Another third party option to bring to your attention...

I've talked a lot about Gary Johnson, Jill Stein on this blog, but I've found another third party candidate who seems up my alley. It is unlikely that he will make it onto the ballot since he seems to have even less support than the Greens, and they have trouble getting on the ballot in all 50 states. However, he is worth mentioning because I have to say I'm partial to aspects of his platform.

His name is Zoltan Istvan. He's the candidate for the Transhumanist party. His platform focuses heavily on science and technology, and solving the solutions of tomorrow. Transhumanists are about using technology to make lives better, although in somewhat extreme ways. As far as I know, they seem to be for mixing human technology with human biology to greatly expand lifespans, enhance our capabilities, etc. So they do tend to have an aspect of extremism to them, but not necessarily more than, say, the Green Party or the Libertarian party.

In some ways, Istvan offsets a lot of Jill Stein's crankery and flaws quite a bit. Whereas the Greens tend to appeal to some cringeworthy aspects of the anti science left like vaxxers, homeopathy supporters, etc., Istvan seems heavily focused on having a science based platform. As a free thinker with great respect for science, I like that. He's also for a lot of the same things I am, like universal basic income, getting money out of politics, and weakening the two party system.

However, despite that, he doesn't cover a lot of various issues. He doesn't have much of a foreign or social policy at all, and barely mentions economics outside of his guaranteed income proposal. And a lot of his ideas are overly optimistic, to say the least, and some of them are too futuristic to really take the forefront of this election. For example, he wants to push for laying the groundwork for the rights of conscious robots that will exist in the future. While self awareness of AI is an issue we may eventually have to grapple with, it seems out of place in 2016. He also talks about wanting to put trauma chips in peoples' heads so that emergency responders can respond faster if someone is seriously injured. It seems like a lofty idea, but is unlikely to go over well with anyone skeptical of the government tracking them. He also wants government to be representative of people in terms of professions, which in some ways sounds good, but would potentially subvert the democratic process.

All in all, Istvan, like other candidates, is a mixed bag. He has a lot of ideas I'm sympathetic to, but to an extent, he seems too forward thinking where he's trying to focus on the problems of tomorrow involving technology that doesn't even exist yet, without solving the problems of today. Some of his ideas are also somewhat cringey. Still, regardless, he seems to be about as good of a candidate overall as someone like, say, Stein or Johnson would be, so he's worth mentioning regardless. I think he's someone alienated democrats should at least look into.