• FaceDeer
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    16 months ago

    I’m not American, I’m writing all this as an external observer.

    What alternative do you propose to voting Democrat?

    • @Zehzin
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      6 months ago

      Support local grassroots pro-working class political movements and candidates instead of voting for the least worse ghoul every 4 years? Find the local chapter of whatever you think is better? Get involved for a cause that both parties are actively harming ? Demand, by any means available, elected officials to not be pieces of shit if they want your vote? Maybe just stop defending genocide support on the internet because it makes our guy look bad.

      Putting your vote behind someone you believe to be detrimental to your own values should not be the default position and is, at best, the worst case scenario. Screw the two US parties and everything they stand for.

      • FaceDeer
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        16 months ago

        Did you watch that CPG Grey video I linked to earlier? Voting third party is the same as not voting under the American electoral system. It’s basic game theory. So your alternative to voting Democrat boils down to “do nothing.”

          • FaceDeer
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            16 months ago

            Yeah, he says it’s worse than not voting because it’s soaking up votes that in absence of the third party would have gone to the “least worse” of the two actually viable parties. I was being generous and assuming OP wasn’t going to vote for that party anyway.

              • FaceDeer
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                16 months ago

                It is fact, actually. This is a result of basic game theory. First-past-the-post electoral systems inexorably develop into two-party systems because of the mechanism that he describes, in the same way that gas inexorably diffuses or water flows downhill.

                Insisting that it won’t happen because you feel like it shouldn’t happen just causes you to fall into the traps CPG Grey described.

                • Victoria Antoinette
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                  6 months ago

                  game theory assumes that we have rational actors acting in their own best interests. That’s not what people do. game theory doesn’t predict what people will do.

                • Victoria Antoinette
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                  16 months ago

                  the same way that gas inexorably diffuses or water flows downhill.

                  no, those can be calculated and predicted. the same isn’t true for the rate at which political parties are created or dissolved.

                • Victoria Antoinette
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                  16 months ago

                  First-past-the-post electoral systems inexorably develop into two-party systems because of the mechanism that he describes

                  this is the crux of duverger’s “law” which is not a law at all but actually a tautology.

                • Victoria Antoinette
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                  16 months ago

                  Insisting that it won’t happen because you feel like it shouldn’t happen

                  that didn’t happen here.