved in making those decisions.
Drug laws - a typical American "Leftist" position might be "legalize marijuana". A Libertarian position would be more like "The State has no authority whatsoever to regulate what you put into your own body. End ALL drug laws".
Death Penalty - Libertarians are generally opposed to the death penalty.
Gay marriage / minority rights - Libertarians believe the Govt. should have no say in marriage at all, which implies that homosexual couples should be able to marry if they want. Of course, it also implies that others should be free to choose not to recognize that marriage, but hey... that's the price of freedom: You want to be free, you can't compel other people to behave the way you want them to.
OTOH, yes, Libertarians tend to be more closely aligned with "the Right" on economic issues: taxation, trade, business regulation, etc. But I don't think it's fair to call the Libertarian movement "an extreme right wing movement". If for no other reason, because a simple "left / right" dichotomy is not a valid model for representing political orientation.
A good response to people who say that is to point out that there is nothing wrong with being "extreme." That word is just being used as an emotional smear tactic. "Extreme" basically means the same thing as "pure" or "principled," which are both potentially good things. (Ayn Rand has an essay that points all this out, it's not my idea.)
The guy may have a legitimate (to his view) objection, but it's that libertarians are extreme right, not extreme right. (Or, extreme anti-progressive if you want to reject the left-right terminology, which I pretty much agree with you on).
Second, Ayn Rand and her Objectivist 'principles' are ideological bunk masquerading as rational philosophy. Given your comments further down, in attempting to champion the need for a rational basis for policies, there is much irrationality in Rand's positions and ideology, and her ideas only trend toward sacrificing the many for the needs of the few. This opposes the purpose of civil society, as well as the cause and foundation of justice. Furthermore, we already have enough individualism going around. It has not made the world a better place.
> her ideas only trend toward sacrificing the many for the needs of the few
She specifically and clearly explains in her work why that is not the implication of her philosophy, and there is no reason to believe it would be.
Only if you go by the American standards of "left." Libertarians support capitalism, which places them at best a shade left of center in a more global scale.
True. That's OK though, as the context of what was being discussed here was clearly American specific.
Libertarians support capitalism, which places them at best a shade left of center in a more global scale.
That's not completely true. There are Libertarians, even in America, who are more socialist than capitalist. I will grant you, however, that in terms of "general usage" of the term libertarian, more self-described libertarians in America probably do fall into the "pro capitalist" camp. There's nothing about libertarian ideology per-se, however, that mandates capitalism. Libertarianism basically reduces to the Zero Aggression Principle (or "Non Initiation of Force Principle") which says nothing about economic systems.
While in theory, the NAP says nothing about economics, the reality of the general philosophy of those who subscribe the NAP is inherently capitalist. Libertarian philosophy is derived from property rights, starting from the rights of self-ownership. See "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" for example, which starts off by building on top of Locke. Also, the Wikipedia article on the NAP states that there's a strong relationship in the first few sentences, linking to http://mises.org/daily/3660
There's also the fact that Libertarians have pretty much never actually endorsed left-leaning governments, while they have endorsed quite a few right-leaning but impurely-libertarian governments.
Alas, there is so much money, power, and political infrastructure in maintaining the status quo. Changing this structure will not be popular and will quickly be relegated to "wacko" status, and minimized in the mainstream press..... which has a vested interest in maintaining the current system.
I agree with you. They are a progressive party, they are anti-individual rights, and that's why they have "Pirate" (literally a thief) in their name.
The cause of liberty cannot be advanced by backing movements that do not base their ideas on a rational foundation.
A religious devotion to "rationality" is the most insidious form of irrationality.
> A good rationalist
"Rationalism" is actually an error. It means thinking in a way that's disconnected from percepts. Rationalism is the opposite of "empiricism," which is also wrong. It means thinking without abstraction.
tl;dr: being a "rationalist" is not good. Being "rational" is.
> should see genuine irrationality as part of their toolbox
Being genuinely irrational is never going to help you accomplish anything. Kirk was feigning irrationality.
Random deviations from what your opponent thinks is your strategy are in fact known-good components of good strategy.
Time to shave your neckbeard.
"Obama's NSA is spying on your church groups and trying to figure out how many guns you own" would be a pretty powerful political platform that could get a few people elected.
Now, given that, it makes sense to target the Republican party. The party is in a period of disunity, and as a natural tendency Republicans are more amenable to arguments based on distrust of government. Democrats will oppose government when they dislike negative effects that they can see actually happening (e.g. as the Iraq war dragged on), but arguments along the lines of "we shouldn't trust government with these powers, even if you can't see the negative effects yet" work better on Republicans.
Moreover, people don't care about "privacy." Abstract arguments about "privacy" aren't going to get votes. You have to put those abstract arguments in concrete terms that people understand and that relate to things they care about. Paint the issue as giving the liberal administration the ability to snoop on conservative political organizations ("Obama is reading the Tea Party's e-mails!"). Paint the issue as secularists being able to snoop on religious organizations ("Obama is reading your church's e-mails!"). Figure out how to tie it to something Biblical and you're cooking with fire.
This is not a cynical argument, by the way. The whole reason to be worried about surveillance is because of its chilling effect on freedom of political assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. "Obama is reading your cypherpunk IRC logs!" would resonate with a lot of people on HN--but ordinary people don't care about cypherpunks or pirates or groups like that. But there are groups they care about. The chilling effect of surveillance impacts cypherpunks and pirates and anti-abortionists and religious fundamentalists alike. If you don't caucus with those groups, you'll never establish a coalition large enough to have any political impact.
> "but arguments along the lines of ['distrust government'] work better on Republicans"
Forgive me, as someone raised and educated outside of the US, I sometimes get a bit confused. Which party thinks the government should regulate abortion as a crime, and regulate which kinds of partnership qualify for marriage benefits? Which party thinks government should be trusted with truly massive budgets to use the US military to coerce other countries (as a possible measure of this, consider on whose watch the military budget grew, and on whose it shrank)?
By their works shall ye know them, I think? I concluded that the Republicans were the party of big government. Did I get confused again?
> "Paint the issue as giving the liberal administration the ability to snoop on conservative political organizations"
Well, you can paint it any way you like. In practice, I haven't heard of any abuses of surveillance aimed at political conservatives, maybe excepting the KKK (who you may or may not see as "political conservatives" anyway). Just look at how they spent the budget for COINTELPRO, a 15-year-plus abuse of FBI power to suppress political "subversion" (i.e. dissent with the status quo); 85% of that budget was spent on things like suppressing civil rights groups and anti-war protesters. Admittedly, COINTELPRO is going back a long way; if you know of specific abuses that are more recent, I'd certainly consider that more-interesting evidence.
> "This is not a cynical argument"
This, ultimately, is the part I'm questioning. I think this proposal's strategic suitability rests crucially on the distorted image that Republican voters have of the Republican party, and of the overall public discourse.
> "Moreover, people don't care about 'privacy.'"
I couldn't agree more.
> Which party thinks the government should regulate abortion as a crime and regulate which kinds of partnership qualify for marriage benefits?
Religious Republicans don't view this as "big government." You can make sense of the position by thinking about where people think law comes from. Most secularists believe that law is created by governments (though many libertarians espouse belief in "natural law.") If you're a Christian, you generally believe that there is also a higher law that comes from God. Laws concerning murder, reproduction, and marriage, exist, rooted in the Bible, independent of state and federal laws on those subjects. Now, to the extent that state and federal law is consistent with Biblical law, government is "merely" acknowledging inherent law. Attempts to make state and federal law inconsistent with Biblical law are perceived as "big government" attempts to override higher law.
> Which party thinks government should be trusted with truly massive budgets to use the US military to coerce other countries
Most Republicans perceive defense as one of the few legitimate functions of government.
> In practice, I haven't heard of any abuses of surveillance aimed at political conservatives
That's more or less irrelevant.
> I think this proposal's strategic suitability rests crucially on the distorted image that Republican voters have of the Republican party, and of the overall public discourse.
There are two parts to my argument: 1) that the Republican party is a more fertile ground for opposition to surveillance; 2) that privacy advocates need to translate their abstract principles into concrete issues that voters care about. It's the second part that I'm saying is "not cynical," to the extent that there is nothing cynical about trying to find common ground with people whose politics you might otherwise dislike. The former argument is neither cynical nor not cynical--it's just a fact to take into consideration that Republicans trust government less than Democrats, even if they do trust government with certain issues (like defense).
Including spending almost as much on military as the entire rest of the world put together (44.5% of world total, and btw twice the per-capita budget of any sane country), and using that enormous military to invade countries that do not pose a threat. I'm not even arguing (here) against this military budget, nor the adventurism. I'm arguing against calling it small-government, and against calling it "defense", because it's obviously neither.
Anyway, that got off-track. To return to the point, I'm perfectly "careful to distinguish between subjective and objective elements", thank you very much. But given that the subjective elements, on this particular subject, are laughably disconnected from reality, it's pretty cynical to exploit that.
I understand the "two parts to [your] argument". I would have thought that was clear. And I'm agnostic on the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. However, I think both parts are cynical.
And you're spot on about pulling a "Tea Party". The fact is, politics is a nasty business. We need a large group of people willing to say whatever it takes to get voted in. Once in, the only goal should be voting reform. If we can get rid of FPTP we can fix everything else eventually.
They were backed by the billionaire Koch Brothers. We'd have to get Bill Gates or someone like that to pull off something similar.
I propose something called "The 4th Amendment Party" which directly addresses privacy issues, in the US anyway. An international Pirate Party could be used for hopefully countering the negative effects of multinational corporations.
Heck, take advantage of Citizens United and get Google, Facebook, etc, to chip in. If, as has been extensively speculated in other threads in the last few days, NSA surveillance is a dire threat to the global competitiveness of U.S.-based online companies, they have a legitimate business interest in funding such groups.
Heck, CBS's entire market cap is only $30 billion, which Google could buy with cash on hand. How much for just the news divisions? I bet you could get a major presence in US media with just a $5-10 billion acquisition.
I don't have a solution.
You don't need to dislodge them. You just need to convince them that you've got a political platform that will get votes, to counter demographic trends (people who remember the Soviet Union dying off, etc) that don't work in their favor. Bill surveillance as an attack on religious groups, a way for the IRS to more strictly enforce tax laws, etc, and you can present them with a platform that will get votes from their base.
I haven't been watching the news lately, but I can't believe that the republicans aren't already trying to tie the NSA thing to the IRS thing.
Too bad there is no land left on the planet to move to. You can't try new ideas that would flip the worlds political ideologies on their head without somewhere to try it.
The alternative is what all the communist countries and most of Europe did in the last 200 years - violent revolutions overthrowing the current regime. Problem is, our regime isn't nearly as bad as those regimes were, so the pressure isn't there and it is much harder to justify.
I'm all up for a floating city on Venus, though.
That's not true. England transitioned from a feudal society into its modern state with a shocking amount of continuity.
It should be noted that we also had a civil war to decide the boundaries of powers in our government (between the states and the federal government).
While you are correct in that it involved 2 labels of British Society that had been around for years, the details behind each faction and the changes that the leaders of the side of Parliament wanted to bring were more discontinuous. If Cromwell's supporters and his son had been able to hold onto power after his death, I would imagine Great Britain to have changed in some striking ways over the next few centuries.
The secret to the US two party system is that primary elections are really, really important and virtual no one partakes in them. Democrats get elected in safe blue districts and Republicans get elected in safe red districts and only a tiny number of purple districts are really up for grabs. So if you want to shape who wins the general election, the place to apply your time and money is in the primary elections.
Even if you don't win, nothing turns a politician faster than a strong primary challenge. Most of the "old guard" Republicans who defeated their Tea Party challengers none-the-less have shifted course to appease the Tea Party.
So if you want to get Congress to move on domestic spying, start primary-ing Congressmen with anti-spying candidates.
The lobbyists know how this works: they fund both sides to hedge their bets, and they fund individual candidates, not parties. They understand that the balance of power is not between republicans and democrats but it exists inside of both the parties.
However in this instance, my personal favorite would be: Patriot Party
Think about what a childish and ridiculous name "Google" is and still it got adopted worldwide.
Of course, the core problem is not the name of the party, it's the lack of a democratic voting system.
Trying to institutionalize this protest and form a political party was what the PP was about. I'm not sure they succeeded (here in Germany). While they managed to form political positions regarding policies touching technological matters, information acts and data retention, they fall short on anything else on the political scale. They were able to gain traction in state parliaments, but the outlook for the nationwide elections coming up in fall aren't good at all. They have immense personal problems - often connected to the fact that in the areas not covered by their agenda, they are quite diverse.
Building a political party makes sense only if it can influence decisions in parliaments. I fear the PP won't get there here in Germany. Special interest parties don't work in many democratic parliament systems.
A much better fit are in most cases civil liberty unions who can gain public recognition as experts and make it hard for parties in the parliament to ignore their statements.
Has it raised a single dime to support candidates who follow its principles? As far as I can tell, it has not.
Has it done a single day of door-to-door organizing, either for its own growth or for a candidate it supports? As far as I can tell, it has not.
By all appearances it's just a group of people who chat together on IRC. That's fine, but it's not a political party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiquidFeedback
Read about it, there are some fascinating ideas about how participatory politics can work in the world of software.
At least on a national level 3rd parties are poised for failure unless there is some massive financial backing and a strong leadership.
In my opinion the smarter way would be to focus on lobbying efforts and bundling money and manpower for pro-internet candidates. Considering that there are politicians in both parties that have excellent positions on tech related issues but not that much in common in regards to other policies, making this about one issue and not about ideology seems a much more promising approach.
Specifically, first past the post voting provides a disincentive for third parties to compete because they are most likely to harm the candidate who is closest to their own position. Something like score voting, approval voting, or instant runoff voting is needed to break the deadlock.
Approval voting is probably the best bet because people who want to support a third party candidate could also vote for the first or second party who is closest to their position. It's simple, and much easier to support and understand than the other options. This would allow third parties to get a real sense of how well they are really performing before pushing their supporters to actually stop voting for the first and second party candidates.
In at least some states (my own North Carolina, for example) it's VERY difficult to get a new political party recognized by the State, and certified as eligible to put candidates on the ballot. Now, to be fair, NC has some of the worst ballot access laws in the country, but the point is that it's not necessarily easy to organize a party, get candidates on the ballot, etc.
Here in NC, you have to gather enough petition signatures to equal, IIRC, 10% of the total votes cast in the last Presidential election, in order to certify a new party. That winds up being > 100,000 signatures, and you just can't collect that many signatures using only volunteers, which means you need to hire paid petitioners. Last I heard, it cost about a dollar per signature. Oh, and you actually need about 25% more signatures than the nominal requirement, because a bunch will get thrown out by the Board of Elections for one reason or another (not from NC, no birthdate listed, etc.)
You're basically talking about a 4 year long effort and over $100,000.00 to get on the ballot here. And here's the rub: If your party's candidate for President or Governor doesn't garner at least 2% of the vote, you get bumped back off the ballot and have to repeat the whole process again. And so on and so on and so on... Now, 2% isn't that bad, but they only just lowered it to 2% from, IIRC, 10%, a few years ago.
For context: Since the modern (current) election laws went into place, only one party in NC has ever gotten ballot access outside of the Democrats and Republicans, and that was the Libertarian Party. And until they lowered the retention threshold to 2%, we had to go through that "petion, petition, petition every 4 years" cycle essentially constantly, which meant that we had very little money (or energy) to dedicate to supporting candidates, advertising, etc. It was a nonstop war just to retain ballot access.
Also, for context, no 3rd party candidate in NC history has gained 10% or more in race for President or Governor. We have managed to hit the 2% threshold the last two election cycles though, which is nice, since it frees up time and energy and money to do other things besides petitioning.
Anyway, the point of all that is just to show that it takes a lot of effort, time, energy and money to organize a political party and get on the ballot (at least here. Each state is different). And that's just getting on the ballot. Actually winning elections is even harder.
All very bizarre.
Think about that for a minute... You have to be recognized by the State, to be a write-in candidate. Is there a bigger oxymoron in existence than "certified write-in candidate"? But if you don't do it, no votes cast for you will be counted. Even if you seemingly earned what would be a landslide victory, it wouldn't count, because they totally disregard any write-in votes that aren't certified ahead of time.
And people think our system of government isn't rigged and corrupt... sheesh.
Unfortunately, the electoral system of the US appears to be prevent that kind of development, as it makes it exceptionally hard for non-established parties to enter the parliament. So fixing the electoral system would be a prerequisite, but how to fix that without having a parliament majority in the first place?
I believe most Americans would vote similarly.
If you ask me, both parties need 'agents' like you're talking about. People that are rational and don't party-line vote. Take each issue into consideration. Dragging the leftists/rightists to the middle to actually discuss items in a civil manner -- total consideration for the citizens that elected their asses.
I fear this country is toast within 50 years if we can't get away from bipartisanship and party line votes.
-Frustrated
In the case of pirates there is at least a level of romanticism around the idea. And since nobody is really a pirate, anybody can be one.