Saturday, April 12, 2014

I've squandered all my keystrokes elsewhere this A.M.

Not that I think any amount of voting for anybody is going to fix what is a basic math problem, but this is an argument that has always puzzled me. If everybody I knew who said "I won't vote for [$whoever_they_really_want_to_vote_for] because they won't win!" actually voted for them, we'd have a lot more Libertarian dogcatchers.

10 comments:

  1. Randian Lectures...
    [Buhahahahaa]

    My dogs would be sitting there like Nipper the RCA Dog, and his tilted head, panting on his every word (waiting for a cookie, of course).
    Thank you both for a great laugh first thing this morning.

    Rich in NC

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  2. I'm following the Heinlein example, and Voting for the Opponent of whomever I'm against. Seems to work out okay, until the Presidential Elections roll around. Then it's "Hold the Nose Time."

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  3. If the choice is between awful but electable, noticeably better but electable and great but no chance, I'll vote noticeably better. Usually the first two choices are awful, awful in a different direction or unelectable--in that case my vote is better used as a signal against awful even if it won't help elect someone decent.

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  4. Mr. Correia wins Internets for day. I've no need to browse further! :-)

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  5. So in general I do an effective value calculation - If I have politicians A, B and C running, and A would do exactly what I want, but only has a 0.00004 percent chance of winning, say, an asteroid hitting both opponents or something, and B is at 60 percent of what I want, with a 50 percent chance of winning and C is at 10 percent of what I want with 50 percent chance, I'm going to vote for C every time. Now, it's not a strict calculation, because if both B or C are sufficiently bad, or B is sufficiently leading C so that my vote doesn't 'matter' (or the other way around for that matter) I'll vote for A.

    I know I fail the Libertarian purity test on that, but, barring crossing of certain lines I simply won't cross, I'd rather get part of what I want than none.

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  6. It would help if one could have more confidence that B wouldn't jettison 50 of the 60 percent one wants in return for the conditional approval of David Gregory or the Times editorial board.

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  7. It seems more likely that if all the libertarians voted that way, it would split the Republican vote and you'd end up with more Democrats.

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  8. The problem I see with Libertarian candidates is that if you read text of where they stand they sound pretty good. Their problems arise when they get in front of a camera and try to speak about where they stand on issues, they always give the impression that they can't function without a tin foil beanie. I have no doubt that the media is partially to blame by cherry picking the clips they present on the news, but still the candidate should be better prepared

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  9. " they always give the impression that they can't function without a tin foil beanie"

    In my experience, they aren't much better in person. They always seem to either have a heavy dose of "batshit crazy" salted in there, or "I was an engineer for a few years, and I totally think my experience designing widgets and having poor social skills will make me an awesome state senator".

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