Yea, and I started my MBA shortly after Enron when ethics was a big push. Even then it took very little reading between the lines to see that the ethics talk was only about following the law as advised by company attorneys and keeping on top of PR.
2 Likes
If only Soviet Socialism had given us a decent example of an alternative⌠I guess business is business no matter what the political climate, and psychopaths will always claw their way to the immoral high-ground. 
1 Like
Any political party with enough popular support to have any real shot at winning the Presidency is, more or less by definition, a âmajor party.â If the Green Party or the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party ever succeed in getting a candidate into the White House it will be after they get enough people on board their platform to become a âmajor party,â not before.
2 Likes
Look to northern Europe for examples of countries with less misery and less inequity. Countries that donât treat their (non-wealthy) citizens with such contempt.
Granted they donât face identical challenges, but then which countries doâŚ
4 Likes
Iâm not interested in starting the next âthird partyâ, Iâm interested in starting the first âfour-hundred ninety-ninthâ party.
There are many factors which inspire US elections to split between two sides. They encourage people to not think about issues or performance so much, but rather, who everybody else seems to be voting for. This gets people to form opposing teams. If it was just a one-shot process of dozens of candidates having debates first, and then everybody choosing one, without any poll-watching or updates until the elections were finished, it would be a lot easier. And would, in all probability, not split into two sides. But then a minority would no longer be able to control who runs or gets elected.
Many news outlets arenât covering it; itâs not particularly newsworthy. If you look at the original pre-hype AP article, you can see that thereâs nothing very juicy there.
The point is to reduce the power of the incumbent parties. Not to âwinâ like a simpleton, but to improve the chances for more diversity and increase the level of representation in the government that we are voting.
Hey you unmotivated commie loving dirtbag, take some fantastic motivation for the 3.5 billion from 85 fantastic people. Get your priorities straight!
(edit) direct link to video
1 Like
Fucking hell, what a total cock! Kevin OâLeary that is (who ever he is), not you; your a house elf, so youâre alright with me.
If you want to increase diversity you have to win an election every once in a while. Third parties can and do win some elections, but all the ones we have now are still a long, long way from getting the White House. If they ever want to make it there theyâll have to convince voters to put them into a greater number of lower offices first, like how Green Party candidate Gayle McLaughlin successfully ran for mayor in a large city that is economically dependent on the local oil refinery. Those are the kinds of tangible victories that can have actual meaningful impact on weakening the two-party system.
At best voting for a third party in a Presidential election sends a message to the two major parties that the candidates theyâve put forth arenât connecting with a fair chunk of the electorate and that maybe next time they should nominate someone who isnât such a tepid centrist on the issues. In practice that hasnât worked out either.
Look at the 2000 election: Nader siphoned off a big chunk of the Democratic vote because candidate Gore wasnât running on a platform all that different from candidate Bushâs. (The difference between the two eventually became much more apparent, but that came after the election.) Theoretically this could have been a wake-up call for the Democratic party to field a candidate who was radically different from the Republicans in order to win back all those progressive votes. Instead, their 2004 nominee to unseat Bush was another rich white Christian son of a former military pilot who attended Yale, joined the Skull and Bones secret society, opposed gay marriage and and authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
2 Likes
Nah, the idea that businesses are beholden only to their shareholders and not to the broader community is a fairly recent one. I mean, sure, some people have acted like that for a long time, but those people were considered bad people if they were exposed. Iâm pretty sure that pretty much every human society outside of a recent slice of history has held a responsibility to your community as part of the foundation of ethics. And most of us still feel that responsibility even though they try to beat it out of us. In a cursory overview given by a few university ethics courses, I canât think of a philosophy who discussed ethics who didnât think that the good of the many was a big ethical deal - and philosophers are usually a pretty loony lot.
If you want a just society, part of achieving that is making sure no one gets so powerful that they can do the kinds of things that powerful people in America do. If you let that class exist, then it will be occupied by psychopaths who will do whatever it takes to get there and to stay there. If that class doesnât exist at all then the psychopaths have to settle for less because less is all there is. Ultimately, I wonder if Americaâs mega-rich are backing themselves into the same corner that Marie Antoinette did - they arenât giving themselves much of an out via free and fair elections (which are a tool that allows political leaders to leave office alive).
Soviet Socialism was just another example of extreme disparity, more like a monarchy or an oligarchy than an equal society. The power differential between Stalin and an ordinary citizen may have been the largest power differential ever seen in human history between a ruler and the people.
[quote=âeuansmith, post:50, topic:53686, full:trueâ]
Fucking hell, what a total cock! Kevin OâLeary that is (who ever he is), not you; your a house elf, so youâre alright with me.
[/quote]Well, if you are calling Kevin OâLeary a âtotal cockâ then clearly you are alright with me.
3 Likes
You canât win an election until you have âmore votes.â There will be a period where more votes donât result in a victory, and this period is called âgrowth.â
Sure, if your only measure is instant gratification.
Agreed on the game theory insight. As others have pointed out, this tends to ensure high order fuckery in service to the game.
Systems thinking has this observation:
All systems are perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
We canât vote our way out of a system designed to favor the establishment.
The rules to the game must change.
3 Likes
Sure we can, it just takes a really long time. If you broaden your timeline to a generation or two, then the seemingly small changes that happen with âestablishmentâ people add up to far more significant change - especially if there are loud people on the fringes fighting over decades to push positions on issues until they become mainstream.
If you expect to be able to radically alter government by voting for someone in the next election, youâre going to be disappointed your entire life.
Didnât Jebâs brother prove you could win an election with less votes than the opposition?
1 Like
But see the UK. In this parliament, they had a chance to vote for voting reform, but instead chose to keep the first past the post system that entrenches a 2 party (more or less) system. Now in a couple of months thatâs going to be shown to be totally not fit for purpose when the vote splinters, the results wonât reflect what the voters want and a hung parliament/minority government occurs.
The problem with voting for third party candidates in the United States, is that the system is rigged in favor of the two party system. At the moment, voting for third party candidates means you might as well not vote at all. Of course I would love for that to change, but voting for third party candidates isnât going to help. Youâd need a significant change that isnât going to happen anytime soon. So again, you might as well not vote at all.
Meanwhile when you donât vote, or vote for third party candidates; you get the GOP.
Now Iâm not saying I love the Democrats, but at least they want to govern, and at least they believe in science (namely that man made climate change is happening). You canât convince me at all that the GOP and Democrats are the same in that regard despite whatever problems the Democrats have.
1 Like
The issue with the pushback here is that American politics is basically the Yankees vs. The Lakers. Who will win, and which winning teamâs side are you on? Thatâs fine, youâve given up on there being anything but binary R/D politics playing various halves of the country against each other. Why would you vote for a loser, right? However, strategic voting necessarily requires you to vote against your own interests in one way or another. I would venture to say that if you vote R/D, you canât complain, since the only difference between them is who they choose as victims of their policies.
Insanity.
Or you can start by supporting third party candidates at the local level where they have an actual shot at winning elections, building up political clout gradually until such time that they have the resources and reputation to actually win national offices.
If _____ Party candidates can demonstrate that they make good mayors then theyâll have a better shot at winning a governorâs race. If they demonstrate success there theyâll have a real shot at winning the White House.
Thatâs the weirdest use of a football metaphor Iâve ever seen.
3 Likes
⌠but what will embiggen the smallest bush?
