Davide Crimi, Italy studio464@gmail.com

‘To use the word “Libertarian” here is completely wrong. Libertarians would never support an “energy task force”- this implies a huge government program to throw money at something that the free market has determined to be uneconomical. ‘

I feel I must reply to Ed:
Well, libertarians might if they were consequentialists and they believed that the only way to a future of soft technologies, which includes a decentralised energy system (i.e., tidal power on the coast and/or solar in the desert etc run by local people or energy companies) was to divert huge existing funds into R&D with the view to a less centralised, resource & $$ hungry system. That is, the consequences of some initial big (or diversionary) spending is that it lays the foundation for enabling the smaller people to take control over their lifes; that one initial ‘wrong’ leads to a better ‘right’.

Infamous US libertarian philosophers such as Nozick always argue for money for militias or armies & weapons, so unless Ed is arguing for NO funds then s/he will at least argue for something. If so, then that something ($$) might as well be spent on re-righting wrongs, such as cleaning up the environmental mess created by nuclear power, PCBs (thanks Monsanto), and regulating the emerging technology of biotechnology.
Science sets us free but only if we realise that we are part of a web of life, respect other life-forms and see that our huge potential that can transform our lives, with a very little output from ourselves (in terms of time & money) can greatly assist our fellow citizens and species (after years of wrong-doing).

And finally, my own experience of alleged ‘libertarianism’ aka ‘neoliberalism’ in the 80s/90s was that it required a massive state-represssive-apparatus to keep down those who’d been excluded, so not much $$ or liberty saved there.

I like the platform that you have laid out here. These are issues that I could run with.

My reason for running is to expose the stranglehold the 2 party system has on politics and the barriers that states have put into place which effectively keep other parties from joining the race.

For instance:

I was going to try to get my name on the ballot for the Presidential election. Since I don’t have party backing and limited funds I can not get the required 59.000 signatures to have my name written on the ballot. Whereas Rep./Dems. only need 2000 or so to run in the primary. After the nomination goes to the winner of those parties the General Election is a pass for them without any required signatures.

I gave up on a Presidential run and am now going for Congress which has a requirement of 2,124 signatures. At least that amount is doable for me.

Being a lifelong Libertarian (albeit one with a foreign policy) I thought about asking for party backing. I did send out feelers but received nothing back as of today.

This is a good time for other parties to run especially if the incumbent is a Republican. The US in general has a sour taste for the GOP.

with marx’s sense of community. The way we live now is not sustainable and disconnect with nature and others is increasing. Technology has many positives, but also many negatives. Without balance forward progress is not possible; likewise, awareness is a prerequisite for envisioning a better future. So it would be mad interesting to be involved in the process of throwing ideas around. Different perspectives and experiences are the crucial to a flexible, dynamic group and broaden the collective knowledge.

I am an open-source author, computer scientist, and lifelong computer programmer. The idea of an open-source party was also something that I thought of years ago, and I have two points to suggest:

1) Achieve historical integrity with distributed revision control such as Mercurial/hg.

2) Implement transparent process through public-key digital signatures.

At this point in time, I think the Debian free software team (consisting of thousands of public-key voting members with audit trails) is a great example of a working democratic process, as they have to constantly make amendments and work with exact language in their own policy documents.

I have always been amazed that nobody in America has yet cared enough to check in a simple ASCII text file into an hg repository that holds all voting records and transcripts of all public sessions. Since hg is distributed, any citizen could type it and provide their own clone of the repository that could then be merged by any other citizen.

The Open Source Party Proposal

And right above it are ads from Google, like:
“Better Than Open Source”
Free, full-fetured reporting & analysis
platform. Free download.

Seems to me that you are already on the
slippery-slope.

“Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato, because ordinary people have not learned how to run the ship of state. They are not familiar enough with such things as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, or the confusing intricacies of law and ethics. They are also not inclined to acquire such knowledge. The effort and self-discipline required for serious study is not something most people enjoy. In their ignorance they tend to vote for politicians who beguile them with appearances and nebulous talk, and they inevitably find themselves at the mercy of administrations and conditions over which they have no control because they do not understand what is happening around them. They are guided by unreliable emotions more than by careful analysis, and they are lured into adventurous wars and victimized by costly defeats that could have been entirely avoided. This is how the Republic portrays politics in a democracy:”

“Imagine then a ship or a fleet in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but who is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and whose knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors ate quarreling with one another about the steering—every one is of the opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation …”

Not gonna work, the current system works as it should and was designed. You will not accomplish much, it is human nature, was so even back in Greek days.

That would be the smart bet in my mind.

As it stands your suggestions seem to broad for me. For instance is screwing with the banking system more important than education? And the IP concerns of the “Web” section are too vague to be useful.

The larger problem is that once you try to propose a complete platform you are required to have a stance on all sorts of issues that are not core to the change you wish to create. Abortion and gay-rights, for instance, are key issues, but they are being addressed perfectly well by the established system. No need to muddy your platform by making it comprehensive.

What is the single most important change you wish to see? If corporate personhood had an opposition party, then the issue might bubble up to the mainstream. Otherwise it’s just another group of wackos. This time they have webpages.

http://www.digg.com/politics/Cyberpunk_icon_proposes_open_source_political_party

Good luck mate

I think one first step would be public financing of election campaigns. Then, we can get the legislation written.

Also, I strongly advise AGAINST starting any third or fourth party. I think we need to take over the Democratic Party– the party of the people– and join with Daily Kos and MoveOn and Democracy For America and these populist groups and do our work there. The Democratic Party has become detached from its grassroots over the last 30 years, and become beholden to corporate lobbyists, and we’re making great progress on recapturing it back from them.

Join with us, get active in your local Democratic party, and set its agenda.

Don’t complain about the Democratic Party. BECOME the Democratic Party.