Well, yeah. i was just getting at the fact that it’s not as if everything was going great until now, and the current generation (millenials or whatever you want to call them) are going to be the ones who fuck it all up. The point would be it’s already a shitshow - and the old are as much to blame as the young.
Not sure what’s funny, but i’m glad i can amuse.
The greatest single mistake that brought so much of this into the modern world was made in 1913. From that time to this, each generation only gets worse (and not by accident). What brought about the 1913 incident was spawned during the “enlightenment era” by specific theorists who decided to infect the world with their cure, of course without having the slightest clue as to how to verify it first.
But if you want to trace it back even further, it goes back around 10-12,000 years when man discovered how to use a “super-language”, a means to communicate that is above natural language so as to form an early version of the Ubermensch of that time (depicted as the “monolith” in the film 2001) and eventually led to what has been named “the original sin of Adam and Eve” (being inherited by each generation) about 6000 years ago. The “gods” (social engineers) had screwed things up almost as badly as they are now but eventually, some 4-6000 years later designed and formed “Ahdam”, a presumed solution and dam for the bullshit they had created. But we see how their “solutions” work out.
No offense to the “gods” of our day, but seriously, you guys need some very serious supervision.
Yes. That is why it is always becoming increasingly difficult for each generation to come out of that trap. That is no accident.
Because it’s not good enough.
James, I’m all open to suggestions, but you gotta help me understand how your vision works. You can think of me as stupid, or in need of a lot of hand holding if you like, but help me out here. So far, you seem to have suggested that we replace all our current laws with “personal” laws, if I may call it that (but of which I still don’t agree is a law), and I say all you’ll get out of that is warlords taking over the community through fear tactics. The ball’s now in your court–explain to me why I’m wrong.
Baseless assertions as far as I can tell.
Of course not. I never said it was. I just thought you were saying that your one child/adult rule alone would redistribute the wealth.
What is the “justice of generations”? Is that just your one child/adult rule?
The justice of generations means that any generation should not live under worse conditions than its former generation.
Again: Currently there is a crazy expropriation of all by all, of everyone by everyone, of anyone by anyone, and especially of the future generations by the current generations.
Debts and a polluted planet mean an extreme egoism, an egomania, a life at the cost of our offspring.
We live at the cost of our children, our grandchildren, …, in short: our offspring.
If a society lives at the cost of its future, then this society is in a suicidal mood. A suicide of a society means that there is no offspring anymore. And our society says: „We are a global society“. That’s lunatic.
So the justice of generations is very important.
At least a little bit beacuse I have had the following association:
Do the humans really regress? If so, then it’s not funny.
Ah, then I agree wholeheartedly.
After twenty six pages, are we any close here in finding democracy?
I want somebody here to make me a believer.
Alas, we can’t give you what you want, LM, but I’m getting a hell of a good education from this thread.
Thanks.
Why can’t you?
Well, first of all, spell out in specific detail what it is you want. I’m not quite clear on that, but I know I can’t give it to you. 
I think that we can safely surmise that the only way to eventually get a democracy is to coerce people into it, then turn them loose.
Until people learn how to govern themselves, there can be no actual democracy. Until that time, people think that the purpose of laws is to coerce other people into obedience. And as long as people are being coerced there can be no democracy and very limited learning concerning how to govern oneself void of coercion. The mentality remains “What am I supposed to do”, that of a child, rather than “what needs doing”, that of a mature adult. The result of that mentality is that people empower rulers who can’t help but take advantage and ensure that they remain rulers empowered with coercion. So it will be a very long time before there is ever a true democracy. A republic is the closest thing you could get to a democracy and even that loses authority to an empire.
Then either it isn’t the best or you are never satisfied.
Well, I wasn’t, but I have to admit…
Case in point^^
A) stop CHANGING laws until you know what laws you would make for merely yourself regardless of your situation.
B) every law you make to coerce others is another law for you to be confined by (which is why the USA is no longer a free country). Realize that in reality it is always other people making the laws upon you regardless of your situation.
C) the purpose of a government is NOT to coerce those other people into obedience (and thus usurp domination), but rather merely to arbitrate otherwise individually difficult situations to discern (such as who goes first at a 4 way stop intersection).
D) for those who actually can think very deeply; find the law(s) that you would always be willing to obey because it is always to your benefit to do so. Show others who couldn’t have figured out what that was so that if they can at least understand that law, they too will obey it for the same reason (aka. “no coercion” necessary). The more people obeying that law, the more people there are benefiting without needing so many other laws of coercion. Eventually build the laws of the land around that one law and the land becomes un-coerced, democratic, and truly free.
E) think “Golden Rule” but add abstract and then specific details when making laws that are going to coerce you into the will of other people.
Note that (D) & (E) are only for deeply thinking people. It is much like Bigus’ issue with me. I can tell him how to solve his problem, but he doesn’t really want it solved enough so as to make the slightest attempt to understand what I am saying. So he can’t even determine whether what I say is right or wrong. His argument is that such solutions are “up there” and thus don’t count. Similarly, how one governs himself is one of those “up there” thoughts and thus most people can’t even imagine it when they try and very seldom try. So they have to be shown. Demonstrations are required because explanations are a bit useless.
So people continue to make laws disregarding their own final objective. And those laws then prevent them from being shown or ever seeing what they need to see in order to get to the point where they actually can and will govern themselves, “democracy”. That is why it will be a very long time before there is actually any democracy. The monkeys making the laws blind themselves to their own freedom. Although one should note that AI machines can handle it for themselves quite nicely, without human interference (which will be handled as well).
If this is true, we’re going to have to wait for a genetic leap.
It’s the best we currently have. You want to propose something better, so let’s hear it.
This is reminiscent of Kant’s categorical imperative. Is that what you’re getting at?
Makes sense, but it has to be said that most of the laws we live with are laws that we willingly go along with and agree on anyway, which makes the description of “coercion” questionable. But I see what you’re saying in principle.
This is the troublesome spot–I’m assuming that when you say there is no coercion, it means there is no law enforcement. And if it is not the government’s job to coerce others into conforming to the law (their own law?), then there’s nothing stopping a brute from taking advantage of the coercion-free environment and stealing, raping, and murdering. The government stepping in to arbiter with “now, now, that’s not fair,” isn’t going deter him.
I don’t think there can be a single law like that–if for no other reason than that everyone’s different–everyone has different life circumstances, lives in different environments, has different genetic propensities, works in different occupations, has different social ties… so what works for one person won’t always work for everyone. This doesn’t make working in harmony with one another impossible per se, but it is the basis on which conflicts of interest arise, and if reason and civility cannot reconcile people’s differences, there can sometimes be a tendency to resort to war, sometimes in a panic.
But I can see how laws get reinstitutionalized–that’s one part I was missing.
This one, I need a bit of clarification on. Why would we make laws that are going to coerce me into the will of others when the whole point is to do away with coercion?
This might address my issue with point D)–the differences between people. If people are intelligent and deep thinking enough, mature, patient, and even tempered, then they might be able to resolve their differences through reason and diplomacy, and arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement. This is never guaranteed of course, but the more intelligent and cooperative of the human race should be able to pull it off in most cases.
Sounds like Eric’s quote in my sig.
And this seems to be the fatal flaw in your vision. If it wasn’t for humanities shortsightedness, a model like yours might actually have a chance of working.
You’re supposed to tell me that democracy is the most enlightened form of social organization ever where I should support it and that magical unicorn farts will eventually save the world with everybody holding hands singing Kumbaya.
That is what eugenics is all about and it’s already on its way. They are just waiting for enough of the older generations to hurry up and die out.
If the guiding stars in your world are figures like Kant, Hume, and Nietzsche, you must live in a very dark world (which frankly would explain a lot of the responses I have been getting over the years 
).
My intent is simply, “Stop messing with it until you know what the F*** you are actually doing to yourself”.
Imagine a chess game being played between two groups of people. Each group has “elected” a “representative” and they each vote on which moves to make. But the representative, being a little more of an expert at the game, gets to have a vote equivalent to one-third of the total votes.
As the game is play, the representatives have to play two games, one of chess and the other of handling the crowd. He can’t play his best chess game because too often he would get out voted. So instead, he plays the game in such a way as to trick his own group into seeing the most obvious moves that he hopes will perhaps eventually lead to a win. He knows that the game could be won much more easily without the interference of the crowd, so he really prefers a socialist group, but has to deal with this whole voting scheme.
The game lasts much, much longer simply because the game is far, far more complex than chess would normally be and the voters are, in effect, interfering with themselves. Each player has to use false-flag tactics so as to persuade his own group into supporting a better move, even though he already knows it wouldn’t have been the best that he could derive on his own. The greatest expertise and strategies are stifled by the ignorance of the voters.
Thus to handle the game more effectively and efficiently, “stop voting on the chess moves and let those already representing you go ahead and play their game much as generals in a war” (the socialist dream). And while they are doing that, YOU STAY BUSY figuring out exactly what game YOU would want to play and will be played on you. Chess isn’t the only option.
Play a different game that doesn’t have a win-lose ending, but rather a win-win never-ending.
Because the real chess players are playing You - subtle coercion, subtle influence, “media hypnosis”, “mass-programming”. In effect, you are merely an extension of them, slugging up the game. You, the common voter is nothing but a burden on the real players. You have no other influence at all.
Bad assumption (although understandable). The government is given policing power or law enforcement so as to ensure the arbitration. The government itself is to have to will of its own (until socialism). The government is there to bring together the best and brightest thoughts on how to resolve personal conflicts that can’t be resolved easily enough by the kind of people involved, such as a 4-way stop. But to ensure that the decision, not a coercive one, is strong enough to be depended upon for arbitration, a law enforcing agency is required.
Arbitration is worthless if it has no power to persuade. But that persuasion is not coercion against the will of the people involved. It is a coercion against the doubt and confusion that would be involved if the law was not enforced.
Let’s take a more serious example, the theft of a car, “taking possession without permission of the registered owner”.
Things are being taken from people all of the time. The arbitration is about which things can be taken, by whom, in what manner, and at what time without law enforcer intervention. The typical simple-minded, black and white rules very seldom lead to an actual majority decision per incident, even when the real majority voted on the rule. They vote on laws with specific thoughts in mind when in reality, a very large number of actual incidents do not fit what they were expecting when they made the law (which is why court judges were supposed to be “spirit of the law” judges, not “letter of the law enforcers”). Thus the law is a general law, not really fitting a great many actual situations, yet being enforced upon all such situations = “coercion” when not wanted by anyone involved.
In a socialist system, very un-democratic, one rule applies to all people throughout. A law is made by the elitists of that system (the “bourgeoisie”) to which all people are to be held accountable (except the chosen elitists of course). But what if there is a community that wants to handle such a situation differently?
The voting process is supposed to balance the greater majority opinions concerning the issue, which is not the way socialism actually works. But even if an entire nation votes on what to do about auto-theft, they cannot be representing the majority situations when auto-theft occurs. What of the community that wanted to handle it differently than the majority voters? They will be coerced into conforming to a wider national decision. And that is what democracy is supposed to prevent.
The arguments would be of the type, “What if the car was just driving through to community from out of state?” In such a case, a federal law enforcement would be appropriate so as to allow nation wide travel. But why apply a federal law to a community only concern? Perhaps a community would rather enforce its laws differently concerning its own citizens who have a good reason for living by a different standard ( = “democracy”). The more federal laws, the less democracy there can be.
But also what about an issue merely between neighbors? Perhaps certain neighbors want to handle the situation differently than the city, but still need law enforcement so as to ensure the arbitration. Currently they can’t really do that, “un-democratic” because trying to enforce a private-local law is against city, state, and federal laws = required lack of democracy by law. Thus people are always having to hide things “from the law enforcers” which they now use hidden surveillance to prevent, forcing higher, presumptuous, un-democratic laws upon all people regardless of their individual situations = “socialism”.
Why couldn’t they simply have a law that says, “We don’t enforce anything if you have made no agreement among yourselves”? Such laws have been made before, even back in Roman times. And that law inspires people to find what their own needs really are and form a natural democratic situation. But instead, what you get is, "We only enforce our higher laws if you have made no agreement among yourselves, while they inspire people to never agree among themselves; “don’t be a joiner”, “be independent”, “be your own boss”, “be a self-made man” == “team-a-phobia” = “loser” (the true “slave mentality”) and completely controlled by the higher monarchy.
THEY are making your decisions and enforcing those decisions because you are not making them for yourself with your own neighbors and documenting them. Their excuse is simply, “Well, you aren’t making those kinds of decisions, so we have to make them for you … else something bad MIGHT happen”. And until you find out what it is that you abstractly want in life, you and your neighbor are not likely to agree to hardly anything. But once you learn what it is that you personally, in an abstract sense, want to have the freedom to do and don’t mind being restricted to not do, you will see that your neighbor actually wants those same abstract things. At that point you and your neighbor (or even within your own family) can start making your own laws that the higher government can’t really do much about (although within the past two generation, they are getting more and more intrusive). You are at that point beginning to make a true democracy because you are making laws that apply to yourself and allowing them to be enforced by higher law enforcers.
“I don’t think…” was the operative phrase. Deeply thinking people know otherwise.
I’ll respond to the rest of this later…
Then I definitely can’t give you what you want, the least of reasons being the lack of unicorns in this world. I’m almost afraid to ask where you got the idea that I’m supposed to tell you that.
I could give two shits about Kant. I was asking if you were modelling your view after his.
That sounds less like Kant (you seem to have taken out the “regardless of your situation”, though this does not lead to contradiction).
I think I follow. Let your representatives in Congress (or the President himself) do their job while you do yours (car maintenance, medicine, library work, teaching, whatever). But you’d have to have a lot of trust that those you elected to represent you do know what they’re doing and require no surveillance, no checks and balances, and that you can leave them to their own devices such that the effects that their work will have will be to your advantage. Also, I listed a bunch of vocations as what one does at his own game, but were you thinking of something else? Like how to conduct one’s self morally?
So if I agree with a law that I didn’t invent, I must be brainwashed? If it wasn’t for “mass-programming” I’d disagree that murder ought to be outlawed? That it’s perfectly safe to run a red light?
There are some laws I disagree with–certain drug laws, for example–but it’s not as if laws are incompatible with reasons that a normal sane person can appreciate and support.
So law enforcement != coercion???
You’re kind of saying there is no coercion and there is at the same time. I suppose it’s the type of coercion you have in mind. There is no coercion, you seem to be saying, of the type in which people are forced (by threat of some kind) to obey the law against their will or without justification (this is standard or literal coercion), but there is coercion of the type in which people are “persuaded” or “reasoned with” to agree to follow the law in virtue of its justifications (this I can only conceive as metaphorical coercion as the literal meaning of the term denotes being forced by threat). ← This isn’t the kind of law enforcement you have in mind, is it?
Now I’m not sure what the difference between this “coercion by persuasion” and your brainwashing analysis of those who already agree with the law is–knowing you, I’m guessing that by “persuasion” you mean the showing of reason and logic, whereas the “brainwashing” that precedes the complacency of the masses in accordance with the law utilizes social pressure and psychological “tricks” more than reason and logic. Am I guessing correctly?
Ok, the pieces are starting to fall into place… still need a lot of clarity though… but so far it sounds like contractual law. You and your neighbor draft up a contract upon which you both agree, and that becomes a law binding upon you both.
Now getting back to the government’s role as arbiter, if one of you violates your part of the contract, in what way is the law suddenly enforced? Does the government try to persuade you back to your initial reasons for drafting up and agreeing to the contract? What if circumstances change since the initial agreement, what if variables enter the picture that you didn’t think of–are these circumstances and variables admitted into the arbitration, opening the possibility of renegotiating the contract? And are we saying the government’s ability to persuade is so powerful that no one will be able to break a contract for one’s own personal and selfish reasons without caring at all for being fair or honorable?
I suppose that’s you, huh?.. oh, deep thinker 
Go ahead and reply to the rest of my previous post before this one if you like.
So much for enlightened humanist democracy especially when it is pointed out to be just another rigged fraud.
Realize that your vote serve only two purposes;
1) It let’s the players know how much more persuasion is needed in which direction so as to accomplish what they have already decided is going to happen.
2) It slows and confuses the game such that they lose all perspective as they focus on controlling you and thus don’t even consider the final consequences of what they are determined to bring about. You distract them into mental blindness of their own actions.
Other than those, your vote has nothing at all to do with what direction the laws take. If you vote in the “wrong” direction either that direction won’t pass or will be changed pretty quickly by whatever means is necessary.
So as that deep thinking person, your better “task” is to resolve the issue of what laws you would have imposed upon yourself no matter what your situation in the future might turn out to be. Somewhat ignore or simply accept the world as it is at the moment because you are seriously not changing it anyway. Go ahead and do your job and whatever necessary things you must, but don’t get into the attempt to exercise your minuscule authority over other people. Once you accomplish that task of understanding your own true needs and thus what restrictions would help or hinder, you can stop focusing on that and start applying it. Apply it properly and all of the other problem gradually go away. When and if it comes time to vote, you will have a much, much clearer picture of what laws would be best for the nation.
If you have agreed to a law, the law merely reinforces your own decision. The laws are to help YOU with YOUR goals, not merely prevent others from their goals.
I take it that you know nothing of contract law. A valid contract states the consequences of breaking the contract as well as how it would be determined if it has been broken.
Realize that democracy and anarchy are of a very similar construction although lead to a very different outcome. Anarchy is “do whatever I want (including making whatever laws I want)”, whereas democracy requires that you FIRST figure out what you should want for your own sake BEFORE you go voting on laws (or do anything else for that matter). In short, grow the hell up before you go casting laws for everyone else to have counter. And what I mean by “should” is what I call IJOT, the Integral of Joy Over Time or the maximum amount of joy for the greatest length of time.
You should probably take a moment to verify whether or not anybody in this thread actually believes that before you ask us to defend it. You think you're making some big statement by shitting on democracy. Democracy is bad. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. One of the major goals of the U.S. Constitution was keeping the U.S. from becoming a democracy. That's Poli-Sci 101. Nobody in this thread as far as I can tell has a vested interest in defending democracy in its present state. You may as well be in here trying to goad us into defending Betamax VCRs or lutefisk.