"I've heard many times that although democracy is an imperfect system, we somehow always muddle through. The message I want to give you, after long and hard reflection, is that I'm very much afraid it is no longer possible to muddle through. The issues we deal with do not lend themselves to that kind of treatment. Therefore, I conclude that our democracy must grow up. I'm not going to give you a magic recipe on how that will happen—I wish I had one—but I offer some thoughts that I hope will stimulate your thinking.
What's principally lacking on the federal scene, it seems to me, is the existence of respected, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary teams that could at least tell us what is possible and something about the pluses and minuses of different solutions. Take energy, for instance. What I would love to see established, with the National Academies or any other mechanism to confer respectability, is a team that will ... say, 'Okay, there are lots of suggestions around, and most of them won't work. But here are six different plans, any one of which is possible. We'll tell you what each one costs, what's good about it, what's bad about it, how dangerous it is, and what its uncertainties are.' At least each option would be a well-integrated, clearly thought-out plan. I do not trust democracy to try to put together such a plan by having each committee of Congress choose one piece of it. Suppose Congress designed an airplane, with each committee designing one component and an eleventh-hour conference committee deciding how the pieces should be put together. Would you fly on that airplane? I am telling you we are flying on an energy plan, an inflation plan, and so on that are being put together in exactly that way.
Unfortunately the original 1980 article that this was excerpted from is paywalled.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Geezer on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:02PM
Respected, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary teams are wrought of the same material as the politicians, and subject to to same failings of moral character and ethical thinking. The 20th Century's first technocrat "brain trusts" hatched Stalin's 5-Year Plans, and we all can see how that turned out. Technocracies are no better than PTA meetings for solving problems with political implications.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01 2017, @05:02PM
I'd say the same thing, but from a different perspective: our elected officials are not interested in what's the best plan overall, least dangerous, least costly, in short: they don't care about doing the "right" or "best" thing. What they are interested in is what will get them re-elected, what will get them financial support, what will get them personal power, wealth and fame. It's just a happy coincidence that this sometimes coincides with what is good for the country overall, and that is why our system has succeeded as well as it has.
We are muddling through with a far from perfect system, that we are roughly on top of the modern world isn't a statement about how good our system is, it's a statement about how bad the competing systems are - and luck, so much is just sheer dumb luck.
If we want to improve our chances of staying roughly on top of the world, we really should endeavor to improve our systems, luck swings both ways, and we're overdue for some bad luck, historically speaking.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:32PM
This is exactly it. Look at the last US election. One of the candidates wanted the best thing for the US (whether it would have worked or not is up for debate, but I think Bernie Sanders intentions were never in doubt), while others wanted either power or fame. Look how well that worked out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @08:39AM
He would never have supported Clinton and would either have requested to be put back on the Independent ballot, or agreed to the Green party offer and joined up with Stein to offer a third party solution.
While I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for most of the election cycle, that choice eliminated any respect I could have had for the man, just like the DNC/Hillary not shifting to support of other candidates when the full brunt of her controversies began unravelling at the beginning to middle of the year.
At the same time I hold the Republicans accountable for letting Trump win rather than at least voting for the libertarian candidate and actually showing the party that they would rebel rather than people a 'Republican Rebel' who flipflopped parties more than a hollywood movie star flipflops sexual identity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:48AM
I don't agree with all of Scott Adams' political tripe, but his bit about persuasion is pretty good - persuasion is most effectively accomplished with:
1) Identity (does your target identify with you, are you "one of their people"?)
2) Analogy (can you make an analogy that the target "gets" at a gut level?)
3) Reason (logic, data, facts, proof)
The first type of persuasion "Trumps" the other two combined. The second type is o.k. and can strengthen the first, and the third type is basically useless in political transactions (popularity contests decided in voting booths.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:06PM
Term Limits solve much of this money grubbing of elected officials.
Politicians and baby diapers should be changed often. And for the same reason.
Still,,,
Perhaps there should be a technocratic branch of the legislature, with "divisions" that report to specific legislative comitties.
The members of such comitties may not serve more than one term, and no company can have a representative in the same technocrat-division for more than one term without a two term haiatus, as a means to attempt to control corporate take over.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:14PM
Your plan will ensure that nobody with any experience will be making the decisions. That's not a good plan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:18PM
Why isn't it a good plan? Not all experience is good. Most of our politicians have lots of experience in being corrupt, authoritarian pieces of trash, but that isn't beneficial at all. I would rather have inexperienced people who would at least attempt to stand up for my freedoms.
Also, just because there are term limits on a particular political position doesn't mean that you won't have experienced people filling that position; there are plenty of types of political offices (governor, congressperson, representative, president, tons of local political positions, etc.), so politicians who have experience in other offices could move to a different type of office.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:27PM
The corruption primarily comes from the fund-raising and the ability to work for those firms after leaving office. Term limits don't really do much about that, the full solution is to bar public officials from taking jobs with companies that were lobbying them previously. As well as removing all the private funds from campaign finance.
That should address most of the problems involved.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday January 02 2017, @01:31AM
The corruption primarily comes from the fund-raising and the ability to work for those firms after leaving office. Term limits don't really do much about that,
Term Limits do more than you think.
They really do about all you can do in a free country. People should not be punished for life just because they served a couple two year terms as a congressman. Its not reasonable to restrict people from working in their field of expertise simply because they served in congress.
By assuring that a no one can have a "career as a politician" by limiting them to a small fixed number of terms you also reduce the value of that person to a company that might hire them as payback for favors done while they were in office. There's not that many favors you can do in 4 or 6 years.
I get it: You want fine grained control over the details of the life of anyone who ever takes a government job. Yet you rebel when anyone else insists on that level of control over your life. We don't live in that kind of world.
It is sufficient to prevent any elected office from being a permanent career. You don't get to run anyone else's life.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 02 2017, @04:36AM
Fancy term restrictions just make it harder for small time players to game the system. The pros can provide a string of ringers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday January 03 2017, @07:47PM
The pros can provide a string of ringers.
Those ringers still have to get elected. The old plan of it being someone's "Turn" is out the window.
It was Hubert Humphrey's Turn.
It was Bob Dole's Turn.
It was John McCain's Turn.
It was Hillary Clinton's Turn.
The electorate is not buying into that any more.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03 2017, @08:40PM
48% of the electorate voted with their gut this time (I can't get over the Brexit analogy... sure, you know it's going to hurt, but you just want to, so F-it and vote for the obnoxious egomaniac, because you like him better than the career pol.)
I saw some kind of meme about "W was so bad that we elected a black to replace him, so in 2020 we should be ready for a hispanic lesbian who used to be an exotic dancer."
Truth is, to get elected (not just CinC, but any big office) you need backing, backing to pay for advertising, backing to pay for polling of the electorate, backing to staff the strategists who use that polling data to craft the positions that are most likely to keep you in a winning position come election day, backing to travel where needed when needed and book the venues to get the audiences and the media coverage. You won't get enough backing to get elected CinC without some quid-pro-quo, unless you're Perot, Trump, Gates, etc. and even they need some things that money can't buy, but backing from the "usual players" can.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @06:45PM
Most of the arguments for term limits are actually arguments against democracy.
The real problem with Democracy in the USA is the public education system is bad.
[1] Having the same party gerrymandering/rigging things to keep winning in certain areas and just having to change candidates doesn't really solve things that much does it?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 06 2017, @10:19PM
They shut down the OTA (Office for Technology Assessment) which was supposed to supply the science-based advice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:17PM
We got the bad luck already. Haven't you been paying attention? His name is Donald Trump. That's enough bad luck to last us quite a while if the gambler's fallacy is to believed.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday January 02 2017, @01:17AM
Never say "How could things get any worse?"
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 02 2017, @04:42AM
The bad side of Trump won't really show until 3-5 years from now. Right now we've just got the anticipation and uncertainty. And, all in all, he's not really out to wreck America.
A Yellowstone eruption, that would be bad luck. A nuke going off as part of a domestic training exercise, that would be bad luck (and almost happened more than once already.) Economic downturn due to bull-headed negotiation style - that's not bad luck, that's outright mismanagement, Trump may bring us this if he actually follows through on his swagger - and that's the unknown, how much is just hot air - hopefully quite a bit of it is just that: bark without bite.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:00PM
you can say the same about USA, it didn't turn out well for most
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:32PM
The 20th Century's first technocrat "brain trusts" hatched Stalin's 5-Year Plans,
Are you fucking kidding me?? "Brain Trusts"? First thing that was done at time of Stalin was to purge his perceived enemies, which included the entire intellectual class and replace them by frighted yes-man that did nothing but be yes-man that tried to survive in a cut-throat inner-circle. So before you talk about "brain trusts" and "Stalin" or even "Lenin", give your head a shake.
If you want to look at technocratic governments, look at Canada. Or Germany. Or France (unless they elect that right-wing nut).
Turkey *had* a technocratic government too, until last 15 years and especially now, as it is purged and replaced by yes-man and theocracy.
And finally, Russia, which is currently the opposite of technocratic government. And this is what US is now going towards since at least George W.'s days and when Tea Party took over the Republican Party. A brief reprieve forced by Obama, but that is snapping back faster to Stalinist/Trumpist style than you can say "5 year plan". Maybe US needs to wake up that they elected Stalin-like man.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:02PM
Maybe US needs to wake up that they elected Stalin-like man.
Won't happen. One thing I've noticed about strong man types is that when they inevitably don't do what people elected them to do, the people just double down. Obviously, if the strong man didn't succeed, it must be because his enemies are just that powerful.
Not sure if the USA can wake up from this. There's too much stupid, and stupid won. When stupid doesn't work, stupid just fights harder.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @03:52AM
When stupid doesn't work, stupid just fights harder.
Don't fight stupid directly. Let it fight itself.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @06:23AM
The problem with that is, stupid has gotten so big and so powerful and monopolized so many resources that in its fighting itself it's going to kill a bunch of us little people as collateral. Unless and until we get these bastards on both sides of the aisle onto the notional B Ark and aim it at the Sun, there's gonna be fallout, and we're gonna eat it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @09:57AM
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." (Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.) Friedrich Schiller
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:09PM
The problems with this include:
1. Who decides who is "respected" and "non-partisan" enough to be on these teams? If I want to exclude a solution, all I need to do is declare those proposing said solution hyperpartisan crackpots, and suddenly they aren't relevant anymore, even if they're right.
2. Who pays for the respected, non-partisan, interdisciplinary teams? Whoever is paying the bills is likely to have a strong influence on whatever solutions they come up with.
3. Some political problems aren't a matter of expertise, but a matter of simple self-interest. For example, generally speaking almost everybody wants government largesse to go to themselves, and the tax bill to go to somebody else.
4. The US government has such groups, from the Brookings Institute to the Council of Economic Advisors to the RAND Corporation. It doesn't seem to help much, because the politicians hear from them what they want to hear.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:33PM
Aristarchus does, he's such a genius, if he doesn't know something, nobody does.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:06PM
Amazing! I was just going to suggest this! I am sure you are all familiar with the concept of the "Philosopher-King" that Plato suggesting in the Republic? A technocrat dictatorship is just a modern watered-down version of the same thing. I, for one, would welcome myself as our new overlord, and promise only to use my absolute power for good. Srsly!
On the other hand, every time I have seen this attempted, it has not ended well. So I keep in mind the words of wise men. "Scientia est potentia" Sir Francis Bacon ("knowledge is power"), and Lord Acton: "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." On the internet, someone named "anonymous" connected the dots: "Knowledge is power, power corrupts, study hard, be evil".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:31PM
The senate and congress both have these committees too. They are made up usually of the people from the senate and congress. They try to keep them 50/50.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:23PM
Considering neither part represents my interests, that means my interests are ignored by congressional committees. Bipartisan != non-partisan.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:10PM
Democracy is working fine. The problem is that the majority of people cares about the truth. Many even argue that there is no such thing as an objective truth. If Americans paid attention to the truth of what politicians said (and held them accountable at the ballot box), then it would not have been a choice between Clinton and Trump, but rather a real choice between policies that might help the common people.
The only way to make this happen is to admit when you are wrong and give others the chance to see when they are wrong without making them a "loser".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Entropy on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:10PM
Considering they all lie all the time and nothing ever happens to them, this seems a goal that's kind of hard to achieve. How many times are career politicians(Clintons, Bushes, etc.) ask a question to which they reply with a bunch of doubletalk that doesn't answer the question AT ALL IN ANY WAY....and that's somehow accepted as OK? It's corrupt all the way to it's core nowadays from the news to the oval office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:08PM
She lost! Get over it, loser!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:35AM
Worse than that, she failed to receive 5 percent of the popular vote, hence her party won't qualify for public funding of its campaigns.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/27/why-5-for-the-green-party-is-a-win-for-america-jill-stein-commentary.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 06 2017, @10:34PM
Exactly why a small step to an instant-runoff preferential ballot would work. At least as a step in the right direction. And let the 5% threshold for public funding be determined by the numbers of *first* choices.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:14PM
say, 'Okay, there are lots of suggestions around, and most of them won't work. But here are six different plans, any one of which is possible. We'll tell you what each one costs, what's good about it, what's bad about it, how dangerous it is, and what its uncertainties are.' At least each option would be a well-integrated, clearly thought-out plan.
The IPCC delivered one plan, radical reduction of greenhouse gases emissions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:25PM
A train is racing towards a cliff. There is no way to leave the train. The experts offer just one plan to deal with the situation: Stop the train before it reaches the cliff. Obviously their solution must be wrong, as they are not offering alternative solutions.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:35PM
Fill the canyon with marshmallow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 01 2017, @05:23PM
A train is racing towards a cliff.
Broken analogy since there are plenty of alternate strategies for dealing with global warming with some mix of adaptation and mitigation. The fact that the IPCC uses this very argument to push a single, unrealistic option demonstrates a huge amount of bias.
Obviously their solution must be wrong, as they are not offering alternative solutions.
Yes. We can't say fully how they are wrong, but it's a big warning sign that they've been compromised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:32PM
Name one that involves things we could do right now. The problem here is that there's no reason to believe that there is a solution to be had in any reasonable time frame. Had we cut back emissions when it became obvious that we had a problem, the cut backs wouldn't have been that bad. But, we're now decades down the road and hoping to solve it via technology when we could have had it solved in large part by now.
Perhaps somebody will come up with a solution other than massive cut backs, but the likelihood gets less and less as time goes forward because we're not doing any of the things we know would solve the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @12:43AM
Name one that involves things we could do right now.
The obvious example is laissez faire. Humanity is in the midst of the greatest improvement in the well-being of humanity ever. We have a proven process for creating wealthy countries that everyone is implementing to some degree, even the worst of countries. And wealthy countries are far better positioned to deal with the effects of global warming (or its absence for that matter). Extreme weather is easy for a wealthy country to deal with. Wealthy countries have better and more sustainable agricultural systems. Wealthy countries can adapt to rising sea levels more easily.
It should be a warning sign that adaptation is being ignored here.
because we're not doing any of the things we know would solve the problem
There are other problems than just climate change such as overpopulation, poverty, habitat and arable land destruction, etc. Solving climate change in a vacuum ignores these bigger problems.
I think there is a deliberate attempt to exaggerate the harm of global warming precisely to create the false dilemma we see here. Sure, it's obvious that we have a global warming problem. But it's also obvious that we have many other problems as well. And some of them can kill billions of people in a far shorter time frame than global warming is alleged, without evidence, to be capable of.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday January 02 2017, @01:28AM
Extreme weather is easy for a wealthy country to deal with. Wealthy countries have better and more sustainable agricultural systems.
Sure, because the US handled Katrina so flawlessly, and California never has water shortages.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @02:54AM
Extreme weather is easy for a wealthy country to deal with. Wealthy countries have better and more sustainable agricultural systems.
Sure, because the US handled Katrina so flawlessly, and California never has water shortages.
I said "better" not "perfect". I'll note that aside from Katrina, you have to go back to 1972 [wunderground.com] to find a hurricane that has killed more than 100 people in the US. And Katrina was so bad due to unusually incompetent leadership at all levels of government from New Orleans (which badly screwed up the evacuation, leaving 100,000 or so people behind in the city) up to the federal level (where a poorly managed reshuffling of bureaucracies left no one in charge of the duties that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) normally covers).
And the response to Hurricane Katrina is probably the worst managed disaster in the developed world over the past few decades.
As to water management, there are plenty of developing world regions that have far worse water management issues, such as Syria's epic mismanagement of water which led to civil war.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday January 02 2017, @09:27AM
Or you could build a bridge from the end of the cliff. Or evacuate to the end of the train and detach the last carriage. Or derail the train.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:17PM
©1982 Mike Resnick
(Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:14PM
Copyright? Author stole the ideas! Here's something closer to the original.
Chance has given birth to these different kinds of governments amongst men; for at the beginning of the world the inhabitants were few in number, and lived for a time dispersed, like beasts. As the human race increased, the necessity for uniting themselves for defence made itself felt; the better to attain this object, they chose the strongest and most courageous from amongst themselves and placed him at their head, promising to obey him. Thence they began to know the good and the honest, and to distinguish them from the bad and vicious; for seeing a man injure his benefactor aroused at once two sentiments in every heart, hatred against the ingrate and love for the benefactor. They blamed the first, and on the contrary honored those the more who showed themselves grateful, for each felt that he in turn might be subject to a like wrong; and to prevent similar evils, they set to work to make laws, and to institute punishments for those who contravened them. Such was the origin of justice. This caused them, when they had afterwards to choose a prince, neither to look to the strongest nor bravest, but to the wisest and most just. But when they began to make sovereignty hereditary and non-elective, the children quickly degenerated from their fathers; and, so far from trying to equal their virtues, they considered that a prince had nothing else to do than to excel all the rest in luxury, indulgence, and every other variety of pleasure. The prince consequently soon drew upon himself the general hatred. An object of hatred, he naturally felt fear; fear in turn dictated to him precautions and wrongs, and thus tyranny quickly developed itself. Such were the beginning and causes of disorders, conspiracies, and plots against the sovereigns, set on foot, not by the feeble and timid, but by those citizens who, surpassing the others in grandeur of soul, in wealth, and in courage, could not submit to the outrages and excesses of their princes.
Under such powerful leaders the masses armed themselves against the tyrant, and, after having rid themselves of him, submitted to these chiefs as their liberators. These, abhorring the very name of prince, constituted themselves a new government; and at first, bearing in mind the past tyranny, they governed in strict accordance with the laws which they had established themselves; preferring public interests to their own, and to administer and protect with greatest care both public and private affairs. The children succeeded their fathers, and ignorant of the changes of fortune, having never experienced its reverses, and indisposed to remain content with this civil equality, they in turn gave themselves up to cupidity, ambition, libertinage, and violence, and soon caused the aristocratic government to degenerate into an oligarchic tyranny, regardless of all civil rights. They soon, however, experienced the same fate as the first tyrant; the people, disgusted with their government, placed themselves at the command of whoever was willing to attack them, and this disposition soon produced an avenger, who was sufficiently well seconded to destroy them. The memory of the prince and the wrongs committed by him being still fresh in their minds, and having overthrown the oligarchy, the people were not willing to return to the government of a prince. A popular government was therefore resolved upon, and it was so organized that the authority should not again fall into the hands of a prince or a small number of nobles. And as all governments are at first looked up to with some degree of reverence, the popular state also maintained itself for a time, but which was never of long duration, and lasted generally only about as long as the generation that had established it; for it soon ran into that kind of license which inflicts injury upon public as well as private interests. Each individual only consulted his own passions, and a thousand acts of injustice were daily committed, so that, constrained by necessity, or directed by the counsels of some good man, or for the purpose of escaping from this anarchy, they returned anew to the government of a prince, and from this they generally lapsed again into anarchy, step by step, in the same manner and from the same causes as we have indicated.
Such is the circle which all republics are destined to run through.
Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius [marxists.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:19AM
Nice quote, Aristarchus! Do you have portions committed to memory? Or did you just read it and say "hey I remember Machiavelli saying something similar" and if so how did you search to re-find it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:22AM
PS - you can't copyright an idea (you can patent one) but you can copyright the expression of an idea.
eg. if one writes a review of a book, the review is a different copyright. Similarly, there are countless renderings titled "the Madonna [and child]" each holding their own copyright to the same idea, rendered with slight variations.
Copyright might be broken, but your protest that copyright is impossible because the ideas were unoriginal is incorrect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:13AM
Who the fuck voted this funny? This is serious futurism.
Lightspeed communication means even alpha centauri is years to run the candidate announcements and elections.
It'll be the problem of our great^n grandkids but that doesn't make it less of a problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:45PM
If he doesn't understand the fundamental fact we dont have that here in the US, and never did, why should i bother reading his opinions?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 01 2017, @05:37PM
You're being both pedantic and inaccurate. A republic is a form of democracy; it just isn't a direct democracy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @05:53PM
The Founding Fathers would disagree with that opinion. Most of them considered Democracy an evil to be guarded against. They believed this because they studied the results recorded in history from every single previous attempt. Then founded a Democratic Party while some of the same people were still alive. Go figure.
Point being Democracy can't work, never has worked and is one of the fastest ways to being ruin on a people. The Republic we have allowed to fail into a Democracy was intended to prevent what we see today. When we rebuild we will have to learn from the failure of Constitution 1.0.
(Score: 3, Touché) by GungnirSniper on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:24PM
The Democratic-Republican party.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @09:33PM
You can democratically elect representatives. When they talked about democracy, what they were usually referring to was direct democracy. Of course, we also have the electoral college, indicating that they were on guard against some other forms of democracy as well, but still not completely.
The Republic we have allowed to fail into a Democracy was intended to prevent what we see today.
I really don't think a Republic (what we have now, actually) is some magical cure-all to begin with. The government has been oppressing people since the country was founded; in some ways we've gotten a lot better (no more slavery, no more Jim Crow, women can vote, etc.) and in other ways we may have gotten worse (such as with automated mass surveillance, but that wasn't possible in the past). The founders didn't put enough limitations on the government, and the checks and balances they created were not enough. Just going back into the past would solve nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @06:57PM
There is no cure all.
The founders didn't put enough limitations on the government, and the checks and balances they created were not enough.
Ultimately that's the voters job. Remember those amendments that lots of you treasure are _amendments_. They didn't all happen at the same time. Go figure how stuff got changed.
The government has been oppressing people since the country was founded; in some ways we've gotten a lot better (no more slavery, no more Jim Crow, women can vote, etc.) and in other ways we may have gotten worse (such as with automated mass surveillance, but that wasn't possible in the past).
If you all keep voting for lesser evil it should be no surprise you still get evil.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:15PM
What are you even trying to say? Have you even read Constitution 1.0? How is that not a democracy?
I don't understand this. Yes, you hate the Democrat Party. Did it ever occur to you that the word democracy had some other denotation than referring to the policies of the Democrat Party, or are you just too fucking stupid to even comprehend that?
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:05PM
This is the same Utopian Progressive nonsense that we have fought for a century. There are no 'disinterested' academics who can provide 'the facts', only different groups of political partisans, one of which is trying to skip the normal political arena by getting themselves declared 'the experts.' Even if we could all agree on the facts, even if we could all agree on which facts were important to the issue at hand, it still doesn't solve our problem.
Currently we have two or more utterly opposed philosophical systems who do not even agree on what "good" and "evil" are. They do not agree on what the goals are. No possible board of experts can solve this problem.
The sausage making we see in Congress is the attempt of both sides to get enough done to win reelection. But it isn't Democrats vs Republicans. It is Congress united as the Uniparty vs the voters. Different members adopt differing positions based on what will get them reelected. Ignore the party label, a Congresscritter from IA supports ethanol subsidies, one with a big military base in their district supports keeping it open and probably supports expanding it. But no big problem can be solved while Congress, as a body, wants one set of goals and the majority of the voters want something completely different. And of course while significant (often majorities in a district) want wildly different things. We no longer have any sort of consensus on what basic direction is best.
Which is why I so often say this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot (or at least really warm), so we can get resolution on the question. Because until that happens we remain paralyzed and incapable of action. And after that big throwdown the Libertarians probably want a go at the survivor.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:01PM
this fight between Americans and Progressives
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:15PM
You don't believe people, whether in academia or not, can sometimes be impartial, and can sometimes find and report the facts without political bias? The record of progress in the sciences is a gigantic rebuttal to that overly cynical assertion.
> this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
WTF? That's your means of solving this dilemma? Force? Might is right?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:22PM
Yep! jmorris is the first name that comes to my mind when I think "political theory" and "without bias"! I mean, the whole "not a democracy" thing is such a new and searing insight, not some hackneyed point that has been bandied about by the forces of evil since the establishment of American Constitutional Democracy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:45PM
Yeah J-Mo has one thing in common with his oogedy-boogedy nightmare man Marx, and that is that both of them are born critics :) Which is to say, while they may be insightful about pointing out what's gone wrong, for the love of Cthulhu, do NOT listen to their proposed solutions!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:37PM
> this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
WTF? That's your means of solving this dilemma?
And your solution is? We have two groups who want utterly incompatible things and now that the Right has found its balls again, neither side is likely to submit without blood. Somebody has to lose, to be willing to revise their victory conditions. This is worse than the 1850s where it was basically just a single issue dividing the country, now it is basically everything. The two primary groups can't even agree on basic morality, on the purpose of government, what each thinks "progress" even is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:12AM
now that the Right has found its balls again,
I thought the right found balls when it started teabagging them? Am I wrong? There was a whole Dick Armey of them, at some point. And, jmorris, you evil fuck, are you supporting the Dylan Roof or Charles Manson model for the decisive action that will provoke the coming conflict? Perhaps Harper's Ferry? You lost, jmorris, you just haven't realized it yet. Yes, the South will lose again!!!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @06:18AM
The right found its balls all right; they're spread out on the right's collective face, as the right cracks its own ribcage to bend over far enough to deepthroat itself.
Christ, you never mentally made it out of junior high's locker rooms, did you? Sit down and shut the fuck up and let actual rational adults handle this. You're insane, not just an asshole like Uzzard but actually insane. We've seen what your way of doing things leads to. You try to dress it up with big words and witty retorts and pseudo-profound quotes, but your facade cracks every few posts and we get a glimpse of the wild-eyed lava-faced maniac under the surface.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:15PM
Someone predicted that he's a Russian shill, wouldn't be too surprising to me. His posts support the worst ideas and would likely lead to civil war. Sounds pretty good to a Russian spook I'm sure.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @10:45PM
He hasn't got the intelligence or the coherence. No, this is one of our good ol' boys, probably a bit inbred and definitely a bit nuts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @12:27AM
The record of progress in the sciences is a gigantic rebuttal to that overly cynical assertion.
Not at all. There is almost no political or economic consequence to whether or not string theory is a scientific theory, or naming another species of beetle. But once there is such consequence then we get the usual biases. This record of progress in science happens despite that bias, not because it doesn't exist.
Economics, for example, is notorious for being corrupted and biased by real world interests. It still manages to make progress despite those obstacles.
this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
I have to roll my eyes at that one too. What benefits would there be to a "hot fight"? The charm of the modern democratic systems are that they allow people of quite different viewpoints to work together. Peoples' beliefs and self-interests aren't going to resolve through escalation of conflict. It'll resolve through experience and compromise, finding out what works and fails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:20AM
fuck me khallow, just when i think i finally got you pegged (no giggling at the back there!) you come out with this. you almost restore my faith in humanity.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @06:13AM
Who are you and what have you done with the real KHallow?! ...please tell me you shot him through the brain stem and dumped the body in a wood chipper a la Fargo.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:34PM
Economics isn't a science. Don't muddy the issue by trying to lump it in with the sciences.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 03 2017, @01:40AM
Economics isn't a science.
The obvious rebuttal is that it checks off all the boxes:
The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:18PM
Hmm the shills are playing off each other! What does this meeeean??
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:48PM
... instead of spending other people's money, especially under threat of violence for noncompliance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @07:01PM
We have a fiat currency. The concept of the government not touching "other people's money" is nonsense. Usually what people saying that mean is "continue the status quo polices that make the rich richer and pretend this is the 'natural order' not a deliberate policy."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pen-helm on Monday January 02 2017, @01:35AM
There was once proposed a Science Court http://science.sciencemag.org/content/193/4254/653 [sciencemag.org] of impartial smart guys to consider opposing arguments and judge the scientific truth. This court would not make policy, leaving that to the government.