Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party • Hacker News Board

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#141

Post by pharmakom » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #41

endisneigh wrote: post #12

One thing people misunderstand about third parties is that they don't need to win. If they're structured correctly (this is by far the most difficult bit), they can have significant political influence without ever winning a single election. For example, love him or hate him, Ralph Nader probably swayed the 2000 Election and had incredible influence over the outcome (for better or worse). Coming back to the Forward P…

Let's review the record: Yang ran for President. Did very poorly. Ran for NY Mayor. Did very poorly. Why does making him the face of a new party make any sense at all?

It’s pretty common for presidents to have lost on their first try.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#142

Post by torginus » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#143

Post by inglor_cz » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:47 AM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #137

inglor_cz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that term limits are becoming more important with longevity technology coming to the fore. While I do not believe that longevity technology is going stay in hands of the rich and powerful forever, they will surely be the first group that will use it extensively. Even adding 15-20 years of working life would mean that 100 y.o. politicians or judges would become a normal occurrence. For Democrats: would you lik…

We don't have longevity technology yet though, only "keep you alive whilst you get dementia" technology. I wouldn't want to live over 90, maybe not even over 80 - but we'll see what changes by then. I agree with term limits though, but mainly to ensure that the politicians better represent those working in the economy. So many issues come from politicians effectively being idle landlords - completely divorced from th…

We cannot yet turn a 70 y.o. into a 50 y.o., no. We are nowhere near that kind of technology.

But we might be able to turn 70 y.o. into 67 y.o. relatively soon. In fact, there already was an experiment in humans which turned their epigenetic clock back 2,5 years by rejuvenating their thymuses.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02638-w

(Of course, the complicated relationship between epigenetic clock and real internal state of the organism is not fully clear yet. I know. This might be a very imperfect measure.)

This kind of baby steps is going to compound. I am sort of afraid of the possibility that we will ignore the baby steps until their aggregated weight is unconquerable, much like the climate crisis, where any single added chimney meant "almost nothing", but all of them together over decades meant a lot.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#144

Post by TulliusCicero » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:53 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

Generally that's true, but some polities have started doing ranked choice voting, which may give third parties a way in: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_...

> Ranked-choice voting is used for state primary, congressional, and presidential elections in Alaska and Maine and for local elections in more than 20 US cities including Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Leandro, California; Takoma Park, Maryland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Portland, Maine; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and St. Louis Park, Minnesota.[1] New York City is the largest voting population in the US using RCV.[2]

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#145

Post by vintermann » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

It can make sense as a regional party, especially in states where one party is extremely dominant. But you don't get the president that way.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#146

Post by TulliusCicero » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:55 AM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #102

lalaland1125 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranked choice has a lot of advantages over the alternatives that are often underestimated by people too worried about theory. The big advantage of ranked choice is that it is simple to understand and implement. In elections, it is essential that the average person understand exactly how the system works. An election result that people don't understand/trust is worse than useless.

That's a reason I like approval voting. It's easier to consider what your ballot's effect will be. That's hard with IRV.

Regular voters will basically always prefer ranked choice over approval imo, because they really want to be able to rank their preferences. A leftist who wants a green party candidate but will hold their nose for a Democrat doesn't want them to be "equal" in how they vote.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#147

Post by citboin » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:56 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

Right now a third party is a wasted vote so we need more than 3 national parties in order for them to be viable alternatives to the current two. The Forward party and Green Party could cooperate in order to make this happen, but that’s probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#148

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

third parties in the US are historically not very successful, but mostly because they tend to shoot for broke by running for President and failing.

In other places where FPTP results in more than two parties, this is usually because they run at lower levels first, to set the expectation that they can run something. it is also usually less costly to run in such races as the required outreach networks are smaller and media campaigns less expensive.

And US election campaigns at the national level are very expensive because it takes a lot of funding to do outreach to 330 million people over 9M sq km, plus media advertising slots are very pricey. Bernie Sanders spent $220M on his 2016 campaign, and that was for the primary. To put that in perspective, the maximum a UK political party was allowed to spend on all seats in Parliament was 19.5M GBP in 2019; the maximum spend on any single seat is 30,000 GBP.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#149

Post by space_fountain » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:58 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #142

Does the 3rd party make sense in the US election system? My impression was that 3rd parties are unhelpful, since they steal voters from ideologically similar parties, thus helping the opposition.

I don’t quite know how to make it happen, but because of the nationalization of politics there are also plenty of places where only one party is competitive so it feel like those places might be an opportunity for a third party

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#150

Post by TulliusCicero » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 7:58 AM UTC

tryptophan wrote: post #14

a_t48 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tempted to back them purely for Ranked Choice Voting. Will be keeping an eye on this for the future.

Ugh I support electoral reform, but why the obsession with ranked choice? It is the second WORST voting system after first past the post, which is what we have now.

The people all arguing how approval is better than ranked choice remind me a lot of people here arguing that functional programming is better than imperative, and being constantly flabbergasted that their preference isn't reflected in real world implementations.

Approval voting has advantages when you get into the weeds, but ranked choice has one big advantage right out the gate: people like it more. If you present the two systems to regular voters with simple one paragraph descriptions, people will choose ranked choice nearly every time, because they want to be able to rank candidates if they're voting for more than one person. Nobody wants to have to say that the guy there willing to hold their nose for is just as worthy of their vote as the guy they really want in office.