Can a third party candidate win?

[Eric the Green]

(07-08-2016, 05:47 PM)Drakus79 Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 07:08 AM)Odin Wrote: And property is the creation of the state and can only be enforced by state power protecting the Haves from the Have-Nots.

Your definition of property is either really skewed, or you're being obtuse.  You don't need the state to have or defend property rights.  Individuals have been defending their own property since time immemorial. Even animals defend their own territory without the help of a government.

That's called barbarism. At first people just wander around and have no real property at all. Then people take up arms and defend themselves against ambitious neighbors who want control, and to fend off pirates, brigands and invaders. Fighting is very severe and brutal. Eventually the most powerful fighters take over your region and demand payment in kind for protection. This is called feudalism. Eventually the most powerful feudal lords become the kings of their region. Well, it's back to the state then! But instead of civilized society, you have tyranny. I'm surprised you don't know this history. Did you see the Civilization episode one I linked here?

In civilization, however, property and money become government programs, and protecting it becomes the chief occupation of the state. Deeds are issued and money is coined. It's a much easier way to do things and allows for more activities in life than fighting and defending your property and losing anyway to the most brutal guy in your neighborhood, region or country.

Quote:Now if you were to say the state helps to enable a situation in which the haves can enforce a monopoly on property, I would agree with you.  The state enabled the situation in which escaped slaves were forced to return to their masters.  The state enables the situation in which huge corporations can lobby for more leverage over smaller businesses and institute government bailouts to the wealthiest 1%.  The state enables the situation in which the central banks can keep borrowing against our children's future to keep their corrupt system afloat and keep the oligarchs in power.  Yes, the state enables those types of corrupted property rights.  But libertarians are opposed to that.

I just don't know where you libertarian guys get this notion. Was this a Generation X fad? I just don't get it.

The state doesn't have to do anything to create and "enforce" a monopoly, beyond its usual assignment of protecting property. The most successful, greedy and ambitious company in the "free market" buys out the competition or forces it out of business in short order. Mutual collusion follows and you have the oligarchy; no state activity needed. Big business can lobby for power because it controls government by spending money on campaigns and getting their guys in there who will refuse to outlaw such lobbying. Government bailouts did not create the 1%; the 1% created the bailouts by crashing the economy. Slavery existed because government did not outlaw it in certain areas, as it should have. Wealthy planters took advantage and controlled the government to protect their "property" until Abe took over and won the civil war.

Quote:Look at the way Johnson governed NM. He was very selective about which laws passed, vetoing most of them, and made sure each went through a rigorous cost/benefit analysis.  He also promised not to use the power of the executive action unless there was a national emergency, and would probably undo several executive actions if he became president. His running mate, Bill Weld governed Massachusetts in a similar fashion. Both were Republican governors in heavily blue states, yet they were very popular in their states serving two terms. Why? Because they weren't your typical Republican NeoCons. They were classically liberal Republicans that you used to see in both parties once upon a time.

Generally, as a libertarian, you try to take more of a hands off approach to the executive office so as not to step on people's rights. When a tragedy happens, you try not to use it to your political advantage to set an agenda.  The hope is to reverse the trend of what's going on USA for the past 40 years.  Reverse the police state.  Try to be nicer to each other.  Set a tone of peace love and kindness rather than divisiveness and us vs. them approach.  Try to defend people's rights rather than restrict them.  Try to remove laws rather than add to them.  It's actually very easy.

There is no getting "there". It's all a spectrum, sometimes we go too far one way, and have to reverse course. Right now we're too far in the authoritarian / oligarchy / police state direction and need to reverse course. And I acknowledge that once we do reverse course maybe things will go too far in the other direction and we may have to pull the breaks. But the ends don't justify the means. It's all means.

How is not passing laws "moderate?" The people of NM probably needed a lot of those laws. Laws are passed to protect the people from rapacious, greedy business people, as well as criminals. Business is not a criminal enterprise, but when it pollutes and violates the right of consumers and workers and trashes the economy, laws have to be passed. If business apologists like yourself and other libertarians want fewer laws, then the solution is for business to behave itself, and contribute so much to society that no welfare programs are even necessary. THAT would be "trying to be nice to each other," but I don't see that Utopia happening any time soon. The recent history of business rules it out for the foreseeable future, in fact.

Removing laws is not something that adds to peoples' rights, in itself. It depends on the law. Rights must be protected by law, or they don't exist except in theory. When tragedies happen, laws are often needed to prevent such tragedies from happening again. And they often work. The trend of the past 40 years has already been hands off. The result is the economic decline and inequality that we see. More laissez faire would just be more irresponsibility and neglect. I don't see irresponsibility as a solution to society's problems. The people and their government need to take a hands-on approach instead.

The police state exists in America mostly in communities of color. That's because the state you want to further dismantle, has already been drastically dismantled. Social workers have been fired; programs cut. Now all the social and economic problems have been dumped into the lap of the police, who are not able to handle them. The solution these last 40 years has been to arrest as many young black men as possible and put them in jail, or just shoot them. It doesn't work. We need the war on poverty back. We need government programs. We need better education. We need higher wages. We need communities working together, black and white, with awareness of what real needs are. Just to let things take their course, as you want, will not work.