Our name might seem silly at first, but you should remember everyone has been labelled a pirate at some point in the last few decades. Movie studios and recording companies place their propaganda in front of us at every chance they get, they waste your time with warnings on DVDs you’ve legitimately purchased or movies you watch at the cinema. They’ve told us over and over that home taping on to cassettes would kill the radio, that recording a TV show on to the VCR would bring an end to free-to-air TV, or sharing an MP3 music song with a friend will cause the end of musicians’ careers. The list goes on but here’s the important point: at every turn, at every change in technology, the rights-holders always say the same thing: ‘no, we don’t want you doing that’.
These rights-holders donate to our major political parties, they’ve lobbied for and changed our laws to protect their profits and their outdated distribution monopolies. They’ve had their hand in writing trade agreements and international law, all in a failing attempt to control how you access your culture online. This is how the Pirate movement began; as a reaction to the corrupt corporate, political, and rent-seeking encroachment on a free and open internet, and our democracy.
So... you want to get into office based solely on media copyright issues and literally every other issue is "elect us and we'll figure it out!". Very hard to take seriously, good luck.
And yes, your name is silly. You should change it; messaging matters and you start with your left foot forward.
I think we need fewer package deals when it comes to politics. At least in the US, if you feel strongly about a single issue, you currently have to find the party that aligns with that view. But then when you vote for them, you also are voting for a great big basket of crazy that comes along for the ride, in the form of "that party's platform". I personally can't in good conscience vote for either of the Big-2 because of this baggage. It would be great to have candidate that just said "You know what, I'm going to for sure support this one particular issue, and abstain on the rest." I'd be up for that.
There are a lot of legal and historical reasons for the two-party situation in the US. Nobody except the ruling class likes it, but the ruling class really really likes it. There have been a lot of efforts made to change it. This is one of multiple worst strategies I’ve ever seen.
There is exactly one reason for the two-party situation in the US. First past the post voting system. It causes any third party with non-trivial support to merge into one of the major parties to avoid splitting the vote with whichever one is most similar to them.
Switch to range voting, STAR voting, approval voting, and it goes away.
The incumbent parties don't have a lot of incentive to do that because tautologically the people currently in office are the people the existing system puts in office, so why would they want a different one? But even a lot of politicians are pretty jaded about the existing system. Get a couple third parties in there who are willing to turn a 51 vote majority into a 49 vote minority over this and you might get it through.
>There is exactly one reason for the two-party situation in the US.
Fair enough! You are, of course, exactly right. But, the reasons for still having first past the post voting are arguably less clear. Many nations have reformed their first past the post voting systems while the US (along with some other countries) remains stuck.
> "You know what, I'm going to for sure support this one particular issue, and abstain on the rest."
A better strategy is to trade your vote away on anything that isn't your core issue. You trade with political opponents for their support when the issue you do care about comes up.
Using that technique, even a single representative can have quite some impact, as long as the issue they care about is narrow enough.
Ok, but I'd like to also have _some_ idea of what I'mn voting for aside from being able to download movies for free and doing away with patents (also ridiculous on its face). I agree with you, but that doesn't make these jokers any more attractive.
Indeed messaging matters. Nowadays all names are like the 'Ministry of Truth' names. If you have a party named X and a bill for Y, in reality it will reflect the opposite of X and Y.
They do, and there is a stark contrast between how Republicans and Democrats handle important issues in the US. You see, Republicans just sell you out. Then the Democrats just sell you out.
We need ranked choice voting and campaign finance reform.
Seeing runaway inflation, runaway housing prices, runaway crime...uh, I don't think any party has any idea what they're doing. Why do words on a website matter if reality shows it's not true?
Well that's a lot of hyperbole, but who cares? So the incumbents suck; at least they're relatively predictable. Them being bad doesn't make the Pirate party good.
Pretty much nobody really cares about these issues. I am aware of the history of Pirate parties in the Nordic countries but you are completely wasting your time with this in the US. You’d get a lot more attention by talking about free speech and social media regulation, but nothing like this will ever be anything but a hobby club.
Maybe, but it is something we all feel is important, and should have at least one group talking about it. For too long have these laws avoided any scrutiny in the public eye through obscurity, intentional or not.
Fwiw, socialists have a derogatory term for prioritizing immaterial political agendas like yours. We call it “library socialism.” Some try to wear the label on their sleeve, thinking it’s cute. Socialists, however, recognize that your agenda can only be realized by confronting the capitalist mode of production, which only enforces copyright and intellectual property law to temporarily mitigate the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. In other words, it is a systemic component of capitalism beyond a certain stage of development, and it cannot simply be opted out of.
As a gainfully employed adult, it is hard to personally justify piracy of entertainment media. Now if this discussion was about open access to science, medical, and technical papers, many of which were funded by tax payer dollars, then you'd have my donor dollars. Otherwise you are championing an issue that is doubtfully on anyone's top 100 problems list.
We often use popular mediums as a stepping stone to help discuss these more important pieces of media, make no mistake, open access to intellectual materials is our goal, alongside entertainment media, to a different degree.
Just because, as a gainfully employed adult, you can now afford it, doesn't mean it's right; doesn't mean the system isn't in need of fixing. It just means you're now able to ignore the problem.
That's you. Not everyone has that. Also think about something:
What's your opportunity cost as a result of trivial replication and propagation being locked behind mechanisms that facilitate the creation of artificial scarcity?
Your link to check if there is a party in your state does not work, cuts off at new hampshire.
Also, I agree with not being left/right wing but inability or unwillingness to commit to some belief or guiding principles that tells people how your policies might affect issues important to them is very bad. If I have an illegal immigrant family member, will you be hunting them down for deportation, after all they broke the law. Will you allow sharia law as an extension of people's right to practice their faith? will you reform immigration? If so, how? Will you end the visa lottery or amp it up? How about H1B and other skilled worker visas? I have colleagues that will have their entire lives impacted by that. Will you reform police and the military and if so how? Just funding? Will you, as a pirate actually restrict gun ownership, enact balanced reforms or leave things as is?
I am not saying take a position on every issue now but I can't tell it apart from satire when you are not even hinting at what your principles are. Change for the sake if change is something juvenile people whose only goal is to self-aggrandize and give their own lives meaning at any cost. To me, you are actually a bit dangerous because you want to scoop up support fully knowing screaming change like Obama will help a lot. Do you have a sinister motive? No idea, all I know is people like this, college/young kids start small and actually revolt in many other countries, but in the end, either the military or some other power takes control.
I like "piracy" and identify with what you are saying but idealism without principles and leadership is at best folly and at worst dangerous.
Hi, though we are centered on a few topics, within our discord we have a platform committee which is hammering this out over time, though as we are a coalition of diverse individuals, this has not been fast or easy, as we prefer a sizable majority in our party before passing a platform proposal, feel free to join to get a better idea of our ideas outside the core!
Their foremost goal should be to launch across-the-board primary challenges against all the congress-critters who have either endorsed or voted for IP-maximalist legislation in the past. This is how the Tea Party got its start, and now they rule the GOP. It works.
The original pirates were and are murderers, rapist and thiefs.
Despite some romantication going on - this is what they are doing. So I always thought it is not a smart idea, to adopt the name, that was meant as criticism.
Most, romantic and heroic archetypes are murderers, rapists and thieves. Pirates, knights, samurai, cowboys are all romantic ideals and ugly realities. Heroes in antiquity like Hercules were portrayed little better - to be a hero was to be the most violent man in a violent world ruled by violent gods, and to this day modern heroes (including obviously superheroes) are almost always associated with aggression and violence.
Americans often pride themselves on revolutionary ideals which spread chaos, pain and suffering throughout the world, to the point of looking down on countries stable enough not to have constant gun violence. We hold soldiers and police in far greater esteem than doctors and scholars. We write love letters to serial killers. We root for underdogs, villains and rebels by default.
Let's be honest - it is a silly name, mostly because it seems childish and tone-deaf given more pressing modern political issues, but not because of any implied association with rape, pillage and plunder. If anything, that probably sells better in the US than elsewhere.
> Platform: Putting People Before Corporations [..] Opening up Government [i.e. transparency]
Every party makes similar promises. Instead, lead with what makes you different - your focus on IP law and digital rights. Perhaps even emphasize your flexibility or neutrality on other issues, so that your voting base isn't decimated by your positions on wedge issues.
I wouldn't call putting people before corporations and opening up government wedge issues; they're right in line with the Pirate Wheel[0] which leads to all pirate politics' positions on issues. I think these are excellent examples of what the US Pirate Party should focus on.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply those were wedge issues. I agree they're in line with pirate party ideals, but they're also in-line with the (stated) ideals of nearly every other party. Featuring them so prominently is like a restaurant advertising that they prepare meals using, among others, water and heat.
Really? I could see the other third parties like Green Party, American Solidarity Party, Libertarian Party, etc. having those issues on their platform. But Republicans and Democrats have shown time and time again that they value corporations over people and want the government to be more closed. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though
You misunderstand me. That they don't practice those ideals doesn't stop them from including them in their party platforms. Parties can distinguish themselves in two ways: with promises, and with actions. Until they gain power, the pirate party can only distinguish itself with promises. And it can't do so if it promises the same things as every other party.
> Do you have a position on abortion, gun control, or gay marriage?
How about the radical position of letting each state decide for itself? They could even have the party in each state decide its own position, rather than enforcing a one-size-fits-all policy centrally.
Of course it's nice to think that there is one "right" answer to all those questions, and that the world would be better if we could just use the law to force other people to go along with what we want, but I think recent history has shown that just makes politics more dysfunctional and leaves everyone unhappy.
What makes a federal/national one better than an international one, or an individual one, for that matter?
I admit, it's not an easy question, and my suggestion isn't guaranteed to work, but if there is complete deadlock and extreme polarization (potentially leading to violent conflict) at the national level, it's at least plausible that delegating some of those policies to smaller, more politically homogeneous, units might reduce the tensions, and make it easier for people to vote with their feet if they are unhappy with the rules they live under.
I think it's interesting that people on both sides of the states-rights spectrum see themselves as defenders of liberties. Even if there is conflict in the details, that is legit common ground!
There's a lot of common sense power to the idea that smaller political units can reach an acceptable compromise more easily, and that having multiple governments offers some choice to those who can move. But there are big factors the other way too:
- The issues that most divide our definitions of liberty are aligned with differences in urban vs rural, majority vs minority, and rich vs poor. These are clustered such that they exist at state levels as much as federal.
- Smaller political units are more vulnerable to outside forces ... National parties can airdrop money into local campaigns to get strategic outcomes that have little to do with the constituents.
- The citizens of smaller units tend to have more direct power relations with each other, pulling them towards policies that explicitly maintain or redistribute power. This creates big problems for the less powerful, who see their position become more engrained and who often don't have the resources to vote with their feet.
None of this is an answer to "what's the best unit". I think that whichever personal liberties you value, you have to be pragmatic about who is protecting them where.
> I think it's interesting that people on both sides of the states-rights spectrum see themselves as defenders of liberties. Even if there is conflict in the details, that is legit common ground!
Sure, but liberty to do what? Liberty to not do what?
It is difficult to reconcile one person's liberty to marry the person they love without experiencing discrimination with another's liberty to discriminate against anyone who loves the 'wrong' people.
Or the right to own other people vs. the right to be free from ownership.
Does the freedom to innovate protect the generation, modification, dissemination, and implementation of ideas, or protect an inventor from having to compete with copycats?
Is the right to repair the equipment you own more or less important than the right of manufacturers to devise means of preventing unauthorized modifications?
Its easy to move to a different state if you disagree with the policies of your current state. If you disagree with a federal law, you're pretty much screwed.
This is just silly. Minimum wage workers move across state lines all the time. The distance can be just several miles in some cases. You don't really need to do anything to do it, other than make an appointment at the DMV to update your license. Aside from that, it doesn't take any more resources than moving in-state.
No, I'm not. And this line of reasoning doesn't refute my original point anyway that moving to a different state is easier than moving to a different country.
Let's try approaching this from a different angle. Let's have X be the number of Americans who have the resources, knowledge, and paperwork required to move to a different state. And lets have Y be the number of Americans who have the same requirements, but to move to a different country. Surely you can agree that X is a much larger number than Y, right?
Which is why making them “optional” is not the neutral position that it might sound like at face value. Your government either recognizes that liberty, or it doesn’t. Assigning responsibility to someone else is exactly equivalent to the latter.
Because as long as traveling between states is free each state has to deal with the consequences of its neighbors. Why have a federal government if it’s not going to impose some kind of union that binds all the states together?
I wouldn't say that travelling between Florida and Hawaii is "free", and moving your house and job across the country is not something that people regularly do. Conversely, many people choose to immigrate to the US, or emigrate from it, so although that is more difficult, it is only a difference of degree and not of kind. And of course even nations have to deal with the consequences of policies in nearby countries (or even countries the other side of the world).
As for the point of having a federal government, I could turn the question around and ask what is the point of having state governments when you could just decide everything centrally. You say "some kind of union", but I think you mean "exactly the sort of union that imposes the particular restrictions on states that I think is important". It's very much an open question what the "correct" set of restrictions should be, and that list has changed over the course of US history, and has different choices in different countries.
> It's very much an open question what the "correct" set of restrictions should be, and that list has changed over the course of US history
…which is the point of Federalism. The point isn’t what I think is important, the point is what we decide collectively as a country. And when such decisions are made, everyone must go along with them, because that’s how we accomplish goals. You can’t row a boat across a river if half the people on it are rowing in the wrong direction. However, if you decide you want to go back to shore, and everyone agrees, then the system should support that too (ie repealing prohibition).
For other stuff that the fed govt doesn’t care about, leave it to the states, and for the stuff the states don’t care about, leave it to the people. 10th amendment.
> I’d rather fight than just accept equality for gay people ends at state lines.
Why stop there, though? Should the US invade countries that have worse rights for gay people, in order to "liberate" them? Both states and countries are (in some sense) just lines on a map, and ultimately you are using the threat of force if you are imposing a set of rules on people, whether you use an army to do so or not.
The beauty of this solution is that you are free to fight in other states for legislation. Instead of it being imposed to the states by the federal government even though the local population might not agree.
> How about the radical position of letting each state decide for itself?
The current state of affairs is that the constitution does not allow the federal government, or the states, to prohibit abortion, guns, or gay marriage. So the status quo is that this is up to the individual. Leaving it up to the states would be a regression.
Now you're making the argument against "leave it up to the states."
Laboratories of democracy work great when different states have different characteristics or preferences. It makes no sense to have a federal minimum wage because a living wage is a vastly different amount of money between New York City and El Paso, Texas. Maybe people in Massachusetts prefer to have high taxes and a lot of government services and people in New Hampshire the opposite.
But if something is a right, it's a right everywhere.
Like I say, I don't want to have to argue for any particular side in those debates, or to make those positions sound serious if they are not (although I think some people do seriously hold them). My point was that just because something can be labelled "progressive" doesn't mean that everyone supports it (or supports it enough to pay more taxes for it).
The choose your state dropdown is lazy-populated, so the last half (everything after New Hampshire) fails to load under my default browsing configuration.
A list of 50 states and some US territories should just be statically included.
My understanding is that when pirate parties actually got some amount of power (by getting into the legislature) in other countries, things got weird, by nature of them having to establish policy positions on lots of stuff other than IP law. Like suddenly you need a position on green energy and foreign interventions and public teacher salaries and zoning and all the other things a regular party is gonna have to vote on. And this conflicted with how they got popularity and power, which was by being largely single issue.
The main means for a third party to win seats in the US would be if they went into districts which are effectively uncontested because they're >70% blue or red, so the other major party isn't even running a candidate for you to split the vote with.
Then the winning platform in that district would be the one where you're mostly aligned with the party currently occupying that seat but differ on the pirate issues.
So you'd end up with a blue pirate party and a red pirate party based on which district they're running in. They would work with each other on pirate issues, but they'd generally caucus with different major parties on a per-district basis.
It might also help to prioritize getting range voting or STAR voting so this would stop being necessary.
There are parts of the US that don't use first past the post voting. NYC is one prominent example that uses ranked choice. Many of these alternative voting systems make it easier for a candidate that is not part of the main two parties to get elected.
Also even if this party does not have success, just by running they can change the other candidates policies
As long as there are single-member districts it's basically impossible for a third party to gain a large representation. I'm sure that's the main reason for the US and UK huge polarity in politics.
I quite like the German model:
> Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then on the federal level.
> As long as there are single-member districts it's basically impossible for a third party to gain a large representation.
This is only a result of first past the post voting. If a third party had any significant support, they would split the vote with the major party most like them and hand the election to the major party least like them. Then the third party merges with the major party most like them and we're back to two parties.
Switch to STAR/range/approval voting and that doesn't happen. You can run a hundred candidates and no one splits the vote. There is no point in even having primaries anymore, just run all your candidates in the general. Party becomes little more than an endorsement.
Libertarians don't have to run as Republicans to avoid splitting the vote with them, and then don't have to vote with Republicans on stupid wars or oil subsidies or whatever to avoid having a Republican run against them and hand the next election to a Democrat. Likewise with Greens vs. Democrats and anything else you like.
Winner take all elections ( single person wins per constituency) is still fundamentally flawed, because it disenfranchises too many people. Even with ranked choice, there will be "losers" who didn't vote for the winner, and nobody represents them and their choices and wishes. Proportional representation deals with this.
> Winner take all elections ( single person wins per constituency) is still fundamentally flawed, because it disenfranchises too many people. Even with ranked choice, there will be "losers" who didn't vote for the winner, and nobody represents them and their choices and wishes. Proportional representation deals with this.
Proportional representation brings a bunch of different problems and is much harder to achieve in the US because it would require federal constitutional changes, whereas you can change the voting system in a state with a simple majority of the state legislature.
And different voting systems fix this. Suppose you have single representative per constituency with STAR voting. Then there is no "you didn't vote for this person" because you vote for everyone in degrees and the candidate who best represents the district wins.
Now suppose you're a minority constituency. You're 5% of the population, dispersed all across the country. With the existing system, a candidate willing to murder you in order to lower gas prices by 1% for everyone else can win the election with 95% of the vote. This is also the result you get with PR, because the "don't murder me" party gets 5% of the representatives, a coalition government forms in which they are not a part, and you get murdered.
But with STAR, the candidates who commit to not murdering you get the highest possible score form your demographic and the ones who want to lower gas prices get the lowest possible score. Since there can be a hundred candidates running, this will plausibly be the main difference between two of them, and a 1% difference in gas prices isn't enough to significantly change the scores people outside your demographic give to the other candidates. So the "don't murder me" candidates win everywhere and constitute the entire government no matter how the coalitions shake out.
> And this conflicted with how they got popularity and power, which was by being largely single issue
In Czechia (where a pirate party is currently a part of the government) it was IMHO quite the reverse - the Czech Pirate Party mostly gained popularity by accenting ordinary center-liberal political themes.
It's hard to gain too much insight from Wikipedia, but it looks like it fills a niche that was empty.
The Pirate Party of Canada used to be quite active on r/CanadaPolitics. Once they fleshed out their platform they ended up overlapping heavily with the NDP and Greens (particularly the Greens).
I think many Pirate Parties have fallen into similar traps when they fleshed out their platform.
> It's hard to gain too much insight from Wikipedia, but it looks like it fills a niche that was empty.
Yes, pretty much. There are Greens in Czechia but they are more left-progressive (compared to center-liberal pirates) and they are unacceptable for many because of their anti-nuclear position.
The Patriot Act is still alive and well, it's simply dropped out of the public imagination. It's still harming people through excessive surveillance and the lack of privacy, which is one of the reasons we would work to repeal it if we were to gain power nationally.
I'm a fan of the party. For a good idea of what sort of ideas this spawns from, check out the founder's blog https://falkvinge.net/
Basically imagine libertarians with a strong drive to consider practical matters over ideology. Individual liberties, but drop the ideology and do what works for people, and what the people want as a whole.
Not sure I agree with the abolition of patents. If it takes you a decade or more to invent something and then someone else can immediately copy and sell it, what incentive do you have to do all that work?
I do agree that patents/copyright need reform and a reduced patent period could be beneficial, but I think complete abolition would backfire.
If what you really want is e.g. abolition of software patents, what you want to do is to start off demanding abolition of all patents and then compromise at abolition of software patents. That's what the other side does.
Patents, just like capitalism, aren't bad by themselves, but if left in the hands of powerful people/entities who can abuse and extend them at will for profits they become dangerous and cancerous, just like capitalism. The solution is probably in some form of strict control that prevents their abuse; very hard to realize if those abusing patents are the same people who dictate rules, or very close to them.
Look at how much open source has revolutionized the software industry. It teaches us a few lessons. First, that people invent for the joy of it regardless. And second, that innovation happens faster when unencumbered.
Another good example is penicillin. Imagine where we would be with bacterial infections today without it entering the public domain from day 1.
I understand the desire to own your work, and immediately arriving at the conclusion that patents are morally or ethically right, but fundamentally when you release some piece of information into the world, it is for all practical purposes no longer yours. Patents are an artificial protection for something that simply isn't true in practice, and it doesn't appear that it increases innovation at all, if your focus is the practical side of things.
First of all, plenty of drug research and patents are actually done in order to develop variants that avoid other patents. Patents in the drug industry are mostly a parasite producing more patents.
Secondly, plenty of research is publicly funded.
The major philosophical error people make when asking why would people create anything in the absence of IP laws is believing that just because they created/invented something, they are owed something in return. Plenty of times, IP gets created, but there is no one to sell licensees to because no one wants it.
The major historical error is believing forgetting that people created and invented stuff just fine before IP laws existed.
Well, here's a thought. Maybe they cost so much because everyone has to start from scratch because they're not allowed to leverage existing tech and research because of patents.
Maybe you should start to count how many actual inventors own their patents...and compare that to the number of trivial patents, design patents, and patents that have never been invented and just have been reserved for future use by mega corporations.
Then take a look at companies like Oracle that did not invent anything for the last 20 years, but are still sueing the whole software industry for things that are common practices even taught in University classes. An API shall be patentable? Seriously?
While I am still pro patents I also have to say that patent offices are the wrong judges (speaking of them as part of the judicative branch) on what is patentable and what is not.
Why did Microsoft got most of their financial income from Google's Android over the last decades? (before Azure took off) ...it was the licensing income stream for the mp3 codec that wasn't actually invented by them; it was invented by the Fraunhofer Institute in the 80s.
It's ridiculous that the patent system is so messed up that they always favor not the actual inventors.
They are also intended to encourage sharing of information. Without patent protection, someone who spends 10 years to make a profitable product may just keep all of the information about it a trade secret.
Even if you want patents to exist (which i don't believe in), but lets say for whatever reason they are necessary. there is no reason the government should run this program. They are a monopoly and should not get a say in how someones intellectual “property” is protected. Plenty of work left in protecting real property and rights. Private companies and individuals can worry about this if it is worth their time.
I hate the pirate party name. Also the name of the pirate bay.
"Piracy" was a term greedy corporations used PR to apply to sharing. Like sharing tapes and filesharing.
They will say they took the term and made it their own but imo its still a victory for the PR fuckers.
Honestly, I see where you're coming from, but personally I think the connotation behind "pirates" (Treasure Island > Pirates of the Caribbean) has changed enough that the entire name has been flipped on its head, making it more of a virtue than a crutch, you know what I mean?
Why would copyright last for 14 years, but then patents wouldn't exist? It makes perfect sense for inventors to have a short monopoly on their creations. Patent law should certainly be reformed so that patents need to be more specific, limited in scope, and so on.
It is a good idea that people should get more active in politics but think about this statement from their web-site:
"What is your goal?
Our primary goal is to get elected into office. We believe in political change from the inside."
The goal of these "pirates" is stated very clearly: To get power. Not to chance the society in a particular way or direction, but to get power to themselves (who else?). To get elected. Then what? Oh we'll think about that later but our current goal is to get elected.
I don't think it's a bad idea to say "We are neither left nor right", since "left" and "right" are not very clearly defined concepts, and most people have chosen their side on that dimension already .
A better question for the FAQ would be: Are you pro-democracy, or pro-autocracy?
How do you plan to promote your choice of democracy, or autocracy, in practice?
This should be the last thought. People should be taught tolerance and be patient about ideas and thoughts that are against yours. The world is not black and white and this left and right thought process which is extremely binary is hurting us all in the long run.
Just look at how politicians went about things in the olden times. Even when they disagreed on things, they were far far better than just raging against each other like they are doing now!
"It should be the last thought" may be acceptable when you're figuring out what you believe in, but surely not when you're running for office or forming a political organization.
I would like to respectfully disagree. There are centre, centre-right and centre-left parties in Europe. If am not mistaken, Angela Merkel's party is centre-right. But even if it isn't, there are other types of parties than just Left and Right.
Right and Left which are just two sides is way too narrow view of the world.
I wholeheartedly agree that left and right are often limiting and self-defeating categories. I'm talking about having a position on important issues, like global warming, democracy, foreign policy, and even property more broadly. The "Pirate Party" seems to be aiming their cannons mainly at file sharing of entertainment.
I agree with you here. I like that they are looking beyond left and right. But it should be clear where. It could be center, center-left or center-right.
But I do understand why though. The people weren't even ready for Bernie Sanders this election. I found him as the better candidate among the lot, with a better plan. So adding the "centre" or "centre-left" party maybe way too much.
But I think the file-sharing/pirate party movement is a lil way too late. At the peak of Pirate Bay, they really were revolutionaries giving chances to new artists and new ideas through their front page campaigns and what not. But we have bigger problems like climate-change right now. File sharing would be not in my priority list in the current political environment.
To answer your question, the United States Pirate Party is pro-democracy, like all pirate parties. We believe a more representative democracy would be beneficial for all third parties in the US, and support various electoral reform policies to further that goal. We also believe in the longer term that liquid democracy[0] is the way forward. I do agree that this could be communicated more clearly on our site, thanks for pointing it out.
That is a great stance. Democracy can be improved. And should. But seems like not everybody agrees on that, therefore it is a political issue.
If there is no democracy then autocrats decide who can copy what songs, if any, from the internet. What you can read on the internet. If there is an internet. But if there is democracy then people can decide all that by voting.
If there is no democracy there will be no Pirate Parties, unless for some reason that benefits the unelected people in power. Hey I'm glad that there is US Pirate Party now. But is there one also in China and Russia? Why not?
The USA is notorious - especially in recent decades - for discouraging parties other than the two large corporate-influenced ones (the Republican and Democratic parties): You have barriers to listing on the ballot; the state financing primaries of the two large parties; limited public funding, vs. lax regulation and effectively little limitation on commercial/corporate funding, for election campaigns; strong affiliation of the main media outlets with one or the other large parties; and not last and certainly not least: Many elections in the US are "first-past-the-post", with no proportional representation, which also tends to favor the largest parties.
For this reason, the strategy of pirate parties in other world states - gaining a few parliamentary seats on a limited-focus platform (or centrism/third-way'ism + "pirate" principles) - is essentially invalid in the US.
It is my opinion that this is "copycat politics"; and while I certainly support legalized file sharing, better privacy rights, limitation of intellectual property etc. - I believe this initiative would be better served either by forming a "third party coalition" with other movements/parties (e.g. Greens, Libertarians, People's Party if they actually start running people), or, and it pains me to say this, form caucuses within the one or both of the large parties. And I say this with the utmost respect for your efforts.
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PS - "No safe harbor for the enemies of liberty" <- bad choice of slogan, it reminds people of how the US drone-bombs people to death all over the world.
This is gonna sound super random but one thing you can add to the political positions is prison reform(for profit, quotas, in jail cus can't post bail for non violent crimes) and fair sentencing.
It's related cus pirates are subject to unfair penalties and if jail, our jails are pure evil
Yes, that's on our docket to add to the platform because many of us feel strongly on the topic. Thanks for bringing it up, you should join our platform comittee on the Discord![0]
I did a little work on Pirate Party politics in the UK about 10 years ago. One (unfortunately unsuccessful) approach we tried was to get Pirates to write short manifestos about what Pirate Politics really were.
> Currently pharmaceutical companies spend only 15% of their revenue on new drug research. The remaining 85% is spent on activities such as marketing and profit taking.
[Citation needed]
I'd like to see a budget breakdown of what these companies spend on research, manufacturing, marketing, etc.
At a glance, from looking at CBO pages, it looks like average R&D spend is actually more like in the 18-20% range, and that this isn't unusual for industries, which makes sense since they have other costs beyond R&D.
With all of the deadly important issues in the US and the world today these folks have locked their compass on "the legalization of sharing movies, music and other art online"? Is this not satire? Perhaps these "pirates" should watch some illegally downloaded copies of "Don't Look Up." And their wisdom should be so plain to see that we trust them to come up with good decisions later for small details like the world outside of file sharing? "Aye, matey! I'll have me platforme on global warmin' just after I finishe a-pirate-watchin' this last season of 'ye Witcher!' and several other crucial arts, perhaps a-playin' some cracked games in which I'll learn about what's called the economies."
I'm not trying to deny that intellectual property issues can be important, even extremely so. It's argued that Germany's rise was related to a lack of copyright[1], and we can think of patents on medicine and many other areas where copyright is crucial, even foundational. But please...
> With all of the deadly important issues in the US and the world today
Thanks, that was a perfect example of whataboutism. Why do you assume that IPR law is not an "important issue"? It's certainly important wrt. economic development, as you point out that Germany has benefited in the past from having looser IP restrictions. And a stronger economy helps us deal with all kinds of other issues, including climate change.
You mean on what basis do we justify ownership and property? As far as I can see there's no strong intrinsic justification for private property, but rather it's subordinate to other values like justice and well-being. History is filled with various approaches to property, and at least in my point of view I have to consider it as something decided by politics and culture.
Btw that doesn't mean that because you might disagree with your society's approach to property that it's morally defensible to steal, etc.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadAnd yes, your name is silly. You should change it; messaging matters and you start with your left foot forward.
Switch to range voting, STAR voting, approval voting, and it goes away.
The incumbent parties don't have a lot of incentive to do that because tautologically the people currently in office are the people the existing system puts in office, so why would they want a different one? But even a lot of politicians are pretty jaded about the existing system. Get a couple third parties in there who are willing to turn a 51 vote majority into a 49 vote minority over this and you might get it through.
Fair enough! You are, of course, exactly right. But, the reasons for still having first past the post voting are arguably less clear. Many nations have reformed their first past the post voting systems while the US (along with some other countries) remains stuck.
A better strategy is to trade your vote away on anything that isn't your core issue. You trade with political opponents for their support when the issue you do care about comes up.
Using that technique, even a single representative can have quite some impact, as long as the issue they care about is narrow enough.
So, the pirate party protects people.
We need ranked choice voting and campaign finance reform.
We have an _enormous_ industry enforcing copyright laws which barely make sense, and imo that industry is parasitic
Yes, that's what piracy enables, if the legislation isn't successful.
What's your opportunity cost as a result of trivial replication and propagation being locked behind mechanisms that facilitate the creation of artificial scarcity?
Also, I agree with not being left/right wing but inability or unwillingness to commit to some belief or guiding principles that tells people how your policies might affect issues important to them is very bad. If I have an illegal immigrant family member, will you be hunting them down for deportation, after all they broke the law. Will you allow sharia law as an extension of people's right to practice their faith? will you reform immigration? If so, how? Will you end the visa lottery or amp it up? How about H1B and other skilled worker visas? I have colleagues that will have their entire lives impacted by that. Will you reform police and the military and if so how? Just funding? Will you, as a pirate actually restrict gun ownership, enact balanced reforms or leave things as is?
I am not saying take a position on every issue now but I can't tell it apart from satire when you are not even hinting at what your principles are. Change for the sake if change is something juvenile people whose only goal is to self-aggrandize and give their own lives meaning at any cost. To me, you are actually a bit dangerous because you want to scoop up support fully knowing screaming change like Obama will help a lot. Do you have a sinister motive? No idea, all I know is people like this, college/young kids start small and actually revolt in many other countries, but in the end, either the military or some other power takes control.
I like "piracy" and identify with what you are saying but idealism without principles and leadership is at best folly and at worst dangerous.
https://sci-hub.se/
The original pirates were and are murderers, rapist and thiefs. Despite some romantication going on - this is what they are doing. So I always thought it is not a smart idea, to adopt the name, that was meant as criticism.
Americans often pride themselves on revolutionary ideals which spread chaos, pain and suffering throughout the world, to the point of looking down on countries stable enough not to have constant gun violence. We hold soldiers and police in far greater esteem than doctors and scholars. We write love letters to serial killers. We root for underdogs, villains and rebels by default.
Let's be honest - it is a silly name, mostly because it seems childish and tone-deaf given more pressing modern political issues, but not because of any implied association with rape, pillage and plunder. If anything, that probably sells better in the US than elsewhere.
Every party makes similar promises. Instead, lead with what makes you different - your focus on IP law and digital rights. Perhaps even emphasize your flexibility or neutrality on other issues, so that your voting base isn't decimated by your positions on wedge issues.
[0]: https://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29943518.
How about the radical position of letting each state decide for itself? They could even have the party in each state decide its own position, rather than enforcing a one-size-fits-all policy centrally.
Of course it's nice to think that there is one "right" answer to all those questions, and that the world would be better if we could just use the law to force other people to go along with what we want, but I think recent history has shown that just makes politics more dysfunctional and leaves everyone unhappy.
I admit, it's not an easy question, and my suggestion isn't guaranteed to work, but if there is complete deadlock and extreme polarization (potentially leading to violent conflict) at the national level, it's at least plausible that delegating some of those policies to smaller, more politically homogeneous, units might reduce the tensions, and make it easier for people to vote with their feet if they are unhappy with the rules they live under.
There's a lot of common sense power to the idea that smaller political units can reach an acceptable compromise more easily, and that having multiple governments offers some choice to those who can move. But there are big factors the other way too:
- The issues that most divide our definitions of liberty are aligned with differences in urban vs rural, majority vs minority, and rich vs poor. These are clustered such that they exist at state levels as much as federal.
- Smaller political units are more vulnerable to outside forces ... National parties can airdrop money into local campaigns to get strategic outcomes that have little to do with the constituents.
- The citizens of smaller units tend to have more direct power relations with each other, pulling them towards policies that explicitly maintain or redistribute power. This creates big problems for the less powerful, who see their position become more engrained and who often don't have the resources to vote with their feet.
None of this is an answer to "what's the best unit". I think that whichever personal liberties you value, you have to be pragmatic about who is protecting them where.
Sure, but liberty to do what? Liberty to not do what?
It is difficult to reconcile one person's liberty to marry the person they love without experiencing discrimination with another's liberty to discriminate against anyone who loves the 'wrong' people.
Or the right to own other people vs. the right to be free from ownership.
Does the freedom to innovate protect the generation, modification, dissemination, and implementation of ideas, or protect an inventor from having to compete with copycats?
Is the right to repair the equipment you own more or less important than the right of manufacturers to devise means of preventing unauthorized modifications?
Other than that, no.
Let's try approaching this from a different angle. Let's have X be the number of Americans who have the resources, knowledge, and paperwork required to move to a different state. And lets have Y be the number of Americans who have the same requirements, but to move to a different country. Surely you can agree that X is a much larger number than Y, right?
May be a global secular government with uniform civil laws for all is the answer?
As for the point of having a federal government, I could turn the question around and ask what is the point of having state governments when you could just decide everything centrally. You say "some kind of union", but I think you mean "exactly the sort of union that imposes the particular restrictions on states that I think is important". It's very much an open question what the "correct" set of restrictions should be, and that list has changed over the course of US history, and has different choices in different countries.
…which is the point of Federalism. The point isn’t what I think is important, the point is what we decide collectively as a country. And when such decisions are made, everyone must go along with them, because that’s how we accomplish goals. You can’t row a boat across a river if half the people on it are rowing in the wrong direction. However, if you decide you want to go back to shore, and everyone agrees, then the system should support that too (ie repealing prohibition).
For other stuff that the fed govt doesn’t care about, leave it to the states, and for the stuff the states don’t care about, leave it to the people. 10th amendment.
If we’d left things to states, Jim Crow would’ve stayed on the books for decades longer, and some states would still not have gay marriage.
Why stop there, though? Should the US invade countries that have worse rights for gay people, in order to "liberate" them? Both states and countries are (in some sense) just lines on a map, and ultimately you are using the threat of force if you are imposing a set of rules on people, whether you use an army to do so or not.
That said, supporting the fight for gay rights in other countries? Sure. There's a lot of daylight between "do nothing" and "invade with army."
The current state of affairs is that the constitution does not allow the federal government, or the states, to prohibit abortion, guns, or gay marriage. So the status quo is that this is up to the individual. Leaving it up to the states would be a regression.
Laboratories of democracy work great when different states have different characteristics or preferences. It makes no sense to have a federal minimum wage because a living wage is a vastly different amount of money between New York City and El Paso, Texas. Maybe people in Massachusetts prefer to have high taxes and a lot of government services and people in New Hampshire the opposite.
But if something is a right, it's a right everywhere.
Are you serious? By this reasoning, previously the gay couple was experiencing higher taxes to reduce the taxes of straight couples.
A list of 50 states and some US territories should just be statically included.
Then the winning platform in that district would be the one where you're mostly aligned with the party currently occupying that seat but differ on the pirate issues.
So you'd end up with a blue pirate party and a red pirate party based on which district they're running in. They would work with each other on pirate issues, but they'd generally caucus with different major parties on a per-district basis.
It might also help to prioritize getting range voting or STAR voting so this would stop being necessary.
Also even if this party does not have success, just by running they can change the other candidates policies
Only implemented recently iirc.
I quite like the German model:
> Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then on the federal level.
(from wikipedia)
In CZ, we can prefer individual candidates from the party list. Plenty of VIPs lost their putatively safe seats because they were disliked enough.
This is only a result of first past the post voting. If a third party had any significant support, they would split the vote with the major party most like them and hand the election to the major party least like them. Then the third party merges with the major party most like them and we're back to two parties.
Switch to STAR/range/approval voting and that doesn't happen. You can run a hundred candidates and no one splits the vote. There is no point in even having primaries anymore, just run all your candidates in the general. Party becomes little more than an endorsement.
Libertarians don't have to run as Republicans to avoid splitting the vote with them, and then don't have to vote with Republicans on stupid wars or oil subsidies or whatever to avoid having a Republican run against them and hand the next election to a Democrat. Likewise with Greens vs. Democrats and anything else you like.
Proportional representation brings a bunch of different problems and is much harder to achieve in the US because it would require federal constitutional changes, whereas you can change the voting system in a state with a simple majority of the state legislature.
And different voting systems fix this. Suppose you have single representative per constituency with STAR voting. Then there is no "you didn't vote for this person" because you vote for everyone in degrees and the candidate who best represents the district wins.
Now suppose you're a minority constituency. You're 5% of the population, dispersed all across the country. With the existing system, a candidate willing to murder you in order to lower gas prices by 1% for everyone else can win the election with 95% of the vote. This is also the result you get with PR, because the "don't murder me" party gets 5% of the representatives, a coalition government forms in which they are not a part, and you get murdered.
But with STAR, the candidates who commit to not murdering you get the highest possible score form your demographic and the ones who want to lower gas prices get the lowest possible score. Since there can be a hundred candidates running, this will plausibly be the main difference between two of them, and a 1% difference in gas prices isn't enough to significantly change the scores people outside your demographic give to the other candidates. So the "don't murder me" candidates win everywhere and constitute the entire government no matter how the coalitions shake out.
In Czechia (where a pirate party is currently a part of the government) it was IMHO quite the reverse - the Czech Pirate Party mostly gained popularity by accenting ordinary center-liberal political themes.
The Pirate Party of Canada used to be quite active on r/CanadaPolitics. Once they fleshed out their platform they ended up overlapping heavily with the NDP and Greens (particularly the Greens).
I think many Pirate Parties have fallen into similar traps when they fleshed out their platform.
Yes, pretty much. There are Greens in Czechia but they are more left-progressive (compared to center-liberal pirates) and they are unacceptable for many because of their anti-nuclear position.
> Are you left-wing or right-wing? > We think “left-wing” and “right-wing” aren’t very useful ways of seeing the world
Although I generally agree, but man this gonna be wild...
If not, yikes. The site seems broken or disorganized. Nothing on who supposedly runs the party.
One of there last posts is about the Patriot Act which isn't really a thing anymore.
Basically imagine libertarians with a strong drive to consider practical matters over ideology. Individual liberties, but drop the ideology and do what works for people, and what the people want as a whole.
I do agree that patents/copyright need reform and a reduced patent period could be beneficial, but I think complete abolition would backfire.
If what you really want is e.g. abolition of software patents, what you want to do is to start off demanding abolition of all patents and then compromise at abolition of software patents. That's what the other side does.
Another good example is penicillin. Imagine where we would be with bacterial infections today without it entering the public domain from day 1.
I understand the desire to own your work, and immediately arriving at the conclusion that patents are morally or ethically right, but fundamentally when you release some piece of information into the world, it is for all practical purposes no longer yours. Patents are an artificial protection for something that simply isn't true in practice, and it doesn't appear that it increases innovation at all, if your focus is the practical side of things.
Some things sure, but I don't see how this would work for drugs that cost tens of millions of dollars to develop and run through trials.
Secondly, plenty of research is publicly funded.
The major philosophical error people make when asking why would people create anything in the absence of IP laws is believing that just because they created/invented something, they are owed something in return. Plenty of times, IP gets created, but there is no one to sell licensees to because no one wants it.
The major historical error is believing forgetting that people created and invented stuff just fine before IP laws existed.
Then take a look at companies like Oracle that did not invent anything for the last 20 years, but are still sueing the whole software industry for things that are common practices even taught in University classes. An API shall be patentable? Seriously?
While I am still pro patents I also have to say that patent offices are the wrong judges (speaking of them as part of the judicative branch) on what is patentable and what is not.
Why did Microsoft got most of their financial income from Google's Android over the last decades? (before Azure took off) ...it was the licensing income stream for the mp3 codec that wasn't actually invented by them; it was invented by the Fraunhofer Institute in the 80s.
It's ridiculous that the patent system is so messed up that they always favor not the actual inventors.
"What is your goal? Our primary goal is to get elected into office. We believe in political change from the inside."
The goal of these "pirates" is stated very clearly: To get power. Not to chance the society in a particular way or direction, but to get power to themselves (who else?). To get elected. Then what? Oh we'll think about that later but our current goal is to get elected.
A better question for the FAQ would be: Are you pro-democracy, or pro-autocracy?
How do you plan to promote your choice of democracy, or autocracy, in practice?
Or technocracy?
Just look at how politicians went about things in the olden times. Even when they disagreed on things, they were far far better than just raging against each other like they are doing now!
Right and Left which are just two sides is way too narrow view of the world.
But I do understand why though. The people weren't even ready for Bernie Sanders this election. I found him as the better candidate among the lot, with a better plan. So adding the "centre" or "centre-left" party maybe way too much.
But I think the file-sharing/pirate party movement is a lil way too late. At the peak of Pirate Bay, they really were revolutionaries giving chances to new artists and new ideas through their front page campaigns and what not. But we have bigger problems like climate-change right now. File sharing would be not in my priority list in the current political environment.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
If there is no democracy then autocrats decide who can copy what songs, if any, from the internet. What you can read on the internet. If there is an internet. But if there is democracy then people can decide all that by voting.
If there is no democracy there will be no Pirate Parties, unless for some reason that benefits the unelected people in power. Hey I'm glad that there is US Pirate Party now. But is there one also in China and Russia? Why not?
For this reason, the strategy of pirate parties in other world states - gaining a few parliamentary seats on a limited-focus platform (or centrism/third-way'ism + "pirate" principles) - is essentially invalid in the US.
It is my opinion that this is "copycat politics"; and while I certainly support legalized file sharing, better privacy rights, limitation of intellectual property etc. - I believe this initiative would be better served either by forming a "third party coalition" with other movements/parties (e.g. Greens, Libertarians, People's Party if they actually start running people), or, and it pains me to say this, form caucuses within the one or both of the large parties. And I say this with the utmost respect for your efforts.
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PS - "No safe harbor for the enemies of liberty" <- bad choice of slogan, it reminds people of how the US drone-bombs people to death all over the world.
It's related cus pirates are subject to unfair penalties and if jail, our jails are pure evil
[0]: https://discord.gg/MrdnPxzrf2
Here is one: https://web.archive.org/web/20140906172617/https://www.wired... (that one is mine)
[Citation needed]
I'd like to see a budget breakdown of what these companies spend on research, manufacturing, marketing, etc.
At a glance, from looking at CBO pages, it looks like average R&D spend is actually more like in the 18-20% range, and that this isn't unusual for industries, which makes sense since they have other costs beyond R&D.
I'm not trying to deny that intellectual property issues can be important, even extremely so. It's argued that Germany's rise was related to a lack of copyright[1], and we can think of patents on medicine and many other areas where copyright is crucial, even foundational. But please...
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
Thanks, that was a perfect example of whataboutism. Why do you assume that IPR law is not an "important issue"? It's certainly important wrt. economic development, as you point out that Germany has benefited in the past from having looser IP restrictions. And a stronger economy helps us deal with all kinds of other issues, including climate change.
Btw that doesn't mean that because you might disagree with your society's approach to property that it's morally defensible to steal, etc.