• jjj@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    12 hours ago

    It’s not about voting for the lesser evil, but against the worse one. The way the United States is structured, which influences the way its people think about voting and vice versa, you are given only two options when voting for president:

    • Vote for the Democrat one
    • Vote for the Republican one

    But… you might think you’re clever and say “I should just vote for neither of them, nobody will stop me”. If your state has RCV then put your preferred candidate as a first pick and just place Democrat before Republican. Problem solved, no more strategic voting. Unfortunately, precious few states have adopted this for any elections, let alone the presidency.

    In states without RCV, there are 3 equivalent cases from your perspective:

    • Vote Republican: Increment their number by 1
      • Overall effect +1 for Republicans
    • Vote Democrat: Increment a threatening score by 1, thereby requiring Republicans to gain 1 more vote to win
      • Overall effect -1 for Republicans
    • Don’t vote or vote for a non threatening party/candidate
      • Overall effect 0 for Republicans

    Forgive me for assuming the reader wants to get Republicans (and Republican aligned Democrats) out of office. In this case, it is your responsibility to vote for the most threatening candidate. It’s a sick trick of game theory, which is why RCV is so important.

    • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      HELP! We tried this in Europe but the politicians kept on selling out to rich people as soon as (or even before) they got voted in! Feeling kinda alienated and class conscious atm what should we do now?

    • freagle@lemmy.ml
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      12 hours ago

      You really just gotta get out of the private space of who people vote for and do actual work that matters. Wasting your energy trying to get polite genocidaires elected is costing lives every day. You only have so much time. Vote the way you understand the system works, assume everyone else is as smart or smarter than you and they can figure out how to vote. And then spend the other 364 days of the year putting all this effort you want to put into vote mongering and put it into dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

      Because the way this works is that there’s an orphan crushing machine and there are two parties who take turns operating the orphan crushing machine and we need all the help we can get dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

      And when you spend all your effort screaming at the people who want to dismantle the orphan crushing machine that they should ALSO be sure they vote for the correct people to operate the orphan crushing machine, wait let me put it in your terms:

      If you help us dismantle the orphan crushing machine, that’s -1 for the orphan crushers and +1 for the people fighting the orphan crushers

      If you don’t help us dismantle the machine, that’s 0 for the orphan crushers

      If you consume time and energy from other people who would otherwise be convinced to help us dismantle the orphan crushing machine, that -1 or more for the people fighting the orphan crushers and +1 or more for the orphan crushers.

      It’s just the way game theory works out. Trust me. I’m a doctor of game theory.

      • Squirrelanna@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        14 minutes ago

        It’s a little wild to tell someone they should spend this energy doing something about it instead of writing when you wrote more than them just to say it. It rings pretty hollow. Not saying this to tell you you’re right or wrong, just some constructive criticism. Stick to the substantial arguments if you really want to change minds.

      • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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        9 hours ago

        Because the way this works is that there’s an orphan crushing machine and there are two parties who take turns operating the orphan crushing machine and we need all the help we can get dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

        Damn that’s 🔥

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        Wasting your energy trying to get polite genocidaires elected is costing lives every day.

        On the contrary, it helps save lives until the orphan crushing machine is dismantled. No one is saying just to vote lesser evil and do nothing else, they’re saying that voting for lesser events is one part of the larger effort.

        Because the way this works is that there’s an orphan crushing machine and there are two parties who take turns operating the orphan crushing machine

        The way this actually works is that they take turns operating one particular orphan crushing machine, but one party turns on a number of additional orphan crushing machines when it’s their turn.

        And when you spend all your effort screaming at the people who want to dismantle the orphan crushing machine that they should ALSO be sure they vote for the correct people to operate the orphan crushing machine

        No one is spending all their effort doing that. Some people spend some of their effort doing that, in order to counteract the efforts of other people who can’t seem to understand the difference between the people operating one orphan crushing machine, and the people operating several orphan crushing machines.

        Until you actually have an actionable plan to dismantle the machines, or an electoral process which doesn’t make third parties spoilers, the optimal achievable outcome of voting is the minimization of machine operation. The operation of bi-partisan machines isn’t really relevant to the voting issue. Whoever has the greater machine operation is the outcome to avoid.

        We agree that the goal is to dismantle orphan crushing machines. It’s much easier to dismantle machines while they are not running. Spending time and energy to try to get the lesser machine-operators instead of the greater machine-operators is a +1 to the machine-dismantlers, since now they have the opportunity to dismantle the idle machines.

        The efforts outside voting are unaffected by voting for the lesser machine-operators. Not voting, or generally speaking voting third party, gives no benefit to the machine-dismantlers. Since, generally, the people who want to dismantle the machine would otherwise vote for the lesser machine-operators, discouraging that vote is a detriment to the machine-dismantlers; therefore fighting that discouragement is a benefit to the machine-dismantlers.

        Game theory only works if you assign your values correctly.

        • freagle@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Game theory only works if you assign your values correctly.

          Obama/Biden changed the policies, budget, headcount, and leaderships of DHS and ICE. They explicitly made it possible for ICE to be deployed in US cities. They appointed Tom Homan to lead it. They deported 3M people. Trump used the framework Obama/Biden put in place. He made Tom Homan is deportation czar in term 1. Biden took office next and did literally nothing to stop any of this from happening except for the fact that he chose not to use ICE the way it was able to be used, knowing full well what would happen on the next swing. Trump started term 2, brought Tom Homan back.

          Numbers? Obama deported 3M. Biden deported 4.4M Trump has deported slightly less than 1M in term 1 and about the same number in this term so far. He might be on track to match Biden/Harris.

          Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat just to impose more collective punishment on the citizens there. Obama/Clinton destroyed the country of Libya. Clinton literally said she laughed watching the video of the murder of 80-year-old Gaddafi when he was videotaped being sodomized by a bayonet.

          You’re a fool if you think one party kills fewer orphans.

          US economic sanctions are a bi-partisan consensus and they kill more children than wars do. Averaging 800k deaths per year, every year, for 50 years, without abatement. The Democrats every ounce as responsible as the Republicans. And of those 800k deaths, the most impacted are children, the sick, and the elderly.

          It was Truman that saved 10k Nazis from facing trial, Truman that nuked Japan twice, Truman that oversaw the mass murder of 10% of the population in the Northern half of Korea, Truman that supported the fascist dictatorship in the Southern half of Korea that killed 100k civilians in political purges, and Truman who propped up Chiang Kai-Shek while he was fascist dictator in Taiwan and killed or disappeared 10k+ civilians in political purges.

          It was LBJ who saw the most heinous crimes committed against Vietnam, building on what JFzk had started. It was LBJ who oversee the mass use of Agent Orange and napalm against civilians in Vietnam while the Vietnamese were fighting to expel their colonial oppressors. My Lai, Rolling Thunder, and “free fire” were all LBJ. It was LBJ that decided to make Laos a target and bumb their civilian infrastructure to stop the supply chains feeding the Vietnamese freedom fighters. It was LBJ that oversaw the US leadership of the Indonesian military dictatorship that killed a million people in political purges. It was LBJ who sent Marines to the Dominican Republic to ensure that the democratically elected president did not take his seat and installed a right-wing authoritarian.

          Clinton: Yugoslavia, neoliberal destruction of Haiti’s agriculture, corrupt vulture capitalism of post-earthquake Haiti, Bill and Hillary with black house slaves in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, “superpredator” lies and the Crime Bill, blocking UN intervention in Rwanda, undoing the New Deal, undoing the financial protections that crashed the US economy in the 1920s which literally setup the exact mechanisms for the 2008 crisis.

          You’re falling for the PR. The Democrats and the Republicans are collaborators. They are the good cop and the bad cop. They both work for the same department. You are convinced that the good cop is someone you should support. You think the good cop is somehow going to lead to better outcomes. You are wrong. And you need to stop trying to convince everyone else to go with the good cop. You need to join the group of people who have refused to support the good cop because they understand the game.

          If you want better outcomes just look for the historical examples. Women’s Suffrage? Didn’t happen by voting. Civil Rights? Didn’t happen by voting. Gay rights? Didn’t happen by voting.

          You are actively wasting your time fighting with people on the internet about this when you could be doing literally anything else to work on dismantling the orphan crushing machine. And no, you’re wrong that Republicans turn on more machines. They don’t. They use the exact same machine that the Democrats use. They built it together. They maintain it together. It’s a single machine.

        • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online
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          8 hours ago

          Where does it end tho?

          When do the machines get dismantled if it has to be perfect before it’s done?

          The lesser evil people have no plans to do it. People are told they aren’t supposed to bring up the machines because that might mean it’s more likely that even more machines are brought online.

          How many dem governments have those machines survived?

          • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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            8 hours ago

            I responded to you elsewhere. You’re not choosing your side, you’re choosing your opponent. Between the two, I prefer the Democrats as my opponent. I should hope that most thinking leftists feel the same. The only reason to choose the Republicans is accelerationism, and ethically I can’t justify “What if we just sent the orphan crushing machine into overdrive so it overheats?”.