Never mind. Take your time. There is no hurry.
with love,
sanjay
If voting changed anything they would of made it illegal already…
it never will… moreover, trusting voting machines in this globalist environment ???
But what to do about it? Even if it is possible to establish a method for drawing out the wise and virtuous and ushering them into leadership positions, we need to restore the people’s faith in their leaders. I believe that when the people lose faith, even if it is on false grounds, their lack of faith causes the system to fall apart–it eventually becomes a self-fulfilling professy.
This is what I meant by the conservatives being right. One of the most salient points they stand for is smaller and more regionally localized government.
Or like a football match, or like reality TV. You watch, Donald Trump will be president… just because he was a reality TV celebrity.
I believe Uccisor even concurred with this point in this very thread.
I swear, federal elections have become a popularity contest in the US, and voters make their decisions with the mentality of teenagers.
I also think the US government has turned due process into a social science experiment. They are currently testing the population to see what they can get away with. They found that Schwarzenegger can win in California, and with Trump they’re testing the theory that celebrity-hood wins more votes than wisdom, virtue, or competency.
Ah, so that’s where the Harry Potter quote came from:
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
- Sirius Black
Yes, now speaking of conservatives, and the original intent of the Constitution, they understood that given this many local communities, or “states”, there had to be some kind of centralized government with minimal power whose sole function was simply to keep all the states from going to war with each other. The greatest fear at the time of America’s birth was that the union of all states would degenerate into war, just as it had in Europe, at the first opportunity. They didn’t want to just expand Europe. They wanted a new system, a system that wasn’t like Europe, a confederation that was able to maintain harmony amongst the states in a way that Europe never could. The best they could think of was to establish a glorified “committee” made from representative from all the states whose purpose was to make decisions for the states when the states couldn’t amongst themselves.
It’s not clear, at least to me, whether they predicted the monolithic monster this mere committee would one day become, a monster that can now drag down the entire Earth with its own downfall.
Either way, one must be careful. A government 1000 strong will need a leader amongst its own ranks, and then you’re adding layers upon layers of government in a hierarchical structure. One man to rule over 32,000 thousand local leaders may not be all that worse than several layers of leadership (in the form of whole governments) in a colossal hierarchical structure.
Rome fell because it became too big. America may be different in its structure and its methods, both presently and in the past, but I can’t think of a single system that can maintain a population of 325 million and span a continent one and a half thousand miles wide without eventually crumbling. Layers upon layers of bureaucracy makes for a deck of cards. One man to rule over 325 million makes for a lone pillar holding up an unsustainable weight. I see no other method than these two.
(This makes me think: is the reason for the fall of great empires–republics or otherwise–simply unmanageable size? Could the secret to maintaining a republic be to live within a moderate size? What if America were actually four or five smaller confederations? Would the dangers of war breaking out between them still be as great?)
Ok, so you must mean people who are motivated to take on the yolk of leadership but are not hungry for power. They therefore don’t compete for it. They don’t go to any ruthless end to take it.
The problem, therefore, if I understand you correctly, is that in allow our leaders to compete for and take power themselves, we are inviting the ruthless and the power-crazed to jump to the top of the food chain. The kind of person we want in power are those that are fully qualified, of course, but require others to usher them into power. That, if I understand correctly, is a method for filtering out all the maniacal mad-men.
Hmm… the only problem I can see with this system is that, on occasion, there may be long drawn out periods where the people are indecisive about who they want as their leader. Suppose you had two candidates, and the population was more or less split 50/50 on who should win. Suppose one candidate won by a margin of 51%. It wouldn’t be that surprising that within the next week or so, the winner’s ratings drop to 49%, thus ushering in his opponent. Then a couple days later, his ratings rise again to 52%. Then again, after a few days, to 48%. You can see how this could drag on for months. In this kind of situation, government would be stifled. It wouldn’t happen all the time, of course, but when it does, it would be like a traffic jam where nothing gets done.
Well, in order to convince people, you will need a lot more than just understanding. You will need to demonstrate real world examples of its success. This is, by far, the most powerful way to convince people (which is why science is so successful).
With 1000 voters to every leader, this would certainly go a long ways to satisfying the two essentials that I mentioned–assurance that the voters are thinking on behalf of the population at large, and that the elected leadership is able to maintain the people’s happiness and wellbeing–and perhaps there are other essentials that I’m not thinking of at the moment–but I’m just saying: these are essentials, and the system wouldn’t work unless they are met (unless the system we’re aiming for is a repressive dictatorship, but no one wants that).
Are you taking into consideration that there is usually more younger people in society than older people? This assumes that there is, on average, more than two children for every set of parents.
I think you’re going to continue making calculation mistakes so long as you go purely on speculation. There are just too many variables determining who will be eligible to vote and who won’t, and these variables will continually occur to you so long as you keep thinking about it.
But I think your point is made: the portion of the population who are eligible to vote (and do vote) will be significant enough to have the intended effect.
The very definition of foolishness.
Ain’t this the truth?
It really surprises me how few people will really think through the ramifications of things like this–like there’s so many hidden holes in the system that can be exploited by anyone who wants the circumvent the system and has the wherewithal to do it. The question that everyone should be asking is: what’s actually stopping the vote counters from tampering/skewing the results? This is the bewildering part, because the answer really is: nothing!
Now this doesn’t mean they always will tamper or skew the result–given that they really are impartial, they should just do their job, tally up the votes, and go home. But no one is really impartial. Either they have their own personal reasons to skew the results (and given that almost everyone in politics wants one side or the other to win, even vote counters will have a preference–they are human, you know), or they will be easily–easily–paid off or threatened to skew the results.
Seriously! Like, what’s stopping this?!
This thread has seriously flipped my attitude towards politics through a 180–not that I held any serious convictions on politics for any great length of time at the beginning, but like I said countless times before, I was a newbie to political philosophy when I started this thread–I decided: what the hell, I’ll give it a shot–and I started out with all the newbie thoughts and values, all the prejudices and misconceptions, and I quickly (or over the course of 2 years) got torn to shreds.
Now I’m more cynical than I’ve ever been. More despairing about the fate of mankind.
The flip can be summarized thus: the false hope in democracy is based on the illusion of 10 out of 100 loop holes in the political system being plugged by so-called solutions. People end up thinking that since we used to have, maybe, 1 solution plugging 1 loop hole out of 100, and then we figured out this ingenues system that plugged up 10 loop holes, we had it made. Sure 10 solutions to 10 problems is a hell of a lot better than 1 solution to 1 problem, but you still have 90 more plugs to come up with (not to mention the fact that every solution you come up with introduces 10 new loop holes–every plug has a few holes). But people will be so enamored and frankly desperate to believe in the efficacy of those 10 plugs that they will completely ignore the 90 holes that still exist, denying their existence, and will therefore convince themselves that they’ve built the perfect system. 10 plugs is all they need because the 10 holes they fill were the only problems needing to be solved. Now the system is perfect!
The flip I went through is to stop focusing on the 10 plugs and to recognize the 90 holes that still exist. The fact that there’s nothing stopping the vote counters from skewing the results–nothing in the theory of democracy, nothing in the constitution, nothing in the virtuosity of human nature–is one of these glaring holes that I would have just dismissed 2 years ago. Now I’m seriously asking myself: what’s stopping them? I can’t think of anything. And this is not the only loop hole.
Something broke in my mind, something that was blocking me from seeing the 90 holes in all their stark reality. But now that’s all I can see–just a shit load of loop holes in a system that is faaaar from perfect, so many ways for anyone to exploit whenever they want to so long as they have the wherewithal. Oh, it’s still a lot better than the monarchies of medieval Europe, 10 times better as a matter of fact, but that’s pathetic compared to the 100 times better it could be if, ideally, all loop holes could be plugged.
So let me just take a moment to mock myself from 2 years ago:
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! 
Oh God.
The line goes: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Democracy doesn’t work… But all of the others are worse. “In a true democracy, 50% +1 of the population can piss in the Wheaties of 49% of the population, then force them to eat it.”
This is why the best parts of the American Government are not the democracy parts…
This is also why I spend so much time telling people, “This is not a fucking democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic!!!” The constitution is what must be held up. Everything else is mob rule…
(HI GIB! I don’t know how long I’ll be back, but it’s good to see you are still here.)
Glad to see you coming to your senses Gib and you’re quite correct in elaborating the many flaws with democracy.
Constitutional Republic is what devolved into our current state of existence right now.
Oligarchy and plutocracy wet dream.
Expectations will never help make wise decisions.
Honestly, I don’t feel like I’ve come to my senses. I feel like I’ve simply gone through a shift. I don’t like being this cynical, but that’s where I am right now. Hopefully, I’ll be able to think of a more positive way to think of all this.
Yeah, I’m still here, will be for a long time to come. I’m hoping this thread dies pretty soon, but I’ll keep replying so long as other people keep posting.
I don’t think that murder qualifies as “evolving” into a rotting corpse.
A more positive way of thinking about all of this? Good luck with that.
You know, there are different ways of positive outlooks.
Take me for instance, I view that a lot of people need to die in order to make this world a better place. Oh sure, it’s all very relative and subjective conjecture but you can see where I am going with all of this. 
Explain.
Can you be any more vague?
You want to make the world the best that it can then eliminate the entire human race
Once that is achieved there will be no more suffering and everyone will be at peace
No half measures like only getting rid of some as it has to be either all or nothing
But if the logic of this is too disturbing for some then we can carry on as we are
It matters not to me but carrying on is the more practical of the two options
The self preservation in me says no. No, I want humanity to survive and flourish, I really do.
With that being said, your human extinction event is very probable given the current environment and that cannot be denied.
Still, it’s inevitable that large segments of the global population will be culled down. At any rate I would like to see the destruction of world governments everywhere and the destruction of all individuals that are responsible in making this bullshit world as it exists today possible. For me all these individuals are better off dead.
Would you like me to?
ever wonder why people/voters always want more regulations ???
the corbett report (dont agree with the solution because it is precisely money that led us on the brink), but again, no gov can fix this huge mess, explained in 1H… The Regulation Trap. Democratic fairy tales no more.
More vague than you have already been? No thank you.