The hottest Political Philosophy Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Philosophy Topics

Book Review: Open Socrates (Part 1)

Don't Worry About the Vase • 1209 implied HN points • 23 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Treat Socratic inquiry with caution: making open-ended questioning into the highest moral good is manipulative and can be harmful, and some deep “untimely” questions are load-bearing and can break functioning life if asked at the wrong time.
  2. Living well requires practical answers, habits, and incentives — virtue ethics, rules, and cached beliefs are realistic tools humans use to act, so inquiry must be balanced with action rather than dominating every choice.
  3. Watch for wordplay and framing tricks: many grand philosophical claims (e.g., vice is mere ignorance or justice always equals advantage) rest on conflations or bad arguments, so measurement, incentives, and real human psychology matter more than pure dialectical purity.

Project Sentinel Has Launched!

Emerald Robinson’s The Right Way • 2380 implied HN points • 03 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Project Sentinel is a group of experienced experts who offer solutions to current problems in America. They focus on informing people about political issues and strategies to counter perceived threats.
  2. These experts believe America is facing a serious crisis, comparing it to a coup d'Ă©tat, and they emphasize the need for constitutional solutions to restore order.
  3. Members can access high-quality intelligence updates and advice from this elite group, which includes national security analysts and former military personnel.

Government for Dummies

News from Uncibal • 934 implied HN points • 11 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Modern politicians often lack deep understanding and experience, leading to a government focused on following simple recipes instead of thoughtful decision-making.
  2. There's a difference between technical knowledge and practical knowledge; good governance requires wisdom that comes from real experience, not just following rules.
  3. If the electorate grows frustrated with inadequate leaders, they might take matters into their own hands, which could lead to serious political unrest.

Does America Require an "Anglo-Protestant" Majority?

Glenn Loury • 515 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Some believe that America needs an 'Anglo-Protestant' majority to maintain its success and values, arguing that this group historically shaped the nation.
  2. Immigrants often come to America for its opportunities and quality of life, and there's skepticism about the idea that they would change the culture negatively once they arrive.
  3. There is a debate about how important a dominant culture is for national stability, with some suggesting that laws and institutions play a larger role than the ethnic or cultural origins of the people.

Yes, You Do Have to Tolerate the Intolerant

Yascha Mounk • 4456 implied HN points • 08 Aug 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. You need to tolerate different opinions, even those you disagree with. This helps maintain a fair society where ideas can openly clash.
  2. Censoring ideas can lead to more harm than good. It’s better to counter harmful thoughts with discussion and argument instead of shutting them down.
  3. Embracing free speech has historically led to progress. Societies that allow free debate are often less prejudiced over time, showing that open conversation can make a difference.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

Why We Drink

News from Uncibal • 835 implied HN points • 08 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Alcohol is more than just a drink; it's linked to our freedom. When people try to limit our drinking, it can mean they're also trying to limit other freedoms.
  2. Drinking responsibly helps us learn about our choices and how to live with others. It's part of growing up and being a good citizen in society.
  3. If society starts to restrict our alcohol consumption, it could show a bigger problem. It might mean that people are becoming less capable of handling their freedoms well.

The field

Silentium • 619 implied HN points • 11 Oct 24
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Silence can be a powerful tool for personal reflection and growth. Taking time away from noise helps us understand ourselves better.
  2. Embracing silence can lead to greater creativity and inspiration. It allows our minds to wander and generate new ideas.
  3. Creating a space for silence can improve mental well-being. It's important to disconnect from the busyness of life sometimes.

The Greatest Role of Philosophy Is . . .

Ethics Under Construction • 87 implied HN points • 15 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Evil is a metaphysical privation that hides behind appearances, so it can’t be found by feelings or surface impressions. Philosophy, by demanding clear reasons, is uniquely able to unmask and analyze this hidden destruction.
  2. Evil combines serious, freedom-destroying harm with a lack of any objective justification that a reasonable agent could accept. Because subjective motives and emotions don’t count as justification, evil often disguises itself as good and misleads the unwary.
  3. Evil is self-defeating and potentially limitless when unprincipled, so it cannot be negotiated with or ignored. Philosophers have a duty to use rigorous analysis to identify, expose, and oppose evil to protect freedom and the moral order.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 6

Bet On It • 60 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Personal liberty should be broad: people should be allowed extreme speech (even libelous or slanderous claims), full drug legalization is preferred to criminalization or forced treatment, and warrantless wiretapping of innocent people is a criminal violation.
  2. Many policies usually labeled 'right-wing' are really civil-liberty issues: government control of the airwaves, bans on tobacco advertising, and gun-control laws can unjustly restrict speech and the rights of peaceful, law-abiding people.
  3. Treating orders to commit crimes as making someone an accessory matters a great deal: if leaders who direct or incite harmful actions aren’t held as accessories, then incitement and conspiracy can’t be shrugged off as mere speech.

Why do politicians tend to be morally bankrupt?

Philosophy bear • 42 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Many political problems are structural, but some exist mainly because morally callous people gain power; those individuals both create institutional distortions and exploit existing flaws.
  2. Politics attracts people who like high-risk social combat and the rewards of power and fame, so the field naturally selects for personalities comfortable with lying and moral flexibility.
  3. Group dynamics and outside influence reinforce bad behavior: honest politicians get pushed out or forced to adapt, while powerful actors like funders actively select for morally flexible leaders.

Notes of many things

Philosophy bear • 114 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Many people form quick, lasting judgments about others and then defend those first impressions forever, and that habit of instant categorizing gives people a false sense of power and can warp institutions that need fair judgment.
  2. Mental illness often explains or partly explains harmful actions, which makes blaming people complex, and treating disorders like OCD is delicate because you must both teach tolerance for uncertainty and correct exaggerated fear estimates.
  3. Luxury consumption rarely brings deep, lasting happiness and can waste time and money that would buy richer social experiences, and making traits like beauty or sex fully mutable would, for many, remove a central source of meaning in life.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 5

Bet On It • 115 implied HN points • 06 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Involuntary servitude is unacceptable. Many state practices—like the draft, strict military rules, taxation, subpoenas, jury duty, and psychiatric commitment—function as forms of forced labor or control over people’s bodies.
  2. The state’s coercive powers should be curtailed through legal changes. Ideas include abolishing subpoenas in favor of trials in absentia and treating income taxation as a form of forced labor that merits radical abolition or privatization.
  3. Self-ownership means people should be free to quit jobs or service, facing only moral, financial, or reputational consequences rather than physical coercion. Government-created privileges for unions distort the market, so removing those privileges is preferable to adding more regulation.

How to be less box-shaped

Overthinking Everything • 942 implied HN points • 07 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Scoring systems and metrics turn complex values into simple numbers, which helps comparison but tends to make everything converge and can replace the original purpose. Use self-chosen scores as playful, disposable goals so they don't capture your values.
  2. Modern scale rests on four bargains—mechanical rules, replaceable parts, centralized control, and scale—that grant power and reliability but sacrifice adaptability, specificity, autonomy, and context. Be aware of these trade-offs so you can choose when to accept their benefits and when to push back.
  3. Mechanical recipes and games are useful learning and coordination tools, but pairing different approaches and practicing improvisation preserves agency and variety. Start with clear rules, then learn to adapt or switch between them rather than treating any single method as the only right way.

The game theory of cooperation

Optimally Irrational • 72 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. When people expect to meet again, conditional strategies like "I’ll cooperate if you do" make cooperation a rational, self-interested choice because future losses deter short-term cheating.
  2. Reputation, indirect reciprocity and partner choice scale cooperation: public records, gossip and the ability to shun defectors let groups enforce cooperative norms even when partners change.
  3. Cooperation has multiple roots — kin selection, reciprocal altruism and cultural evolution — and because many cooperative equilibria are possible, societies pick and stabilize particular norms while moral feelings help people follow and enforce them.

Response to Sunstein

David Friedman’s Substack • 269 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Government should be modeled as a political market where voters, politicians, and lobbyists act in their own self-interest, so many government failures follow from misaligned incentives rather than benevolent intervention. Deliberative democracy is unrealistic because ordinary citizens often lack incentives to seek truth and get little timely feedback.
  2. Behavioral economics broadens the rationality assumption by adding attention and information-processing costs, which helps explain more real-world behavior but also makes theories more complex and sometimes less predictive. So far it hasn’t clearly improved economic prediction across the board, though it may have promise in areas like macroeconomics.
  3. Redistribution and welfare-state transfers create strong incentives for rent-seeking and can undermine the gains from free trade and open migration, since political transfers replace voluntary exchange as a way to gain. Secure property rights and reliance on voluntary transactions tend to produce healthier incentives for prosperity.

Patrick Deneen's Work Is Unempirical Drivel

Richard Hanania's Newsletter • 5071 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Postliberal thinkers often avoid discussing concrete policies and focus on abstract ideas instead. This can make it hard to pinpoint their actual positions on important issues.
  2. Patrick Deneen, a prominent postliberal figure, tends to rely on emotional appeals and broad claims without providing solid evidence or engaging in real debates about policy.
  3. The rise of postliberalism signifies a decline in healthy intellectual discourse on the right, as it often prioritizes vague narratives over fact-based discussions and critical thinking.

Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future

Pekingnology • 147 implied HN points • 08 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Ancient Chinese political debates still shape modern Chinese thinking and offer insight into pressing issues like family law, corruption, cultural policy, and military choices.
  2. Different schools—Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Mohism—present competing answers (for example harmony vs freedom, ritual vs law, culture vs material welfare, realism vs idealism) that help frame policy trade-offs.
  3. Framing these debates as lively, contemporary dialogues makes their ideas easy to grasp and shows practical relevance, while leaving room for debate and differing interpretations.

On Priesthoods

Astral Codex Ten • 35170 implied HN points • 08 Jan 25
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Priesthoods are groups of knowledgeable people that help in truth-seeking. They balance individual insights and societal ideas to find better answers to questions.
  2. These groups often keep a distance from the public to maintain their expert status. They worry that mixing with public ideas can lower their standards and credibility.
  3. While priesthoods have good functions, they can also fall prey to biased views and political influences, which can make their recommendations less reliable over time.

Andrew Tate and Andrea Dworkin: The Faces of Sexism

Fake Noûs • 808 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Both misogyny and misandry are real and often mirror each other: large numbers of people hold hostile generalizations about the opposite sex, but those views tend to appear in different social spaces.
  2. Some strains of modern feminism can act like reverse sexism by privileging women and attacking men, sometimes hiding controversial claims behind bland definitions of equality.
  3. The deeper cause is general human selfishness and weak norms around sex and romance, so blaming an entire sex is a mistake; better to recognize shared flaws, hold yourself accountable, and try to be kind while protecting yourself.

Virtue will always be irritating

Philosophy bear • 543 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Virtue-driven movements are often irritating and can cause real harm, yet they also point to genuine injustices that need fixing.
  2. These movements tend to attract socially blunt, traumatised, youthful, or opportunistic people, and social media amplifies their worst traits through brevity, mass dunking, and lack of mercy.
  3. Despite mistakes and excesses, rejecting a movement just because it annoys you is wrong; real progress usually emerges over time from group-level debate, even though individuals can suffer without trust and fair processes.

Stratocratic Social Contract Theory Revisited

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe • 2081 implied HN points • 29 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Stratocracy is a government system where only those who serve in the military can vote and govern. This system is different from democracy because it ties rights and governance to military service.
  2. The theory suggests that rights come from the ability to use force, which means those who can fight have a stronger claim to rights and protections in society. This contrasts with modern beliefs about rights being self-evident or given by the government.
  3. The theory predicts that a stratocracy may decay into a system where rights are ignored, leading to conflict. Warriors must then rise up to restore the system and ensure their rights are defended.

Humilitism

In My Tribe • 1184 implied HN points • 15 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. Humilitism is the view that no one can have a highly accurate understanding of complex social systems, so people should be humble about their political knowledge and judgments.
  2. It rejects confident technocratic elites and crisis-driven politics, preferring to treat social issues as problems with trade-offs rather than urgent calls for sweeping solutions.
  3. Humilitism is distinct from labels like conservative, libertarian, or populist — you can hold strong opinions yet still accept fallibility and worry about the fragility of social order.

The last thing human hands will build

antoniomelonio • 99 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Tools tend to become invisible extensions of ourselves, and AI is the first tool that can build other tools without human hands, so machines can increasingly replace human labor and craftsmanship.
  2. Our hands and bodies evolved for making things, but as machines take over work and process, people risk becoming appendages of machines; what remains uniquely human is public action and the creation of shared meaning.
  3. If usefulness and productivity stop defining our worth, humans can turn toward expressive, nonfunctional creations—art, relationships, and meaning-making—which machines cannot fully replace and which can become the new center of human purpose.

The Persona And Legacy Of Murray Rothbard

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 30 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Murray Rothbard was a fiercely uncompromising and prolific thinker who championed anarcho‑capitalism and wrote on economics, history, philosophy, and politics.
  2. He combined Austrian economics with moral and ethical arguments to reject the legitimacy of the state, and he was willing to ally tactically with left or right forces to advance libertarian goals.
  3. His clear, prolific writing and teaching, plus a decades‑long habit of following the money in history, made him influential, and his vast work being online means his ideas can spread even faster with internet and AI tools.

Just us

Philosophy bear • 143 implied HN points • 21 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Activist circles practice strict operational security: they keep phones far away, use encrypted apps like Signal, and avoid discussing illegal acts even in private chats.
  2. Their direct actions are mostly modest—occupying buildings, graffiti, lock-ons, squatting, and small-scale property damage—and are driven by a sense of justice rather than a desire to harm people.
  3. There’s frustration that powerful people often act recklessly and leave clear evidence, which feels hypocritical compared with how careful ordinary activists must be.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 3

Bet On It • 115 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. The state often does things—taking money without consent, forcing people to serve, or waging mass violence—that would be crimes if done by private individuals, and those acts should be judged by the same moral standard.
  2. Democratic approval or majority rule does not make rights violations right; popular support doesn’t legitimize theft, slavery, or murder.
  3. Rulers lean on intellectuals and ideology to normalize their power, and many modern policies reflect stubborn dogma and waste rather than simple exploitation.

The Tragic Hysteria of Abortion

Bet On It • 1222 implied HN points • 01 Dec 25
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. A fertilized embryo has intermediate moral value, so abortion can be morally justified in truly extreme cases like to save a woman’s life or prevent catastrophic harm, but it isn’t justified for mere inconvenience or brief misery.
  2. The best evidence finds that getting or being denied an abortion has minimal long‑term effects on subjective well‑being, though denial causes short‑term distress and some moderate economic harm that tends to shrink over time.
  3. People commonly catastrophize unwanted pregnancies, so there’s a moral duty to carefully check whether a pregnancy would really ruin your life rather than deciding in a hysterical moment.

Are Bad Researchers Bad People?

Heterodox STEM • 263 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Intellectual virtues like humility, open-mindedness, and integrity are crucial to sound inquiry because they help researchers notice and correct biases.
  2. Practicing these virtues improves research quality, helps expose pseudoscience, and reduces political polarization by making people less likely to dismiss opposing views or cling to weak evidence.
  3. Teaching and modeling epistemic virtues—through classroom practices, checklists, and dedicated programs—can strengthen scholarship and make public debate more reliable and civil.

The Divergence Machine II

Breaking Smart • 58 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Progress isn't a fixed moral or religious story; it's a dynamic, non-stationary argument driven by rapidly expanding experience. It requires inventing new ways to make sense of new data instead of framing change as a zero-sum debate.
  2. Historical thinkers show two responses to rapid change: some embraced ongoing doubt and pluralism, while others tried to preserve old comforting frameworks. Over time the empirical, practical approach — focusing on better ways of knowing and doing — became central to Progress.
  3. The Argument of Progress is pluralist and cooperative, asking people to keep participating, tolerate others, and rebuild value categories as reality changes. Recent shocks like Covid and AI have pushed this way of thinking into the mainstream.

Whom Should We Dismiss?

Fake Noûs • 460 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Don’t reflexively shun all bad ideas; many harmful or mistaken views are worth debating because public debate can persuade audiences and refusing to engage can make you look censorious or even strengthen those views.
  2. Some ideas are inherently not worth engaging — obvious nonsense or morally repugnant doctrines (like wild conspiracy theories or support for slavery) — but popularity doesn’t make a bad idea reasonable.
  3. Decide by the person, not just the idea: many people with bad beliefs can be changed by patient, respectful dialogue, though it’s reasonable to avoid clearly delusional or closed-minded individuals.

Is Religion Good for the World?

Fake Noûs • 601 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. All organized religions are false in some or all of their core tenets.
  2. Some people try to argue others out of religion because they think false beliefs shouldn’t be held, though many stop doing that over time.
  3. Rejections of religion can rest on different grounds, like denying God’s existence or criticizing the morality of religious figures, and critics emphasize different reasons.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 1

Bet On It • 150 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. The American founding is presented as rooted in libertarian principles, emphasizing the separation of the economy and many social spheres from the state.
  2. Compromises like slavery and the Civil War are portrayed as having pushed politics toward statism and socialism, causing libertarianism to lose influence until a later revival.
  3. The appeal to the Founders is criticized as hypocritical because slavery and Indigenous dispossession contradict libertarian ideals, but 18th-century political ideas still contain important truths that modern libertarianism can recover.

Why Are There "Academic Marxists" Who Do Not Follow in Marx's Footsteps at All?

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 207 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Very few academics today make arguments that actually follow Marx's six claims; most of those claims (teleology, stage theory, ideology-as-master-key, utopia) have weak empirical support, and only two threads still have useful traction: that relations of production must fit technology and that technological change can destabilize property orders.
  2. What people call “academic Marxism” is often a post-1960s humanities phenomenon — a left-progressive toolkit or methodology that diverged from Marx’s political-economic aims and focuses more on cultural critique and theory than on organizing working-class politics.
  3. Long-run social and economic change looks more like uneven, sectoral waves of creative destruction with institutional lag and complementary investments than synchronized stage-based revolutions, and humanities departments need a clear, defensible case for why we study literature rather than relying on implicit ideological frameworks.

Solving Narcissisism and NPCs

Polymathic Being • 63 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Some people outsource their identity (NPCs) or their validation (vulnerable narcissists), and when those combine you get zealous, reactive enforcers who lack a stable inner self.
  2. The antidote is to build agency by choosing core values deliberately and seeking honest, grounded external feedback instead of blindly following tribes or rejecting all outside input.
  3. Practical steps are to tighten your commitments to a few reliable anchors (family, community, virtues), stay humble and curious, and avoid getting captured by dogma or false binaries.

*For a New Liberty* Book Club Reboot

Bet On It • 155 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. A multi-week book club is being rebooted that will repost original chapter-by-chapter commentary every Friday and add fresh responses to readers’ comments. It starts Feb 6 and will run for about four months.
  2. The reading focuses on For a New Liberty, a provocative anarcho-capitalist book that’s deep and beautifully written. Participants are asked to read chapter 1 by next Friday.
  3. If readers like this weekly format, more favorite book clubs will be rebooted in the future. Interest from participants will determine whether the series continues.

*Unbeatable* Round-Up

Bet On It • 196 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. A wide-ranging, original case that free markets deserve stronger defense and often produce better outcomes than government alternatives.
  2. Many popular government policies sound appealing but often do real harm, and most market failures trace back to human irrationality rather than fundamental flaws in markets.
  3. The argument confronts mainstream assumptions and offers bold policy challenges—like revisiting Friedman's abolition ideas and accounting for social-desirability bias—to persuade unconvinced skeptics.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 2

Bet On It • 75 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. The non-aggression axiom says no one may initiate physical force or threats against another person or their property, and that same standard should apply to governments, so actions like war, conscription, or taxation are morally suspect if done by the state.
  2. Property rights follow from self-ownership and rules of initial acquisition (Locke-style mixing), which ground the right to transfer or trade what you own and thus justify voluntary exchange.
  3. Basing rights on vague appeals to "natural" law is philosophically weak and calling rights "absolute" is misleading, yet treating property rights as flexible building blocks helps explain many social rules (for example, false alarms or trespass can be framed as property violations).

“On Views Held Five Minutes Ago”

a newsletter for infovores. • 91 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
đź“– Philosophy Political Philosophy
  1. Ideas like trusting widespread beliefs or respected experts are not always fallacies; most people and credible authorities often get things right, so we should give some weight to tradition and past wisdom.
  2. Many supposedly brand-new views actually have historical precedents or private supporters whose evidence was lost or expressed differently, so novelty alone doesn’t prove correctness.
  3. Conservatism acts as a selection mechanism—slowing change, blocking harmful experiments, and stabilizing institutions—so it can both prevent bad ideas and help shape safe reforms, and it isn’t identical to current partisan politics.

A newsletter of despair

Striking 13 • 3234 implied HN points • 03 Nov 23
🌍 World Politics Political Philosophy
  1. It's vital to acknowledge the suffering of others, even when we feel safe and distant from conflicts around the world.
  2. In times of conflict, it's crucial to avoid falling into the trap of dehumanizing the 'other side' and making moral calculations about whose lives matter more.
  3. Seeking solutions in complex conflicts means embracing moral complexities, questioning binary thinking, and striving for practical, realistic steps towards peace.

How to learn about politics from two Democratic-leaning women in New York

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1268 implied HN points • 14 Aug 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Political Philosophy
  1. People often don't see themselves as wealthy, even when they clearly are. This can lead to a disconnect between how they view their own status and reality.
  2. Business owners can struggle with changing economic conditions, like tariffs, that impact their ability to succeed. Decisions made by politicians can have a real effect on small businesses.
  3. Not everyone is satisfied with the mainstream political options. Some feel disillusioned with both major parties and are searching for better alternatives.