Slashdot Mirror
Ask Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik
Our first interview subject for politics.slashdot.org is the
Libertarian Party candidate for US President, Michael Badnarik. You can read his blog to learn more about him. Standard Slashdot interview rules apply: Post your questions today in this discussion. Moderators do your thing. We'll select ~10 questions, and hopefully get answers later this week.
You don't. In the LP's view of the world those that have the money and power get to make all the rules. They forget that humans are basicly corrupt and, as a whole, don't care about anything other than power.
The LP's ideas, much like communism, fall apart when put into practice because humans don't think that way.
Henry George designed his single tax on land value to be based on assets that have no cost of insurance. The key concept here is "cost of insurance" is zero for land only if you discount the cost of national defense and other societal structures that guarantee land rights. Think about government as reinsurer of last resort and you can start to see that not all assets of a given value have the same cost of ownership. For example, skyscrapers that are symbolic of some hated value system world-wide will necessarily have a higher reinsurance premium associated with them than will some number of undeveloped desert land of comparable value. This is where actuaries make their money.
Seastead this.
I suspect you're a troll, but since you're modded up to 4, I'll reply anyway.
The November 2004 Presidential election will decide whether Bush or Kerry will be president. I don't like that choice, but it's a fact that that's the choice.
A third candidate who's seen as right-of-center will take votes away from Bush, and therefore help Kerry. Just as Ross Perot decided the 1992 election by taking votes away from Bush Sr.
And a third candidate who's seen as left-of-center will take votes away from Kerry, which (since the election is close) will cause Bush to be elected.
Since the likely result of his participation is to ensure the election of George W. Bush, I cannot understand why anybody other than a Bush supporter wants Nader to take part in this election. It's got nothing to do with freedom of choice. Even if he's on the ballot, you can't choose Nader as your President; you can vote for him, but the result is equivalent to not voting at all.
As for Nader's motivation in helping Dubya to win by running, it simply shows once again that nobody should expect a pol to believe what he says. Nader has made a career out of causes like the environment, but he clearly doesn't give a shit for them per se - it's just a career move.