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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday April 17 2014, @10:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the Also:-Sky-is-Blue dept.

A study by Princeton and Northwestern universities shows that a small group of elite have control over the general population and the government only supports the rich and powerful while the masses have no say whatsoever. The 42 page report concludes "we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by iwoloschin on Thursday April 17 2014, @11:35AM

    by iwoloschin (3863) on Thursday April 17 2014, @11:35AM (#32584)

    This sort of confirms something we've all already known. So now what do we do about it? I'm not sure I'd support an armed uprising, it could just as likely lead to something far worse, but could there be concerted grassroots efforts made to get "not-lawyers" into public office at the Federal level? Or at a minimum, maybe we could look at setting up term limits for Congress?

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by geb on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:07PM

    by geb (529) on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:07PM (#32592)

    Once you recognise the risks of revolution as being too great, the only other option is to fix problems one by one while trying to keep the greater structure intact.

    Reform individual parts of government and social structures by continually hammering away at them with small efforts, and even when you recognise that the structure is immovable because it's tied in with so many other problems, keep on going anyway. Attack a broken structure with so many attempts to fix it that at least some of them work, and from there continue trying to fix related problems, and work your way through the whole system. At all times be wary of evil bastards trying to exploit instability for their own purposes.

    It will be slow, tedious, requiring an immense amount of work, and will be discouraging as you see repeated failures.

    It doesn't have the emotional appeal of grabbing a weapon and shooting somebody you don't like, but it's the only method of reform that leads to good results.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Geezer on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:45PM

      by Geezer (511) on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:45PM (#32611)

      Your solution presupposes that the structure will remain in passive stasis long enough for any incremental changes to be made and remain. The chances of any power structure 1. overlooking peripheral change and/or 2. allowing the aforesaid change to remain in effect and/or 3. not brutally repressing the agents of said change, closely approximate zero.

      No system is better than a bad system, because it is a fresh foundation for a new system.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:06PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:06PM (#32621) Journal

      Once you recognise the risks of revolution as being too great, the only other option is to fix problems one by one while trying to keep the greater structure intact.
      ...
      It doesn't have the emotional appeal of grabbing a weapon and shooting somebody you don't like, but it's the only method of reform that leads to good results.

      I disagree with the last assertion, not with the "no violence" part of it (which I agree with) but with the uniqueness of proposed approach.

      Preliminary: the stages of evolution - survive the medium, adapt to the medium, change the medium. When taught, the last step is omitted most of the times.

      Strategy:

      1. admit that you are no longer controlling the game (unless you are part of the oligarchy), so the medium is no longer under your control;
      2. look at what is your strength and discover it: the numbers of you
      3. look at the game the oligarchy proposes to you: competition.
        The illusion: everyone competes equally.
        Actual state of fact: no longer a competition between the many of you, but one between you and the oligarchy - and they already won it and control you
      4. refuse as much as possible to play their game and choose others - there are too many of you-s for the small number of oligarchs to control every aspect of your life (short of killing you).
        There [wikipedia.org] are [wikipedia.org] many [wikipedia.org] games [wikipedia.org] that can be played [wikipedia.org]

      Finally, note that it is not necessary for the current system to be totally destroyed to get back enough control over your own destiny (e.g. just look at open-source: closed source continue to exists, yet the OSS developers are not powerless. And neither Salman Khan [wikipedia.org] is powerless, even if others charge an-arm-and-a-leg [wikipedia.org] for what they call education [wikipedia.org] and its actually just conditioning [wikipedia.org])

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 1) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:37PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:37PM (#32606)

    Wasn't this designed in from the start? It's especially obvious in the electoral college, but all forms of representative government are a step away from "true" democracy.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:15PM

      by umafuckitt (20) on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:15PM (#32697)

      What is "true democracy"? There are many different sorts of democracies and not all are compatible with all societies. For instance, the ancient Athenian direct democratic model doesn't scale well to large societies. To keep it manageable even the Athenians had to bring in a more restricted definition of "citizen", and didn't allow women and slaves to participate. Also, individual Athenians didn't have "rights" in the way that we think of them today.

      The version of democracy you choose to run your country is inevitably and compromise between some ideal model and practicalities. This is OK. The problems occur when the model becomes tainted by corruption and skews toward and oligarchy and/or plutocracy, as is happening in the US today. Witness the recent campaign donations fiasco in supreme court. I was depressed for days after that. That decision takes influence yet further out of the grasp of the masses and places it deeper into the pockets of the rich few. It's really pretty sad how the constitution and "freedom of speech" are being twisted out of existence.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:12PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:12PM (#32793) Journal

        You have mistaken the reason that women and slaves weren't allowed to vote. The Athenian democracy came about when the majority of the population, in debt to a wealthy few, and threatened with slavery, rose in rebellion. After considerable death and destruction, a compromise was reached where no Athenians could be enslaved, and the male adult citizens were all allowed to vote. (There were a few other compromises.) This was known as the laws of Solon. Immediately after they were agreed to, rebellion broke out again, because both sides were unhappy with the compromise. I believe that Solon was also ostracized (i.e., banished from the city for 10 years). Eventually, though, the fighting died down, and both sides learned to live with the compromise. And THAT's why Athenian men were all allowed to vote. Women weren't involved in the fighting (not much) and didn't have anyone standing up for their rights, so they weren't given any. Ditto for slaves, who were already mostly foreigners anyway.

        There wasn't anything very idealistic about the origin of Athenian Democracy. The idealism came afterwards.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday April 17 2014, @08:52PM

          by umafuckitt (20) on Thursday April 17 2014, @08:52PM (#32826)

          Thanks for the info, it's interesting.

  • (Score: 2) by velex on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:01PM

    by velex (2068) on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:01PM (#32615) Journal

    Something like this? http://www.wolf-pac.com/the_plan [wolf-pac.com]

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:52PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:52PM (#32713)

    could there be concerted grassroots efforts made to get "not-lawyers" into public office at the Federal level?

    Out of 535 current Congresscritters, 211 are lawyers, and are outnumbered by the 214 businesspeople. The third-largest contingent is educators (teachers, professors, coaches, etc). The popular image of Congress being entirely filled with lawyers is actually incorrect: there are certainly more lawyers than the general population, but that's mostly at the expense of professions like plumbing and bricklaying.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:29PM (#32804)

      at the expense of professions like plumbing and bricklaying

      People who run for office tend to be financially successful and have spare time to dedicate to a political campaign.
      Sadly, Joe Average competing successfully is an anomaly.

      Something that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the Founding Fathers also stacked the deck from the very beginning.
      To vote, you had to be white, male, over 21, and own property (in most places, 50 acres).
      Additionally, senators were *appointed*.
      If you want to see a time when Egalitarianism made serious strides, it was at times when the incomes of the extremely wealthy were taxed at a marginal rate of over 50 percent. [firedoglake.com]

      So, how do the rich get away with it?
      "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves, not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." --John Steinbeck

      -- gewg_