Re: What can we do about government?
Can you two (well, only just George really) stop bitching about each other? Cognisant made quite the valid point, although past a certain point money and power do become an issue. Although, look at bill gates for example: money and power, but used in an admirable way.
Cognisant has insulted me several times on this forum without provocation, and because I know that I am vicious beyond any measure you guys can understand, I chose not to react. My patience is beginning to wear thin.
As for Bill Gates, I would suggest that you get on youtube and watch one of his speeches, where he says that "if we do a good job with the healthcare system and vaccines, that we can
reduce the world population".
The point of medicine is to make people healthy, and live longer. If Bill Gates thinks that medicine is meant to do the opposite, then it means that he is using his foundation to create death, and prevent birth.
That is hardly the admirable use of money and power. Most people call that "genocide".
As for you jg, you make points which I agree with to a certain extent. But they are all so radical and currently far from reality that you would need to write a book to support them properly. Although I think you have largely failed to take into account the way society functions and more importantly, who is in it. Having no rules or government (have you read Marx?) would IMO not go down so well in reality, due to the sort of people that inhabit this world.
I have mostly written the book.
Also, re read what I said, in this and other threads. I did not say "no rules". I said "people ruling themselves". Which, by the way, is precisely what direct democracy is.
I am getting really tired of people thinking that the only way for there to be any order in this world is for a large central government to declare that they are entitled to most of what the people make, and that they are the only ones who are fit to make up laws - especially since we have seen time and time again that whenever you get a small group of people who do such things, that it inevitably leads to corruption and injustice on a massive scale.
I understand how the world works, and the players in it, rather well. The unfortunate truth is that so many people are so ignorant of such basic things as how power works, how money works, and what dominant entities are in place that they do not properly understand that the government in place is not acting at all in their interests, and is in fact responsible for undermining them at every turn.
People do not understand that the government is in fact a giant violence machine, bent on denying people personal liberty in any meaningful way. The only freedom of choice available to people are with things that do not matter. Anything meaningful is not at all influenced by the public, as evidenced by 98% of the population being against the bailouts (still happened, with about 20 trillion of your dollars given away), and the wars continuing despite massive public objection.
The government thinks that it owns you. And most people are so gutless that they agree.
An interesting note, mentioned before on this forum, is that direct democracy seems to function exceptionally well. I think a good implementation of direct democracy would bring great results to this world.
Yes, it does. However, something that people don't think about much is that if there is direct democracy, then what jurisdiction do people have over different regions?
For example, lets say everyone on this forum lived in a really nice region in a small town of say, 10 000 people, and were fully self sufficient. We mined our own metals, grew our own food, and traded with other people for stuff that we can't be bothered making.
Then imagine that the rest of the nation discovered that our little town was on top of a massive uranium reserve, that if mined, would poison the entire town, and ruin all of our lives.
How then, do you stop the rest of the nation, acting directly democratically, from doing that? You can't, unless there is either a law making such things illegal - but the reality is that if you passed such a law, it would make the government unable to do anything at all, because these sorts of conflicts would happen all the time.
Therefore, the only way to do it is to have direct democracy, and to cut the nation up into small communities that run themselves, each of which has massive control over its own region.
The role of any federal government, therefore, would be in the execution of very broad tasks that individual communities cannot do, such as border defense.
Which is exactly what I was saying.
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