[itchitawa]

It's easy to blame the government but the majority of Americans vote for the government they have or none at all. That means they are either happy with it or they're incompetent and should not be allowed to vote. It's easy to blame politicians but really it's the short-sighted self-interested voters who are at fault. If you vote for a party with a history of doing terrible things then you are asking them to do more terrible things.

[mcantelon]

It's a corrupt system. Both parties have the same attitudes towards fundamental state issues and they collude to prevent any other parties from entering their contest for lobbyist dollars (note the lack of third parties in the televised debates on network television).

[SwellJoe]

"If you vote for a party with a history of doing terrible things then you are asking them to do more terrible things."

Which of the two parties that can plausibly win elections do you believe does not do terrible things?

[lukifer]

The two-party system (backed the winner-take-all vote) has become the ultimate form of regulatory capture.

[EliRivers]

Their plausibility is a gift from you and everyone like you. Thanks so much for fucking the rest of us over.

[SwellJoe]

You blame me for this fucked up system? Yeah, I'm not carrying that weight.

I worked for years for third party politics. I was a card-carrying member of the LP. Worked for ballot access for both LP and the Green Party. If that's how you want to activate, go do it. I'm done with it. I see the system for what it is: Corrupt.

As long as we have first-past-the-post voting, laws stacked against any third party or independent candidates, and a complicit media, third parties are a pit into which people throw their passions and their energy and their money, with no resulting change.

You do what you gotta do, and I'm gonna do what I gotta do. What I gotta do is help build communities of resistance, and make it as expensive and inconvenient as possible for this shit to keep happening.

[EliRivers]

Well that's me told :) For what it's worth, I vote every time, never for one of the big two, and I tell people why.

[Double_Cast]

That might be true of a Direct Democracy. But an Indirect Democracy insulates politicians from the will of the voters. Votes do little more than bludgeon politicians out of office as a last resort. As long as politicians don't upset voters too much, the two incumbent parties retain power and continue doing as they please (which isn't all that different from each other, since the optimal behavioral strategy is to hug the center of the spectrum). So to some extant, I blame the structure of the government.

But given this situation, I also blame the voters. Polarization is pretty high. Voters readily pledge loyalty to the party line rather than individually consider the pros and cons of each platform's ideas. Voters don't realize that the less precommitted they are to their party, the more pressure they exert over congress. I.e. the less confident politicians are that the same demographics will reelect them, the more likely politicians will actually pay attention to the voters. pg has noticed this, among others.

Unfortunately, zealotry is a tough nut to crack. It's hardwired into human psychology. One can find it in politics, religion, sports, warfare, the dynamics of any group in general. And consciously or not, the parties encourage it (since each party's optimal signalling strategy is to differentiate themselves as much as possible). The media encourages this too, definitely consciously since it feeds their bottom line.

Given Indirect Democracy is here to stay, I think the worst problem is the lobby system. Not only has the power of the voters been diluted, but it's taken a backseat to that of the lobbyists. I'm not saying corporations are conspiratorially colluding to directly control congress, but each corporation's individual bribes certainly incentivizes the government's behavior, and arguably more so than the people's votes.

[csense]

> it's the short-sighted self-interested voters

Not really. The fact that people are individuals who always make decisions at the margins means you can fall into a sort of network effect hysteresis trap. If you have Party X who gives you 20% of what you want and is polling at 49%, Party Y gives you 22% of what you want and is polling at 49%, and Party Z gives you 80% of what you want and is polling at 2%, if you believe the polls are accurate, you have a much larger expected gain from voting for Party Y instead of Party Z.

This is true even if the voter preferences are universal -- if e.g. everyone would get 15%-30% of what they want from X and Y, and 70-90% of what they want from Z.