Third Party Debates Moderated by Larry King: Discuss 221
Since the two big guys got their three debates covered, and the last third party debate kind of fizzled due to technical difficulties, we invite you to discuss the third party debate happening at 9 p.m. EDT tonight. Candidates from the Green, Libertarian, Constitution, and Justice parties will be debating in the same room with Larry King moderating. It would appear that C-SPAN is rebroadcasting it, so you catch it using rtmpdump if you happen to not use Flash. Since third party politicians are still politicians, remember to print out some Logical Fallacy Bingo. Topics for the debate include climate change, the drug war, and civil liberties.
Update: 10/24 02:32 GMT by U L : It turns out there will be a final third party debate next Tuesday on foreign policy between two of the candidates. To determine who will be in the debate Free and Equal is holding an IRV vote until 10:30 p.m. EDT October 24.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:4, Insightful)
>"The properties of IRV seem to be less preferable to a Condorcet voting system or even a system like range voting or approval voting. What makes IRV better than these methods in your opinion?"
Generally, most people (myself included) throw all "alternative" voting systems into the IRV category. Just about ANY type of voting system is better than the simple majority system in use by 99+% of the governments of the USA (and most countries).
That said, I have spent many hours reading about many of the various preferential voting systems out there. I don't know which one is "best" overall. I am not a statistician (having only about 6 credits of university stats) nor a subject matter expert, so I am not going to pretend I am qualified to compare them. But any intelligent person will quickly realize just how incredibly poor our current system is; I would jump at the chance to use even the *WORST* "IRV" solution over what we currently use.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.electology.org/approval-voting [electology.org]
Third-party topics for third-party candidates (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is Rasmussen's list of things that the voters care about:
Economy
Health Care
Gov't Ethics and Corruption
Taxes
Energy Policy
Education
Social Security
Immigration
National Security/War on Terror
Afghanistan
Or a similar list from NBC/WSJ [pollingreport.com]:
"Climate change, the drug war, and civil liberties" are not on either list. The mainstream candidates don't care about them because the voters don't care about them.
It's of no use getting wrapped up in our Slashdot bubble and insist that the things that are important to us must be the top priorities of the nation. A President has to be picked by half the country (or a bit less). We can rant and rave all we want that their priorities are wrong, but all that gets us is the joy of ranting and raving.
Democracy sucks, but less than the other options. We're stuck here in a country that cares more about Afghanistan than about getting their junk groped at the airport. Unless they're service members, or their family, the odds are that the latter affects them more. But it's no use telling me that. Tell them.
I suppose this debate is going to try to do that, and maybe it'll change something. But it's not going to suddenly propel a minority issue into a game-changer.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:4, Insightful)
IRV is not that different to the current system in the US. You need a proportional [wikipedia.org] system, which allows other parties to get to at least have some representation and everyone’s vote count (except for those lost in rounding).
PR has its problems but most of those already are present in the US system anyway. What kind of backwards system allows only voters in the small number of "swing states" to have a vote that actually ends up mattering in deciding you president.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:3, Insightful)
Does proportional mean I am effectively voting for a party rather than an individual? That seems like a pretty significant downside.
Re:Tea Party is libertarian, not far right (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they have far right members, but also many socially liberal members because the core goal overlaps with people of many different philosophical backgrounds.
Yes, and I see lots of the former and none of the latter actually in office.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's not really possible to make things worse than they are now (without going to something ridiculous like throwing darts at a wall). The simple plurality voting commonly used really is the worst system for greater than two candidates. For exactly two options it's the perfect method, but for more it's the worst of all the voting systems.
Re:Third-party topics for third-party candidates (Score:3, Insightful)
marijuana and the psychedelics should be legal (not addicting) but you will find those who will claim it should be possible to use drugs like cocaine and meth and heroin freely. these are people who only see the constraints on their personal freedom, and not costs to society: lots of addicts who can't take care of themselves. even if you buy the dubious claim that someone can take a drug like heroin or cocaine or meth only occasionally with no ill effect on their relationships or employment, such an outlier does not have any merit on what a nation's drug policy should be like for the average person
of course, drug addiction should be treated as a healthcare problem and not an issue for incarceration, but there are substances which simply can never be legal in society. even all of the programs in europe drug liberalization champions refer to: those programs still have as their goal the reduction of users, these programs have a central belief that using hardcore drugs is harmful and should not occur and must be fought, but with novel approaches instead
some people can't wrap their minds around the simple and obvious fact that using some drugs: heroin, cocaine, and meth, is all downside. and even if they understand that, and see only the cost to the user, and not society, and therefore it should be legal, the problem here is a blindness: of course there is a cost to society when your life implodes. we see in the USA a gigantic debate about all sorts of policy issues involving people who for some crazy reason believe themselves to be islands and think their choices incur no costs on others, when of course they do
in other minds, the issue is simply oppression from government, but in reality the greatest oppression a person can ever suffer in this life is addiction: bars in the mind, an interrupt switch that replaces higher cognition with an empty craven need to feed. in fact, the most oppressive nation that can be conceived by fascist minds would require people to use heroin. there simply is no better weapon for control and oppression and subjugation that can be designed by mankind than drug addiction. and yet, some fools will embrace this horror, simply because they think the only source of oppression in this world is government. it's a sick form of reverse psychology: if a government entity told them not to jump off a cliff, they would jump off a cliff
of course, you will also find people who are in denial about being an addict or attempting to rationalize their addiction. you can see desperation in their words
in a nutshell, some people just don't understand that there's freedom and responsibility, and freedom from responsibility, and mistaking one for the other is immaturity, not a better understanding of true freedom in this world
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't recall anything at the federal level specifying how exactly the electors from the states are selected for the electoral college.
Re:Libertarians ARE logical fallacies (Score:5, Insightful)
You (and the mods) misunderstand.
He's not saying "we must take away personal liberty until everyone is equal", he's saying "it's impossible to have true liberty with so much inequality."
There's a move to make school focus on teaching job schools. College is becoming ever more expensive to bury you in debt. Unions are being destroyed so your employer can play you against your neighbor to pay you both less. Employers want to keep unemployment up so that you're desperate enough to work ever-longer hours for those low wages. And you'll do it, because the alternative is dying in the streets. Data mining allows them to charge you the max amount you're willing to pay. Their contracts require you to waive your right to sue. If you want to retire, you're forced to invest money, where it will be systematically skimmed off by Wall Street firms.
What freedom do you think you have? The freedom to work for someone else's benefit until you die?
The only freedom you'll ever know will come from ganging up with your neighbors, and fighting back. Call it a union, or a government -- either way, it's the people against the powerful. That's how it's been every since the biggest strongest men in the tribes realized they could take the fruits and berries gathered by the other members.
It has a huge effect on you and all of us (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean I agree it's stupid, but it has zero effect on me or anyone I know.
That is utterly false.
The attempt to curtail drug trafficking is a HUGE source of the pain we all experience at airports, or crossing the border anywhere.
It has driven a huge number of illegal immigrants to the U.S.
It also provides a baseline reason for lots of stops and searches from police officers.
It also is the source of vast sums of money being spent by federal and local governments, which could have meant lower taxes or greater services for everyone including you.
There are countless ways that the drug wars affect people who do not care a whit for drugs. I have never used a controlled substance but I am for curtailing all drug laws. Yes, ALL drug laws.
Re:Why bother without IRV (Score:4, Insightful)
"There are plus and minus with America's first past the post system. What I like about it is that I get a clear chocie between 2 moderate people. I don't have to worry what type of deals they will cut to get into a political coalition - I have less to worry about political hacks cutting inside deals. I am voting for an individual."
This is the same FUD argument that was used in the UK, but the problem is it's exactly that - FUD.
By voting for an individual, particularly under first past the post, you're basically saying the largest minority gets an effective 100% of that power pool. So if you have 3 candidates, one gets 35%, another gets 33%, and another 32% then the one getting 35% wins effective 100% of that power meaning he can push his agenda without any kind of care or concern for what the 65% of people who didn't vote for him want. This is exactly the problem we have in the UK with our First Past the Post system and the problem scales from both the individual MP to the whole government. Meaning the whole government can get in with sometimes as little as 30% of popular support and yet gain 100% of power in the face of the 70% of the population who didn't want them.
Proportional representation means that the individual representative has to work to try and ensure they follow a set of policies that is good enough for at least half of their electorate forcing them to be much more representative of the electorate. At a government level this may well mean coalitions, but that ultimately means those backroom deals you talk about are moderating principles that ensure laws are past that at least somewhat please half the population, rather than serve minorities and often self-interests.
In the UK for example we got our first coalition in a long time and whilst it's not been particularly rosy it's been far more moderate than a purely Conservative government would've been - for example whilst the Lib Dems allowed tuition fee increases to go through, they were only £9,000 whilst the Conservatives wanted £12,000 fees. Similarly the NHS changes whilst not pleasant are still much more moderate than a purely Tory government wanted. In other words, the coalition has had a moderating influence and it's the same elsewhere where there is proportional representation.
You only have to look at Canada to see the problem - when they had a minority Conservative government things weren't great, but now Harper has a majority the country has gone massively downhill in no time at all in terms of the quality of it's law making, with the wingnuts crawling out the woodworking and recommending/passing some really awful bills.
Re:It's all in a name (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with "approval" voting is that it asks me which candidate I approve of.
Looking down the list of all candidates, no matter the party, I don't see one that I approve of.
Re:Third-party topics for third-party candidates (Score:5, Insightful)
"There are many important issues in this presidential campaign. When it comes to deciding for whom you will vote for president, which one of the following is the single most important issue in deciding for whom you will vote? The economy. Social issues and values. Social Security and Medicare. Health care. The federal deficit. Foreign policy and the Middle East. Terrorism." If "all": "Well, if you had to choose the most important issue, which would you choose?"
Climate change, the drug war, and civil liberties aren't even options in the poll! You can't use a poll that doesn't allow these options to conclude that people don't care about these options.