“Local lessons taken from national politics,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, November 25-December 1, 2016, p. 25.

What can we learn locally from the national election?

Whatever your personal opinions, facts should have the last word. Donald Trump is the President-Elect because enough people supported him to pass the 270 Electoral College votes even if not the popular vote. What can we expect from a businessman taking over the toughest job in the world?

To begin with, he wouldn’t be the first. Since 1900, there are at least eight bona fide entrepreneurs who became presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and the two Bushes. (Prior, Entrepreneur 2/15/16) 

If we go back further, we can find many others who were farmers and traders, in short, plantation (and slave) owners. Perhaps not a qualifying measure for political success, but the engagement in commerce should not be considered an impediment.

Second, our university system endorses the view that we can train leaders (to organize their companies and communicate well), and that once they climb high enough up the corporate ladder they can serve in political offices. We can think of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, our very own governor John Hickenlooper, and the two Romneys as governors of Michigan and Massachusetts.

Third, if we appreciate our political system as pragmatic rather than ideological, it makes sense to appreciate the skill-set of businesspeople when applied to the affairs of the state (or city). Governance, in short, is about finding out what people want, compromising on the means to accomplished these wants, and then proving one’s mettle with results.

To be sure, for all the greatness that business-leaders can bring to politics, there are many critical assessments over their success. David Davenport (Forbes 6/22/16) explains that context matters, that measuring short-term success is different from long-term policy consequences, and that after all ideology does inspire the popular imagination. 

We’ll have to wait and see whether President Trump will be successful or not. Only time will tell what he can accomplish in an environment where one’s whims don’t translate into law, and where the complexity of the decision-making process is a bit more overwhelming than when running your own casino or hotel.

It’s worth noting that when the economy is doing well, credit can be given to the business community, so in those times business leaders seem attractive as political leaders: if they can do it for their companies, they can do it for the rest of the country.

Likewise, when the economy is not doing well, as we have seen in the aftermath of the Great Recession and its steady but slow recovery, we look for billionaires, from the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet to Mark Cuban to offer solutions to our ailing economy. This mindset surely helped propel Trump to the presidency.

Whether the economy is booming or bust, salvation in the hands of entrepreneurs is believed to be the only way to heaven on earth. Does it work well in small cities, like Colorado Springs?

The first “strong mayor,” Steve Bach, was lauded as a businessman who would approach the city’s dormant economy as a marketing guru, bringing jobs from around the country and revving the economic engines of the city. 

After four years, Bach accomplished little on the economic horizon; he’ll be best remembered for the acrimony he fomented between the Mayor’s office and City Council. With this in mind, the wisdom of the day was to elect John Suthers as an experienced lawyer/politician who will bring harmony, if not economic progress.

Instead of economic stimulus, the current mayor’s personal views about the legalization of marijuana—a Constitutional Amendment that passed, no less—have overshadowed both our cherished democratic principle of majority rule and a pragmatic approach to the economic benefits of legalizing pot (as seen in booming Denver).

Regardless of how you feel about pot, isn’t it awkward that the highest-ranking official of the city travels outside the state (Arizona) to speak against the legalization of pot instead of traveling there and elsewhere to bring businesses to the city? 

Bach the commercial real-estate broker was unqualified to manage a large city operation like ours; Suthers the politician seems too beholden to an ideology to listen to the people and make the city less “lame,” as some millennia call it.

Perhaps what we need is people who are not military retirees who find politics a nice hobby, but entrepreneurs who run large companies and have the experience of solving complex problems. The only two in CS that come to mind are Philip Anschutz and Perry Sanders.

Between the two, Sanders seems to care more about the well-being of the city and should therefore be recruited to become the next mayor of his adopted home; he has a proven track-record!

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com

“The majority should incorporate minority’s ideas,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, May 29-June 4, 2015, 23.

The Majority Should Incorporate Minority Ideas

Given the election results, John Suthers (63), former Attorney General for the state of Colorado, beat Mary Lou Makepeace (73), a former councilwoman and mayor, by a wide margin: 68% to 32%. What do these numbers tell us?

As the business community knows all too well, marketing hype is one thing, actual results may tell a different story. Doubling your sales sounds impressive only when you forget to disclose that you sold only two cars last month.

So, let’s dig one level deeper into the election numbers. To begin with, there are about 439,886 residents in Colorado Springs (official site, 2013). Not all residents are eligible to vote: those under the age of 18 account (about 25% of them), so that leaves about 329,914. We must deduct the number of felons and foreigners (legal or illegal), so we can assume about 300,000 in round numbers.

How many of these are both eligible and registered to vote? Without an official answer, we can estimate about 75%, which would give us 247,435. What we do know is that about 39% of those actually voted, 95,502. 

This also means that only 21.7% of the total population voted. Of that group, 68% chose Suthers (64,941 voters). If you consider all the residents of Colorado Springs whose mayor he’ll be, then about 15% actually endorsed him.

In case you think that this situation is unique to our city, the same percentages in round numbers are true of presidential elections when only about 146 million Americans are registered out of a population that exceeds 300 million.

The point, of course, is not that the new mayor or any other elected official hasn’t been properly elected; only that the rhetorical claims for public support and mandate are greatly exaggerated given our current democratic system of election.

But there is another point about the “wisdom of the crowds,” so named and popularized by James Surowiecki in 2004. According to this theory, the wisdom of the many (the majority) is greater than that of the few (however expert they may be).

This view was illustrated in a TED talk by Lior Zoref in 2012 when he asked the audience to estimate the weight of an ox. Of 500 entries, the lowest guess was 308 pounds, the highest 8,000, and the average was 1,792. The actual weight was 1,795. Pretty impressive!

This live experiment has been used to argue that if we polled lots of people, no matter the issue, their collective wisdom would exceed or be more accurate than that of a few CEOs or politicians.

Would that be true of political decisions, say, about the future of the City of Champions or the oversight of city-owned utilities? The public will always want to pay as little in taxes as possible while maintaining a high level of city services. Public officials will be the bearers of bad news: the less tax revenue, the less service.

Not only is there an inherent conflict between residents’ aversion to paying higher taxes and city officials who wish to ensure services are delivered, but there is another problem to consider. What if following the so-called wisdom of the crowd, the majority, leads us to adopt the lowest common denominator? 

Instead of making difficult choices that may upset some in order to ensure long-term viability, we follow short-term sentiments and face future disasters. Scientists and innovators, entrepreneurs and thinkers, worry less about what everyone thinks in order to forge ahead into uncharted territories. 

It was the British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill who cautioned us in the 19^th century against the tyranny of the majority. For him, it was important to listen to and account for minority voices, those whose insights may shed light on issues the majority may overlook.

A similar sentiment was expressed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, also in the 19^th century, about “herd mentality” and the ways in which crowds can be swayed in one direction or another, especially when a charismatic leader pushes an ideology.

Coming back to mayor Suthers, yes, he has a mandate, but it’s a thin one. Yes, his proposals were endorsed by more than twice as many people who endorsed Makepeace’s. But as we know from voting patterns in our city, retired voters (military and others) vote in greater proportion to young ones. What do young residents want?

Would legalizing recreation marijuana sales within city limits have the same effect as in Denver? It’s not about “pot-heads,” but about an image of open-mindedness that invites newcomers, as Denver has successfully done. If we want to balance the city military-dependency with startups, listening to minority (voting) voices might help.

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com