The more power the government accretes over the market, the more potential there is for corrupt use of that power.

The problem is there isn't a candidate running who is willing to do the right thing. The Republican Party hasn't been for small government in decades. They take your money and give it to defense contractors and banks, whereas the Democrats take your money and give it to insurance companies and banks. The Republicans eliminate regulations that protect people and competition from corporations while the Democrats enact regulations that protect corporations from people and competition.

Nobody is doing the right thing. That's why the Republican voters nominated The Joker and the Democrats almost nominated Sanders. People are for someone who will shake things up. But the fact is nobody knows what Trump will actually do, so your choices this year are between "clearly bad" and "wait, what?"

That's bullshit. The government at least owes you a song and dance about how it's working for you. Even if you're too poor to pay taxes. Corporations don't owe you anything. When the masses have been squeezed dry they will have nothing to protect themselves from the externalities of corporations. The failure of this government is that it no longer exists. It's a corporation now. Sort of an inter-corporate security/insurance firm. What we actually need is a working government. I can't believe we still have the electoral college. Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Or what happened in 2000 with Nader and Gore. The problem isn't just government period. It's this pretension of one.

> Has no one heard of instant runoff voting?

Approval voting. You want approval voting. Range voting is actually better but approval voting is almost as good and is a lot simpler for people to understand, and both are better than IRV.

I agree that approval voting is simpler conceptually. I like that IRV lets me prioratize my vote. It's not that much more complicated. Counting the vote is a lot harder but the voters don't have to do that. If 60% prefer Gore to Bush and 90% of them prefer Nader to Gore then you don't get the "correct" result. You'd have Gore beating Nader with 60% vs 54% approval when 54% (the majority) of the population actually prefered Nader to Gore. They can't risk leaving Gore unapproved because then Bush might win. IRV solves this.

You're only getting that result by having 100% of the voters who prefer Nader to Gore approve of both while 100% of the voters who prefer Gore to Nader only approve of Gore. In which case approval voting does what it's supposed to do and gives the election to the candidate with the highest approval.

Moreover, the problem you're trying to solve is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is provably impossible to do. You could have a third of voters prefer each candidate but majorities prefer Nader to Gore, Gore to Bush and Bush to Nader.

I see what you're saying about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. I don't think I was specific enough. You're right in the general case and IRV doesn't solve that problem. What I mean is that 54% could prefer Nader outright. But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. This causes Gore to have the highest approval even though he wasn't the majority's most desired candidate. It wouldn't fix the bias towards those expected to win.

> But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win.

Only the Gore voters have to do the same thing, and then Nader wins if he has more support. Because a small percentage of people will vote only for their preferred candidate and risk Bush, which will be proportional to the support that candidate has and thus give Nader the win if he actually has more support.

The thing you're really objecting to is why range voting is better than approval voting. With range voting the Nader supporters can give Nader 10, Gore 9 and Bush 0, the Gore voters swap Gore and Nader and then there is less brinkmanship necessary to get the right outcome. But that's the cost of using the one which is easier to explain. And range voting is more complicated than approval voting, but it's simpler than IRV, so you're really just making the argument for range voting over approval voting.

I feel like the trap you're falling into is to grade approval voting based on whether it does what IRV does.

The problem with IRV is that it tends to do crazy things. So for example, imagine everybody expects that in a runoff between Bush and Nader, Bush wins. But between Bush and Gore, Gore wins. So then people who would vote for Nader can't vote for him because it would give the election to Bush again. But even weirder, Bush voters can vote for Nader in order to give the election to Bush. So IRV doesn't solve the most important problem, because people will still be clamoring for third parties not to run and for people not to vote for them for fear that they'll harm the major party most similar to them.

Ok I think I'm with you. Thank you for this actually. I really appreciate it. Range voting doesn't seem that bad. People are used to taking surveys. I have failed many times to explain IRV and this does seem to have the same benefit. Also brinkmanship is an awesome word that I did not know.

Arrow's Theorem only applies to ranked voting methods.

http://scorevoting.net/AppCW.html

There is actually quite a bit of government out there. I don't know exactly why it is the Legislature has all but collapsed, but that's not all of government.

Thing is, w.r.t the economy, what can actually be done? The only thing I know of that isn't pretty disruptive is as higher inflation target - and we cannot maintain GDP growth to hit the one we have.

Governments are the more dangerous, objectively speaking. All of them have the monopoly of army and public forces. Not a single corporation in the world could be equally dangerous just based on this.

Are you sure? There are some pretty scary private security firms. Do you actually know what they have? I hope government really does have a monopoly on force.

No private organization has committed crimes comparable to the ones committed by authoritarian governments. I could mention USSRs pogroms, concentration camps on Germany or summary executions in Cuba, to name a few.

What does that mean? Bernie is a socialist, not a capitalist. How would a Sanders campaign have redeemed US capitalism?

Firstly, Bernie is a Social Democrat. Secondly, Capitalism has gotten so much Crony in it that the inequality is hurting the capitalism. Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy.

" Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy."

That's a little bit of a stretch.

Inequality is a problem mostly because:

A) The benefits of globalism go to the 1%, then to the middle class in terms of cheaper prices, but the working class lose jobs.

B) US has massive importation of low-skilled immigrants. They go right at the bottom. You don't need a 'messed up system' - if you just add poor people, you increase inequality.

C) Bernie is an old-time socialist - he has no new ideas, really. I've heard him talk, he wants to massive increase wealth distribution and do it by taxing 'the rich'. This never works out, really. 'Infrastructure' is a cover - really, it's a wealth transfer exercise. Europe and Canada tried that in the 1960's it didn't go s well.

The problem is really difficult, and it's exacerbated by the sheer size of the US, also there are no ethnic ties. Sweden is only the size of Los Angeles - and they are 'Swedes' an ethnic group with fraternal social order, a Monarchy, a State Church, common cultural identity. It's easier to 'redistribute' when the person getting the service is someone you know.

The best kind of 'redistribution' is 'jobs'. Surely, increasing the minimum wage a little bit might work, and possibly having unions where none exist (Wallmart?), but strengthening already existing unions - particularly in the auto-sector and government is not going to help anyone - they are part of the problem. Auto workers and gov. workers are massively overcompensated relative to their private sector peers. Gov unions are one of the reasons government is so massively inefficient. If Bernie could fix that, that'd be great - but he's a politician, he's never had a normal job and wouldn't have a clue how to do it.

I think moving towards empowering people, making sure they can participate in the global wealth creation is very important, but 1960's style socialism is not the answer.

The same Bernie that now supports Hillary and is himself a part of the incredibly corrupt DNC?

He doesn't support Hillary. He is supporting a non-Trump presidency.

And how can you possibly say he is part of the DNC? Do you even follow US politics at all?

Bernie's more like the last New Dealer.