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Maybe it's just me, but I've been getting this vibe (it's strong here, but I'm feeling it elsewhere too) that there are folks who would like to see our entire society come crashing down.
Perhaps they think we can build something better, and like the Phoenix, emerge from the ashes, strong and vibrant.
And I guess I can see the attraction. Our government has been co-opted by the monied interests, our waking lives seem to be either being tracked by corporations or one government agency or another, the same monied interests seem determined to depress wages to keep us docile and hungry for the resources we need to keep ourselves and our families alive. And on and on. It's as if our society has been taken over by greedy, corrupt and amoral scumbags.
And to an extent, all of this is true. Which begs the question: What can/should we do about it?
There is one thing most of us can agree upon: That those elected to administer our governmental systems aren't acting in the best interests of the greater populace. Rather, they seem to be taking their marching orders from those with the resources to command their attention, their wallets and their votes.
There's quite a bit of agreement about that. The problem is that there are large groups of people on various sides of this question with different prescriptions for solving these problems:
Some think we need to strip the Federal government of most of its power and leave things to the states/counties/municipalities.
Some think we need to reform our existing political systems to reduce the influence of money on our elected officials (at all levels of government).
Some think it's just a lost cause and we need to just tear it all down and start over.
The biggest issue, IMHO, is that those same folks who are controlling our political systems for their own benefit use these differences of opinion to divide us. This keeps us from putting aside our differences so we can work together to create the kind of society of which we can all be proud.
Which brings me to the folks who want to tear our system down. With what shall we replace it?
Destroying one of the bulwarks of our society seems like we're creating change. But what are the consequences of doing so, intended or otherwise?
History (cf. all the infighting and problems with the Articles of Confederation) tells us that a strong central government was necessary back in the late 18th century, and (again, IMHO) is even more important today.
Could government be more distributed than it is? Possibly. Should there be stronger controls on how the central government treats its citizens? Almost certainly.
But if we destroy the "beast in DC" to punish those who have so egregiously abused it, who will pay the price when chaos ensues.
Just some semi-random thoughts.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:24AM
The government's power will continue to grow as technology fills in the gaps left by incompetence or lack of manpower, primarily by enhancing surveillance with machine learning. Technology will also provide the mandate for governments to remain on an authoritarian path, since citizen bioengineering and AIs will be considered existential threats or at least great excuses to monitor everything.
Bread and circuses will remain great pacifiers to keep the populace from uprising. This will not work if the lower and middle classes can't adapt to job losses caused by automation. That is the time to modify the government, while the people are angry enough to make the government weak and malleable.
Corruption is rampant on the local level and worse in some cases. Decentralization won't solve every problem, and will remove some checks on local corruption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @08:52AM
There is only 1 way to deal with that.
"Citizens United" must be overturned.
That will require a Constitutional Amendment which says that all political campaigns in the USA will be publicly financed.
(Throw in "Money is not speech and corporations are not people" just for good measure.)
It is unfortunate that by the time that process clears all the hurdles, USA will be what used to be called a Third World country.
USA already has 23 percent unemployment and the numbers aren't getting better.
In 2014, the Pricariat [google.com] was over half of all USAians and the numbers for 2015 put it at 60 percent.
These are people hanging on by their fingernails.
An emergency with a cost of $400 means they will have to sell something or take out a loan.
Over the last 4 decades, there has been a coup d'etat in slow motion. [google.com]
Greedy rich people want EVERYTHING for themselves and, via their shark lawyers and no-ethics lobbyists, have pretty much gotten there.
We haven't seen this kind of inequality since the days of the robber barons.
For an example of what comes next, it would be good to look at France in 1789.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @01:16PM
Equality is irrelevant. Objective standard of living is what matters.
And people living hand to mouth do so out of choice. They're quite capable of slightly lowering their SoL and saving for a rainy day, they just choose not to. If they made twice the money, they'd spend twice the money. No amount of equalization of income is capable of making up for foolish fiscal choices.
How you solve this is teach people from a young age to save. Bonus points if you explain why having a sweet ride while living in the projects marks you as an unsalvageable fool.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:07PM
Au contraire, mon frere.
*Equality of opportunity* is what's important. That is the basis of true liberty.
Standard of living, objectively defined or not is just a trope, and not a very good one. As Heinlein put it, we are not "producing-consuming economic animal[s] but [men]."
As humans, when we are unable (by circumstance or design) to develop and use our innate abilities, we are diminished and emasculated.
What's more, taking such a narrow view with respect to the value of human life demeans us all and deprives us of the creativity, ingenuity and good works of a large swath of humanity.
Which is made even more tragic when equality of opportunity is arbitrarily denied based on irrelevancies such as geography, melanin content or ancestry.
I understand the "Fuck you, jack! I got mine." attitude. Perhaps with the addendum "Go get your own!"
This assumes that we should treat all things like a zero-sum game. Fair enough.
However, I'd posit that by providing equality of opportunity we can allow those with talent and drive to maximize their potential vis a vis inbred, lazy, and most of all, idle trust fund kids who contribute nothing to society.
tl;dr: Equality of opportunity is an essential tenet of a society that values individual liberty. However, equality of opportunity is not equality of outcomes. The cream will rise to the top. Give each person the chance to maximize their potential and we *all* benefit.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:35PM
It most certainly is not. If I choose to spend the sweat of my brow to make the lives of my children easier, that is both my right and none of your business.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @12:06AM
Why not increase copyrights to 200 years while your at it. Surely that hit song you wrote deserves a few extra generations at least.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 15 2016, @09:32AM
Copyright is not a natural right like property. If it exists at all it should be severely limited.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:26PM
They're quite capable of slightly lowering their SoL and saving for a rainy day
I'm not sure about that. Rainy days are frequent when you and your family are living in that kind of situation.
A broken tie rod or a snapped timing belt can easily cascade into multiple other problems while the car is out of commission or needs to be replaced. A car accident or a broken arm can wipe out all your savings and getting sick can substantially reduce them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:37PM
Which is precisely why you should be saving. Shit does and will always happen. Take a lesson from the Boy Scouts and Be Prepared.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 16 2016, @03:29AM
Even monkeys care about equality. They will deprive themselves instead of getting a better, but less equal, situation.
People in the USA really would be happier with the world of 1948, even if it is poverty by modern standards.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday July 16 2016, @05:15AM
tl;dr People are fucking idiots? Tell me something I don't know.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 17 2016, @10:56PM
"Citizens United" must be overturned. That will require a Constitutional Amendment which says that all political campaigns in the USA will be publicly financed. (Throw in "Money is not speech and corporations are not people" just for good measure.)
[...]In 2014, the Pricariat was over half of all USAians and the numbers for 2015 put it at 60 percent. These are people hanging on by their fingernails.
I disagree. I think the huge missing element here is respect for rule of law. A large contributor to the instability and corruption that you claim to care about is a widespread disregard for laws and such not just among the powerful or wealthy, but everywhere. And what is particularly relevant here is that we support protection of everyone not just the parties we like. If the laws allow us to marginalize corporations (and other organizations like labor unions, non profits, etc), then they'll have the leeway to marginalize undesirable ethnic groups, sexual orientation or gender, belief and opinion (muslim or empiricism), behavior (such as use of recreational drugs or walking at night), and anyone too poor to afford a phalanx of lawyers or a stable of politicians. The rich and the powerful still have a right to defend themselves with speech, to petition government and society for redress, etc just like everyone else. Attempt (and more likely than not fail) to take that away and you open up Pandora's box.
When we start picking and choosing who gets the protection of law, carving exceptions or onerous burdens for the groups we don't like, or throwing the wealth of society at the projects we prefer, then those best able to manipulate that sort of system win. I think I'm not spoiling anything by revealing it's not going to be the poor.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @01:22PM
You don't need to feel vibes, I'll tell you straight up that I've had my fiddle out and been voting for the most destructive possible candidate for several election cycles now. Which is why I'm probably the only person truly happy with how Obama has performed while in office.
There will be a revolution in this nation within the next 50 years. It's possible that it will be political rather than bloody, but I wouldn't put money on it. I'm actively trying to hasten it because the sooner it comes the less oppression and hardship have to be endured.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:20PM
Perhaps you're right, and there will be revolution. I hope I don't live to see it.
Sadly, history has shown that the vast majority of people who are present during such uprisings tend to suffer greatly.
Whether it be Rome in the second through fourth centuries CE, France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Russia, Spain, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and others in the 20th century, or Iraq, Syria, Lybia, etc., etc., etc. in the 21st century, the blood of innocent, decent people were and are being shed.
That's a huge waste of human potential. I believe that sentient life is precious and we should try to preserve it.
IMHO, blowing everything up is antithetical to that. What's more, history also tells us that it's entirely likely that something much worse than what we have now will rise from the ashes of such a revolution.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:32PM
We've done it correctly before. Maybe next time we'll figure out how to actually curtail corruption instead of just mitigating its impact.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday July 14 2016, @10:37PM
Defeatist and pre-SENS thinking.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday July 22 2016, @09:36AM
pre-SENS thinking
I'm finding a lot of acronyms that form SENS, but none of them are making any particular sense in this context. Enlightenment?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 22 2016, @06:21PM
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, an approach to anti-aging:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SENS_Research_Foundation [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey [wikipedia.org]
http://www.sens.org/ [sens.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsNNUEx5OkU [youtube.com] (1h20m, not too in-depth, use it as background noise. part of the video is a Q&A)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday July 22 2016, @06:40PM
Ah! I thought you meant politically defeatist. You mean that he has accepted defeat at the hands of death. I had considered that acronym, but the pieces weren't clicking. Thanks for the links.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 22 2016, @04:18AM
I agree that it is a huge waste of human potential, but that's exactly what's driving this now. Everybody can feel the fury building, even the 1%. They're building bunkers and buying remote islands as fast as they can, thinking they can take the money and run.
We ought to return to the philosophy of Checks & Balances. Money has utterly captured every lever of society because there is no check on it. And people who place money above the commonweal are by definition, sociopaths. So any successor system must be engineered to block regulatory capture by wealth, and prevent sociopaths from gaining office.
In the American legal provenance, a really great start to the former would be to abolish corporate personhood. Corporations are not people. For the latter, we need tests (bran scans? comprehensive psych evals?) to disqualify sociopaths from positions of authority.
Further, strict term limits and transparency laws must be anchored to the bedrock of the Constitution to eliminate the entrenched political class. Backstop that with the death penalty for official corruption, and we could have a republic that could run well for another 500 years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 19 2016, @08:49PM
I'm actively trying to hasten it because the sooner it comes the less oppression and hardship have to be endured.
I'm looking forward to the rebuilding phase and I think I'll "enjoy it" a lot more at age 50 than age 70 or age 90
Why couldn't everything have crashed when I was 25, I would have really kicked ass and times would be pretty good now. Instead, decades of muddling thru and not quite yet and obviously things are not going to get any better any time soon.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Thursday July 14 2016, @06:05PM
i agree with your "vibe", and i've spent some time thinking about WHY they want to burn it all to the ground. the folks i've seen that want to "reset" the system tend to have very little to lose in a "reset", and feel they've been let down by government/society/life/etc.
of the "burn it all to the ground" types that i personally know, most have no full-time employment (because), none have college degrees, and some don't even have high school or GED. they tend to be on wellfare, but complain about everyone ELSE on welfare. in one case, i know someone who collected disability, unemployment, subsidized housing, medicaid, and food stamps all within a 10 year period; the only form of welfare he hasn't been on was financial aid for higher education. that one complains that nobody's ever given him anything in life, but he and his wife and kids lived rent free with his in-laws for a few years, and then moved into a house his parents bought for them. he claims to have "multiple jobs", but is incapable of working for anyone for more than a few months without getting himself canned. his "jobs" tend to be "working for himself" (off the books, of course) at flipping cars. he's never met a tax he couldn't avoid paying, but complains about "high taxes", of course. he also complains that "obamacare" ruined the country, but he didn't seem to mind when medicaid footed the bill for the birth of his latest kid. of course, he claims he "earned" that medicaid with the few months of MEDICARE taxes he paid 10 years ago when he had a decent job for a few months. good luck explaining to him that medicaid and medicare are different programs... he thinks the term "welfare queen" can't be applied to him because he's "not urban".
i, on the other hand, have been working since high-school. during high school, my nights and weekends were spent at work (on the books...) or taking classes at the local community college. by the time i got to college, i had saved tens of thousands of dollars (which ensured i didn't qualify for need-based grants...). i've been working 9-10 hours a day, 5 days per week for 12+ years, and usually a few additional hours on the weekends. i commute 4 hours per day so i can send my kids to great schools in an area i can afford. i've given up weeks worth of vacation days in the past few years (wouldn't it be nice if they paid those out?), and am on call during tokyo and london business hours (i'm NY based). i've worked long and hard to get where i am, and i have a lot to lose in a "reset"... instead of just TALKING about how much i work, i actually HAVE a job that eats up most of my time. i spend weekends studying and trying to improve my abilities.
am i wrong to think the "reseters" are a bunch of whiners who refuse to accept that they got where they are in life based on their own decisions? the result of the brexit vote has me worried because it's the same mentality that we see over here with our "reseters" - the poorly educated thinking they know how to "fix" problems they know literally nothing about. talk to a brexiter or a trumpeteer, and you'll find that they don't even know the VOCABULARY associated with the "problem" they're "going to fix". i especially LOVE the guys that brag about the "great deal" they got at walmart while calling for huge trade tariffs on goods from china and mexico. of course, they don't know what a tariff IS, but it sounds good. again, good luck explaining how that's going to cost them... then you just become another "expert" to be ignored.
/* no comment */
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @06:17PM
none have college degrees, and some don't even have high school or GED.
It's almost to the point where a trained monkey could get a high school diploma or a GED. Many colleges are only a little better than that. Doing well at a game of Jeopardy! isn't as impressive as some seem to believe. But that doesn't stop people from believing they are superior to those without degrees, regardless of how true that is, and regardless of how many times they've actually innovated to the point where they moved humanity's knowledge of the universe forward. If your only accomplishment is being a corporate wage slave or making more money than someone else, you have nothing to justify your feelings of superiority. It's elitism at its finest.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Thursday July 14 2016, @07:30PM
It's almost to the point where a trained monkey could get a high school diploma or a GED. Many colleges are only a little better than that.
i agree 100%. so what's it say about someone who chooses NOT to get any kind of diploma? nothing positive that i can think of... would you rather hire a high school dropout, or someone with a BS from a 2nd tier engineering school? would you rather hire the 2nd tier engineer or someone with a PHD from an ivy league?
If your only accomplishment is being a corporate wage slave or making more money than someone else, you have nothing to justify your feelings of superiority. It's elitism at its finest.
fair point. i also like to think i'm raising kids who have some potential to make the world a better place. besides, i plan to teach at community college when i'm no longer dependent on my higher paying job. with any luck, i'll be able to make a positive change in some young geekling's life.
but i'm curios why i, a wage slave, who's able to provide a comfortable lifestyle for my family, SHOULDN'T feel superior to someone who can't hold a part time job and who depends on family and friends to provide them with basic life necessities. in fact, i kept them in their house for an extra month or two with my wage slave income. are they somehow superior because they've learned to leach off of everyone around them, including the government they claim to hate so much?
but either way, his "burn it all to the ground" policy would allow him to reset his poor life choices, and is unfair to those of us who chose to work hard to get ahead of the crowd (as wage slaves or otherwise). i believe he should have to live with his poor live choices, or work to improve his options (like getting a GED, for starters). there are no do-overs in real life (as our friends across the pond who voted for brexit but now want to take it back are finding out).
/* no comment */
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @07:57PM
so what's it say about someone who chooses NOT to get any kind of diploma?
Nothing much. A few people choose not to bother because they would rather use their time for other things, such as self-education. Some people won't do it out of disgust for the system. I don't presume to know everything about someone based on whether or not they have a diploma.
would you rather hire a high school dropout, or someone with a BS from a 2nd tier engineering school?
I've hired people without degrees of any kind, and also people with degrees. I'll take anyone who can do the job well and understands the theory. You have to filter out the ones who don't know what they're doing, because even among college graduates, there are too many. Lazy employers seem to prefer to rely on schools to filter out bad applicants, but that is foolish and also creates a perverse incentive for educational institutions to aim only for what employers expect rather than aiming to provide everyone with an excellent education. Maybe degrees from top universities can mean something, but again, they are far from a guarantee. There's also a point of diminishing returns, so just stacking more degrees onto the pile doesn't necessarily make a candidate better able to do the job.
I don't care about the "high school dropout" qualifier.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday October 07 2016, @04:50PM
So he's a racist. Not terribly surprising given the rest of the story. Some people are very good at blaming everyone else for their problems. Some of them are even good enough at it to invent "problems" so they can blame other people even more.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:37PM
The are levels of anarchy to which we should not descend. One of them is grammar and logic.
Which begs the question: What can/should we do about it?
You have used the phrase, "begs the question" incorrectly! http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/begs-the-question-update [quickanddirtytips.com]
Even in a post-apocalyptic world, we should avoid mistakes like this. Or have I misunderestimated humanity?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @02:21AM
the bulwarks of our society
That's odd.
Growing up, they **weren't** telling me that Oligarchy was made the country great.
They said it was DEMOCRACY i.e. everybody gets a vote and the majority wins.
So, when supermajorities of USAians want things (e.g. single-payer healthcare; a smaller military), why aren't we getting that?
Simple answer: We don't have a Democracy.
SCOTUS (the Reactionary John Roberts court) said choice of gov't policy can now be sold to the highest bidder.
...and, of course, Ronnie Raygun and Mark Fowler[1] destroyed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and no president since then has put it back to right.
[1] What an appropriate name for someone who totally loused up the public's main information system.
Could government be more distributed?
How about "Democracy Everywhere"?
That's a definition of Socialism.
When you get to work, you don't leave all semblance of Democracy outside the door.
All decisions are made by democratic vote of the workers; every worker gets a vote; all votes are equal; majority wins.
Extrapolate from the workplace to every corner of society.
Margaret Thatcher said TINA (There is no alternative) to austerity, privatization of public services, and other forms of Neoliberalism.
Bullshit. SITA (Socialism is the alternative).
...and don't hand me that crap about "it will never work".
IT ALREADY DOES.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned cooperatives across northern Italy.
All we need is politicians that are as smart as the ones in Italy in 1985. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Friday July 15 2016, @01:11AM
I don't want to burn anything, per se. I would like everybody who is happy with their systems and elected officials to be permitted to keep them. I just don't think they should be permitted to impose them on anybody else. I see no reason why people shouldn't be able to coexist within the same geographic territory but not all have to swear fealty to the same ultimate authority.
As for dividing us, 10 times out of 10 when a politician is concerned about people being divided they are concerned that not everybody is on board with their program. They want people to unite - but they want them to unite on their platform, not on somebody else's. I'd like to see a different definition of united/divided. Let's unite on the idea that we shouldn't get our way at the expense of other people. Those who believe a war is necessary to defend themselves shouldn't pay for it with money from those who disagree. Those who want to make abortion safe and legal shouldn't fund it with money from those who believe it's an unjustifiable homicide. Those who want to prohibit drugs should prohibit them in their own house and on their own property and leave everybody else's choices alone.
It's a simple and easy truce to make, and it's the only thing that could ever work. We could be united as decent neighbors who don't 'fight all the time over who is going to be tyrant for the next four years by simply not having an office of tyrant any more. Our individual households might look different but we could certainly, absolutely live in peace. We could probably also collaborate and cooperate on a lot of things like trade and mutual defense.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @08:19AM
Your idea sounds very much like the Indian reservations.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday July 15 2016, @01:06PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 17 2016, @08:34PM
I think you're right: although the Indian nations are supposedly accorded sovereignty, it's limited. But if the federal government wants to run a pipeline, a power line, or a highway through tribal land, can't the tribe stop it? Before your proposal reminded me of the reservations, it reminded me of the situation with the native Americans versus the white people prior to the reservations. White people believed in ownership of land whereas the natives did not; white people were all organized as a single society whereas the natives formed multiple societies. Eventually the white people gained possession of nearly all the land and, as you explain, limited what the natives could do. There were technological factors to it but it's often true that a large, organized group can bully people who don't also form a large, organized group.
Under the arrangement you propose, suppose you have a homestead and you're not part of the system. You're sovereign. Now if your sovereign neighbor with the 11,960 acre farm wants to make it 12,000 acres for efficiency, knowing that you're armed may dissuade her. But if the people with the system decide that your land is in the way of a hyperspace bypass that needs building, do you really expect to stop them? Even if you join up with a few sovereign neighbors, you may get trampled. If lots of you unite, well, that's starting to look like you're forming a system of your own, isn't it?
Conversely, if the people with the system can provide goods or services that you want, such as a supply of clean water, sewerage, power, fuel, or communications, you may be tempted to deal with them. In those dealings I see the potential to be drawn into joining the system. Suppose you wish to be entirely off the grid. You'll have to provide some of those services for yourself. One person can plausibly build a house from materials gathered onsite, but such a house will be primitive. Niceties such as photovoltaics or even water pipes aren't going to be practical for one person or a family to manufacture.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday July 18 2016, @01:35PM
If lots of you unite, well, that's starting to look like you're forming a system of your own, isn't it?
I have no objection to people forming new systems of their own, but I don't think their should be a monopoly. You can tell which systems are the moral systems because they are the ones that let people exit and go off and form new systems when they feel that this one isn't working. In fact that's exactly what the Declaration of Independence says is a right of all people, but that right isn't available in the U.S. or in most jurisdictions.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday July 16 2016, @05:09AM
The Articles of Confederation provided the feds with barely any power whatsoever. The Constitution provided somewhat more. The latter was "strong" compared to the former, but still hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what we have today.
We have all kinds of problems, and some of them are quite complicated. But this seems like one of the easier ones. If you don't like what a state government is doing, you have the option of staying the hell away from that state. Almost everybody has two legs and two feet and therefore the ability to move from state to state (having the will to do it is a separate problem). However, if you don't like what the feds are doing (btw, what was Congress's approval rating again?) then your options are a bit more limited. In fact, they are known to argue that you still owe them taxes even if you do manage to move out of the country.
In addition to that, history suggests that there are limits to what (as far as people, lands, and resources) can be effectively governed. Laws are added to the pile. Budgets grow. Bureaucracies bloat. Empires collapse.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday October 07 2016, @04:59PM
Something that the "burn it all down" types don't understand is who wins in an anarchy. The people in charge of government are just using the tools available to them. The constitution is an obstacle to them, as are international law, free market regulations, free speech, the internet, and educated masses. These things are all provided by our government, though the power players chip away at them as much as they can. But in an America without its government, we will lose the Constitution. The power players will hire private militias and enforce martial law. It will be the same people, with the same goals, but without any legal constraints. They will put the billions of dollars they now put into frivolous lawsuits and lobbying into dictator-style oppression.
Maybe you can escape it if you move to Montana. But if you want to live somewhere most people want to live, say hello to the police state. Oh wait.
The one thing you can say for them is that it's pretty hard sometimes to see the difference between what we have now and what we could have without our government.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday March 30 2017, @09:39PM
You guys need to switch to proportional representation. It's pretty well the only way of diluting power while keeping it useful. No one should be unrepresented merely because their party isn't a majority.