5 ms·

Ultimately it's the two party system that's screwing Americans over. However, let's not pretend both parties are even remotely the same.

swed420 3y ago
This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties, but if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same. They are two variations of corrupt and ensure a race to the bottom. Conveniently, they keep everyone bickering about the wrong things while the enablers at the top win no matter what color the current puppet is. Edit to add, I don't suspect adding a third or fourth party of capital will fix the fundamental contradictions baked into capitalism.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  > This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours. In any case, if you look at the candidates for rep or dem nominee for president, there is a stark difference on how they feel about the mega rich and corporations (Warren, Bernie vs. any rep nominee really). Unfortunately the corporation wing typically ends up on top due to establishment support and money. But if you'd expect any change for the better, it would come from the D side, never from the R. Furthermore, there's a huge array of issues where corporate interests are not as strong as party ideals, and it really matters who has the final say in those. As for the multi-party system, you at least get a more evenly distributed set of ideas in the political landscape: environmental party, religious nutjob party, agrarian party etc. This forces the main parties to take stances and be less extreme.
  - swed420 3y ago
    >> This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties > No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours. Writing it off the way I did was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to intentionally mischaracterize my statements and instead made a simple error, the kind that would be expected to be common in such a disorienting state of affairs. It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation. As for the nominee process, the flaws are addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40013399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40013399
    - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
      And if power was distributed in a more proportional manner, Bernie could start his own party and enjoy some 20-30% of the vote, forcing the others to compromise. So again, the two party system is to blame. Edit: of course the two party system was designed by wealthy land owners, so in that sense it was meant to be captured by the wealthy. It was never meant to represent the average Joe.
    - xracy 3y ago
      > It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation. This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying. But given you're complaining about frequency from other people, the problem isn't "everyone else is bad at reading", it's "you're bad at communicating" The good news is that this is a human problem. Maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote, and try and think about how you could change it to better convey what you're trying to say.
      - swed420 3y ago
        > This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying. It's not everyone though, just the majority, and though what you said could be true depending on circumstances, it isn't guaranteed to be. A sufficiently brainwashed or otherwise narrow minded person is going to skew their comprehension of statements that don't compute from their perspective. I do agree that it might be worthwhile for me to continue adjusting the presentation to help mitigate this, and I can assure you this process is an ongoing one. Sometimes it's easier said than done in a sea of mixed actors, including bad faith ones. Also even with a perfect wording, sometimes people find it's easier on their cognitive dissonance to just shoot the messenger anyway.
        xracy 3y ago
        > It's not everyone though, just the majority If the majority of people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm a bad communicator. If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation. Your initial comment is not set up like a complaint of capitalism. No one communicating about the woes of capitalism also brings up "both sides." Most who makes an appeal to "both parties are bad" is making an appeal that it doesn't actually matter who they voted for in the last election. Oftentimes this means justifying an unpopular vote. It's not a useful thing to say "everyone is bad." Especially since, if the Overton Window shifted away from the GOP, I think it would greatly change the acceptability of ideas that would take away the power of capitalism. But the GOP has firmly rooted the Overton Window around the idea that "Capitalism == Good". If you doubt this, I would ask you to consider what the Overton Window of just the Democratic party is. It's not great, but there's 1000000x more acceptable policy than for whatever you get if you include the GOP.
- xracy 3y ago
  > if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same. This is dogwhistling on your previous point. The appeal to "both sides are bad" is kinda pointless when one side is attempting to overturn election results, and the other side has a wide enough tent to contain people who would've been considered part of the other party a year ago. I'm not under the impression that the Democrats are all that great, but as long as they have something worse to point at they're able to hide in plain sight. And to be fair, it's just like, not even a close competition. I disagree with 80% of the Democratic party, and even the 80% I disagree with is more reasonable than any Republican who has signed an agreement to never raise taxes. So your appeal to "both sides are bad" is either bad for the point you're trying to make (Capitalism = Bad), or it's a dog-whistle/red-herring you could back away from when someone called you out for it. I lean towards the latter. P.S. Side note, if you don't understand there are implications to what you're saying that people will respond to then you're responsible for keeping comments very reddit-hive-mind-like, for not being able to understand what you yourself are implying.
  - swed420 3y ago
    What I'm implying is nothing as complicated as you're making it out to be. As for defending Dems as a lesser evil, none of that will matter on the current climate trajectory. But Don't Look Up if that helps you feel better.
jjj123 3y ago
When we’re talking about the impact of neoliberalism, they absolutely are the same. The things they differ on are mostly social issues that don’t actually have much of an impact on capital.
RestlessMind 3y ago
It's not as if the multi-party systems are a panacea. There are enough of them around the world which are screwing over their citizens (UK, for example).
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  I'm not too familiar with the UK system, but it seems to be quite bi-polar between the Tories and Labour. The US is not two party system by law either, but converges to that anyway by the way the system is set up. Furthermore, democracies are always vulnerable to bad outcomes by design, but at least with multi-party system the outcomes divide somewhat better across the spectrum.
  - sys_64738 3y ago
    British politics used to have a third tier when the Lib-Dems were independent and unaligned with the other two larger parties. But that all went away in 2010 when the Tory party formed a coalition with the Lib-Dems. From that point the Lib-Dems became toxic as a vote for them is a vote for another Tory government.
jamie_ca 3y ago
A two-party system is a side effect, the root problem is winner-take-all at the lower levels. If you have bigger districts that elect the top 3-4 candidates you're more likely to see results of 3-1 or 2-1-1 than 4-0, and the 2-1-1 result being attainable is what allows for more parties reliably. There's lots of ways to set up ballots and calculate support fallbacks, and they've all got tradeoffs, but they're nearly all strictly better than First Past The Post at electing a larger body (senate, congress, parliament, whatever).
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  Yep, as I mentioned in another comment, the two-party system is not by law, but a side effect of a badly set up election scheme. I wonder if it was the intention of the founding fathers, as they were all wealthy land owners. Would they have wanted the workers to be able to set up their own party to compete against them successfully?
- illiac786 3y ago
  My number recommendation is always: change the voting system to priority lists. Everyone has to list at least 2 candidates/parties, in order of preference, maybe more. That would immediately kick out extremists.

swed420 3y ago

This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties, but if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same. They are two variations of corrupt and ensure a race to the bottom. Conveniently, they keep everyone bickering about the wrong things while the enablers at the top win no matter what color the current puppet is. Edit to add, I don't suspect adding a third or fourth party of capital will fix the fundamental contradictions baked into capitalism.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago
> This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours. In any case, if you look at the candidates for rep or dem nominee for president, there is a stark difference on how they feel about the mega rich and corporations (Warren, Bernie vs. any rep nominee really). Unfortunately the corporation wing typically ends up on top due to establishment support and money. But if you'd expect any change for the better, it would come from the D side, never from the R. Furthermore, there's a huge array of issues where corporate interests are not as strong as party ideals, and it really matters who has the final say in those. As for the multi-party system, you at least get a more evenly distributed set of ideas in the political landscape: environmental party, religious nutjob party, agrarian party etc. This forces the main parties to take stances and be less extreme.
- swed420 3y ago
  >> This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties > No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours. Writing it off the way I did was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to intentionally mischaracterize my statements and instead made a simple error, the kind that would be expected to be common in such a disorienting state of affairs. It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation. As for the nominee process, the flaws are addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40013399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40013399
  - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
    And if power was distributed in a more proportional manner, Bernie could start his own party and enjoy some 20-30% of the vote, forcing the others to compromise. So again, the two party system is to blame. Edit: of course the two party system was designed by wealthy land owners, so in that sense it was meant to be captured by the wealthy. It was never meant to represent the average Joe.
  - xracy 3y ago
    > It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation. This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying. But given you're complaining about frequency from other people, the problem isn't "everyone else is bad at reading", it's "you're bad at communicating" The good news is that this is a human problem. Maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote, and try and think about how you could change it to better convey what you're trying to say.
    - swed420 3y ago
      > This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying. It's not everyone though, just the majority, and though what you said could be true depending on circumstances, it isn't guaranteed to be. A sufficiently brainwashed or otherwise narrow minded person is going to skew their comprehension of statements that don't compute from their perspective. I do agree that it might be worthwhile for me to continue adjusting the presentation to help mitigate this, and I can assure you this process is an ongoing one. Sometimes it's easier said than done in a sea of mixed actors, including bad faith ones. Also even with a perfect wording, sometimes people find it's easier on their cognitive dissonance to just shoot the messenger anyway.
      - xracy 3y ago
        > It's not everyone though, just the majority If the majority of people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm a bad communicator. If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation. Your initial comment is not set up like a complaint of capitalism. No one communicating about the woes of capitalism also brings up "both sides." Most who makes an appeal to "both parties are bad" is making an appeal that it doesn't actually matter who they voted for in the last election. Oftentimes this means justifying an unpopular vote. It's not a useful thing to say "everyone is bad." Especially since, if the Overton Window shifted away from the GOP, I think it would greatly change the acceptability of ideas that would take away the power of capitalism. But the GOP has firmly rooted the Overton Window around the idea that "Capitalism == Good". If you doubt this, I would ask you to consider what the Overton Window of just the Democratic party is. It's not great, but there's 1000000x more acceptable policy than for whatever you get if you include the GOP.
xracy 3y ago
> if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same. This is dogwhistling on your previous point. The appeal to "both sides are bad" is kinda pointless when one side is attempting to overturn election results, and the other side has a wide enough tent to contain people who would've been considered part of the other party a year ago. I'm not under the impression that the Democrats are all that great, but as long as they have something worse to point at they're able to hide in plain sight. And to be fair, it's just like, not even a close competition. I disagree with 80% of the Democratic party, and even the 80% I disagree with is more reasonable than any Republican who has signed an agreement to never raise taxes. So your appeal to "both sides are bad" is either bad for the point you're trying to make (Capitalism = Bad), or it's a dog-whistle/red-herring you could back away from when someone called you out for it. I lean towards the latter. P.S. Side note, if you don't understand there are implications to what you're saying that people will respond to then you're responsible for keeping comments very reddit-hive-mind-like, for not being able to understand what you yourself are implying.
- swed420 3y ago
  What I'm implying is nothing as complicated as you're making it out to be. As for defending Dems as a lesser evil, none of that will matter on the current climate trajectory. But Don't Look Up if that helps you feel better.

jjj123 3y ago

When we’re talking about the impact of neoliberalism, they absolutely are the same. The things they differ on are mostly social issues that don’t actually have much of an impact on capital.

RestlessMind 3y ago

It's not as if the multi-party systems are a panacea. There are enough of them around the world which are screwing over their citizens (UK, for example).

karmakurtisaani 3y ago
I'm not too familiar with the UK system, but it seems to be quite bi-polar between the Tories and Labour. The US is not two party system by law either, but converges to that anyway by the way the system is set up. Furthermore, democracies are always vulnerable to bad outcomes by design, but at least with multi-party system the outcomes divide somewhat better across the spectrum.
- sys_64738 3y ago
  British politics used to have a third tier when the Lib-Dems were independent and unaligned with the other two larger parties. But that all went away in 2010 when the Tory party formed a coalition with the Lib-Dems. From that point the Lib-Dems became toxic as a vote for them is a vote for another Tory government.

jamie_ca 3y ago

A two-party system is a side effect, the root problem is winner-take-all at the lower levels. If you have bigger districts that elect the top 3-4 candidates you're more likely to see results of 3-1 or 2-1-1 than 4-0, and the 2-1-1 result being attainable is what allows for more parties reliably. There's lots of ways to set up ballots and calculate support fallbacks, and they've all got tradeoffs, but they're nearly all strictly better than First Past The Post at electing a larger body (senate, congress, parliament, whatever).

karmakurtisaani 3y ago
Yep, as I mentioned in another comment, the two-party system is not by law, but a side effect of a badly set up election scheme. I wonder if it was the intention of the founding fathers, as they were all wealthy land owners. Would they have wanted the workers to be able to set up their own party to compete against them successfully?
illiac786 3y ago
My number recommendation is always: change the voting system to priority lists. Everyone has to list at least 2 candidates/parties, in order of preference, maybe more. That would immediately kick out extremists.