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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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Study Concludes USA is an Oligarchy
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Cum tacent, clamant. When they are silent, they shout. -Cicero
(Score: 4, Insightful) by geb on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:07PM
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
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
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:
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
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