Communism can mean a classless, stateless society, or it can mean a country where communists are in charge. Marxist-Leninists do not believe that a stateless communist society can be established overnight, especially in countries without industrial development.
YES
My understanding is that a tankie is defined as someone who seeks to promote global peace, understanding, and equality, with nuanced views that incorporate marginalized and international perspectives, grounded in historical evidence.
That’s how I see it used anyway.
You really should vote for the lesser evil, because your opinion of the people you agree with is very low.
Again, as I already told you, the problem has nothing to do with intelligence. It isn’t some kind of personal failing to be in a collective action problem, that’s why it’s called “a collective action problem.” Again, you’re out of your depth here, it’s very clear that you don’t understand how collective action problems work, and you need to stop asserting your ignorance and learn about them. Go skim the Wikipedia article on Collective Action Problems, particularly the part relating to game theory and maybe something will stick. The concept here is important to understand in general, with plenty of use-cases completely unrelated to politics.
I want to hear your response to this: Why would polls worded like “has most favorable opinion of?” or “most ideologically aligned with?" not work to detect a consensus of a single leftist candidate and why wouldn’t people then vote for that candidate?
Ok, great. So you’re all in on this one and once I’ve addressed it, you will not propose any other solutions.
First off, let’s note that these polls do not currently exist. Therefore, regardless of whether they would work or not, at the very least until they do, my position is justified. No mechanism currently exists to coordinate the switch and, not owning a trusted polling company myself, I don’t have the means to bring these or any other polls into existence. So, while they don’t exist, I don’t need to incorporate them into my decision making calculus.
Second, if these polls did exist, their implications would not be immediately apparent. If these polls showed that a third party candidate was most favored, but every other metric, from polls about intended voting to political endorsements to campaign finance and so on, metrics that have more established track records and that people are used to relying on to predict outcomes, then it would be much more likely that people would see your polls as a statistical anomaly. And if people saw it that way and did not switch, then the next election cycle, they would say, “see, we were right, it was a statistical anomaly, that question is not a reliable predictor of who would win.”
Third, which candidates people like and dislike is influenced by the exposure they have to that candidate. A candidate with a lot of funding and air time can more effectively pitch themselves to a wider audience, even if they aren’t as good of a candidate or aren’t as aligned with their views. Furthermore, the perception that this happens means that even if an ad isn’t convincing to you, it will factor into your calculations about who is more likely to win.
Is that enough? Despite your baseless accusations that I’m being “evasive” I have given three crystal clear responses to your latest proposed solution (just as I clearly answered all your prior solutions). I could probably find more, if you like (I didn’t even get into the specific questions themselves yet). But at that point you’re probably better off reading the Wikipedia article so you can understand the underlying concept.
I could explain it to you myself, going over the Prisoners’ Dilemma and all that, but since you’re regarding everything I saw in debate-mode, convinced that I’m saying something ridiculous, I think you’d learn more by getting the information from a different source.
I feel like you are hinting at the possibility of not only a leftist majority but a majority interest in a specific candidate and we would be too dumb to figure that out. Is that your position?
No. If you’d listened to a single thing I said, you’d understand that it has nothing to do with being “too dumb to figure it out.” It’s a problem of coordinating a mass switch. It’s a collective action problem. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, people acting rationally on an individual level are not necessarily going to arrive at the best collective outcome. Read, like, anything about game theory, I am begging you.
Hey, ancient wisdom person, you need to be able to explain why the problem is fundamental and not solvable. I don’t see it. And all that ancient wisdom does you no good politically if you can’t impart it.
I agree, please stop making bad arguments so we can stop this thread or maybe I can learn something.
I have shot down half-assed argument after half-assed argument of yours, and you just keep spewing them out without putting any actual consideration into them.
First it was that polls showing the popularity of third party candidates in general could provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I disproved that.
Then it was that favorability polls would provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I disproved that.
Now it’s that polls you just dreamed up that nobody is asking that are supposed to provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I suppose this one could go on forever, with each question I prove wouldn’t work being replaced by an equally inane question that you spent 5 seconds coming up with. Just over and over again forever.
You might as well be trying to prove Bigfoot exists by asking one by one about every location you can think of, and each time I check one you simply produce a new location to check.
So I’ll tell you what - I will address one, final attempt to produce a mechanism for coordinating a switch. Right now you’ve offered a suggestion, “We could try “has most favorable opinion of?” or “most ideologically aligned with?”” Before I do: are you confident enough in that attempt that you’re ok with it being your very last one? Have you actually thought it through and tried on your own to think of reasons why it might not work? If I’m able to address this one, will you finally admit that you are unable to provide any mechanism for solving the collective action problem, and that you cannot defend your position?
If you’re a Democrat and you feel like the Green Party has a candidate polling at a majority
Polling as in “intends to vote for” or polling as in “has a favorable opinion of?”
If favorability: Multiple candidates can have positive favorability, so in that case most Democrats would stick with Democrat candidates because they don’t expect the third party to win.
If voting intention: The only way for a third party to be polling at a majority in terms of voting intention would be if people really did intend to vote for them (which would require some people to intend to vote for them before it was clear they had a real chance), or if people lied to pollsters about their intentions.
You’re not going to find some clever solution that allows you to bypass the problem of coordinating a mass switch, that problem is fundamental. This is tiresome.
So, in your mind, if someone did this favorability poll you want, and it showed, say, 60% favorability for the Green Party, you would vote for them, and you imagine that the majority of Democratic voters would all spontaneous switch their votes over together?
Go ahead and ask that to people you know, irl or people online: “If there was a poll showing a third party with 60% (or higher!) favorability, would that cause you to switch your vote? Would you expect it to cause others to switch their votes?” I can already tell you the answer you’ll get.
I hate to say this, but the fact that you think this is such a trivial problem tells me that you must be young, and there are no words I can say that are a substitute for experience. I recognize your mindset because I’ve had it myself, you want to drive a rational answer and the world can simply bend around to what you come up with. You want an answer that’s simply correct, because you don’t want to face a difficult decision, you don’t want to deal with the fact that both courses of action have some validity to them and either one comes with potential negative repercussions.
Let me give you a piece of advice - there are two types of ideas, ones that are molded around reality, and ones that are molded around psychological needs. The ones molded around psychological needs are always more appealing (assuming you have the needs it’s designed for), but they’re also not real. The ones molded around reality are often less smooth and neat, and less appealing - because they’re not designed for you, they’re designed to represent reality. The task of anyone seeking truth is to learn how to recognize what both types of ideas look like, what they’re “shaped” like, what they feel like. Your idea that you can get all the benefits of supporting a third party while also getting the benefits of voting Democrat - it’s shaped around what you want to be true. Essentially, it’s motivated reasoning convincing you that there must be some way for it to work, in order to avoid facing a difficult decision.
Seek truth from facts. Put aside how you think the world ought to operate and look at how it does. You can’t make a map before you’ve seen the territory. When you do that, you’ll see that this sudden spontaneous shift as the result of some random poll is never going to happen.
That’s all I have to say to you about this topic. I’m sorry if that comes off as condescending, but it’s genuinely from the heart. I can’t force you to see something you’re dead-set on not seeing. I don’t see anything productive coming from continuing this.
It’s an important point, because you presented it as a form of evidence that could be used to show when “it’s time” for everyone to switch to a third party, and then completely rejected it for that purpose right after. Which leaves us back at square one, which is that there is no means of coordinating a sudden switch or recognizing when such a switch would be viable. And without that, your whole position collapses.
I’d rather he do nothing than do actively bad things.
The poll would have to be about a specific candidate. Not voting third party in general.
Then why did you link it?
That’s not not how you spell ad-hominem or what it is.
If the poll is not meaningless to you, then what number would it have to be for it to make you to vote third party?
> cites poll
> “actually, this poll is meaningless.”
Good talk.
Sounds like we need to organize more to get better information. Also, what is this I found? https://news.gallup.com/poll/512135/support-third-political-party.aspx Looks like a poll that supports 3rd party candidates without committing to vote on them.
Well then, seeing as that poll shows 63%, I assume you’re voting third party with everyone else then, right? Because that’s apparently how you think the world works.
Stop giving me this nonsense and come back down to reality.
Wait, what? Why would it continue indefinitely? Lets say we had a Green Party with polling showing 90% of the population interested in that party. In what reason would you not vote for the Green Party (Assuming they are aligned with your goals)? Even if the polls are off we still have an extremely good chance of winning.
The Green Party would not be polling at 90%. When polls ask people who they intend to vote for, they would tell them that they intend to vote for the Democrats, because they consider the Greens nonviable.
You know, like you said you’re doing when I asked why you’re not supporting them now.
I guess you’re expecting people to lie to pollsters or something? Most people aren’t going to do that.
You don’t technically need money to win an election, it helps, but all that matters is the votes. If you don’t debate a popular candidate, your opponent can call you a coward. No one wants to debate anyone, it’s just better optics to engage.
This is so absurdly naive that it’s hardly worth answering. Money lets you spread your message. Being in a debate lets you spread your message. These are massive advantages that it’s virtually impossible to win without. People aren’t voting completely divorced from anything campaigns do.
Seriously, this is completely ridiculous and I won’t entertain the notion further.
Yes, this is why it may happen an election or two after we get critical mass.
This is fundamentally not how things work. It won’t just spontaneously happen, just like that, it isn’t a trivial issue. Even if every single Democratic voter would prefer the Green Party (for instance), each of them individually would think, “Well, I may want to switch, but nobody else is going to, so it would be a wasted vote.” There’s no reason this wouldn’t continue indefinitely.
This also ignores the fact that certain vote thresholds are necessary to be recognized as a major party and receive things like federal campaign funding and a spot in televised debates. Collecting votes doesn’t only help in terms of perceived relevancy, but it also directly helps in spreading the message.
I’d also like to point out that we’re not at election day and yet you don’t seem to be advocating for a third party, instead criticizing me for doing so. If your position is that you should support a third party up until it comes time to vote, then where is that support?
But that doesn’t make any sense. Running as a third party candidate means doing a political project in which you’re trying to attract supporters to vote for you. If that political project is good, then it’s good to vote for, if it’s bad, then it’s bad to start it in the first place.
If no one voted for a third party, that party would lose relevance and wouldn’t be able to accomplish the goal of spreading ideas like you mentioned earlier.
Also, you suggest that once a sort of critical mass of voters prefer a third party candidate, the voting strategy changes and they should vote third party. But it doesn’t work that way. How can we tell when we’ve reached that point, if everyone follows your advice and votes for the less-bad major party? By all appearances, it would seem that the third party has no meaningful support, even if the majority supported it, because they’re voting for who they expect to win rather than who they most prefer. For all we know, that could be the situation right now. People can’t just all spontaneously decide together to switch, unless you have some means of coordinating it. Enough people have to switch for it to start to seem plausible that it could actually work, and that means those first people would have to act contrary to your rationale.
Even people who run as a 3rd party candidate are helping by spreading ideas.
So, you don’t really have a political strategy argument for doing it.
I’m so confused by your position.
I guess I just don’t understand how to square that position with:
I just wish people would do that without justifying it.
The only real way to get change to happen is getting enough people educated and organized to turn the democrat or republican candidate into a 3rd party candidate by numbers, that is the only way they suffer.
And how exactly do you envision that happening without anyone ever making the case for it or trying to justify that position?
Also, if you don’t vote or vote 3rd party, they don’t have to think or care about you anymore. Your not a vote they need to get, because your throwing your vote away.
And if you always vote for them no matter what they do, then they don’t have to think or care about you anymore, because they know you’ll vote for them regardless.
If you are bot, “foreign spy”, or whatever, your post was good at muddying the water, keep it up, your master will be pleased.
Oh thank you, I actually am a foreign spy. Do you think you could rate me 5 stars? I really need this job.
Ugh it’s really tiresome to keep coming up with bits to make fun of this conspiracy theory. Can’t y’all get into like flat earth stuff instead, so I can have some new material to work with? It’s all the same crap.
I try not to be but sometimes I can’t help myself.