I don’t get the “take off your shoes” part. Is this a meme I have missed?

So the quality is worth the price of not owning the work you do?

I guess everyone has to make their own call…

Collective Action Problems

Oh, nice link (not sarcastic), I didn’t realize these issues had a name. Thanks!

But it doesn’t apply to the hypothetical. The first line is “A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action.” The hypothetical was that the majority of people already agree on a specific candidate. So there are no conflicting interests that matter.

First off, let’s note that these polls do not currently exist.

I don’t understand the point of this paragraph. Do you think the current green candidate has a majority interest? If so, then we should start making polls. Conservatives make polls every day like “Bad Black Man Bad?”. I am pretty sure this not a difficult task, especially if we have a majority.

Second, if these polls did exist, their implications would not be immediately apparent.

Yes, I agree with this. I understand why this isn’t ideal, but humans are messy. Like I said is might be 4 - 8 years before we are able to act on our majority.

I think “immediately” also points out some emotional energy. I think you are weighing the horrors of the current situation (and they are very bad) and are willing to take extreme risk to stop those horrors. An admirable goal, but taking those extremes risks has consequences and not just for you. The risk you are currently taking is trying to convince as many people as possible to vote in such a way to throw a wrench in the system. This can work if you can get a large enough amount of people, but that is like a 1 - 5 percent chance. That leaves a 95% percent chance that the outcomes will be the worst possible. On top of this, as you have said, you currently have no metrics. So you don’t know how likely you are to succeed. It’s a bad gamble and I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary.

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.”

Ok, so we miss once and stop trying? Why is the left so weak in your mind? Why not just keep trying until we get the candidate that everyone wants elected elected?

Third, which candidates people like and dislike is influenced by the exposure they have to that candidate.

Where did this come from? I will assume this is a closing argument and not an answer to my question. As I have stated before. Money is very helpful, but not necessary. You can do things like fundraise. Berne proved that it was possible. And the bigger the majority you have, the more of a source you have.

Is that enough?

You linked me to an interesting wiki article that didn’t apply. You wrote a paragraph about how we currently don’t have polls, then claimed victory. You talked about how my idea wouldn’t work right away, then assumed people would just give up. Then you talked about how money was necessary, which was not part of the question.

So your answer boils down to leftist will just give up even if they have the majority, because organizing is hard and not perfect.

I will accept this. I asked a question, you answered to the best of your ability. You and I are both tired of this conversation. I am good with ending it here. I will not be replying to this conversation after this.

I will have to find someone else to convince me that no-voting or 3rd party voting is a good idea, because we are not communicating well.

I wish you well. No hard feelings, have a nice life.

It’s a problem of coordinating a mass switch.

Ok, so I don’t want to use up my one question, so I will just assume your position is that if we had one fascist leader and everyone else was a leftist who agreed on which candidate they would want to lead them, then the leftists wouldn’t be able to do whatever to figure that out and the one and only fascists leader would stay in charge forever. Got it.

You really should vote for the lesser evil, because your opinion of the people you agree with is very low. By your own logic, you’re are already screwed.

Now it’s that polls you just dreamed up that nobody is asking that are supposed to provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch.

Hey, if you have a general argument for why polling wont work, why didn’t you use that instead of just asserting that it wouldn’t without explaining (rhetorical question does not count)? That is why I am trying to figure out why you think that. The only way I know how to do that is by trying to figure out what wording is causing you issues.

Before I do: are you confident enough in that attempt that you’re ok with it being your very last one?

Yes, stop edging me. Any question I ask you, you will probably provide another evasive answer to. Anyone reading this thread will see that plainly. Please add more weight to my arguments.

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?

Polling as in “intends to vote for” or polling as in “has a favorable opinion of?”

We could try “has most favorable opinion of?” or “most ideologically aligned with?”

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?

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.

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.

This is tiresome.

I agree, please stop making bad arguments so we can stop this thread or maybe I can learn something.

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?

Not Democratic voters (assuming you mean the party). Just voters.

If you’re a Democrat and you feel like the Green Party has a candidate polling at a majority that represents your interests more than the Democratic candidate, why would you vote for the Democratic candidate instead? It goes against your interests. I know some Democrats are brain damaged, but I think that is only a small percentage (1 - 3 %).

This is like saying the majority of the population is leftist and has a chance at a bloodless revolution, but they decide to not take it because of shits and giggles.

Or a poll that shows favorability over voting.

Your argument boils down to “We would need a thing that easily could exist and maybe currently doesn’t exist and that’s why this is an unsolvable problem.”

It was a counter to this statement.

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.

But I now that I am re-reading it I see that I had misinterpreted it. I thought you were implying that polls only ask questions about voting and not option. This was my bad. Sorry.

The poll would have to be about a specific candidate. Not voting third party in general.

Third party in general just means that most people are sick of the two candidates in top. This could mean that we are splitting The 60% between five third-party candidates. This means the Democratic and Republican candidates are still on top?

Now if 60% of the people were interested in voting for the green candidate specifically. Then I’m very interested and a big funny is about to happen to the Republican or Democratic candidate.

A broken clock is right twice a day?

Whoa, where did I say the poll was meaningless?

How do you do that thing where you put things I never said in my mouth? Hey, let me try.

My name is OBJECTION! and I can’t read.

Wow, that was easier than I thought it was.

Ad-homing is fun!

Is that 63% specific candidate? Or is that 63% in general?

Because of its 63% for a specific candidate we can talk. Looks like it’s just in general. Which makes sense because the two candidates are particularly bad this upcoming election.

Oh man, looks like you have no good arguments to counter mine, otherwise you would have used them. Looks like I’ll have to put you back into the idiot category. Sorry.

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.

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.

This is so absurdly naive that it’s hardly worth answering.

I think you misread my statement that you quoted. I didn’t say money wasn’t helpful. And I never said we don’t need to debate. I said the debates will come to us if we are popular (You won’t have to doge bullets Neo).

Seriously, this is completely ridiculous and I won’t entertain the notion further.

Your call if you want to end on some bad arguments.

There’s no reason this wouldn’t continue indefinitely.

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.

vote thresholds are necessary to be recognized as a major party and receive things like federal campaign funding and a spot in televised debates.

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.

If your position is that you should support a third party up until it comes time to vote, then where is that support?

Ohhh, maybe you got me, I haven’t been paying much attention to the 3rd party polling. Any progressive 3rd party candidates coming close to Biden or Trump? If they are, then you win, and let me know.

Also, let me just say, if it is not too late, that I support all candidates that agree with me. Have any candidates in particular you want me to verify?

It has its usages. Unfortunately, the market pressures are going to require companies to use them in a way to make investors happy. The average Joe is probably going to have a bad time.

Running as a third party candidate means doing a political project in which you’re trying to attract supporters to vote for you.

This has always been a stretch goal of any 3rd party candidate, because it almost never ever happens. You run 3rd party to tank the votes of one of the primary candidates, for a book deal, or to spread information and awareness.

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.

The strategy is to gracefully step down after you have spread information and before any of the voting happens. You can support a 3rd party candidate and plan to not vote for them unless they get popular.

How can we tell when we’ve reached that point

We won’t be able to tell the instant it happens, because it’s impossible to track all the voters, but signs will start showing up.

You know we are past the point when the democrat or republican candidate starts getting ignored like 3rd party candidates currently do. Remember how Bernie’s run looked? Before the Dems did an op and kicked him out, it was looking very interesting.

For all we know, that could be the situation right now.

Maybe, keep your eye on the polls. If your 3rd party candidate has comparable polling to Biden or Trump then we can start talking about the possibility of that happening. We have to overcome the normies.

By all appearances, it would seem that the third party has no meaningful support, even if the majority supported it,

Disagree, like I said, you can support a 3rd party candidate without planning on voting for them. Everyone knows you have to eat shit on voting day, but before then, you can point out all the good things about a particular candidate, even if you know they are not going to win.

People can’t just all spontaneously decide together to switch, unless you have some means of coordinating it.

Yes, this is why it may happen an election or two after we get critical mass. It’s a limitation of the tools we have.

Remember if the 3rd party candidate has the support, they are no longer a 3rd party. People can say they are 3rd party, but they would be wrong or coping.

Ok, I think I understand the confusion. Running for a 3rd party and voting 3rd party are two different things.

I think that running for a 3rd party has good outcomes, it generates news and discussion and gets your ideas out in front of a lot of people. Maybe, when the time is right, you won’t be a 3rd party anymore and become one of the mainstream parties.

I think that voting for a 3rd party has bad outcomes. As our previous discussions, thanks to the dumb first past the post. Only the two most popular candidates matter. So you should vote for the lesser evil even if they suck (and they will).

When a 3rd party candidate becomes popular enough they edge out one of the standard party candidates and the voting strategy changes in our favor.

I mean voting 3rd part or no-voting. If you want to do that, it is your right. The outcome of doing that is going against your interests. So, you don’t really have a political strategy argument for doing it.

I have found a few people that just didn’t want to feel bad about voting 3rd party. And that is fine, you don’t have feel bad. You can vote how you want. But they felt like they need to create a reason for why they are voting 3rd party or no voting. This is what I think is harming the community. Creating the reason or justifying it when there was no rationality backing it and spreading it like it is a good reason is what irks me. It’s spreading misinformation.

What do you mean? A lot of people are doing that. It’s not like we get one progressive action every 4 years. Why do you think people organize and run for local government? Why do you think I am trying to spread leftist ideas on the internet? Even people who run as a 3rd party candidate are helping by spreading ideas. Bernie didn’t make it to the finish line, but in trying he did a lot of good work spreading ideas and making people think.

If we wake up enough people, the gears in the machine will start turning and we won’t need to vote 3rd party because we won’t be 3rd party by definition anymore.

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.

You got it! That is the shit system in the US.

Oh thank you, I actually am a foreign spy. Do you think you could rate me 5 stars? I really need this job.

Lol, good sense of humor.

I sympathize, it gets depressing. That is why, I don’t blame anyone from no voting or 3rd party voting. I just wish people would do that without justifying it. Not make it out to be this big brained strategy. There are a lot of good meaning ignorant people who will read that stuff and think they are materially improving things by no voting or 3rd party voting. The progressive fight is super hard and a pain in the butt. If you need a rest King/Queen, take 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. Until then we have to play their stupid game.