this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Change is what people make of it, is it not?
change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change
social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system
the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that
within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system
you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath
vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few
You say that like there haven't been third parties coming into power before. For example, the Whig party used to be one of America's two parties before it was replaced. Or to use a more severe example, when Hitler became a Nazi, the party had six people in it, and we all know what happened next. Social change is also defined by the action, not the actors.