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Ross Perot Has Died

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Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#91

Post by BuckRogers »

refurb wrote: post #13
sequoia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This debate footage is so remarkable to watch in 2019, for several reasons. 1: They allowed a third party candidate in a general debate 2: The candidate is able to take breaths & even pause without someone cutting jumping in, allowing him to make an complete point 3: No one is talking over him while he talks. Sure the candidates are tougher to manage in 2019 (especially after Trump changed the game in '16), but the d…

Ross Perot was a very significant third party candidate, which makes his appearance on the debates much more understandable. Ross got 19% of the popular vote in '92, which was just shy of half of what Clinton and Bush got. Pretty remarkable showing honestly. Most 3rd party candidates never get more than a few percent.

My dad voted for Perot, as did I in my school's mock election at the time. He regretted it in the end, attributing his own vote to doing nothing more than causing Bush to lose, but there's never shame in voting for who you think is the best candidate for the job.

In a nation of 300+ million people, having two realistic choices isn't remotely enough to cover everyone's viewpoint. Two parties is much easier for people with money to bribe. It's a good setup for average folks to lose in class warfare (and those of us who work, have indeed lost). Even the convenience store has more than just Pepsi and Coke.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#92

Post by michaelmrose »

protomyth wrote: post #44
davidw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EC and ranked choice voting are two different, and compatible things. You could have RCV within each state, for instance.

Ranked choice might work for parliaments, but it would just create unwelcome surprises in the US. I cannot help but think what happened in a sport (NASCAR) with its switch from winner take all to a series of rankings would mean if it were something as important as voting. You might find sports is not a serious argument, but this is the US and the reaction shows some tendencies towards other aspects of life.

It's not that its not a serious argument its that it is not yet made. Please expand on that.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#93

Post by slowmovintarget »

tunesmith wrote: post #78
espeed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want third parties, you need ranked choice voting or something similar. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem : "When voters have three or more distinct alternatives (options), no ranked voting electoral system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide (complete and transitive) ranking while also meeting a specified set of criteria: unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency,…

Arrow's is one of those theorems that is useful for its own purposes, but completely abused in a pop culture sense. All it proves is that you can't simultaneously meet those particular criteria, but it doesn't establish that those criteria are required in any sense. The IIA criteria is especially problematic. A lot of vote arguments comes down to a lack of consensus on what we're even trying to solve for. For instanc…

> but they're extremely passionate. Who should win?

Being angry, even in a constructive fashion, shouldn't merit extra consideration. A vote is a signal of magnitude 1. Anything else means a person who is angrier gets more consideration. Now we have a market incentivizing anger, which is not how things are supposed to work.

My opinion: lack of consensus on that is caused by lack of critical thinking.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#94

Post by toomuchtodo »

baud147258 wrote: post #15
secfirstmd wrote: post #9

If you are looking for a contrast with a typical tech bro modern day CEO leadership I highly recommend the book "On wings of Eagles." It describes Ross Perots efforts to gather a mix of staff and hired guns to go into Iran and break some of his staff out of prison during the Iranian Revolution. They actually succeeded. Partly crazy, partly courageous...only in America!

I remember reading that book. In the end, I don't think they had to break people out of prison, but they still successfully extracted his staff from Iran

I think I'll add, "Are you willing and able to extract me from a country I'm located in (in the course of our work) while a revolution is actively in progress?" to my list of interview questions.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#95

Post by drawkbox »

josho wrote: post #17
sequoia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This debate footage is so remarkable to watch in 2019, for several reasons. 1: They allowed a third party candidate in a general debate 2: The candidate is able to take breaths & even pause without someone cutting jumping in, allowing him to make an complete point 3: No one is talking over him while he talks. Sure the candidates are tougher to manage in 2019 (especially after Trump changed the game in '16), but the d…

I no longer watch debates because I've realized that the broadcasters prefer the format you mentioned. They prefer it because it's more entertaining and that drives ratings which drives revenue. The media conglomerates are not interested in substantive policy discussions.

Ross Perot was also mad at that even with the access he had. So he did 30-minute commercial blocks [1] and used them as campaign ads/media/airtime during primetime to make up for time on the debates and how the two party system blocks out other parties and candidates.

[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?34277-1/perot-campaign-commerc...

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#96

Post by mikestew »

Theodores wrote: post #26
uses wrote: post #18

What a quaint time when the oddball outsider candidate was a mentally stable human being calmly explaining ideas in a way anybody could understand.

Something about your comment makes me compare and contrast with the oddball outsider who did make it into the White House - the current occupant. At the time there were many people who cursed Perot for splitting the two party vote, however he did get 18.9% and that is pretty incredible considering how entrenched attitudes were at the time for voting Democrat to make sure the Republican didn't win and vice-versa. I ha…

Even the idea of a third party candidate was ahead of its time.

That time being 1832? Or any other election after which a third party candidate had an influence over the outcome?

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#98

Post by 5trokerac3 »

twoodfin wrote: post #21
uses wrote: post #18

What a quaint time when the oddball outsider candidate was a mentally stable human being calmly explaining ideas in a way anybody could understand.

"Mentally stable" does not really capture the American electorate's impression of Perot's candidacy in 1992. He was significantly damaged by his choice to drop out for a few weeks in the middle of the summer—while leading in the polls!—blaming shadowy Republican operatives for threatening his daughter's wedding.

That doesn't sound wholly unbelievable, from a 2019 point of view.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#99

Post by Theodores »

mikestew wrote: post #96
Theodores wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about your comment makes me compare and contrast with the oddball outsider who did make it into the White House - the current occupant. At the time there were many people who cursed Perot for splitting the two party vote, however he did get 18.9% and that is pretty incredible considering how entrenched attitudes were at the time for voting Democrat to make sure the Republican didn't win and vice-versa. I ha…

Even the idea of a third party candidate was ahead of its time. That time being 1832? Or any other election after which a third party candidate had an influence over the outcome?

The current incumbent isn't really Republican, he was a Democrat supporter until recently, has never held elected office and ran on the Republican ticket just because he had the money to do so. He is a genuine outsider.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#100

Post by archgoon »

sampo wrote: post #75
davidw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Italy for a number of years and am not enamored of proportional systems for several reasons: * Small parties sometimes have disproportionate power in coalitions. * Coalitions tend to not be real stable, leading to unstable governments that can't get much done (ok, for some this is a feature, but for some things, I think it isn't). * People matter, but with a proportional system, the party picks the candida…

> I lived in Italy I don't know, Italy might be chaotic under any system. What do you think of e.g. Germany, Denmark?

As an American; I'd generally expect 'chaotic' to be a more likely outcome than the U.S. becoming more like Germany or Denmark.
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