Recently I've been seeing and hearing a lot of talk about Gary Johnson, a third-party libertarian, who is running for president. On the surface, he looks like a cool guy: he supports legalization of pot, personal freedom, and... uhm, those are the only positives I have. Don't get me wrong though, I think it's awesome that there are third-party candidates trying to get their foot in the door for the election. Our system has become too focused on a two-party system which leads to binary thinking and results in people electing the lesser of two evils. But that's an article for another time. Instead, I want to talk about why voting for Gary Johnson could be one of the worst mistakes you'll make in the 2016 election.

Gary Johnson is a libertarian. The founding ideas of this party are that the free market should dictate government policies and social welfare. This makes sense on a surface level: consumers are the ones who buy products and makes companies profitable therefore, companies must act in accordance with the demands of the people. Except, not really, when people talk about "the market correcting itself" they really mean recessions. When people want to see something change in how corporations act, they do so with their dollar (not buying from that company) which causes them to go out of business, go bankrupt, and allow for another company to take its place with some new, shiny alternative. This creates an extremely volatile economy that hurts the people more than it helps them. The entire philosophy behind free market economics being self-correcting and helpful to the people is, to put it simply, false.

But that's not my only problem with Gary Johnson. I could make a super cut of all my "favorite" moments of his clear lack in understanding racism in America, his praise for the Koch brothers (even though they've spearheaded our oil first mentality that's caused conflict in the middle east, and global warming to explode in the past few decades), or that he thinks being poor in America is because you CHOOSE to be a victim. But anyone can google his statements and his voting records to see that he isn't fit to create the "change" he wants to create. The man is unfit to fill the role of a third-party candidate and his policies are filled to the brim with flaws and counter-productive policies that will ultimately harm the American public.

But hey, at least we know he's good at sports.