Representative democracy has, and always will be, a way for the very rich to construct an oligarchy while making the people think they have control over it.
Who is to blame? The voters.
Unless the voting system is actually rigged (which doesn't usually happen in modern civilized societies, no matter what some people might want to think), the people who get in power get there because people vote for them. They don't get there by buying themselves the position.
If some politician or party is known for its abuse of power, corruption and favoritism of the rich and their buddies, why do they stay in power? Because people vote for them. What does that tell about these people?
But what else do you suggest should be done? Back to totalitarianism, where the person with most power gets to be on top without asking the people?
Not when every choice is the same, and you can't get votes without significant amounts of money.
Representative democracy has, and always will be, a way for the very rich to construct an oligarchy while making the people think they have control over it.
Who is to blame? The voters.
I tire of hearing this year after year, if in a representative democracy every voice has the same value, why didn't they immediately end the inequality that plagued them? The US has been a democracy since 1789, still, of all OECD countries, only Mexico and Turkey are more unequal. It's irrational to think that the system is perfect and people have voted consistently wrong for more than two centuries.
The answer to this apparent paradox is simple. Although you can't buy votes directly in a democracy, the enormous bureaucracy of the system can make it almost impossible to detect the money's influence. The system has now become too complex for ordinary voters and even to many experts. It's just impossible to go through the mazes of laws and acronyms and to filter research that's not politically biased. On the other hand, money is very efficient at bringing down bureaucratic barriers, it thinks it's extremely fun to drill holes at the most obvious reforms, like Wall Street regulations.
I risk to say that 90% of American citizens don't have a candidate. Still, many of these will pick one of the major two (and they don't need to be too many, since one can get elected with around 25% of all American voters), because what happens when you don't pick the less crazy of them both is eight years of George W. Bush. Even the American Communist Party is supporting Obama!
I'm willing to bet a lack of currency would cause more problems than it would solve, lol.
There are a lot of people who think it would be a good idea though. Read about resource based economy. Also, in communism, one of the main goals is to abolish money, but no communist society ever got that far.
Communism is a good idea "in theory", but ultimately some people are more equal than others, and its unworkable. I would have thought the greatest failed social experiment of the 20th century would have taught you that. Capitalisms flaws are easy to see, but you would need to have a strong understanding of how economics work before I can even begin to dive into the solutions. Sadly, trying to implement them in reality would cause mass strikes/riots and would face too much resistance at all levels of society. Its going to take the mother of all economic crashes, far worse than 2008 before these ideas could ever be taken seriously.
But what else do you suggest should be done? Back to totalitarianism, where the person with most power gets to be on top without asking the people?
The problem with democracy is that reality usually isn't subject to opinion, so how society should be governed is usually not an opinion either, because there are laws in nature, and through investigating the world with science we can find the most efficient ways of doings things. Science is free from bias, and it's the best way of understanding reality, which we have seen overwhelming evidence of, but we have still not applied that to society. I think nature should be our dictator and lawgiver.
Mitjitsu wrote:
Capitalisms flaws are easy to see, but you would need to have a strong understanding of how economics work before I can even begin to dive into the solutions.
We hardly even have an 'economy' today. Economy has to do with managing resources, but today's society is all about consumption (the more the better). In a rational economy based on reality, consumption wouldn't be the goal, but the exact opposite: conservation. We live on a planet with finite resources, so the infinite growth economy doesn't work.
Its going to take the mother of all economic crashes, far worse than 2008 before these ideas could ever be taken seriously.
Yeah, that's true. Maybe something like that will happen in a few years. That's what happened in the Great depression in the 1930s, and that's how people got all these new ideas about governing society, like communism, socialism, nazism, technocracy etc. It's only when the system fails that people start to think of solutions. I'm not saying that communism is a good or bad idea, by the way. But I think there are better ways of organizing society than with money or barter. I think a technocracy would work better than what we have now (politicians).
Representative democracy has, and always will be, a way for the very rich to construct an oligarchy while making the people think they have control over it.
Who is to blame? The voters.
I tire of hearing this year after year, if in a representative democracy every voice has the same value, why didn't they immediately end the inequality that plagued them?
Please explain to me how what I said is false.
In a properly working democracy (that's the vast majority of civilized modern democracies) anybody can become a candidate and anybody can vote for them. Unless the voting system is rigged (which it isn't in the vast majority of democratic countries, not counting those totalitarian third-world countries where elections are just a facade for the western world), every vote is counted and has the same value. You seem to disagree. Please explain how this is not so. (The only way this couldn't be so is if the voting system is rigged. Please provide some evidence of this.)
Now, a completely different question is why the majority keep voting for those who they know are corrupt. As said, it's not like alternatives are impossible: Anybody can become a candidate. Thus if your friend has better ideas to run the country, he/she can become a candidate and you can vote for him/her.
The answer to the previous question is because of two reasons: Laziness and psychology. The majority of people are lazy when it comes to politics and don't even bother finding out what's wrong with their traditional choice and if there could be better alternatives. Also, many of those candidates and parties are masters at convincing people that they aren't really that bad and that alternatives would only be worse. (In other words, it's safer to keep the status quo than to try to radically change things, as it could screw up everything.)
But that's not a fault of the democratic system. That's a fault of human psychology. And it's not something that can be changed by changing the voting system. Unless you want to go back to dictatorship and totalitarianism where voting is skipped altogether.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Warp wrote:
Anybody can become a candidate.
True, but in order to become a viable candidate you must:
* Raise millions of dollars to get your name out. Many people will vote for the name they saw most or last. Or whoever produced the scariest commercial. If you don't use your own money then you need to convince some rich people to sponsor you. So you must either support some policy that favors their business or some cause they believe in. Because of how wealth is structured here you must spend a lot of time with rich people because the middle class simply don't have enough to be worth your time.
* Win a primary election for one of the two major parties. This means pandering to one subset of voters. You can alter your platform between this and the full election but you will come across as unprincipled and alienate a lot of Americans. If you get lucky no one will oppose you in your party primary, but that is more likely if you raised a lot of money.
These two requirements do a pretty good job at stamping out real change. But the vast majority of Americans will not vote for you if you don't follow this. It's really sad how broken American democracy is and there's no easy fix.
Americans like to point out the perfection of the Constitution. But it was written 235 years ago to govern a mostly agrarian society. One of America's great strengths was always its lack of cultural baggage. Now we've surpassed most of the world and are starting to fall back.
There is no short term solution. The current system cannot elect the right people so we need to change it. Unfortunately this is not a popular view since it would cause short-term problems. An easy first step would be banning political ads from TV. One or two-minute ads are an extremely poor format for political discourse.
The practical solution is to pick a country to move to when things get too bad here. Many Americans have done this. I'm going with Australia, mostly because they speak English and the weather is pretty decent. Canada is friendly and I'm sure Scandinavia and the UK are great but I just can't handle the winter.
True, but in order to become a viable candidate you must:
* Raise millions of dollars to get your name out.
With the established media losing its influence and the rise in social media. I think this obstacle could be overcome.
TheAxeMan wrote:
Americans like to point out the perfection of the Constitution.
US isn't technicaly a demoncracy. You just need to take a look at the Scandinavian countries to see why.
TheAxeMan wrote:
There is no short term solution.
There is a difference between the masses saying "these people are all crooks/in for it for themselves" and "Thats it, I'm sick of it". Most people are happy to stick with the status quo atm.
TheAxeMan wrote:
The practical solution is to pick a country to move to when things get too bad here. Many Americans have done this. I'm going with Australia, mostly because they speak English and the weather is pretty decent. Canada is friendly and I'm sure Scandinavia and the UK are great but I just can't handle the winter.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Warp wrote:
Twelvepack wrote:
Problems with the schools? Increase funding!
Too many people homeless? More government subsidized housing!
Too many drug addicts? More cops and more government sponsored treatment facilities!
There are some problems that money doesn't solve, but that doesn't stop some politicians from trying it anyway.
And what would be, in your opinion, a better solution to those problems that a government can implement?
I don't think that the government can solve these problems, and I think that by infantilizing the people that suffer from these problems, they might even make the problems worse.
So what it comes down to is that there are people who might need more government help than they currently receive, but there are also people who receive government help, but might be better off standing on their own two feet. Throwing more money at the problem shrinks the first group but enlarges the second, and does so at great expense.
US isn't technicaly a demoncracy. You just need to take a look at the Scandinavian countries to see why.
No country is a true democracy. The US is quite democratic though, where (at least in theory) every voter can make a difference, and not only with the election of representatives. Heck, get enough of the populace to agree and they can change the highest law of the land directly.
<Zurreco> if so called professional players cant adapt to every playing field, theyre obviously not that great
Americans like to point out the perfection of the Constitution. But it was written 235 years ago to govern a mostly agrarian society.
235 years ago? I thought the 10 ammendments in the Constitution were like the 10 Commandments, that they were written by God himself 6000 years ago.
See this video about democracy and elections: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTbLslkIR2k
Money can be used to buy publicity, so it's more like a plutocracy than a democracy.
"From the creator of the zeitgeist film trilogy"? Sorry, I pass. I don't care if this is the cure for cancer and AIDS and the ultimate perfect solution to eradication of war and poverty, if it advertises itself with those words I do not care. It's crap, whatever it says.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
That series has some good points but is a bit liberal for my tastes. If you talk about ending poverty and feeding the hungry worldwide you won't get much support from Americans. Even relatively liberal ones like me start to feel queasy. Maybe this is just self-serving bias talking but it's very obvious to me that there should be a lot of poor people in the world. It's a case of "too many captains sink the ship".
Mitjitsu wrote:
With the established media losing its influence and the rise in social media. I think this obstacle could be overcome.
I agree, but it is going to take quite a while. At least a generation or two. Television viewership is still high among the elderly and uneducated, both of which will grow in the short term. My parents sit around watching television all day and are very proud to be among the 100 or so Florida voters that elected Bush II.
Mitjitsu wrote:
So you're being defeatist?
No, just practical. I really do love this country and I really want it to change. But there is not much hope that the political climate will turn around for at least a generation or two. By then the decline will likely be obvious and severe. The ship will probably sink slowly, but I want to scout out the life boats just in case the leak is worse than they are telling us. :)
But that would clash badly with freedom of speech which is (and should be) holy and inalienable.
Actually, it has been clearly decided that freedom of speech does not extend to broadcast television. The FCC is a government entity that controls what can and cannot be broadcast. You need to get a license to broadcast. If you misuse the privilege you can fined or your license revoked. As a country we have rules against showing certain things on television, we just need to add political discourse to that list. Because freedom of speech is inalienable and holy!
I recommend this book to learn more about the problems we are facing. The author has spent a lot of his career working for the Democratic party but the message is not directly political.
http://amzn.to/infodiet
Pro: The theocracy has been set back by another four years.
Con: We will have to listen four more years all those stupid conspiracy theories by the "birthers" and whatnot.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6449
Location: The land down under.
Warp wrote:
Pro: The theocracy has been set back by another four years.
Con: We will have to listen four more years all those stupid conspiracy theories by the "birthers" and whatnot.
Don't forget racism.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Democracy basically means that the people who have IQ > 100 and people who have IQ < 100 have equal effect in voting.
And, that any ballot can be determined by any agenda, given a large enough people. (Which is the strongest reason why I don't like islamic immigration.)
Good that Osama won, but both were so equal (50% vs 48%) that it would have been better to just flip a coin about the election, rather than have a complicated process with votes, and millions spent at advertisements that could have been better spent. A lot of money could have been used to help people if they had just flipped a coin...
Some observations I made about this election...
1. Republicans should have walked this election, there was about 2-3 credible nominees (I would have gone with Ron Paul). Romney was an awful, awful candidate. Worse than John Kerry in 2004. He got nominated purely because he had the deepest pockets. He flip flopped on so many issues, I had no idea where he stood.
2. UK elections are often criticized for being too negative (although in recent years they're becoming less so), but the US ones take it to a whole new level. Literally 90%+ ads are negative, often based on half-truths and outright lies about their opponents. Crucially, like last time Obama was able to out blitz his opponent.
3. Way too much money spent on campaigning and a lot of it was evidently wasted by both sides. The amount spent could run the BBC for a year.
4. There seems to be enough disillusionment with both parties that a 3rd one is needed. However, it would most likely take 30-40 years before the party leader could realistically become president.
5. The style of campaigning by both sides is outdated. All I see is Nuremburg style rallies where a canditate will fire out propaganda unchalleged, and ads. There is debates, but they're very narrowly focused. Since the nominee's know what questions to expect. Its very easy to have a perfectly prepared answer, attack and rebuff.
I love Pearls Before Swine normally, but damn these were funny. :)
