Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
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I'm against voting entirely but people still vote so clearly I haven't decided.
Or in the words of Heinlein:
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?
Like I said, you decide.
Capitalism (and logic) says that a million men are extremely wise when they bear the entire cost of their own decisions. Now take those million men and allow them to unload the cost of their decisions on to other men and wisdom goes out the window. You will witness the effects of this when the 70+ trillion dollar unfunded retirement entitlements come due. Buh bye USA as we know it.
Yeah. I have to admit the stuff I learned in college is getting a little fuzzy at this point, but hearing the reasons why the USA move off the gold standard seemed to be pretty prudent when they were explained to me back then.
Vic
Elite Member
- Jun 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: Dissipate
I'm against voting entirely but people still vote so clearly I haven't decided.
Or in the words of Heinlein:
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?
Like I said, you decide.
Capitalism (and logic) says that a million men are extremely wise when they bear the entire cost of their own decisions. Now take those million men and allow them to unload the cost of their decisions on to other men and wisdom goes out the window. You will witness the effects of this when the 70+ trillion dollar unfunded retirement entitlements come due. Buh bye USA as we know it.
Are you saying that voters somehow don't bear the cost of their decisions?
Comments like 'Buh bye USA as we know it' are bullshit and you should know that. 2nd law, guy, it rules over all. Everything corrupts, everything falls apart, nothing is static. Predicting change is not an impressive feat, it's inevitable.
Look, what I'm saying is that those million men bear the entire cost of their own decisions NO MATTER WHAT. The real issue is should they have to bear the cost of other people's decisions, and if so how much and what do they get in return. It's a business deal like any other. Or at least, it can be.
Yaknow, for all your anarchist fervor, you still carry the illusion of authority. There ain't nobody here but us chickens. We the human race really are all alone and not one has the slightest clue what the hell is really going on.
Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
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They do but indirectly, in unseen ways and very much disproportionately.
Me predicting that the U.S. as a 'country' will collapse is like predicting that someone who sticks their arm into a hot oven will get burned. And yes, everything falls apart, even in business. But it is a matter of how it falls apart and how much falls apart. When costs are internalized and spread out over a huge number of individuals on an even playing field, when something falls apart it is generally going to have a rather small impact zone. When you put the fate of the entire financial system & economy in the hands of a few politicians, well you can just logically deduce the outcome of that.
So if it is a business deal how did I and millions of others get on the hook for a $700 billion bailout of investors that made bad decisions under a system that supplied them with the easy credit policies of Greenspan & Co.? That's some business deal. In any government system where some decide for all, things wind up looking less like a 'business deal' and more like a complete ripoff.
I have continuously maintained that authority is an illusion. Billions of people worship this illusion just as billions of people worship god(s). If no one has a clue what is going on then politicians and their advisers fall in that category as well.
I didn't say democracy was bad. I was agreeing with your statement that man is greedy. Man can be trusted to vote simply because he will vote for the survival of himself. The act of voting is nothing more than an act of self preservation where you vote for who is more likely to keep your current conditions if they are satisfactory, or improve them in some form or another. Though, just be this simple definition of voting, that man will more likely vote for his own personal good, than for the good of his brother is an argument against pure capitalism, since it showcases the greed and evilness of man, and defines why they cannot be trusted to govern there own person in a way that will advance society.
Not under the gov't as it's currently operating - the costs are unjustly and immorally being shifted onto future generations without their consent. Gov't benefits now, huge debts later! It's like taking out a big mortgage now and having the neighbor's kids pay for it.
Depends on whether they do what they should do, which is delink from the dollar and stop subsidizing our borrow and spend economy. They're the ones producing and saving, loaning us their savings to buy their products. We are running a 70 billion a month trade deficit, we have a negative savings rate. Borrowing to produce makes sense, borrowing to consume products from your lender doesn't, and as soon as they figure this out it's over. The Chinese are perfectly capable of buying all the goods they're currently exporting here. We are a DRAIN on the world economy right now, trading our paper and financial claims for actual enjoyable products that the world wants but is going without to keep America from falling under the weight of its own debt and lack of production.
Government is as good or as bad as the intent of those who hold power. Democracy increases the odds of the public being better represented than by small powerful interests.
Bush said it would be a lot easier if this were a dictatorship. That 'lot easier' part means the pressures that the fact it is a democracy brings on him to do something for the public.
Since there was a head caveman, human society has always had inequities between the few who hold concentrated power and the rest. Democracy is an attempt to reduce them.
If you can't recognize the difference between a private power holding too much power, and the power of the elected government who is intended to protect the public from such private powers - despite the fact that democracy can be corrupted when those private powers are able to influence who is elected - then you're going to have a hard time protecting the society from excessive concentrations of power and returning to the norm of dictatorship.
Of course not, but the government, while given representation over the people exists for either one of two purposes, both of which are related. The first being self preservation, and the second being power. If you get decent people elected who are not power greedy than you are fine, but when people who are power greedy are elected is when the people need to be able to defend themselves (hence the second amendment). The entire human existance can come down to two things for the most part, self preservation and greed. A year ago people were clamoring for deregulation so they can make more money, now they want regulation so they can be saved (either a job, a company, a life investment). People themselves do not make the government and government regulation *good*, the checks and balances we put in place make government regulation good.
And the government is run by the same inherently "not good" souls.
Not that I know what the answer is but your argument is fundamentally flawed.
I explained this mroe in depth further in the thread, you can read that response. The concept is not flawed due to the controls we put in place to battle our own evils.
government intervention is good as long as those who make up the government are not incompetent monkeys. Pure capitalism doesn't work... remember the industrial revolution?
- Aug 23, 2003
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At first I thought it was funny.
Now I just think it's sad that something I watched as a kid has more sense than the people in charge of The Fed and The Treasury.
Now I just think it's sad that something I watched as a kid has more sense than the people in charge of The Fed and The Treasury.
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