Libertarians - to vote or not to vote?

This is an immensely contentious issue among libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, especially. Innumerable libertarians refuse to vote because "they don't want to impose their own views on others" or "because it gives power to goverment" etc.

I would love to separate myself from all the political systems on the planet. The problem is that they don't want to separate from me.

No matter what I think of the political systems that have the most power over my life I take an interest in, so I can fight back or prepare correspondingly.

For Americans, at this point in time, if you do not support Trump and Biden wins, you will suffer catastrophic consequences. There is no question about the fact that Biden would inflict enormous harm on the US and the entire planet if he became president, massively increasing taxation, expanding the government, launching new wars, causing global inflation, reducing or abolishing school choice, packing the Supreme Court to abolish the 2nd Amendment and freedom of speech.

Obama already messed up the planet. He pushed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, as president of Egypt. He destroyed Libya. He helped the fascist Mullah regime of Iran. He enabled Erdogan. He even harmed Switzerland by associating with the EU and the OECD to get us to abolish the bank client secret and to promote bank client data exchange. Would never have happened without Obama. So this matters enormously even to non-Americans.

But isn't voting pointless, as a single vote makes no difference? Aren't you just going to waste time by going to vote? Isn't there a huge risk that election fraud will completely wipe out your vote?

Sure, that's all true, which is kind of discouraging. But think about it this way: whatever conclusion YOU come to reflects what other people who think most like you will come to.

So if YOU decide that it is not worth voting, then millions of like-minded people will probably come to the same conclusion and won't vote. Hence the people who least think like you - and those who commit voter fraud - will win and gain power. Whether you like it or not, you will suffer the consequences.

Likewise, if you decide to go vote for the candidate whom you expect to cause the least amount of harm - or who might even improve things a little - millions of others who think like you will also go vote and thus might well swing the outcome your way.

So even if you would like to live in a libertarian society where no one gains power over others through voting, you still are better off by preventing the worst possible candidates from winning - in this case Biden & Harris.

Not voting is not a libertarian position. It's a lazy, cowardly position. In the US, voting for a 3rd party is the same as not voting. Prof.Randy Barnett - former Harvard professor and author of "The Structure of Liberty", a book that describes how a libertarian society might work - explained the problem with the libertarian party in this WSJ article in 2012:

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203922804578080684214526670
(content reproduced outside of paywall here: https://www.minds.com/SMetzeler/blog/randy-barnett-the-mistake-that-is-the-libertarian-party-1164715087336415232)

The constraints are such that a 3rd party simply cannot succeed, so libertarians should instead infiltrate one of the 2 existing big parties - and it looks like anti-liberty extremists - communists and Muslims - are in the process of taking over the Democrat party completely.

There's a famous saying that the current problems with government are the result of "voting for the lesser evil", but that's not true - it's other people voting for the greater evil and winning.