Man, this system just plain sucks, doesn’t it?
Is this the best we can create with our amazing brains? A bunch of ‘lesser of two evils’ contests that still end up giving us a massive population of poor people, a military-industrial complex that is almost designed to create more problems, and a ‘ruling class’ that doesn’t even adhere to the basic ‘the more authority you have the more responsible and transparent you must be’ rule?
It’s just so…stupid.
Thanks! I’m a little skeptical of Cato, and this editorial is very clearly framed for Cato’s usual pseudo-libertarian pro-big-business stance, but it helps me understand the issue a little better.
As an example of the framing, the editorial could have called for extending these same advantages to all qualified candidates instead of just incumbents – instead it suggests that the real problem is the campaign finance legislation itself.
The system works almost exactly as intended.
Is there a better citation? Because that only gives a list of reason incumbents would prefer to limit spending, but certainly doesn’t show that they do, and there’s no particular reason to trust they also considered reasons it might not be the case. The Cato Institute is after all a think-tank with a long history of selecting facts to support a presupposed narrative; if something is real, I’d expect there will be other sources for it.
Well, that’s not what I asked.
Working as intended or not, it’s not working for most of us. We shouldn’t have to dedicate so much energy to still fail to accomplish anything.
Well that’s fair. I guess I was just responding to the notion that we could do better if we only used our brains more. In actual fact, I think the current system is the result of some very smart people using their brains a whole lot to come up with a system that, as you say, does not work for many of us.
Yeah…there’s just that whole ‘evidence it’s not working’ bit.
It’d be nice to have a government with the scientific method on top of it. As in 'this is what we’re trying to accomplish (productive, happy people who have some real control over their environments. No ‘gotcha’ moments, etc.) with everything else being secondary.
Instead they all start with ‘this is how we’re going to do it’, as if one collection of people is going to have all the best ideas ever.
This system? Compared to what other system? Humans aren’t very evolved yet and this is the best we’ve got our monkey-brains to work with in our current reality aside from outright war.
I’ll choose this frustrating (but slowly evolving system) over outright war any day.[quote=“William_Holz, post:151, topic:70876”]
A bunch of ‘lesser of two evils’ contests that still end up giving us a massive population of poor people, a military-industrial complex that is almost designed to create more problems, and a ‘ruling class’ that doesn’t even adhere to the basic ‘the more authority you have the more responsible and transparent you must be’ rule?
[/quote]
One of those lesser of two evils slowly evolves away from more death and destruction. One of those lesser of two evils opens doors down the road to progressive third parties while the other nails that door shut.
Actually, I want to thank you for reminding me to not allow my own emotions to get in the way of helping humanity. I will vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election if Bernie Sanders loses to her in the primary. I will only write in Bernie Sanders on my ballot if there’s evidence to show that he’ll win the general election that way.
Our nation… our world… can NOT afford another Republican administration. The stakes are too high.
Thank you.
Well, we haven’t caught up with the Chewong, the Fipa, the Kadar, the Lepchas, the Mbuti, the Batek, the Buid, the Hutterites, the Ju/'hoansi, the Piaora, the Ifaluk, the Yanadi, or the Tristian Islanders yet (to name a few), at least not when it comes to having civilizations where human beings don’t have to live in fear all the time.
Mind you, part of their success has involved not having anything our current governments/corporations want to steamroll, but they’re all fully capable of functioning in a productive society and them being low tech has little to do with any lack of technical aptitude, skill or ability. (I actually had a Buid dude in a Skunkworks project I was on and he raced ahead of us pretty quickly… learned a lot from the little guy on how to use my brain better)
Also: Iceland’s constitution blows ours away.
It seems like somebody should’ve come up with a way for somebody to help humanity without choosing between two different people who are likely to continue creating all kinds of death and chaos overseas and barely change anything here. Yeah, I’ll vote Clinton too if I have to…but the fact that the system we’re in gives all the power to the worst of us has got to be seen as a major fundamental flaw, right?
Agreed, that’s why people like us don’t simply vote. We work our asses off with grassroots organizations to evolve the system itself. The problem is all the people that don’t vote make our lives a living, fucking hell where we continuously ping-pong instead of making, steady progressive change. That shit needs to stop. We need to vote in the lesser evil AND change the system with grassroots efforts. One without the other is useless.
I’ll vote for Bernie Sanders because I think he can beat Hillary. It’s going to be tough, but I think he can win if we support his campaign and simply try instead of listening to the corporate media that would love nothing more than for us all to give up.
Afterwards, if Sanders loses and it looks like Hillary can’t beat the Republican nominee, I’ll write-in Bernie Sanders on my ballot in the general election as a last ditch effort to stop the worst from happening. All the while, no matter what… before, during and afterwards, I’ll be working with grassroots people all over this nation and planet to change our entire system.
[quote=“William_Holz, post:159, topic:70876”] the Tristian Islanders yet (to name a few), at least not when it comes to having civilizations where human beings don’t have to live in fear all the time.
Mind you, part of their success has involved not having anything our current governments/corporations want to steamroll, but they’re all fully capable of functioning in a productive society
[/quote]
Speaking of Islanders… I hope they’re quite well above sea-level. Climate change isn’t going to wait for humanity to achieve high-minded political evolution. We need to be working with the flawed human systems we have in place today to save future generations from living hell tomorrow. That means working against Hillary Clinton and making slow progress as apposed to attempting to work against Republicans and spinning our wheels into oblivion.
If Bernie Sanders wins, then it’s an entirely new game this nation has never seen before and time for grassroots to upheave obstructionists to pave the way for true revolution.
Fair enough, but the below sources are extremely boring and sometimes quite technical.
I would also point out that incumbents clearly do support some campaign finance reform because they occasionally pass laws to limit and control spending.
This Canadian study argues that spending limits help incumbents more, or don’t help challengers as much as one might expect:
This US study reaches the same conclusion:
https://www.princeton.edu/~ameirowi/published/valence_jop_final.pdf
As does this one:
http://www.pitt.edu/~cwb7/assets/papers/JOP%2011%20article.pdf
I admit to skimming the last one more than the others because this is a boring topic to me lol.
I have extremely little faith in electoral politics, although I’d like a Bernie presidency if only to prove anti-voting critiques right again (on the heels of Obama’s failure) and move more people toward movements for direct action–but with that said, I can’t see how a political system that has always existed for the ruling class could possibly undergo significant, positive changes only with campaign finance reform. Historically, mass mobilization in the streets has always been the catalyst behind major changes, and when policies start to back slide again, it’s usually due to either a repressive authoritarian regime that actively crushes opposition movements, or to the absence of an effective mass social movement altogether.
“Why won’t these people do something they’re philosophically opposed to?!”
I don’t know who you’ve been reading, but anyone that wants the government to adjust the “fairness” of wealth distribution is not a libertarian.
Try as I might, I can’t link the establishment clause to publicly financed elections, sorry.
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He’s getting press today!!! Go Bernie! Bitch slap them back!
Then you have little understanding of the power of the bully pulpit, especially in the hands of the ‘leader of the free world’. Not to mention that I like DC’s design/monuments. The thought of this nation building anything with federal money that sports Trump’s name/visage does not bring happy or pleasant thoughts and would immediately bring, from me, calls for it to DIALLLF*. Or, better yet, to PIACLWAHNW**.
*Die In A Large Large Large Fire
**Perish In A Conflagration the Likes of Which America Has Never Witnessed
The case for moral superiority of the libertarian position is that it should hypothetically be entirely fair – people get what they earn through a process of meritocratic competition.
However, so far this has not described the history of the world. The current distribution of wealth is the result of what a libertarian would consider to be highly immoral policies and practices.
Moreover, since existing wealth can demonstrably be used to extract rents and perpetuate itself, the existing distribution of wealth guarantees that competition in the existing market economy will not be free and fair meritocratic competition.
You can find a pretty reasonable (but quite limited in scope) discussion of this topic here:
The most interesting part of Matt’s essay, and the most libertarian part, is the second argument. As he points out, the existing state of the world is in part a result of past rights violations. Land claims in libertarian theory may be based on a series of voluntary transfers beginning with the person who first mixed his labor with the land, but many land claims in the real world run back to an initial seizure by force. Similarly, claims to other forms of wealth must be justified, in libertarian moral theory, by a chain of voluntary transactions back to a first creator. In at least some cases that chain is interrupted by involuntary transactions. Consider a house built by slave labor. Is the legitimate owner the person with the present title to it or the heir of the slaves forced to build it, or is it perhaps partly the legitimate property of one and partly of the other? What about property in other forms inherited through a chain that leads back to a slave holding or slave trading ancestor who owed, but never paid, compensation to his victims?
Most libertarians would recognize this as a legitimate problem, although many might point at the practical difficulty of establishing just ownership in such cases as justifying some sort of statute of limitations with regard to wrongs in the distant past.
That’s a nice, childlike understanding of reality loaded with an obtuse straw man.
Now, here’s reality minus the infantile, purposefully obtuse bullshit:
If we don’t win this election, vow with me to keep fighting for what’s right, ok?
Yes, I understood this; the corollary is: what are we supposed to do about it?
Your quote spells it out: “the practical difficulty of establishing ownership in such cases as justifying some sort of statute of limitations with regard to wrongs in the distant past.” Since there’s no practical way to restart the world from a place of pure equity (whatever that might mean), we do the best we can with what we have moving forward.
It’s amazing how quickly these political discussion turn personal 
