Can see that working a treat with the anti-vaxxers. Why don't we just all get infected with Covid now and save us all the breath.
Why don't we treat each other as grownups instead of the caricatures we can imagine?
How would you propose to coerce people into getting vaccinated, for Covid or anything else? Let's see your proposal. I'm sure it's no worse than what the most paranoid anti-vaxxer is imagining, but I doubt it's anything like workable.
Voluntarism goes both ways: I won't force you to get vaccinated at gunpoint. You have sole responsibility for your self, your health, and your body, and I with mine. You also have no right to force others to include you in their activities because of it.
There are no ranks, only individuals, remember? Seriously, if current affairs are not enough for you to question individualism as an abolute moral imperative, then I can't help you. Of course, each one of us has to think for him or herself, in fact that is true more so than ever, certainly in my lifetime. But that just isn't enough! With stakes so high, putting petty differenes aside and coming together to achieve a common goal, even if that means temporarily suspending certain 'lesser' freedoms we otherwise, rightly, enjoy, cannot be a matter of contention. Sadly, that is precisely what that mindless Mises quote implies.
There are lots of ranks, filled with individuals. We act collectively to solve problems we can't handle alone. No one contests this, no SirD, not me, not Ludwig Von Mises.
What you can imply from the body of Mises' life's work (not specifically from that quote, which is simply a statement that each individual is alone responsible for his/her own actions) is that collective actionârequiring the suspension of "certain 'lesser' freedoms we otherwise, rightly, enjoy"â the is only moral (and effective) when it is voluntary.
That is the core of libertarianism. If you want my cooperation convince me. If you don't get it leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone* to pursue your own goalsâby yourself or with others.
You seem to want to attach your own baggage to that concept, and seem to have a particular animus for old Ludwig. I don't know what you've read of his, if anything; he is one of the boogeymen who get trotted out to frighten children in academia these days whose ideas are so dangerous they must only be seen thru the lens of caricature and paraphrasing.
If you have actually read Mises perhaps you could quote a passage that implies what you claim. Go ahead, I'll wait.
*By "leave you alone" I mean I will refrain from using the threat of force to prevent you from doing something within your rights to do. You don't have a right not to be disagreed with.
Can see that working a treat with the anti-vaxxers. Why don't we just all get infected with Covid now and save us all the breath.
There are no ranks, only individuals, remember? Seriously, if current affairs are not enough for you to question individualism as an abolute moral imperative, then I can't help you. Of course, each one of us has to think for him or herself, in fact that is true more so than ever, certainly in my lifetime. But that just isn't enough! With stakes so high, putting petty differenes aside and coming together to achieve a common goal, even if that means temporarily suspending certain 'lesser' freedoms we otherwise, rightly, enjoy, cannot be a matter of contention. Sadly, that is precisely what that mindless Mises quote implies.
There are lots of ranks, filled with individuals. We act collectively to solve problems we can't handle alone. No one contests this, no SirD, not me, not Ludwig Von Mises.
What you can imply from the body of Mises' life's work (not specifically from that quote, which is simply a statement that each individual is alone responsible for his/her own actions) is that collective action—requiring the suspension of "certain 'lesser' freedoms we otherwise, rightly, enjoy"— the is only moral (and effective) when it is voluntary.
That is the core of libertarianism. If you want my cooperation convince me. If you don't get it leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone* to pursue your own goals—by yourself or with others.
You seem to want to attach your own baggage to that concept, and seem to have a particular animus for old Ludwig. I don't know what you've read of his, if anything; he is one of the boogeymen who get trotted out to frighten children in academia these days whose ideas are so dangerous they must only be seen thru the lens of caricature and paraphrasing.
If you have actually read Mises perhaps you could quote a passage that implies what you claim. Go ahead, I'll wait.
*By "leave you alone" I mean I will refrain from using the threat of force to prevent you from doing something within your rights to do. You don't have a right not to be disagreed with.
I used 'you' and 'me' purely for illustrative purposes. I don't know you, nor do I think it matters whether you are, in any way, virtuous or not. Funnily, all self proclaimed libertarians think of themselves as particularly virtuous, which I find hard to believe. What I am trying to get at is that your religion has nothing to say about the consequences of your actions for others. This is a gross shortcoming which is particularly evident when applied, in theory, to situations such as the current pandemic where collective action is so obviously imperative.
Again, read the article. It is by libertarians (of the reconvalescent type) for libertarians (of the more pervicacious type, such as Misesians).
I think I am virtuous because I want to leave you alone. Well if that is virtuous, then so be it. Though I can think of no greater insult than being called virtuous especially in today's age. I want nothing to do with that label. I think the world is chock full of the "virtuous", I certainly have no inclination to join those ranks.
There are no ranks, only individuals, remember? Seriously, if current affairs are not enough for you to question individualism as an abolute moral imperative, then I can't help you. Of course, each one of us has to think for him or herself, in fact that is true more so than ever, certainly in my lifetime. But that just isn't enough! With stakes so high, putting petty differenes aside and coming together to achieve a common goal, even if that means temporarily suspending certain 'lesser' freedoms we otherwise, rightly, enjoy, cannot be a matter of contention. Sadly, that is precisely what that mindless Mises quote implies.
I used 'you' and 'me' purely for illustrative purposes. I don't know you, nor do I think it matters whether you are, in any way, virtuous or not. Funnily, all self proclaimed libertarians think of themselves as particularly virtuous, which I find hard to believe. What I am trying to get at is that your religion has nothing to say about the consequences of your actions for others. This is a gross shortcoming which is particularly evident when applied, in theory, to situations such as the current pandemic where collective action is so obviously imperative.
Again, read the article. It is by libertarians (of the reconvalescent type) for libertarians (of the more pervicacious type, such as Misesians).
I think I am virtuous because I want to leave you alone. Well if that is virtuous, then so be it. Though I can think of no greater insult than being called virtuous especially in today's age. I want nothing to do with that label. I think the world is chock full of the "virtuous", I certainly have no inclination to join those ranks.
I used 'you' and 'me' purely for illustrative purposes. I don't know you, nor do I think it matters whether you are, in any way, virtuous or not. Funnily, all self proclaimed libertarians think of themselves as particularly virtuous, which I find hard to believe. What I am trying to get at is that your religion has nothing to say about the consequences of your actions for others. This is a gross shortcoming which is particularly evident when applied, in theory, to situations such as the current pandemic where collective action is so obviously imperative.
Again, read the article. It is by libertarians (of the reconvalescent type) for libertarians (of the more pervicacious type, such as Misesians).
A unified theory of how individuals do act is, in fact, just one more libertarian mansplainer telling us how he believes we all should act, in order for his back-of-the-envelope calculation of society to materialize. The idea behind claiming that all human action is always purposeful, after all, is to place the blame for all human ills on individual shoulders. How convenient to rule out social determinants of human suffering a priori. Serious social science (note the word social) is open and pluralistic in its approaches to theorizing. You can have your freedom dogma, by all means, but I'll have my group-think, thank you very much.
1. Libertarians strive to NOT tell you how you or anyone else should act unless it affects others, it's kinda of a basic fundamental of libertarianism.
2. Good luck with that!
So they tell themselves. Sadly, they're actually very bad at doing what they think they're doing, because they have chosen to think along one dimension only. Just as one cannot not communicate , non-action also has consequences for others - often dire consequences. But of course, if one elevates ignoring consequences for others to a moral principle (see apriorism), that doesn't matter.
Your (and everybody else's freedom to go on a pub crawl during a pandemic forces me, who, for argument's sake is old or has pre-existing conditions, to take extra precautions just to survive.
Have a look at the 2nd article I linked to below.
I bet I am more careful than you are regarding pandemic and I am a libertarian at the same time, imagine that. Broad strokes you have.
A unified theory of how individuals do act is, in fact, just one more libertarian mansplainer telling us how he believes we all should act, in order for his back-of-the-envelope calculation of society to materialize. The idea behind claiming that all human action is always purposeful, after all, is to place the blame for all human ills on individual shoulders. How convenient to rule out social determinants of human suffering a priori. Serious social science (note the word social) is open and pluralistic in its approaches to theorizing. You can have your freedom dogma, by all means, but I'll have my group-think, thank you very much.
1. Libertarians strive to NOT tell you how you or anyone else should act unless it affects others, it's kinda of a basic fundamental of libertarianism.
2. Good luck with that!
So they tell themselves. Sadly, they're actually very bad at doing what they think they're doing, because they have chosen to think along one dimension only. Just as one cannot not communicate , non-action also has consequences for others - often dire consequences. But of course, if one elevates ignoring consequences for others to a moral principle (see apriorism), that doesn't matter.
Your (and everybody else's freedom to go on a pub crawl during a pandemic forces me, who, for argument's sake is old or has pre-existing conditions, to take extra precautions just to survive.
A unified theory of how individuals do act is, in fact, just one more libertarian mansplainer telling us how he believes we all should act, in order for his back-of-the-envelope calculation of society to materialize. The idea behind claiming that all human action is always purposeful, after all, is to place the blame for all human ills on individual shoulders. How convenient to rule out social determinants of human suffering a priori. Serious social science (note the word social) is open and pluralistic in its approaches to theorizing. You can have your freedom dogma, by all means, but I'll have my group-think, thank you very much.
1. Libertarians strive to NOT tell you how you or anyone else should act unless it affects others, it's kinda of a basic fundamental of libertarianism.
Yes, but individuals tend to think, reason and act differently, depending e.g. on whether they're acting on their own or someone else's behalf, whether their life / livelyhood depends on it, whether peers are watching, on hormonal disposition, mood, stress, air temperature, time of day etc. etc. and may often not be acting purposefully at all. This means that theories about how groups act or, to translate this into language a libertrarian might understand, how indivuals within a specific set of external circumstances are likely to act, often have more explanatory power than theories that aggregate supposedly universal truths about what drives all human behaviour at all times. All theories are wrong, but there is nothing that makes atomistic theories inherently truer than others.
A unified theory of how individuals do act is, in fact, just one more libertarian mansplainer telling us how he believes we all should act, in order for his back-of-the-envelope calculation of society to materialize. The idea behind claiming that all human action is always purposeful, after all, is to place the blame for all human ills on individual shoulders. How convenient to rule out social determinants of human suffering a priori. Serious social science (note the word social) is open and pluralistic in its approaches to theorizing. You can have your freedom dogma, by all means, but I'll have my group-think, thank you very much.
Bleeding Heart Libertarians is no longer publishing new material. The final post is here.
Itâs an end worth noting, because it seems to me (I have no very
specific knowledge, and have deliberately not asked any of the
principals involved) to say something bigger about what is happening to
libertarianism.
(...) But if the pandemic has shown that a critical stance toward government is always needed in formulating and evaluating policy, it has demonstrated even more forcefully the limitations and shortcomings of libertariansâ exclusive focus on government excess. The gravest failuresin the government response to the pandemic were sins of omission, not commission â not unnecessary and ill-advised interference with the private sector, but the inability to accomplish tasks for which only government is suited.
Way too much to quote, and too much to respond to in my current state
Um, thanks for sharing. I get it: the way to appeal to you is to make my party just like your party, to see every problem as a nail to government's hammer.
Still curious tho, since you never got around to this: why should the political contest come down to just two partiesâyours (of course!) and the Republicans? What makes Donald Trump a worthwhile alternative but Jo Jorgenson not?
I'll try to keep this brief. I know I rabbit on a lot.
1. You and I have sparred in the past. I have been really unpleasant to you at times. I apologize for that behavior. For the most part you didn't deserve my harsh words. 1a. OTOH , you have a bad habit of putting people down in your posts, or trying to. This quote for instance patronizes and exaggerates:
"...the way to appeal to you is to make my party just like your party, to see every problem as a nail to government's hammer."
1b. You write well and are quite intelligent. You really don't need to be arrogant and snarky. It just weakens the appeal of your thoughts.
2. I don't expect the libertarian party to be like the GOP or Dems. I don't believe that every problem should be a nail to government's hammer. 3. I DO expect the LP to come up with credible policy suggestions when faced with:
3a. one of the worst public health crises in this country's history. 3b. one of the worst economic crises in this country's history. 3c. the biggest global ecological crisis in humankind's history.
4. I understand that the LP believes in limited government and AFAICT a vigorous promotion of individual rights over government powers. However, those two beliefs do NOT serve a nation well in times of major, time-sensitive crises. In fact, those beliefs fail the US entirely.
4a. I don't think Jorgenson offered a realistic response to the coronavirus pandemic. Appealing to people's common sense isn't enough to maintain sufficient quarantining of the general population. As you pointed out, popular opinion was far more cautious about lifting the quarantine than were our governors. Yet without enforced restrictions in place, the incautious group of the population would have dramatically increased the number of infections and risked overwhelming our hospitals and health-care workers.
4a1. Do you have a LP-oriented proposal for fighting Covid19 without government mandates such as social distancing, wearing of masks in public, contact tracing, public funding of accelerated research and testing of medical treatments and preventatives?
4b. Do you have an LP-oriented proposal for addressing 40 million unemployed Americans, a crash in economic activity, the looming threat of massive evictions and foreclosures? Can you explain how the federal government could address those problems without government programs in place? Can you explain, for instance, how private citizens would pick and choose which businesses should get money to stay afloat and which should not? Again, that was Jorgenson's proposal.
4b1. Do you have objections to existing European government programs to shore up employment and businesses during a crisis such as Germany's Kurzarbeit? Germany used this program to recover from the Great Recession far more quickly than the US did.
4c. Do you have an LP-oriented proposal for combating global warming? We might have been able to rely more on free markets to fight global warming had we started decades ago. We don't have time anymore, thanks in part to scientists failing until recently to accurately gauge the severity of the crisis. AFAICT we'll have to look at massive geo-engineering projects to save ourselves.
Gary Johnson largely punted on the issue. The last time I checked the LP's Web page on the matter, it suggested IIRC that we could address this problem primarily by vigorous adherence to private property rights. Such adherence is one of the main reasons that we're in an ecological crisisâthat and the failure of our capitalist society to price the cost of destroying a public good such as the climate into the costs of goods and services.
5. There will be problems that a free-market economy and promotion of individual rights cannot solve. We've got three such massive problems right now.
5a. I think that any responsible government or political party should be able to adapt its policies to meet the needs of the times. A pro-union government, for instance, should decrease its support of unions if they are crippling the economy with general strikes.
5b. I don't see that flexibility from LP politicians. In fact, Johnson and Jorgenson are so wedded to LP philosophy that their proposals to our pandemic, economic collapse and global warming are ridiculous and divorced from reality.
5c. I don't think that the GOP is much better when confronting these problems. The GOP is so shackled to the notion of tax cuts as the only pro-active means of government action that it can barely acknowledge the existence of global warming. It has no plan to contain Covid19 apart from a too-brief quarantine period. And it seems largely content to wait and see if the economy can't get up off the canvas.
5d. The GOP and the LP are both irresponsible on these matters. Size of party and number of elected seats held are not the problems here. Inflexible adherence to inappropriate policies is the problem.
You wrote:
"Still curious tho, since you never got around to this: why should the political contest come down to just two partiesâyours (of course!) and the Republicans? What makes Donald Trump a worthwhile alternative but Jo Jorgenson not?"
A fair question. In general I don't have a problem with multi-party system provided it doesn't devolve into over-representation as occurred in inter-war Europe. I am very skeptical of third parties in American national elections because they typically don't have a sufficient grassroots base to have a big enough bloc of politicians elected to ensure an effective and sustained presence in power.
Yes, elected independent politicians and LP politicians have been able to work with Dems and the GOP but I don't view that as representing a sustained and organized political presence independent of the two parties. Third-party issues tend to get co-opted by the Big Two parties.
My big concern with third parties in presidential elections is that they can split the vote and let undesirable candidates win. Ralph Nader in 2000 comes to mind. I haven't looked at the results of the 2016 election to form an opinion as to whether Jill Stein and Gary Johnson helped cost HRC the election.
Finally, third-parties and their candidates often run on one or two issues and aren't ready to offer fleshed out policy proposals on a broad spectrum of issues. I see someone like Ralph Nader running for president and I view him as just stroking his ego and lacking in real plans to get his core ideas and values enacted.
Way too much to quote, and too much to respond to in my current state
Um, thanks for sharing. I get it: the way to appeal to you is to make my party just like your party, to see every problem as a nail to government's hammer.
Still curious tho, since you never got around to this: why should the political contest come down to just two parties—yours (of course!) and the Republicans? What makes Donald Trump a worthwhile alternative but Jo Jorgenson not?
The true independents apparently are less politically engaged than the leaning independents. So overall, I'm not sure that independent voters (according to Pew, making up about 38% of voters) are really up for grabs as potential converts to Libertarianism.
The Libertarian party (LP) might be able to pull disillusioned people in their directionâI don't know. But my concern with the LP is that it doesn't seem big on collective action or agreements that would require people to limit or sacrifice their individual freedoms. Mandated universal health care, required quarantining, regulation of pollution, federal policies designed to combat global warming...from what I can tell, the LP is against those things. But we need such policies and the LP doesn't seem to offer real alternatives.
Determining who people actually support is why we have elections. You don't sound convinced, but then it isn't about you.
And yes, the LP and you differ on philosophy and policy. Differing from you (and opposing your laundry list of policy proposals) does not disqualify anyone from political participation.
For instance: in the last election cycle, LP presidential nominee Gary Johnson was asked how he would combat global warming. He replied that he thought cap-and-trade legislation would cost far more than it would be worth. He also suggested that we should take the longlong term view: the sun will expand in billions of years, burning up the earth...so global warming is certainly in our future.
Well, shoot me in the leg, if it ain't a Democrat quoting a political opponent out of context! Sure you want to play that game?
Because if saying anything, ever, that can be put on an endless loop in opposition media bubbles to make them look ridiculous means they aren't qualified for office then allow me to present...Joe Biden.
In the National Press Club video Gary Johnson spoke for almost an hour. He laid out credible policy proposals on a variety of topics from foreign interventions to defense spending to taxation to immigration. At about the 29 minute mark he acknowledges anthropomorphic climate change. He doesn't endorse your favorite policy proposal, and ultimately (this event was in 2011) coal power started giving way to a lower-carbon power sourceâwithout a government intervention. He didn't state that very articulately, but if you start the video where Mother Jones thinks you should you'll miss about 45 minutes of articulate, sensible policy proposals.
When that happens to your candidate it's a gaffe. When it happens to an opponent it's a revealing insight into the terrible truth within.
I'd be happy to defend her stance on quarantineâit is an acknowledgement of reality: that if you don't convince people that the threat is real and the solution you offer is effective there is no amount of draconian enforcement that will make it workâbut that isn't the point we're debating here. Again, differing with your policy position doesn't disqualify anyone from running in an election. Differing policy proposals are why we have elections.
Spike Cohen is a member of a noisy faction in the LP that wants to treat elections as performative opportunities to ridicule mainstream politics. Vermin Supreme is the leader (to the extent that anarchists have leaders) of that faction.
Spike was selected as VP candidate to appease that faction. Jorgenson controls her campaign and the party controls the platform; Spike was really the only accommodation they got.
Which of course never happens in the two incumbent parties, right? Neither of them would seek to mollify a faction by nominating as VP anyone who ultimately embarrassed them, like say...Dan Quayle, or Sarah Palin, or Joe Lieberman...or Joe Biden.
Johnson and Jorgenson are simply not being responsible in their policy formulations. The party teeters between the seriously naive and the f*ckit, let's be clowns.
And finally, I'm very skeptical that the LP will ever be able to forge serious, lasting coalitions with the Dems or GOP. If you can't form alliances and build a broad base, you're powerlessâeven if you win an election.
How well a politician handles opponents and builds coalitions is as much a matter of personality as it is of philosophy. Jimmy Carter (a decent man and an underrated president) sucked at it. Ronald Reagan (who I imagine you despised) was very good at it. Justin Amash is a good test case; he is the only LP member in the US house. As such he can't get anything done with just his own party's support. Let's see how his police accountability bill does. Gary Johnson was elected governor twice in a state whose politics are dominated by the Democratic party.
But I'd like to expand on an earlier point: what qualifications does a politician or party need to be on the ballot.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you aren't just a partisan hack using anything handy to attack a rival and take you at your word. By your reckoning Gary Johnson was not a credible candidate for the office of president, but somehow Donald Trump was.
Go ahead and defend that. I'll wait.
You wrote
"Again, differing with your policy position doesn't disqualify anyone from running in an election."
I quite agree. But I'll repeat my main point with different words:
because of its adherence to limited government,the LP seems incapable of formulating policies when events demand large-scale and prolonged government intervention.
This is a fatal mistake embedded in the very heart of the LP's philosophy of and approach to politics. That mistake only grows in impact when it's considered in a larger political arena, such as a state (e.g. New York) or nation.
If. the LP could formulate policies that accommodate major government action in the face of a large-scale or long-term problem, I'd be more interested in what it had to say. (The jokers and clowns and incompetents are something that hopefully the LP will shed). But the LP has completely fallen down when presented with the chance to address major crises with positive action. Sometimes Big Government really is the answer. THREE EXAMPLES BELOW:
1.
Your characterization of Gary Johnson's position on global warming as a gaffe or a poorly articulated statement. is, with all due respect, disingenuous. I believe Johnson gave the same answer to global warming as an issue more than once: the sun will burn up the sun in billions of years, so let's not do anything. In the NPC Q&A he also claims that the cost of fighting global warming outweighs possible benefits. Yes, the speech was in 2011 but Gary's no-government-involvement approach, an LP general policy AFAICT, is today a recipe for near-term irreversible damage to the earth and the US.
A global warming crisis? Gary says let's lend certainty to energy markets (like they don't have certainty. Please). Fighting global warming fails his cost/benefit analysis. If we follow Gary's thinking, we destroy the planet.
Has the LP changed its mind about combating global warming with government action or intervention? Please inform me. This is clearly the greatest crisis we'll face in our lifetimes. In terms of potential, it makes the pandemic look like peanuts. 2.
But the has been the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime, and it's two-pronged. There's the personal assault, with us all under house arrest. We can't go to our jobs, we can't go to funerals, weddings, can't see our families. That's the personal aspect, then there's the economic aspect. That fact that govenment is bailing out companies with two trillion dollarsâ¦whenever government spends money, government bureaucrat money go to their friends, special interests, and lobbyists. It would be better if Americans got to keep their money and let them decide which companies deserve money, not the government.
I very much doubt that Jorgenson or the LP has a credible plan for limiting infections. Appealing to people's common sense or desire for self-preservation wouldn't have done near enough to check infections. Check out this report from the Imperial College in London on what would have happened if there had been no quarantining:
As for our economic crash that's caused 40 million to lose their jobs, Jorgenson wants those people to rely on private charity. Oh, and people should directly get to pick which companies get bailed out. HOW THE F*CK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK?
Here's a good piece from WashPo with charts that let you compare our current downturn to that of the Great Depression. How would Jorgenson have attacked the Great Depression? For all the blame he takes, even Herbert Hoover enacted federal government programs that employed 700,000 people. Unfortunately, the scale of his policies was insufficient. With the LP, I'm guessing its scale would have been non-existent.
The LP's influence on state and federal governments might be beneficial when Big Government isn't necessarily the right answer and the expansion of individual freedoms doesn't excessively conflict with the public good. But the LP is fatally ineffective in crises when Big Government is needed. That's why I don't believe in an LP-run government.
The true independents apparently are less politically engaged than the leaning independents. So overall, I'm not sure that independent voters (according to Pew, making up about 38% of voters) are really up for grabs as potential converts to Libertarianism.
The Libertarian party (LP) might be able to pull disillusioned people in their directionâI don't know. But my concern with the LP is that it doesn't seem big on collective action or agreements that would require people to limit or sacrifice their individual freedoms. Mandated universal health care, required quarantining, regulation of pollution, federal policies designed to combat global warming...from what I can tell, the LP is against those things. But we need such policies and the LP doesn't seem to offer real alternatives.
Determining who people actually support is why we have elections. You don't sound convinced, but then it isn't about you.
And yes, the LP and you differ on philosophy and policy. Differing from you (and opposing your laundry list of policy proposals) does not disqualify anyone from political participation.
For instance: in the last election cycle, LP presidential nominee Gary Johnson was asked how he would combat global warming. He replied that he thought cap-and-trade legislation would cost far more than it would be worth. He also suggested that we should take the longlong term view: the sun will expand in billions of years, burning up the earth...so global warming is certainly in our future.
Well, shoot me in the leg, if it ain't a Democrat quoting a political opponent out of context! Sure you want to play that game?
Because if saying anything, ever, that can be put on an endless loop in opposition media bubbles to make them look ridiculous means they aren't qualified for office then allow me to present...Joe Biden.
In the National Press Club video Gary Johnson spoke for almost an hour. He laid out credible policy proposals on a variety of topics from foreign interventions to defense spending to taxation to immigration. At about the 29 minute mark he acknowledges anthropomorphic climate change. He doesn't endorse your favorite policy proposal, and ultimately (this event was in 2011) coal power started giving way to a lower-carbon power sourceâwithout a government intervention. He didn't state that very articulately, but if you start the video where Mother Jones thinks you should you'll miss about 45 minutes of articulate, sensible policy proposals.
When that happens to your candidate it's a gaffe. When it happens to an opponent it's a revealing insight into the terrible truth within.
I'd be happy to defend her stance on quarantineâit is an acknowledgement of reality: that if you don't convince people that the threat is real and the solution you offer is effective there is no amount of draconian enforcement that will make it workâbut that isn't the point we're debating here. Again, differing with your policy position doesn't disqualify anyone from running in an election. Differing policy proposals are why we have elections.
Spike Cohen is a member of a noisy faction in the LP that wants to treat elections as performative opportunities to ridicule mainstream politics. Vermin Supreme is the leader (to the extent that anarchists have leaders) of that faction.
Spike was selected as VP candidate to appease that faction. Jorgenson controls her campaign and the party controls the platform; Spike was really the only accommodation they got.
Which of course never happens in the two incumbent parties, right? Neither of them would seek to mollify a faction by nominating as VP anyone who ultimately embarrassed them, like say...Dan Quayle, or Sarah Palin, or Joe Lieberman...or Joe Biden.
Johnson and Jorgenson are simply not being responsible in their policy formulations. The party teeters between the seriously naive and the f*ckit, let's be clowns.
And finally, I'm very skeptical that the LP will ever be able to forge serious, lasting coalitions with the Dems or GOP. If you can't form alliances and build a broad base, you're powerlessâeven if you win an election.
How well a politician handles opponents and builds coalitions is as much a matter of personality as it is of philosophy. Jimmy Carter (a decent man and an underrated president) sucked at it. Ronald Reagan (who I imagine you despised) was very good at it. Justin Amash is a good test case; he is the only LP member in the US house. As such he can't get anything done with just his own party's support. Let's see how his police accountability bill does. Gary Johnson was elected governor twice in a state whose politics are dominated by the Democratic party.
But I'd like to expand on an earlier point: what qualifications does a politician or party need to be on the ballot.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you aren't just a partisan hack using anything handy to attack a rival and take you at your word. By your reckoning Gary Johnson was not a credible candidate for the office of president, but somehow Donald Trump was.
don't vote for them because they can't win because nobody votes for them because they can't win so don't vote for them?
You realize what it takes to break that cycle, right?
Rank-choice voting
Yeah, but it has some problems, so people pick it apart and stick with the massively flawed system they have. For a group so accustomed to lesser evil thinking you'd think they would be all over this.
The fascinating thing about democracy is the way perverse outcomes can occur, no matter how you run your elections. We do rank-choice voting in Australia and they have tried variations of whether you need to rank choices all the way down the candidate list that can run to more than 20 sometimes or if you only have to rank a certain number. But they also let you assign your 'preferences' to your first choice's party. So those votes are passed from party to party until someone ends up with a majority. So the parties do back-room deals with guidance from modellers. And that's how we ended up with a senator from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party who had no experience and ran for a lark. He actually turned out to be not too bad at it. It's still a pretty good system and better than yours.
Israel, I think uses the proportion of national votes to apportion representatives. With lots of parties, the government is usually a coalition with inordinate power held by fringe religious parties.
Any system works better when the polis are willing to support the good ideas rather than opposing everything suggested by the majority. Of course, that doesn't work when there are no good ideas put forward.
Or as a friend once said, "The problem with democracy is that the majority of people are assholes"
don't vote for them because they can't win because nobody votes for them because they can't win so don't vote for them?
You realize what it takes to break that cycle, right?
Rank-choice voting
Yeah, but it has some problems, so people pick it apart and stick with the massively flawed system they have. For a group so accustomed to lesser evil thinking you'd think they would be all over this.
I think the only way you are going to solve this dichotomy is to introduce proportional representation. First-past-the-post always tends to throw up little dictators with surprising regularity and minor parties will always struggle to be taken seriously and that's not good for any democracy.
You may be right. I don't know if the US will ever permanently transition away from a two-party system, though.
But again: I don't see how anyone can expect a party that avoids collective action and the right of a representational government to impose laws, regulations, etc. to run a country. Or a state. Or a city. Or town.
Gary Johnson's recommendation that we avoid doing anything about global warming (because the sun will destroy all life on earth billions of years from now anyhoo) should give y'all an idea that the LP shouldn't be putting up presidential candidates. Jo Jorgenson's thought that 40 million unemployed Americans should rely on private charity should strike people as a deal-breaker, too.
Personally, three years of clueless incompetence has been enough for me.
I think the only way you are going to solve this dichotomy is to introduce proportional representation. First-past-the-post always tends to throw up little dictators with surprising regularity and minor parties will always struggle to be taken seriously and that's not good for any democracy.
