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Ross Perot Has Died

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Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#131

Post by newfriend »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #89
madengr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He talked about a conspiracy by the Republicans to ruin his daughters wedding. I thought he was crazy at the time, but now I believe him. I remember his hour long presentations with the flip charts of how things were screwed up. Too bad he didn’t win. Instead we got the scumbag Clintons.

Bill Clinton left office with a 60+% approval rating, higher than Reagan when he left. Bill won both elections with 370+ electoral votes. I think the American people were mostly pleased.

Public opinion often has very little to do with what is actually good for the country.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#132

Post by codesushi42 »

Unfortunately the media establishment discredited Ross Perot by painting him as "nutty" and focusing on his mannerisms, rather than what he was saying. Seeing Bush's and Clinton's smirks during the debates are embarrassing, and did nothing but baselessly discredit the man and his ideas.

The media did the same to Ron Paul by framing him as a loon and someone to laugh at.

This same strategy by the mainstream media backfired miserably, and quite hilariously with the unfortunate election of Trump.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#133

Post by logfromblammo »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #54
protomyth wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the United States has an Electoral College for very specific reasons that are just as true today and they were when the Constitution was written. It is a shame that political parties formed in the first place, but George Washington couldn't have his way all the time. It has nothing to do with the voting. It had a lot to do with the who controlled information. I get the feeling with the internet of today he would…

The Electoral College was supposed to be chosen by their community to go meet and discuss the candidates. When they get appointed anonymously because they've pledged obedience to a political party, they've rejected their responsibility.

I'd argue that even the option to reject that responsibility was removed when the political parties put their presidential candidates' names on the ballot, instead of all the names of their electors.

It seems fundamentally fraudulent to do that. It makes it look like the popular vote actually matters in a presidential election. It's really a bunch of people you have never heard of, voting the way they were told to vote, while under threat of party excommunication if they reneg. There's more democracy to it whenever the Catholic cardinals elect a new monarch-for-life.

The original idea, to send representatives of the community in good standing to make their own decisions in the best interests of those communities, was well-intentioned. It isn't the modern elector's fault that their role has been nullified and obviated by political undermining.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#134

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

gdubs wrote: post #2

Many remember Perot as the goofy rich guy who ran for president in 92, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture that was later acquired by Apple and transformed computing for the next decade. Interface Builder and the NextStep core libraries were arguably one of the biggest catalysts of the iPhone App ecosystem. In many ways iOS exists because of NeXT. So while it was…

EDS - a large company in the 1990s - should also get a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#135

Post by [deleted] »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #128
influx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say he was right: "We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but…

If you can build a car for cheaper elsewhere, why wouldn't you? If your goal is to keep people gainfully employed, well how about working on improving their skills so that a laborer in a developing country isn't more productive than they are?

[deleted]

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#136

Post by libria »

cobbzilla wrote: post #127
defen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't he also "disappear" (from the public eye) during a crucial point in the campaign? My memory of this is hazy as I was only 12 at the time, but I recall my father being interested in his candidacy, but then around July or August he withdrew from the campaign. Then re-entered in September or October, so he came across as "flaky".

He dropped out of the race to get away from bad press, the establishment players kinda forced him out with dirt-digging. I think he thought it would help, but when he re-entered he was worse off. I also remember him doing well in the debates, but his VP pick, Admiral Stockdale, badly flubbed the VP debate.

Yeah, he was pretty disconnected. You're not making the grade if even Dan Quayle is chuckling at you.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#137

Post by espeed »

bzbz wrote: post #71
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,…

Look at the theorem you linked. What is its point? Its “dictator” exists in majority vote as well, and is merely anyone who has not determined their vote yet in a close election, e.g. the “swing states.” Correct me if I’m misreading, but how does this favor majority vote over ranked voting?

It just says 2 choices work -- like in binary decision tree, you can always choose the best of two -- but with 3 or more choices, you lose this property -- sort-of like in rock-paper-scissors [1], we can all agree that...

  1. ROCK      is better than scissors
  2. SCISSORS  is better than paper
  3. PAPER     is better than rock 
 
  ?? PAPER     is better than rock ?? 
  ?? ROCK      is better than rock ??

     DOES NOT COMPUTE
This in-transitive loop is called Holonomy [2], and it Does Not Compute in the classical sense -- it can put you in a state where it's impossible to win the majority vote -- no one can win the popular vote and so no one agrees who the winner is, ever -- and thus there can be no mandate in an intransitive relation [3].

See Eric Weinstein discuss this concept in the context of Gauge Theory on Joe Rogan's podcast #1203: https://podscribe.app/feeds/http-joeroganexpjoeroganlibsynpr...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock–paper–scissors

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_relation#Intransiti...

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#138

Post by melling »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #128
influx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say he was right: "We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but…

If you can build a car for cheaper elsewhere, why wouldn't you? If your goal is to keep people gainfully employed, well how about working on improving their skills so that a laborer in a developing country isn't more productive than they are?

The workers in the cheaper country don’t need to be as productive.

If you’re paying them 5x less in total compensation, and they’re half as productive, you’re still better off with the cheaper labor.

No healthcare, no pensions, no environmental laws will save a company lots of money.

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#139

Post by adventured »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #134
gdubs wrote: post #2

Many remember Perot as the goofy rich guy who ran for president in 92, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture that was later acquired by Apple and transformed computing for the next decade. Interface Builder and the NextStep core libraries were arguably one of the biggest catalysts of the iPhone App ecosystem. In many ways iOS exists because of NeXT. So while it was…

EDS - a large company in the 1990s - should also get a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems

And Perot Systems, which was sold for $3.9 billion to Dell. It had 20,000 employees and $2.8 billion in revenue by 2008, before the acquisition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perot_Systems

Re: Ross Perot Has Died

#140

Post by melling »

newfriend wrote: post #131
akhilcacharya wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Clinton left office with a 60+% approval rating, higher than Reagan when he left. Bill won both elections with 370+ electoral votes. I think the American people were mostly pleased.

Public opinion often has very little to do with what is actually good for the country.

GDP and jobs grew more under Clinton than Reagan too.

They were definitely good years for the economy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-01/rankin...

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