Not winning
Socialists beat libertarians in the 2024 election. That's a bad sign for the future of human freedom.
What were the vote counts?
According to the official Federal Election Commission data, the Green Party candidate earned 862,049 votes while the Libertarian candidate earned only 650,126 votes. In other words, the candidate with the platform most destructive to human freedom beat the candidate with the most beneficial. Hopefully it's not a sign of things to come.
What is the Green Party?
The Green Party rejects capitalism and promotes "ecological socialism." It advocates for free healthcare, free education, the Green New Deal, reparations for African Americans, and other freedom-wrecking fiscal bombs.
In its defense, it does advocate for some freedom-enhancing policies like legalizing marijuana and eliminating three-strikes laws. But ultimately the Green Party is a deeply collectivist organization with aspirations to create massive new government interventions into our economy and our lives. That is not the way to a better future. In fact, it is more certainly a road to disaster than Democrats or Republicans have suggested.
What is the Libertarian Party?
On the other hand, the Libertarian Party favors free markets, voluntary exchange, and economic growth, while also favoring legalizing marijuana and reforming the criminal justice system. Further, it promotes responsible government and a balanced budget. It is the only party reliably advocating for individual rights, economic prosperity, and more responsible government. As such, it is the only party with a coherent vision for a confidently better future. Yet it was beat by the Green Party disaster artists.
How did this happen?
The Libertarian Party had 738k registered voters in 2024, so it seems around 88k of them voted for another candidate, or didn't vote at all. That's normal, unlike what we saw with the Green Party.
The Green Party only had 248k registered voters in 2024, meaning they received around 600k votes from Americans who aren't formally affiliated with the Party. That suggests quite a few Americans were so disappointed by the choice between Harris and Trump that they voted for a third party. But why did they choose such an atrocious alternative?
Perhaps many of those disaffected voters saw "Green Party" and believed they were voting in favor of environmentalism. Unfortunately, that is only true in a limited sense. The Green Party is much more about state interventionism than environmentalism.
At least some of these unexpected Green Party voters were voting in favor of state interventionism specifically. They have likely been indoctrinated to believe that socialism is not only morally defensible, but economically viable. Unfortunately, if reliable history is to be believed, neither is true.
Conclusion
An economy and society based on collectivist coercion cannot stand. The most repressive and violent societies in history have been based on coercion. That is the path of the Green Party.
The most successful economies are based on voluntary exchange. More broadly, the most successful societies are based on voluntary consent. That is the path of the Libertarian Party.
This isn't about supporting the Libertarian Party specifically. In fact, their party is currently a mess and probably doesn't deserve your support. This isn't about any party specifically. This is about supporting the principles of freedom to reap the rewards of enduring peace, prosperity, and happiness.
The Green Party's out-performance of the Libertarian Party shows that human freedom is in serious danger even in the so-called "land of the free." There is no question the United States has led the free world for centuries. But where it is leading now is not somewhere humanity wants to go.