I love it for both reasons. The major failing of the Democratic party IMO, as the party that believes in the power of the government to create positive change in society, is they have placed no emphasis at all on the efficiency of the government and have instead allowed bureaucracy to build upon itself. A UBI should result in a more efficient and streamlined welfare network simply by taking our 79 current means tested programs down to 1.
Except it would have to be two programs, practically, because you can't have UBI without UHI or it becomes meaningless - eliminating means-based healthcare programs without replacing them is a non-starter, telling people they have to use their UBI to pay for health care makes it unpalatable to a large spectrum of voters, and having UBI while keeping Medicare and Medicare probably isn't agreeable to another large spectrum of voters. So it is really UBI/UHI - and I'm assuming TMB Liberty isn't interested in that any more than TMB Gulag is interested in UBI/no healthcare system at all. So the two sides love it in theory, but almost certainly will never agree to it in practice.
I'm just assuming a single payer system is in place long before we reach the point we are ready to talk UBI. Single payer is inevitable, a UBI much less so.
Yea, you can't do universal income without a universal healthcare system. Still though, reducing the whole system down to two organizations would reduce the bureaucracy. I expect single payer to happen eventually, as well as basic income as technology replaces manual labor jobs. I do believe our education system should be putting emphasis on technical training to prepare the future workforce for less manual labor jobs and more supporting the advancing technologies in terms of programming, design, maintenance and repair, etc. More and more people will be getting paid to think instead of breaking their backs, or they won't be working at all if they aren't properly prepared for what's to come. That responsibility falls on us to make sure they're ready.
Libertarians really wanting to corner the false equivalency market guess they found a market inefficiency in logical fallacies
How Not To Waste Your Vote: A Mathematical Analysis https://fee.org/articles/how-not-to-waste-your-vote-a-mathematical-analysis Spoiler How Not To Waste Your Vote: A Mathematical Analysis During this especially contested election, a lot of people are talking about people “wasting” or “throwing away” votes. However, many people who say this do not have a complete grasp of the full mathematical picture – or worse, they are only mentioning the part that supports their position. First let’s define what a “wasted” vote is. Mathematical Definition of Wasted Votes A wasted vote is a vote that provides no determination or effect on the final outcome of the election. According to Wikipedia: “Wasted votes are votes cast for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes – a total of 70% wasted votes.” There are two kinds of wasted votes that mathematically have no effect on the final election: Votes cast for candidates who did not win Excess votes cast for winning candidates Clearly, neither of these kinds of votes statistically affect the election. However, many arguments only mention the first type without mentioning the second. Mathematically and logically, both categories are ineffectual votes. First Past the Post The value of your vote is what you give it. Should you spend it on a candidate you don’t believe in?The United States, along with several other nations, uses the First Past the Post (FPTP) or “winner take all” election. This method is defined as “the candidate who receives more votes than any other candidate wins.” This is one of the reasons that many people mention wasted votes – our system creates that result. Sociologically speaking, the FPTP system tends to favor a two-party system. The French sociologist Maurice Duverger created “Duverger’s Law” which says just that. The Electoral College For U.S. Presidential elections, a state-by-state system is used called the Electoral College. Each state gets a proportional amount of electoral votes which are then used to find a majority for president. Interestingly, what happens in each separate state is a smaller FPTP election, followed by a counting of electoral votes. The Electoral College is slightly different from a pure FPTP system because it requires an actual number threshold (currently 270 electoral votes) for a candidate to win instead of a simple majority of the votes. We can sum things up as follows: States hold “winner take all” FPTP elections for electoral votes Electoral votes are counted The winner must have 270 electoral votes If there is no candidate that reaches it, the House of Representatives chooses the president These distinctions are important, because they can change the math and the concept of the “wasted” vote phenomenon. Wasted Votes in Presidential Elections The general concept that is proposed by many is that you must always vote for a Republican or a Democrat because you must stop the worst candidate from winning. In a sense, you are voting a negative vote – against someone – rather than for a candidate of your choice. However, this actually depends on the scenario of the vote. Let’s look at some examples. Bush vs. Gore: 2000 People voting out of fear of the worst candidate is a self-perpetuating cycle. Let’s examine a common example used in this discussion. Following the extremely close 2000 U.S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believe that one reason he lost the election to Republican George W. Bush is because a portion of the electorate (2.7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party, and exit polls indicated that more of these voters would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%), with the rest not voting in Nader’s absence. The argument for this case is even more pronounced because the election was ultimately decided on the basis of the election results in Florida where Bush prevailed over Gore by a margin of only 537 votes (0.009%), which was far exceeded by the number of votes, 97,488 (0.293%), that Nader received. (Wikipedia) At first, this may look like a clear example of the need to vote for a major party. However, let’s break this situation down mathematically. In every single state election, Bush or Gore won. There were millions of mathematically wasted votes in this election of both types. In California, Gore won by 1,293,774 votes. Mathematically speaking, there were over one million wasted votes for Gore in this state alone. None of these excess votes could have helped Gore, since he had already mathematically won the state. The California votes didn’t matter in Florida. In fact, the votes in Florida have much more relevance than any other state. Conclusions: Sometimes a vote for a major party winner is wasted anyway. Sometimes everything will come down to one state. However, there is no way to predict in advance which votes will be this important. If the parties knew that Florida would have been the deal breaker, then they would have acted differently. However, we simply don’t know the future well enough to predict that. We do know that battleground states are generally more important than “safe” states for each candidate, but it is hard to know exactly which state might matter. (There are plenty of scenarios you can research online about possibly electoral outcomes, I encourage you to do so.) This leads us into our next example. Clinton vs. Trump 2016 Let’s do some math about the state of California and our current presidential election. The average RCP poll has Hillary Clinton ahead by 22.2 percent. The registered voters in California add up to 17.7 million. Not all of them will vote, but we can use the 2012 presidential election as a predictor, where 13.2 million people voted. Out of those 13.2 million, according to current predictions, 52.6% will vote for Clinton. However, Clinton only needs about 31% to beat Trump. The other 21% of excess votes for Clinton will be wasted. This means that approximately 3 million votes for Clinton in California will be wasted. Now, this is only a mathematical model, but we have several reasons to believe in it. California has a history of being a heavily Democratic state Polls usually swing within a single digit margin of error 21% is quite a large margin of leeway Even if the polling changes significantly, we are still looking at millions of wasted Clinton votes in California. Now let’s throw Jill Stein into the math. As part of the Green Party, she is to the left politically of Hillary, so we will assume that votes for her will be taken from Clinton’s pool. (Though this isn’t always a true assumption, as we will see later.) Right now she is polling at around 4%, but we could even give her 5%. If you take away 5% from Hillary’s margin of 22.2%, that leaves a huge margin of 17.2%: still millions of votes. The takeaway from this: you can safely vote for Jill Stein in California without fear of changing the state election results. Therefore, it will not affect the national vote either. Since we have the Electoral College, your votes will have no influence beyond the state to change other vote counts. Those who prefer Jill Stein can with a clear conscience vote for her, since it will make no difference mathematically. Later we will look at the ethics of voting as it relates to this math. Mathematical Importance of a Single Vote There are a few theories on voting power calculations; we will look at two of them here. John F. Banzhaf III created a probabilistic system for determining individual voting power in a block voting system, such as the Electoral College. According to his calculations, because of differences in each state, it gives different voters different amounts of “voting power.” A computer science researcher at UNC ran the Banzhaf power numbers for the 1990 U.S. Presidential election and determined that the state of California had the voters with the highest power index: 3.3. This index is measured as a multiple of the weakest voting state, which was Montana (1.0 voting power). A newer method of measuring voting power was created by a research team from Columbia University using a more empirical (based on existing data) and less randomized model. They concluded that the smaller states had more mathematical voting power due to the fact that they received 2 votes minimum as a starting point. This model tends to generate smaller multipliers for voting power but more accurately matches empirical data from past elections. Using these power ratings as a guide, we can estimate an estimated maximum voting power for each vote. We will be making some assumptions for this calculation. The minimum voting power multiplier is 1 The highest multiplier from both models will be used as a maximum Starting numbers In the United States there are currently 218,959,000 eligible voters with 146,311,000 actual registered voters. In the 2012 Presidential election, 126,144,000 people actually voted. This is our voting pool. Each vote, legally speaking, has the same weight. So if we start from that assumption, taking into account a probable amount of voters (126 million), the power of your vote is: 1 _____ 126 million This is: 0.0000000079 or 0.00000079%. That is the weight of your vote mathematically. Now we can multiply it by the highest power index to show the highest potential of your vote. Our California historical data from 1990 shows a 3.3 index, but to be conservative we will raise it to 4. So now the power is: 0.00000317% Using probabilistic equations and analysis, this is the result. This is how powerful your vote is in the U.S. Presidential election is if you end up in the most heavily weighted state. Addressing Weighted Vote Fallacies As we have seen, many people argue that we should not “waste” votes, yet many millions of votes for the winner are wasted every year. It is difficult to predict whether a vote will end up in either wasted category. We’ve also seen past and possible scenarios where voting third party or major party can have no influence on the final election. Fallacy 1: Treating Single Voters as One Block A false assumption that people make about voting is treating a single vote as a block. For instance, let’s use our current election again as an example. Someone insists that if you do not vote for Hillary, then you are helping Trump to be elected. (The reverse of this can also apply here.) You claim that you wish to vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. You’re then told that the current national poll with all parties shows that Johnson is polling at 7%, which is less than the difference between Clinton (39%) and Trump (40%). Therefore, you must vote for Clinton to make up that difference. There are several problems with this proposal. It does not take each state into consideration. It assumes all Gary Johnson supporters have Clinton as their second choice. And it treats your single vote as the entire 7%. As we have seen, the current picture in California shows that Clinton has a huge margin. If this voter lived in California, a vote for Gary Johnson would not help Trump and also would not hurt Hillary, even if the entire 7% voted for Johnson. Anyone who says it is your duty to vote negative in this scenario does not know the math of this state. This also assumes that all Johnson votes would choose Hillary as the second choice, but given that Libertarians take some platform elements from both the Left and the Right, this assumption would be highly unlikely. The same would go for Trump. When people look at the 7% and tell you that you must vote a certain way, it is assuming you will somehow influence the entire 7%. However, we have seen that you are just one voter, and that your voting power is a very tiny number by itself. You cannot be entirely responsible for a candidate winning or losing with your single vote. In theory, it’s mathematically possible for one vote to decide an election, but given there are an exponential number of possible scenarios with millions of voters (imagine raising a few million to an exponent), it’s astronomically unlikely, especially if you live in a non-battleground state. It’s also astronomically unlikely that all 7% (8,820,000 people) would vote for who they polled for. Even if you gave each voter a 99% chance of voting for who they polled for, the chance that all of them would vote the way they polled is (0.99) to the power of 8,820,000, which is less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% Individuals are not entire blocks of voters, and it’s problematic to treat them as such. Fallacy 2: Third Party Votes Have No Value If enough people vote their conscience and vote for what they believe in, things can change.On the surface, this might appear to be true. A third party candidate for President has never won an election. We also have Duverger’s law that states our FPTP favors two party systems. However, it is mathematically possible for a third party to win, and there are also other measurable gains for voting for a third party. Part of this fallacy is the “winner take all” perspective. In other words, if you don’t win the presidency, you’ve wasted your time. However, there are many benefits of voting third party, even for president. It makes a political statement to the majority parties. It helps local politicians of that party in elections. It can help change platforms to include third-party elements. And it provides recognition for the party among voters as a viable alternative. Third party candidates can and have won local and state elections in the past. This is a fact. In 1968, George Wallace ran as a third party option for President. He received nine million votes and 45 electoral votes. Though he did not expect to win the popular vote, one of his aims was to force the House of Representatives to choose the President by denying either candidate the 270 electoral votes needed to win – and he nearly succeeded. Since our system is not a true First Past the Post, but a hybrid, this kind of situation is possible. In fact, calculations have been done showing that Gary Johnson could in fact force that situation this year. It is very unlikely, but it is possible. Regardless of his loss, the impact of the Wallace campaign was substantial. He was able to affect the dialogue and events of that election significantly. (This is meant in no way as an endorsement of George Wallace’s political positions.) If his supporters had mostly voted for a majority party, his impact would have been less significant. In most scenarios given by the “wasted” vote crowd, all of the votes that are considered are ones from the current voting electorate. Yet we have seen from figures previously mentioned that over 50 million eligible voters are not registered. Even among registered voters, almost 20 million didn’t vote in the last election. These potential votes are never placed into the scenario. The simple truth is, there are millions of uninterested voters out there, yet candidates are not inspiring them to vote. If candidate X or Y were truly worthy of votes, would not some of these voters decide to register? And another question, would it be easier to get a third party voter to choose a majority candidate, or a non-voter? These are not mathematical questions, but they are logical. The fact is, with this many votes at stake, if these non-voters could be encouraged to register, they would undoubtedly change the election as they make up one-third of total eligible voters. Ethics and Math It has been demonstrated that the potential individual power of a vote is mathematically very small. It also has been shown that wasted votes can be cast for the winner of an election as well as the losers, as well as demonstrating that it is sometimes hard to predict exactly which vote will be wasted. Given this information, where do we derive the value of a vote? It’s hard to get it purely from the math or practicality. In fact, it would seem our single vote is of very little import at all. Therefore, we must find meaning and value for our votes outside of the math. Certainly, the Founders never envisioned an endless cycle of US citizens voting for the "lesser of two evils."Certainly, the Founders never envisioned an endless cycle of United States citizens voting for the “lesser of two evils,” as the argument is often presented. The idea was for free and open elections where the people’s voice would be heard. It was simple: the candidate who best represented your interests earned your vote. Your vote is, therefore, an expression of yourself and your beliefs. Your vote has power as a statement. People voting out of fear of the worst candidate is a self-perpetuating cycle. If no one ever has the courage to vote outside of the two main parties, it will never be broken. However, if enough people vote and it shows in the total election count, it will give cause for us to reconsider and embolden even more to vote outside of the two parties. Yes, our current electoral system has some serious mathematical flaws. It simply does not encourage people to vote for their conscience – but we have seen that things are not as bad as we would be led to believe by some. The true value of a vote is in the people. The Value of Your Vote The value of your vote is what you give it. Should you spend it on a candidate you don’t believe in? Should it be an exercise in fear? It’s up to you. It is my hope that these mathematical calculations will bring you freedom from the idea that only majority party votes matter. A vote is a statement, a vote is personal, a vote is an expression of your citizenship in this country. If enough people vote their conscience and vote for what they believe in, things can change. If you are already a staunch supporter of a major party, then you should vote that way. This paper is not against the major parties at all – but rather against the concept that votes somehow “belong” to only Democrats or Republicans. Votes belong to the voter. There has never been a more important time to vote your conscience.
Every vote is meaningless, because no one vote swings an election, but voting 3rd party could make a difference in registering your objection to the 2 parties. It is the response to people who say voting 3rd party is wasting your vote.
There are 2 types of wasted votes: votes for a candidate who did not win excess votes cast for winning candidates To win the Pres election you need 270 electoral college votes How "wasted" your vote is depends on what state you vote in. A heavily R or D state isn't going to be affected by your vote. As an example, Cali is going to vote for Hillary. Your vote isn't changing that. If you are not in a swing state your vote is literally inconsequential to the outcome of the election. In states that are heavily R or D, there will be a lot of wasted votes (excess votes cast for the winner). You can safely vote for a 3rd part candidate without fear of changing election results. If each vote has the same weight, the power of your vote is 1/126 million = 0.00000079% Now we can multiply it by the highest power index to show the highest potential of your vote. Our California historical data from 1990 shows a 3.3 index, but to be conservative we will raise it to 4. So now the power is: 0.00000317% Using probabilistic equations and analysis, this is the result. This is how powerful your vote is in the U.S. Presidential election is if you end up in the most heavily weighted state. Fallacy 1: Treating Single Voters as One Block It does not take each state into consideration. It assumes all Gary Johnson supporters have Clinton as their second choice. Individuals are not entire blocks of voters, and it’s problematic to treat them as such. Fallacy 2: Third Party Votes Have No Value Part of this fallacy is the “winner take all” perspective. In other words, if you don’t win the presidency, you’ve wasted your time. However, there are many benefits of voting third party, or for the losing candidate, even for president. It makes a political statement to the majority parties. It helps local politicians of that party in elections. It can help change platforms to include third-party elements. And it provides recognition for the party among voters as a viable alternative. Ethics and Math it would seem our single vote is of very little import at all. Therefore, we must find meaning and value for our votes outside of the math. Your vote is, therefore, an expression of yourself and your beliefs. Your vote has power as a statement. People voting out of fear of the worst candidate is a self-perpetuating cycle. If no one ever has the courage to vote outside of the two main parties, it will never be broken. However, if enough people vote and it shows in the total election count, it will give cause for us to reconsider and embolden even more to vote outside of the two parties.
Johnson didn't come across great to me on the CNN town hall last night. Asked about the government's role in regulating religious freedom and civil liberties, he gave a very brief answer and said - I would look for balance, and I'm afraid "religious freedom" is allowing for discrimination, and I liked the recent Utah law that was a good balance of the two. Pressed further about requiring a baker to bake a cake for a gay person he said something like - well the law now is that you have to bake the cake, you don't have to decorate it, but you have to bake it and sell it to them if the cake is for sale. Asked about legalizing weed, he said we need more research and development so it needs to be rescheduled from a Class 1 narcotic, but then I think he missed an opportunity to highlight the legal ramifications and got bogged down in debating the percent THC, and forms of marijuana. He said he is not in favor of legalizing prostitution, and kind of danced around it saying - if someone wants a hooker they can go to Nevada because they can be sure those hookers are disease free. On one hand he seemed to stray from some basic Libertarian tenants, but on the other I think that will get him more votes.
That woman talking about marijuana was pissing me off. She seemed like a bitch. Who gives a shit about thc levels?
They were talking about 2 separate issues - recreational marijuana and medical. No one drew the distinction though, and they talked about it like it was all the same thing. Johnson did not communicate his position well. The woman seemed to be pro-medical but anti-recreational. I think maybe Johnson understood that and didn't want to tell her he was for full legalization. I dunno.
They are separate issues, and she was lumping them together. He has communicated his position clearly in the past about it, but I think he was trying to stay in the middle last night to get undecided voters. Even my dad who has voted republican his whole life said after watching it that he didn't disagree with anything Johnson said and that his vote doesn't matter in CT, so he's free to vote for who he actually aligns with. To me that sounds like Johnson gained at least one vote from last night, but he never said anything that would lose him any.
That's a pretty common sense moderate view on anti-discrimination - if somebody is engaged in commerce, they can't choose to not be engaged in commerce on a case by case basis that's related to 1 of 4-5 specific attributes. If he was discussing medical marijuana, what he said makes a lot of sense; the current classification means hospitals can't run clinicals on marijuana without a special dispensation from the federal government, so reclassification allows them to study its effects and determine whether there is a way to control quality and potency of medical marijuana. If he was talking about recreational, it sounds like he went policy wonk on her. I disagree with his take on whores, but legalizing and regulating whores seems like a bigger pain in the ass for states and is probably left up to the states.
He said he wasn't going to punish victimless crimes. If someone wants to be a prostitute, let them be a prostitute; they're going to do it whether it's legal or not and affects me in no way. Legalize it, regulate it, tax it. Done. He said something along the lines of if someone wants to get a prostitute, they'll go to Nevada because they know they get tested. To me, that implies that he thinks it's working.
I tried to have a conversation in the regular political threads saying positive things about a candidate other than Clinton. For as much as liberals call conservatives bigots, it's funny that they fail to see the irony. But not really, it's sad.
To me, he came across as selling himself and Bill Weld as a centrist rather than as a Libertarian. If you watched the Libertarian convention debate you already knew where he stood on Title 2 of the Civil Rights Act. People backing Religious Freedom as an exception are just trying to find a way around relegislating the Title 2 of the CRA and would therefore be creating an inconsistency within the law. If you're for Title 2, or slightly against it on principle but realize it isn't getting reworked, I don't have an issue with his stance on religious freedom because it is at least staying consistent and within your principles of government preventing discrimination. I think he missed some major opportunities to sell himself as the candidate that will uphold the Constitution. Clinton's litmus test for judges is altering the first amendment and she seems to have issues with the 2nd. Trump wants to weaken the first amendment (press), get rid of due process, form internment camps, and generally act as an Authoritarian. Gary touched on things here but didn't drive it home or sell his point strong enough and that is missing an opportunity to really go after the #NeverTrump crowd. When Anderson asked him if he feared that his campaign risked taking votes from Hillary and giving the election to Trump, whom Johnson had expressed some major concerns toward, I feel like he should have given a much stronger answer along the lines of, "we have major issues with both campaigns..." For instance, this would have been a great opportunity to talk about the size, scale and cost of government or the regime change foreign policy that Hillary would likely follow. These are issues that I feel like appeal to most voters.
This is a pretty good blog about his missed opportunities in the Town Hall. http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/03/how-tonights-gary-johnsonwilliam-weld-to
You or I will get blasted for saying it on this board but for the party that's supposed to be the 'open minded' one there is a lot of venom being spewed around if you don't align with their views.
"Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.”
He's trying to get elected, or at minimum get enough votes to lock in federal funding next election cycle. Positioning himself as a centrist is pretty clearly the best lane to do that from.
Somebody posted that Johnson/Weld wasn't a realistic option. What else was said that was offensive to you? There was a discussion of whether Johnson is anti-vaxx, and it was discussed whether he was anti science anti-vaxx or anti government mandated vaxx. What was bigoted in there? Everybody has thin skin, it seems - it isn't just a province of the liberals or conservatives. There are more liberals than conservatives or libertarians, so it probably seems oppressive to non-liberals, but bigoted?
Maybe you read it differently than I, but my perception was that there was no real attempt at discussion and more condescension and democrat back patting.
That's the result of there being a lot more liberals in the political threads on here than anything else imo
I don't think there is much attempt at discussion in that thread aside from OMG what will Trump do next, so take it for what it's worth.
And the requisite How To Cunty Condescension 101 Welcome Pack that they hand out to all the new members at the meetings.
This board gets cunty and condescending about what people wear to a college football game. It isn't limited to politics
Sometime I'm going to wear an amalgamation of Southern and Northern stereotypes all at once. Cargo shorts with a button down or polo made from jersey material, chacos, croakies, Yeti hat. Glorious.
Just so we're clear, my statement that he positioned himself as a Centrist rather than a Libertarian wasn't a criticism. It was mostly a reference to this comment, "On one hand he seemed to stray from some basic Libertarian tenants, but on the other I think that will get him more votes." I felt like they took a Libertarian-lite approach to feel safe for people that want to defect from the major parties. Given the high unfavorable ratings of the two candidates, it may be enough to get to 15% and get on to the debate stage. Gary in general is Libertarian-lite so I'm not even sure if the approach would change if he makes it in to the debates.