From: philip@reed.edu (Philip Moore)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Ross Perot
Summary: I doo I doo
Keywords: pragmatic election strategy
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:59:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR

In article <rdippold.702726595@cancun> rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold) writes:
>philip@reed.edu (Philip Moore) writes:
>>Perot has the necessary and sufficient funding to win the presidency.  
>>Marrou doesn't. (Period)
>
>Right.
>
>
>>Perot doesn't have a national well organized political party to help get
>>him elected, or candidates running for Congressional seats to help effect
>>necessary changes in the government once he is elected.
>>Marrou does.
>
>Okay.
>
>
>>A pragmatic allegiance (called a coalition in parliamentary governments) is
>>the ONLY WAY to dislodge the Republicrats.  
>
>>Anectdotal stories about Perot's off the cuff comments regarding violent
>>neighborhoods may make your libertarian ideologies flare into full flame,
>>but are you willing to sacrifice any hope of ever really making a difference
>>by directing your rhetorical skills against a fellow challenger of the
>>status quo?
>
>See, the trouble is we don't like where he'd take the status quo.
>He's not for making government less powerful and intrusive, he's just
>more making it more efficient.  If all Libertarians cared about was
>winning elections, they'd have allied with one of the major parties
>long ago, most likely the Republicans (because social policies vary
>within parties more than fiscal policies).
>
>It would also seriously damage the LP credibility.  You may not agree
>with the LP platform, but you can believe that when a Libertarian
>candidate says that he/she is for downsizing government, cutting
>spending, lowering taxation, and fighting for individual freedoms that
>he/she actually means it.  For it to get involved so closely with such
>an anti-libertarian like Perot would be the end.
>-- 

I do like the libertarian platform, I do agree with the libertarian platform.
I like it so much in fact that I am profoundly frustrated with the lack of
any libertarian success in getting elected.  Perot is my greatest hope exactly
for this reason.  It is clear that Perot has been profoundly affected by 
professor Alchian's theory of corporate ownership.  When the stockholders in
a company stop paying attention to what the company managers are doing, or
are systematically excluded from voting their influence if their money is
invested through a pension or mutual fund, then company managers change the
way they run the company.  First they shorten the time horizons of their 
decisions and concentrate on immediate profitability rather than long term 
health because instead of millions of little shares that may or may not
like the decisions, the corporation's capital is controlled by a few money
managers whose fudiciary responsibility may actually require them to divest
from a company that sacrifices immediate profits for long term health through
R&D and modernizations.  

This is what drives Perot's democratic philosophy.  The owners of this largest
corporation in the history of the world have stopped paying attention to what
their employees are doing.  Our general elections are analogous to job 
interviews.  How many companies would survive for long if the way the owners
ran the company was to interview potential managers every two years, hire them
strictly on the basis of their resumes (position papers) and the interview
(debates and appearances), and then completely ignore them for two years while
they ran the company.  This is why Perot is less interested in presenting his
own views on the problems facing our country.  To his philosophy his own
opinions are not the ones that matter.  He thinks his job as president is to
solicit, create, or discover possible solutions to the problems and then
present those options to the stockholders for a vote.  The stockholders may
express their opinions through his electronic town hall to their proxy
representatives who will theoretically vote on the solution we find most
appealing.

Since I find libertarian solutions so many of our problems the most rational
and logical, it necessarily follows that at least some of these solutions
will be chosen through this mechanism.  When the sound logic of libertarian
theory is demonstrated then maybe libertarians will start to get elected. 
The libertarians will certainly have more influence with Perot than with the
alternative.
-- 
They did not call it the career politician office, they did not call it the
public relations office, they did not call it the wealthy elite office;
no, when the drafters of our Constitution set down in words the foundations of
our great country they spoke to the voters of the 1992 Presidential election.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc