From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 01:40:44 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: Who Cares (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199811050539.XAA10683@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <v0401170ab26779ac144b@[206.189.103.230]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 12:39 AM -0500 11/5/98, Jim Choate wrote:

>If you're talking about the people who didn't vote, they're trying to keep
>from going under. Probably working two jobs, keeping the kids in school and
>out of trouble, saving for college, paying the house morgage off, etc. Who's
>in office won't make a whit of difference to any of that. It's irrelevant.

	That's crap.

	While I won't deny that some of the people who don't vote are in
the position you claim they are, their not voting has nothing to do with
their economic position, it has to do with the facts that:

	1) This is a mid-term election. Since it isn't a presidential
election, fewer really care to research the issues (which are fewer).

	2) We are currently in decent economic times, and as Terry Pratchet
noted on Men At Arms, (paraphrasing here) Most people don't really care
about democrazy, Equal Rights, or any of that, they just want tomorrow to
be exactly like today. So, as long as things are Fair to good (or great),
there won't be a lot of people intersted in voting, unless things look like
they are going to make a radical change, which leads us to the 3 big reason:

	3) As Jimmy notes, there usually isn't much of a difference between
one canidate and the other (outside of the Natural Law types), and those
canidates who _are_ different (Libertarians, Socialists &etc. ("reform"
types don't count, they really are for making tomorrow just like yesterday
& today, only they ADMIT it for the most part)) either don't get enough
votes to challenge the status quo, or if there is an issue that will
challenge the status quo, the number of voters tends to increase (to
varying degrees).
--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather nave, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com