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Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

forwardparty.com

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Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#521

Post by native_samples »

brightball wrote: post #487
i21QMgplhRJs2OL wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a controversial take but candidates for the Libertarian party should be libertarians. If Yang wanted to run under an existing third party then the Green Party would make more sense.

Just looking through his points on the website, here's what's actively supported by the LP... - UBI - Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries - Term Limits ----- These are widely supported within the LP - Working with government should be painless ----- For LP this means because there should be less federal power, leading to less of a feeling that it's trying to control your life - Legislating based on outcomes, not…

No wonder Yang got nowhere. This list isn't really a list of policies at all, it's a set of vague truisms that hardly anyone would disagree with but which can't be obviously turned into any sort of implementation.

And what sort of libertarian party supports UBI?! How would that ever be implemented without massive levels of top-down coercion and taxation? No analysis I've ever seen says it can be self-funding as was once claimed. If that's really their position then no wonder they don't accrue any influence.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#522

Post by iammisc »

spamizbad wrote: post #509
dbingham wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no room for a third party to start gaining ground in the US. We already have a third and fourth party - the Libertarian and Green parties - that have been trying to gain traction for years. Neither has been able to. The Greens came the closest with Nader in 2000. The reason for that is structural. The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that…

> The Democratic and Republican parties have structurally built themselves into the election system in a way that shuts out any attempt to gain traction by third and fourth parties. It's more than that: The Democratic - (and arguably the Republican party at one time) - are functionally "big tent" parties. For example, the Democratic party has a progressive faction, an "establishment" faction, and a centrist/moderate…

The republican party has a big tent too. There are neocons, extreme far right people, religious people, disaffected workers, anti globalists, and increasingly Hispanics and other immigrant groups.

These groups often have little in common. Just look at trumps support base.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#525

Post by Mizza »

geeB wrote: post #388
realce wrote: post #353

I raised over 400k for Andrew's POTUS run and devoted a year of my life to running his official Reddit (104k subs at peak), then joined a SuperPAC to further his positions after the run. The campaign team was full of fools who squandered almost every good turn received, most campaign workers were paid less than minimum wage, and Andrew eventually stole the pac's name and branding - Humanity Forward - put everyone out…

I do not have any personal experience, but sadly it does not sound too surprising from what's been out publicly. The moment he dropped out and immediately got the CNN job really changed my perception of him. Then after some events from his mayoral campaign, such as his Israel comments or the Staten Island ferry cowboy incident, it's pretty clear he is a politician like many others.

The Israel comments were the most severe political footgunning I've ever seen. I'd love to know what on behind the scenes to cause that to happen.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#526

Post by InitialLastName »

Loughla wrote: post #466
runako wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the thoughtful explanation. Do you have any explanation for why these folks pretty reliably choose representation that pledges to relax environmental protections? Is it possible that they are concerned about the environment, but not concerned enough to matter at any practical level (e.g. given their expressed actions)?

Money, and a lack of understanding of the tragedy of the commons. That's the pure and simple of it. I need to be able to exploit [resource a] to be able to feed my family. For example, take fertilizing a field or crop. So it runs off into the water. Well, that has never been a problem on my farm. I don't have algae blooms and my pond is fine. They don't seem to understand that they are just one small part of the larg…

I think this somewhat misses that pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are different issues with distinct (sometimes opposed) mitigations.

Pollution, like runoff and smog can be _much_ more locally tangible, both in the "i can see that we're putting something into the air/water that wasn't there before" sense and the "I can see the damage this is causing relatively directly". Greenhouse gas emissions is much more ephemeral, since things like carbon dioxide are natural parts of the atmosphere and are released to some extent by natural processes, and they only have a tangible effect on a global scale and over long time-spans.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#527

Post by jmull »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #494

To me, it seems our current system has us stuck in a prisoner's dilemma of sorts. Each side has a large base of constituents who don't love their own party but feel it's a non-negotiable to keep the other major party out of power as much as possible. For example, I dislike both sides, but there's one party I dislike more than the other, so I vote in such a way to keep that party out... which ends up supporting a part…

The general issue is that we have a democracy (of sorts) and there is no coherent party platform/philosophy/approach that could make a majority happy -- at least not for long. As a result, in order to win some elections (have some power) the major parties are formed out of coalitions of disparate groups that can manage to hold their noses and work together.

The bigger and more diverse your coalition the more you win, but bigger more diverse coalitions are harder for any individual member or subgroup to actually like. This is the dynamic pushing parties to be the most objectionable they can get away with, while still actually winning. The winning move isn't to be liked, but to be disliked less than your opponent.

I'll just note, this is a general issue in democracies, not just the two-party system in the US. In the US the coalition is formed before the election and in some other systems the governing coalition is formed after.

You can sometimes get a semblance of a coherent political approach that can outright win elections. But it doesn't last.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#528

Post by native_samples »

spiralx wrote: post #226
gpm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries with first past the post voting regularly manage to have more than two parties. Canada, the UK, etc. I don't think the USes problems can be solely attributed to fist past the post voting (though it certainly doesn't help).

Parliamentary systems still devolve into two-party contests in each district though, it's more that the larger number of districts means that regional parties sometimes takes one of those two slots. At their peak the Lib Dems basically only ever won MPs from a few small regions of the country, mainly Somerset, Sheffield and London. The Greens have their one MP in Brighton, and then the other parties are all regional.

That's a lot to do with their policies though. The Greens are not really different to Labour, Lib Dems ... I don't think even they know what they stand for these days.

A better recent example was UKIP. A single issue party that managed to accrue enough of the vote that they got their issue implemented without ever having to win an election. In FTFP you can implement massive change in politics, without needing to actually replace one of the big parties.

Re: Andrew Yang Founds the Forward Party

#530

Post by jessaustin »

native_samples wrote: post #521
brightball wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just looking through his points on the website, here's what's actively supported by the LP... - UBI - Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries - Term Limits ----- These are widely supported within the LP - Working with government should be painless ----- For LP this means because there should be less federal power, leading to less of a feeling that it's trying to control your life - Legislating based on outcomes, not…

No wonder Yang got nowhere. This list isn't really a list of policies at all, it's a set of vague truisms that hardly anyone would disagree with but which can't be obviously turned into any sort of implementation. And what sort of libertarian party supports UBI?! How would that ever be implemented without massive levels of top-down coercion and taxation? No analysis I've ever seen says it can be self-funding as was o…

It seems there is a divide between libertarians who support liberty and libertarians who would like government to be even deeper in the pockets of billionaires.
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