well "Society and Culture" have changed a lot since the post office in 18th century- actually I was having a long conversation about this exact thing with my granddad a few days ago -about how modern man/the worker is essentially incapable of organizing and doing anything in his own defense- which is what you're hinting at when you say that we need a "better view of gubment"

Take the workers movements from 1832 onwards when regular people got sick of exploitation from factory owners, and they fought back to get better pay and better working conditions etc. Now theres essentially nothing stopping modern man from doing the exact same thing and doing it better, but we lack something which sets us apart from the workers of 1832; we lack the ability to work with and recognize each other as brothers and we have no community or shared culture anymore which can be used as a platform for solidarity. Furthermore, what "culture" we do have today is a total joke which is fed to us through the television and image politics and Neil Postmans "News of the Day" concept whereby real relevant issues are placed on an equal platform with trivial nonsensical information and both are given a 10 second soundbite. So for example, a local business has just closed down in [insert subject hometown here], the story is given 10 seconds on the evening news and is then brushed aside with a cheerful smile by the anchors who then move on to another handful of other stories which have no bearing on you or your life at all. Not even to mention the sheer amount of propaganda and public relations distortion which goes on there anyway. But aside from that, it's the actual medium of deliver information which has fucked with our minds so much, we grow up exposed to this kind of trivial nonsense and thus that is how we come to think about the world because arguably (in a behavioral and developmental sense) the archetype of the News of the Day teaches us to see the world in the same decontextualized manner which renders humans almost incapable for deep thought and reflection on the important local issues which are relevant.

Now, how is that relevant to what you were talking about? Because the workers in 1832 or the american or french or chinese revolutionaries didn't see the world in 10 second soundbites and neither were they bombarded with torrents of trivia, so they knew the real issues that we important and they thought about them and discussed them, and then they went on to do something about it. Furthermore, they had community and a strong sense of "brotherhood" which gave them incentive to "protect the tribe" when it was threatened by greedy factory owners or robber barons, and community is another thing we lack.

I strongly recommend downloading an audiobook of Neil Postmans Amusing Ourselves to Death, and listening to it instead of watching Family Guy this evening. That will help immensely :)

http://teketen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/orwell_vs_huxley.jpg

>>335
The media is a huge part that I can't believe that I forgot in my original post, thanks.

This is the main problem with free speech (don't take that to mean I think the freedom of speech should be limited): Any attempt to curtail this irresponsible journalism that has cropped up in the last fifteen or so years (really since 9/11) is squashed by the First Amendment.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though: younger generations are getting informed of the news more and more through the internet. You're more likely to absorb information by reading an article over hearing one of those ten second sound clips.

>>336

I havent made up my mind about the internet yet, on one hand it can be the "greatest equalizer man has invented" as Richard Falkvinge accurately said, but on the other hand it's being turned into a huge database for the benefit of government and big business and these guys it turns out have a monopoly on it with things like CISPA etc.. look how many internet names and sites came out in support of data collection policies. Admittedly it wasn't all of them or even a majority, but it was a huge number of for-profit ones. Plus, you've got things like youtube and facebook which limit the "free thought" and creativity of people by placing comment boxes out of view and enforcing hate speech flagging and so on, so that only the most neutral or politically correct opinions are the ones that get shared- and these systems are open to abuse with false +1's to give priority to commented opinion and so on... and then there's the god awful "reading twitter" /trending crap that mainstream TV shows are starting to use to give the impression that people give a shit about their petty stuff.

But even in the best case scenario, the internet isn't going to fix the lack of community and culture amongst Europeans which is the main thing holding people back in my opinion. Even if the internet was truly uncensored it'd still come back to majority opinion on what is "right", and when the majority of people are so dumbed down by hollywood culture and "news of the day" style of thinking, then sadly the intelligent minority aren't going to be able to accomplish anything.. which is why "brotherhood" and community spirit needs to be brought back kicking and screaming if necessary, and regarding freedom of speech .. that in itself becomes a joke when any mongoloid has the "freedom" to regurgitate garbage from media propaganda outlets.

The same thing is true with democracy actually.. i forget whether it's Huxley or Postman who said that (probably huxley) the democratic process is essentially a sham when the voting public aren't intelligent enough to make a rational decision in an election, and i'm sure voters would disagree with that insult (lulz) but when you actually look at the quality of the men and women in politics and when you examine their campaigns and advertisements, you can see that they're appealing to retards with the lowest common denominators; so politicans already know that the public is retarded, which is why they think they can get away with doing half the shit they're doing.

You're entirely right, regardless of it being a cliché or not, education is the huge fucking key to fixing all this.

1) A STANDARDIZED GLOBAL LANGUAGE, AND MEDIUM.
Communications breakdown is not just a cool Zep song, it's a plague on well-formed dialogue attempts between ethnic, religious, politcal, and other groups, worldwide. Some great steps have been taken in the past few centuries to keep these channels open between groups (especially sovereign entities), even during times of unrest and disagreement. However, there are still shortcomings. And from your educational standpoint; these problems could be addressed early by less PC educational practices. 5TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER TO CLASS: "listen, these people are of a different color/faith/sexual pref,/ethnicity/political affiliation, but they are a breathing part of the global ecosystem. Learn to communicate effectively, or be doomed to sticks and stones".

2) COMPLETE GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY.
This one will never happen due to something as basic as fear. Everyone wants to know what their government is doing with its time, and their money, but nobody wants another nation to know. You cant vet an entire nation, and so ill call it nigh impossible. Excuse my bureaucracy, but there should be a member of gov't., at every level of gov't., whose job is to do nothing but report to the public what's going on, to make everything accountable. "Trade secrets", so-to-speak, are a possibility, but that should be main plainly clear where applicable:

The Office of the Governor of FakeState's monthly expense report:
Hookers: $3400
Education: $1,600,000
Highway Dep't.: $1,450,000
Secret Squirrel Shit: $225,000

3) FUCK COLLEGIATE ELECTIONS.
Stop monetizing electoral votes. I dont care how important Texas is compared to Arizona, per capita. Give me a system that counts each persons vote. Wether the difference would be seen or not, it would encourage people to become more involved, because yes - now your vote counts.

4) NO LOBBYIST GROUPS or whatever they are called.
This is simply a way to privatize the job that your congressmen and senators should already be doing. Large corporations (no, I've never held a pickett sign) bitch about paying taxes the honest way, because it makes it harder to afford to buy their government at the back door. Lobbyists are the back door.

5) ADJUST PAY FOR GOV'T OFFICIALS / POLITICIANS
Cut some fat here. The liquid incentives for serving in office should more closely resemble the national average for a similar job in the private sector. You might think of this as a way of ADDING fat (P.O.T.U.S. = Fortune 500 C.E.O.), but dont forget that small business outnumbers the shit out of big business, in quantity at least. There are plenty of people who run dense, dynamic, and complex organizations in the private sector -with a similar responsibility:delegation ratio- who make less than 150k a year. Furthermore, let's go ahead and make this payrate not only ACCOUNTABLE and TRANSPARENT, but also a floating number. The public should be able to vote that a gov't. official work under decreased pay for a period, for unsatisfactory performance. As a Mil-Fag, I can tell you it's quite an effective tool for lighting a fire under the ass of a malingerer.

6) CITIZENS MORE INVOLVED, EDUCATED, INFORMED
Greater transperency would certainly facilitate this, but ultimately this is the responsibility of the governed: YOU are the boss of THEM. They work for you. "...ask what you can do for your country" is a helluva sentiment, but it's 3 dimensional. Demanding that your government supply you with reasonable acommodation for your citizenship, payed taxes, public or military service, and general patriotism, keeps the system honest, finely tuned, and more effective as a whole. 'Idle hands', and all that jazz. The place that a citizen should be most involved is at the local level, and formal education (too begin at elementary-level) should step up to further focus on political awareness. Especially at the local level. Not every bright-eyed little shithead in America will grow to be a General Motors C.O.O., American Ambassador to China, or Brigadier General A. Shithead, but plenty of them will -at one point- involve themselves in their local community in some way or another. Wether it's sending their child to a public school, or serving time in County Jail, they will be involved.

7) SELECTIVE SERVICE
I beleive (and I imagine some of you will disagree) that service to your community, state, and nation should be a requirement of citizenship. A lottery should pick entry-level civil servants of all type (politics, police, military, etc.) from recent high school graduates once a year. The graduate must also be 18 at the time of the lottery. The lotteries for which a citizen is elligible must be the lottery of a level of delegation for which they are part of (cant be required to serve a state office from another state, but can be required to serve a national office, etc.). The required minimum service would be 2 years in any service. If the citizen intends to further his education after high school, request exemption, or forfeit his/her citicenship, he/she has a few options:

a) Complete the 2 years service after completion of a degree. The education fees would be at the citizens expense, but he/she would enter the required civil service period at a proportionally higher pay rate.

b) Complete the 2 years service in congruence with the pursuit of a degree, 100% educational expenses paid if the degree is relative to current civil service. 50% of educational expenses are paid if it is not. This expense assistance expires on completion of the service, unless extended.

c) The citizen can forfeit his/her citizenship, and all rights exclusively inherent in that citizenship. They would be required to leave the country.

d) The citizen can request exemption from selective service on the grounds of extenuating circumstances (medical disability, etc.). The request will be evaluated independently, by a corresponding professional (medical doctor), with this evaluation being the financial burden of the citizen. If found to be exemptable under this evaluation, the citizen will be refunded all costs for evaluation by the entity that holds the lottery (municipality, state, etc.).

ANYWAYS, probably too much detail for that one, but i feel pretty strongly about selective service in other fields than military. I see very little in the way of negative impact it would have on out nation, given the relative positive impact.

>>338
oh, and one more thing. ill make it quick, cuz the sandwich maker wants a *backrub*:

"Un-alienable Rights" should be revised to meet the needs of the modern society. I dont have any clear ideas on the particulars of such a revision, but the basic jist should this idea:

DO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT, BUT BE READY TO PAY THE CONSEQUENCES. and STOP TRYING TO MAKE EVERYBODY AS MISERABLE AS YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE A DISTORTED/CONFINED VIEW OF MORALLY ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR.

I'm tired of my gov't limiting my pursuit of happiness. Granted, my pursuit shouldn't hamper the next guys pursuit, but shooting watermelons with a full-auto assault rifle in my backard would make me happy. I would be sure to build a dirt hill backdrop so that I dont hit my neighbor while he's doing the same thing next door. In a furry suit, no doubt.

Do any of you know what lobbying is? It's anything consisting of "non-government group" meets "government-group", more or less. Scientists providing information on global warming, for example, is considered lobbying.


The danger with American Lobbying is we don't call certain forms of money laudering corruption.

We can't get away with illegalising lobbying without destroying a vital linkage institution.

The answer, at least I believe, is tight regulation, where every expense must be made transparent under penalty of law. Enforcing that however will cost a pretty penny; and where that comes from is anybody's guess. Not to mention that although this sort of institution would be good at keeping the fuckwits like Christopher Monckton out of our congress, we have to always ask that question, "who will guard the guards?".



With regards to better view of government, honestly, I think America has the right attitude - their hatred of it comes up only and really truly only when talking about ideological opposition - id, democrats complained about big gov when Bush was in power while republicans were complacent and happy, and now the opposite is true.

What we're missing, at least in my view, is solidarity. Solidarity with ourselves and with the world at large; we forget the other side is as human as we are; those of us who are conscious of the fact that the rest of the world suffers forgets how good we as Americans have it, and those that are conscientious of our wealth forget that the rest of the world lacks it; and likely as a product of our two-party system, we have no idea how to form a coalition and move forward.



Of course I should make it aware that I am keenly on the left - to a point most consider extremist. I don't really see our government as being able to keep up with what's facing us, and I think the necessary changes our constitution has to make would be so numerous by now that the only way to properly adapt it is to abandon it with a new one, a specific one, and one probably quite a bit more like the old Soviet one (before you dismiss this, keep in mind that the Soviets didn't follow a single letter of their constitution and that it was a fairly humane document; I suggest you read it before judging).


>>337
With regards to America, methinks the problem is is that we didn't learn the same lessons the Germans, French, English, etc. learned from the Nazis.

Going back to the solidarity issue, really the whole of the Nazis culmination of power can be blamed on the SPD and the Spartikusbund incident (what killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht). The controversial action of the left-wing Social Democrat government in Germany at the time to crush a democratic uprising (not really even a communist one, mind you, despite their leaders- fundamentally, they wanted to vote) and murder several key figures utterly disunified the left. The Germans themselves have some good terms to illustrates how alienated the left as whole was from itself : entzweien (separate), morphemically "dis-two", with the dis having it's strong connotations of separation and scatted about into pieces, compare vereinen (unite), morphemically "for-one".

Without support within itself the left could form no stable opposition, and some opportunistic conservatives aligned with the Nazis, the latter of which then started bullying/murdering other right wing groups into its ranks, eventually formed an army and very nearly exterminated the left, seizing Germany and her people.

Europe is, or, at least, historically had been aware of what that meant. In many of these nations voting is a legal imperative; they'll let you vote blank tickets for the most part, but it at least makes you aware of what's going on in the world.

In America we just thought of it a some damned European thing and all we got out of it was an appreciation for life, which when married with the depression's appreciation of value meant that the children of the greatest generation here, the baby-boomers of the US, would be spoiled horrendously rotten.



One option to solve our solidarity issue would be the dismantling of our winner-take-all system. Without that, then third parties would feel encouraged to run without fears of undermining their reluctant otherwise favourites. With that in place, politicians can then support issues as they come while still remaining faithful to their mandate and not having to fear the party line. More views, less us-versus-them, more solidarity.

I'm also a fan of a pluralised executive - somewhat like Switzerland and its direct democracy, though logistically speaking I think we should limit ourselves to a triumvirate where not every member is necessarily required to overlook it.


Not to mention economics. If there was a way to treat the subject as a science and not as the voodoo-cult it's become, then maybe we could actually solve some issues. And maybe if we took a critical eye to Europe instead of dismissing it as socialism run amuck, then we could see austerity cults for what they are and move on with economic growth. Of course, that opens of the question of sustainability, coupled with the banks making money appear out of nowhere to the point of burst bubbles, so... whew... Now factor in that I'm the WSM guy from a few threads back. I'm pretty much an idiot, though, so... I don't know, take my suggestions within a grain of salt.


>>338


Regarding Selective Service, what would you do about conscientious objectors? And do you have any idea how expensive that would be? That would bankrupt everything, not to mention put the country at a high risk of human rights abuses. How do you pay the salaries of the people working in the services? How do you pay for education? Casting people away is illegal by international law; what about those seeking asylum or those who can't work for reasons covered by their privacy rights (note that these are inalienable human rights, not citizen rights)? You're absolutely fucking over the poor if you expect them to pay for those acts you require of them - you're just opening things up for abuses in the face of a faceless bureaucracy - it's not going to work. I mean, it hasn't worked; not for North Korea (yes they call the whole thing the army, but de facto its the same idea). What makes you think such a thing would work here? Enacting that would militarise the economy as well, which is arguably more to do with the poverty of the Soviet Union than the command nature itself. I hate to sound like I committing association fallacies here, but that type of economy isn't considered very prosperous. It's been argued that were it not for WWII, America would be leaps and bounds ahead of where it is today, due to the effects of the militarised economy essentially prolonging the depression. Not to mention, do we really need that many people? How many jobs could we possibly have? At some point we'd run out and start assigning busywork. That doesn't improve societies, it just costs money.


Also, continue wining about government pay if you want, but on average public sector employees get payed far less than private sector equivalents. There's going to be a lower limit where if you push their pay down below that threshold, nobody will work in the public sector and those that do will have only the most needy of families. Bureaucrats, despite it all, are humans too. Politicians, I suppose, could stand a pay cut, but you have to wonder how much of the money afforded to them goes to things like the secret service and hosting guests (which, sad as it may be, is often the only way people can get things done - such as having dinner with the Chancellor of Germany (and her Übersetzer) to discuss international economic issues).

>>340
First of all, I don't consider it an inalienable human right to be American citizen.

Also, In my gusto to explain possible lottery practices for selective service, I forgot an important point: not every citizen would/should have to make the choice of service or emmigration. Not every citizen would be selected from the lottery. Only an amount required to staff the necessary positions would be selected. Also, it might be important to say that a person who was passed up in a lottery is not subject to subsequent lotteries. Maybe even extend the statute of limitations to it's process, or something to that effect.

Maybe I'm a dense totalitarian asshole, but I fail to see why a "conscientious objector" deserves preferential treatment over a person who simply doesnt want to serve the common interests of their land due to simple inconvenience (ie: lazy fucks). Or did I miss the point of that? I apologize,I'll try to keep the sarcasm to a minimum, but this is how I see it: Human rights are birthrite, citizen rights are a privilidge. A privilidge earned.

I can understand the threat of civil rights abuse, but that threat is inherent in anything Americans do in the system(s) we already have. Somehow we manage?

>...Casting people away is illegal by international law;...

And with the inverse: we offer citizenship to those willing to serve in our military, or some russian crack whore lucky enough to find a well-to-do American agoraphobe with internet access and a pension for trivial matrimony. And of course, I dont need to mention the Mexican border. It's not casting people away if you give them the opportunity to be a citizen in the first place. I consider it fallacy to beleive politics -or national alignment- to be tantamount to religion/faith, but I consider the choice to be just as important. When a person decides for themselves that their decisions are now their own, and no longer part of some rearing practice -and they are responsible for their own life and choices- they are fully capable of saying I don't like the way these people do business, think I'll find new friends/lovers/bosses/governemt/theology. Call me a proponent of the "love it or leave it" ideal. I honestly don't think this kind of stuff would ever get voted into action by popular opinion, due to legitimate fears just like your own, but then again I'm a horrible salesman.

>what about those seeking asylum or those who can't work for reasons covered by their privacy rights (note that these are inalienable human rights, not citizen rights)?

Doctor/Lawyer - Patient/Client confidentiality? I think that would cover the privacy concerns, save for the fact that you would need to confide in said Doctor/Lawyer. But if that's still a concern, I'm more than confident that I can fall back on this: You could just serve your community.

Only somewhat srs: Tits or GTFO.

>You're absolutely fucking over the poor if you expect them to pay for those acts you require of them

Not when the choice is theirs. Especially not when a founded exemption warrants refund. Also, the promise of secure employment, and educational benefits would be a godsend for impoverished nest-leavers. I wont try to stand on the current unemployment rates, as it's not needed. Worthwhile employment is a constant battle for under-priveledged high school grads. Not everyone can be expected to afford, or receive a scholarship for, a secondary education.

> - you're just opening things up for abuses in the face of a faceless bureaucracy - it's not going to work.

I'm admittedly short-sighted sometimes -I'll grant you that- so I'll leave this remark uncontested. I couldn't expect you to respect my opinions if I didnt offer the same. You may well be right. But I think you posting here is at least somewhat proof that you think (as i do) the current system(s) are already rife with abuse.

I think selective service is a bad idea. Here's why:

1-A lot of people simply cannot make it through military life. It's not that it's hat difficult (just say yes, no, and keep a clean room), but some people don't work well in that environment. Discharging them means a lot of work on the military's end, which means more money is needed. It's also kind of fucked for someone to get a dishonorable discharge especially if they didn't want to bein the military in the first place.

2-Money. It costs (when I went through, at least) around 15,000 dollars to send a soldier through basic training. Inflatin the ranks only inflates costs, especially when...

3-We don't need it. The military is moving more towards a flexible, small unit force that doesn't need sheer numbers anymore.

4-It takes from people in the military. Part of the reason Americans love the military so much is BECAUSE it's volunteer. You don't HAVE to join the Army and go to Afghanistan, it's because you're brave! (or want free college). But I think it takes a lot out of the respect the military gets if you force people to join.

HOWEVER...I do think that if you're running for President, you should have some military experience, even if it was National Guard so you didn't have to go to Vietnam. The President is Commander and Chief and should reflect taht. I'm not saying they had to be generals or anything, but even a few years as a paper clerk could give them some insight about the men and women their policies may put at risk.

I think >>338 has some great ideas, but they require SUCH a restructuring of our political system that I don't see it happening for at least another 50 years. Which sucks (besides the selective service thing).

http://www.governmentisgood.com/index.php

This website is actually the reason I started this thread. It has some really good ideas, like telling people what they are paying taxes for, and defends Big Government as an actually vital institution in American life.

I think that's the fundamental problems with politics: the idea that government is some kind of draining, murdering monster. So you get candidates who run on the pledge of cutting back government, lowering taxes...it just makes the problems worse, so they cut and cut more and more rather than have a rational discussion about how to spend the money they HAVE.

Then when no one's paying attention because "Gummint is takin my medicare", shit like Citizens United goes through and takes more voter rights than Bush or Obama ever dreamed of.

>>342
I'd like to stress that I'm not advocating a military-only draft, never-ending and all-encompassing. Rather, it would fill ALL public offices (well, entry-level offices such as clerks, assistants, blah blah blah).

And once again, the lottery would fill just the positions that are empty. The only requirement of EVERY citizen would be that they made themselves available to this lottery, for times of need.

As I think about it, I can see there would be a few problems with my idea (the largest being that I wholeheartedly agree that our military's strength comes from volunteer service), and so I will concede it - for now. I'm gonna go check out that website of yours.

What of the largely 2-party system of politics?

Jenga you ridiculous bag of horse shit. Every god damned argument you make is undercut but your childish bias and idiocy.

>>I don't care that Mitt Romney strapped his dog to the roof of a car. It's proof that he's a vile person, but last I checked, there's no luggage racks on Air Force One.

Casually leaves out Obama EATING dogs.

>>OK gay marriage (which for christ's sake, do it already!)

DURR HURR AGREE WITH MY POLITICAL OPINIONS!

>>We need a better view of govnermnet

Well maybe when it functions better -and you learn how to spell it- people will have a better view of it? Instead of inspecting people to just love it, and demanding people should love having their money taken from them with virtually no accountability, how about suggesting ways to make the government actually work instead of trying to change people's perception of it? By god you're dumb.

>>Fix education and you can repair politics.

Well throwing money at it certainly doesn't work, what does? School choice. Which kids get the highest grades? Kids in charter schools, private schools and homeschooled. Private sector wins, public schools result in wastes of space like your flabby ass.

>>here's a light at the end of the tunnel though: younger generations are getting informed of the news more and more through the internet.

PFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh yeah, that's a big improvement. Kids having their opinions formed by YouTube, Wikipedia and various unverifiable blogs and tumblrs.

Fuck off back to tinychat you fat, ugly fuck. Sitting on your god damned couch all day.

Oh, don't mind that little rascal! He's just hungry s'all.
>>346

>>338

1) we're already heading this way; that's what sucks about the whole thing. Notions like "global language" and (obviously) the "global village" concept make for warm and fuzzy propaganda but causes more problems than it seems to solve. In any case, what would be the global language of choice.. english? English -if you've studied linguistics and anthropology at all- is a dog language.. and I used "dog" in the sense that the Aztecs and Maya used it to refer to the Tupi Tribes; that is to say, it is banal, incoherent and bereft of higher comprehension because if the language you use to comprehend the world is the language of a retard, then you're going to end up eventually thinking like a retard.

I agree with everything else in point .1 though :)

2) totally disagree with this one. Marxists would point out -and accurately (although im not a marxist)- that you're describing reformation of an already hopelessly broken system, when in reality what we need is revolution, not reformation.

I look at it this way; these systems of taxation and monarchs and "popular assembly" politics were set up in the beginning to keep the retarded peasent of christendom from doing anything to assert himself against the baron or the barbarian desendended "nobility". Therefore, these systems are prisons inherently. Now you can -for the sake of analogy- refurbish an old prison and paint the walls nice and install a plasma TV and hardwood flooring (that is "reform" the system)... but the steel doors are still there, the bars are still there and it's still essentially a prison. Instead you could just demolish the big nasty building and create a villa and a vineyard in its place (that is "revolution" ... uh *utopian revolution of course lol).

3) agree.

Like Huxley said "the democratic system is essentially a sham when the voting public is robbed of their rationality and ability to use their vote wisely" -and if you don't think that's the case, look at the party campaigns.. could they be anymore lowest common denominator and childish?

"Voting" shouldn't even exist. The power should be grassroots held by communities who do their "governing" part time (workers controlling the work place etc).Things like policing should be up to individual communities and the military should be joined to the police force; everybody armed, everybody looking out for their own communities on a voluntary basis with a small central vanguard government existing to tie things together with no presidents or kings or mayors to even get the chance to monopolize power and sell out their position.

4) Agree entirely. And after we've castrated the decision makers behind AIPAC -just like that nice pharaoh did in Egypt and Libya- the world will be a better place.

5) (see 3) government should be a part-time job, same with the army/police. There would likely be privileges or some perks of the job to make it worthwhile -transport costs covered etc-, but these would be minor at best.

6) this is a given.. but ironically it must happen first in order to have 1,2,3,4,5 and 7 accomplished.

7) Here you've wandered into popular assembly political logic where you're forced to find a fair way to give everyone a chance. I'm sorry, but fuck that. We need a meritocracy where only the strongest and the most ingenious and innovative people are driving humanity forward, what we DO NOT need is a world where we're forced to stunt progress because it's politically incorrect and ... ohh go see Andrew Ryan from Bioshock (even though i disagree with "the great chain of industry" cosplay, Andrew Ryan borders on accuracy describing the failing methods of government- it'd be entirely accurate if the game developers had wanted to/had the balls to go ahead and mention how the church/washington/soviets relied on thegreat masses of weak and stupid people in order to control the world- in other words, the exploitation of the popular assembly style of politics, where the intelligent people may disagree with the rhetoric of the politician, but the intelligent person feels like "everyone else" agrees with it, so they say nothing- you know, "herd mentality")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbI7gxxbYpo

also Chomskys talk on "government in the future" made back in (i think) 1970 for the "workplaces owned by workers" concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPlEJlmWuc


VERY INTERESTING CONVERMASATION THANK YEW KINDLY SQUIRE

>>353 sorry.. edit.. ignore that first yt link on the above,

THIS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f18NWnxRmjI is the version i meant to add :)

>>346
I made this for you, sunshine.

>>355
lold

>>353
I don't think I ever said anything about English being the global language. I was intentionally vague because it would be a matter of contention.

If I was to propose a language for global use, it would be probably be something Cyrillic-based, just because of its areas of use, as that would place East-Europe & South-west Asia at the rough middle of everything (that is if you consider the Americas to be "The West", and Asia to be "The East"). I'm no linguist or etimologist, and I don't think that would be the best based on it's propensity for second-language adoption, but making it a pissing contest would kind of defeat the purpose.

>...We need a meritocracy where only the strongest and the most ingenious and innovative people are driving humanity forward, what we DO NOT need is a world where we're forced to stunt progress because it's politically incorrect...

If I may, I'd like to relate your statement to the 'No Child Left Behind' policy. If you are not an Amerifag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

At it's very core, I despise it. But this doesn't mean I agree with you on the need for a 'meritocracy'. I despise it because it doesn't hold a student, a future member of our society, to their responsibilities as such. Maybe a little heavy, but dammit it can't be all Saturday morning cartoons and firecrackers in a frogs ass. NCLB makes it ok to suck at life. I say that both in the negative and positive light. I beleive that the positive side of this -"yeah, you kinda suck, but your worth in society cant be measured on a human scale"- is the more profound.

To ignore basic humanity in favor of perceived value (a perception that is as flawed as the human preceiving it), is to say that I don't have to run faster than you, I just have to run faster than the bear. As much as that seems like the best way to ensure the future of a healthy society, Darwinian and Utopian and Evolved and Perfect -and underpopulated-, you still have a huge drawback: Everybody is ready to fuck Everybody.

Excuse me for sounding doom and gloom, but that sounds like regression to caveman survival instinct. Oh yes! Of course we are driven to procreate to bare young, protect our young to ensure genetic longevity, and kill to feed and maintain dominance of our 'hill' (all as a population control mechanism to weed out the week and ensure our genetic potential is met), but we'll never accomplish much more than that, save for a few proxy wars in which we club the other ape and piss on his body to display dominance and aleviate stress:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/afghanistan-marines-urinating-video_n_1200324.html

Yeah, maybe I extrapolated that too much, but if that is

TL;DR:

then I disagree.

>>356

I wouldn't say that's TL;DR, but it is a [little] incoherent.. or maybe i need more coffee..

Let me ask you though -because what you said about "profound worth on a human scale" made me smile- how else do we measure the worth of anything if not by how it directly impacts humanity as a whole? It's not actually the case that we have a luxury of opinion of evaluating a persons merit because in a species or (you might prefer an) economic sense they're already judged even if they aren't ever praised or vilified about it. But seriously let me ask you that question; if we don't evaluate a persons worth on a human scale then how else do you suggest we do? If we can't judge a person by how their actions effect society and other people then, as i see it, we have no method to judge anybody and then nobody has any merit at all because there isn't any yardstick by which we judge either What merit it or Who is deserving of it.

Anyhow, re: "no child left behind". I wasn't only referring to social policies in the stunting of progress, it's demonstrable in a technological and economic sense as well. One example which I'm constantly reminded of is tower farming... it would be such an easy way to feed the world in a self sufficient and virtually cost-free way, however if any government or business invested in the technology and put several tower farms in and around any state, then it'd feed the poor and bring down food prices but it would put tens of thousands of pastoralist farmers out of work. So the tower farm technology would be forced to be held back (if the people in government cared about the human cost, which is errr debatable) because of the economic impact it would have by putting real farmers out of business. So what I mean to get across by that example is that in todays world we're forced to "stunt progress" because of economic realities rightly or wrongly. (FYI i'd be on the side of the pastoralist farmers if any warped faux-liberal government did try and enact tower farming to "feed the poor")

It's interesting that you'd mention genetic longevity by the way, i've been reading up on the ideas of William Luther Peirce and David Duke recently about the (alleged) Jewish Race vs. the European Races... i'm not entirely in agreement with the genetic angles that I've seen although it's probably all accurate, but I think it's much more a cultural thing than it is a genetic thing... put it this way, you can take a small child and raise him/her in any manner you want and impart any kind of culture you want and in all likelihood unless they rebel completely then they'll end up becoming part of whatever culture you decided to give them. There's that old quaker quote that goes "give me the child for 8 years(?) and i'll give you the man" (or something along those lines) and I think that's far more demonstrable than genetics... in my opinion anyway.

Anyhow, since you mention genetics in one instance and then "basic humanity" in another instance with the implication that we're all the same regardless of culture and genetics, then how do you hold the two ideas at the same time? ...because they seem to me to be contradictory.

No Child Left Behind was a god idea with bad execution. The idea behind the program was to help kids learn and get teachers to ensure kids pas their classes, but it's much easier to dumb down our testing to shuffle every kid through school.

As far as English being the international language...I don't think you can choose an international language. Most of the world speaks English because that's the business language...if France was a major economic player throughout history, I'm sure the world language would be French.

>>358

Ok let's get into this one- No Child Left Behind (and general ideologys which fall into it)

Negatives >

A) Teachers are forced to spend more time dealing with the slow kids and have no time to nurture the bright kids.

B) the slow kids (the disruptive, ADHD mindset types) don't even want to be studying the subjects in the first place, but theyre forced to be there and they cause mess for the bright kids.

C) the curriculum is dumbed down, and becomes boring- so even the bright kids who have the capacity for higher subjects become bored to death and turn into a disruptive kid (as happened to me), or they get their spirit crushed and go off learning altogether.

D) the culmination of all the above renders the kids into adults who aren't fit for anything, this filters into the population and the dumbing down effect becomes worse and worse with each passing generation. Obviously this has implications upon outsourcing skilled labor etc


My opinion; the schools are politically correct indoctrination centers for the service economies of the westyrn werld, good teachers are crushed, bright kids are stamped out and the whole enterprise of education becomes jaded in the minds of anybody involved with the whole sordid mess.

... and we could take lessons from the French philosophers in the 70's on how to actually improve them... even if it is reformism...

>>357
Nah, I'll take incoherent. I sometimes have a tough time organizing my thoughts, admittedly.

>...how else do we measure the worth of anything if not by how it directly impacts humanity as a whole?...

>...But seriously let me ask you that question; if we don't evaluate a persons worth on a human scale then how else do you suggest we do?...

Not at all? Ideally, that would be it. Stop judging your peers. Too idealic? Yeah, it's probably impossible, actually.

Pardon me while I go after-school special on you for a sec: A low-functioning autist (and no, I don't mean CWCs definition of the term) or a full-blown invalid will likely never contribute much to society as a whole, and possibly very little to his extended family even. However, there are people which value his existence within his immediate family, and such. These people, who are 'Valuable Members Of Society' -with clear ties to progress in their professional fields and social interactions- find a profound value in our autist. His is of relational value, by which those that find direct value in him would be less valuable without him.

Too much of a stretch? I can see why you smiled, I kinda set myself up for that with the 'human scale' bit.

>...we have no method to judge anybody and then nobody has any merit at all because there isn't any yardstick by which we judge either What merit it or Who is deserving of it....

I really have no way to respond to that. Honestly, you make a great point, but a scale serves only to define the ways that we exist and practice things like politics and business and family and...

A scale is a great tool, no doubt, but I think that somehow it's a copout for not having the energy to find merit in everyone and everything.

/ponies and rainbows

>...(FYI i'd be on the side of the pastoralist farmers if any warped faux-liberal government did try and enact tower farming to "feed the poor")...

Somehow, I imagine that Wall*E's world started this way haha. Yeah, I know what you mean by stunting progress because of economic realities. I think our extended stays in Afghan/Iraq might have something to do with 2008's unemployment projections. The war on terrorism has become a Job Fair. ANYWAYS....

>...Anyhow, since you mention genetics in one instance and then "basic humanity" in another instance with the implication that we're all the same regardless of culture and genetics, then how do you hold the two ideas at the same time? ...because they seem to me to be contradictory....

Because I beleive Humanity to be a high-level product of genetic bias. Our sentient position on this marble and in our world is a Responsibility, hefted not only on the shoulders of our human construct of morality, but in turn on the shoulders of our continued legacy, by way of genetic selection.

hope this was easier to read than my last post.

>>361

Well, my point -about judging people- is that we absolutely must judge people in order to keep the proverbial wolves from the door. Some people are better than other people, but the crucial thing is that you never judge somebody on their race or fashion or other petty crap, you judge them (as Malcolm X points out) by their conscious behaviour, by their deeds and their actions. You shouldn't judge your peers by what music they listen to or by the color of their skin, you should judge them if in their conduct and beliefs to determine accurately whether they're a douchebag or a decent human being. You can come to the subject of "passing judgement" either from the default stance which is that we all judge each other and we can't help it, or you come to it from the mindset that we (my choice) should be judging each other on our merit and beliefs and conduct so that we can reward good behavior when we find it and discourage bad behavior at the same time. Because if you don't challenge the negative behavior, then people will never change, and likewise (from my own experience) if you don't reward the positive behavior then people will just give up trying to be good... and all of this feeds back into society in the big picture... if you know what i mean :)

To be honest (re: austism) I don't know enough about it or other conditions to give an opinion on it, but I have 2 autistic younger cousins and one who is totally non functional and his asshole parents decided to send him away to a private school on the otherside of the country because apparently their careers are too important to raise him (fucking selfish assholes that they are), and the other one is smart and bright and although he has problems without authority (which runs in the family i guess haha) he's a good kid, and it makes me sad in a way because his parents are determined to send him to a mainstream school when he gets older, which is just going to suck the life out of him.

What i'm getting at is that.. "functioning in society" (shitty school curriculums with shitty people, and then shitty 9 to 5 jobs) is totally overrated for the most part, and I think more people (autistic or not) should be home schooled and have their intelligence nurtured instead of stamped out so that one day they'd be more likely be paid to sketch out revolutionary architecture designs, rather than lug bricks around a construction site.. for example.

But certainly for people like my other little cousin who can barely speak, I think people should just let them live and enjoy their life. If the best employment he can "achieve" is stacking shelves in a Wal Mart, then forget about employment altogether and be an artist or something. Servitude isn't a virtue :)


So, with that said, I evidently think that we can find potential and merit in everybody.. I disagree that it's copping-out to be more authoritarian (as in, challenging negative and rewarding positive behavior) about it though. Our culture is embedded with indifference and I think it's one of the big causes of some much crap in society, I can't help but think that (for example) if the friend of a CEO turned to him one day and told him off for laying off a hundred people, or if a friend of a high-school-type-bitch yelled at her one day about picking on another girl.. i can't help but think that if only people challenged the negative behavior in their peers that eventually their peers would get the message and be nicer to other people, and it'd filter down the hierarchy and society would get a little better to be in. The important thing is being able to challenge things that don't work, and if you're of the mindset that anybody and everybody is full of merit and have reached their potential already, then you'll never challenge somebody's behavior when they "be a dick for no/wrong reasons"..or at least, you aren't likely to challenge it.

Hmmm i'm sure I could've phrased all of that better..


You know, on genetics, there was a good bit on the Atheist Experience's last show where Dillahunty talked about breeding ferocious foxes for fur and how when the breeders began to only breed the tamer foxes expecting to get the same fur, that it only took a few generations before the tame foxes changed completelyl they were much more docile but their fur changed, their appearance changed and so much so that they had to be labelled as a new subspecies.

I still stand by my own line on genetics which is; that the worst eugenics may be 100% true and weighted in scientific fact, but I still think that it's culture which forms the personality of people more so than their genetic codes and predisposition- so that you could take the 4th generation offspring of multiple serial killers and pedophiles and raised him/her in a hippy commune from birth and lo and behold, the kid would be a peaceful non-militant docile hippy and I'd be interested in finding anybody who could challenge my assertion on that :)

I was going to participate in this discussion but there appears to be a lot of long-winded idiocy here. Give it up Jenga these guys are too damn dumb. Same thei ntellect for the intellectuals. Call them faggots and just move on...

>>372

>I still stand by my own line on genetics which is; that the worst eugenics may be 100% true and weighted in scientific fact, but I still think that it's culture which forms the personality of people more so than their genetic codes and predisposition- so that you could take the 4th generation offspring of multiple serial killers and pedophiles and raised him/her in a hippy commune from birth and lo and behold, the kid would be a peaceful non-militant docile hippy and I'd be interested in finding anybody who could challenge my assertion on that :)

The second part is easy to agree with. Environment determines Personality (and a little vice versa sometimes, of course).

However, the first part -namely culture having more weight than genetic code- I agree with to an extent, and for the same reason I agree with the second part. I beleive our natural desire to defend our legacy implants many beleifs and routines we would be without if we didn't have to brave the wilds of natural selection. It's really kind of a moot point, as it is (in my doubt of intelligent creation) an unescapable reality. At this point I'm really just playing devils advocate and derailing this thread.

My bad.

>So, with that said...
...Hmmm i'm sure I could've phrased all of that better..

Nah, I think I get you. I find it easier to back that way of thinking than a more bureaucratic approach like what our government currently does. 'Checks and Balances' is a great way to keep the other guy(s) honest, but It's too much like passing the buck. The responsibilities of every echelon and every branch of gov't. should dictate that any member can bitch slap the shit out of their boss when he's doing something dumb. And I trust that in every governmental environment there is at least one person saying "We could do this better, and without fucking so many people". People suck, but not that much.

I read your reply yesterday, and have been mulling it over. Bottom line: I think you're right. Challenging incorrect behavior would do alot to fix political shortcomings, not to mention so many other shortcomings we have as a species.

________________

Side note: Ever seen those videos of Japanese politicians getting in Irish pub brawls in senate hearings, or whatever they are? That kind of emotion behind their job is dangerous, but you know what it says? They actually beleive in what they are doing, and what they are saying. I like that.

>>375
>implying Jenga is an intellectual

I lol'd.

>>375 sounds like you must have some really original ideas on how to fix things, why don't you share them..?

>>375 sounds like you must have some really original ideas relevant to the subject, so why don't you share them..?

>>376 interesting conversation, you should really check out the Chomsky link a few posts ago "government in the future" if you didn't already.. and "amusing ourselves to death" by neil postman.. really, these discussions and putting them into practice never works without addressing the underlying structural problems of society and without having repaired the mindset of modern man. I mean, you can do something Andrew-Ryanesque and build state paradise, but then you'll have problems because all the citizens will be the same fools as anywhere else in the western cities.

Man is at his most brilliant when he shapes his environment to better suit his needs, however the danger is there that man shapes the environment in a fashion which ultimately hurts him.. an analogy is the pros and cons of having a TV remote for example and i doubt i have to explain how that relates to the topic in any great detail to get the point across; the technology makes life easier, but it makes man lazier < that, is where modern man is at in his own world, and in life in a broad and simplistic context.

>>380
Well, yeah, of course. I'm not marching on Washington, here. If I considered political discussion on a *chan any less futile than pissing in the wind... well I'd be pissing in the wind... Or something.

Nobody has all the facts, but then again, its easier to be an armchair quarterback WITHOUT all the facts.

You seen the remote?

>>384 ahh tbh I'd rather float ideas around the back alleys of 789chan with the kind of people that 789chan attracts instead of bothering with a real forum like uuhh.. libcom or some other place full of semi-indoctrinated liberal utopianists or people in love with propaganda models of capitalism.

Here, I notice, there aren't assholes looking to type furiously to make themselves feel important, and I respect people who can legitimately discuss ideas without having to rubber stamp mindless garbage on top of it.

Er...... i forgot entirely what I was going to say.. but that'll do :)

>>385
LibCom's threads are interesting to read, but their syndicalist hard-on really gets in the way of some shit. Some of the threads where the authors of nihilist communism stirred people up railing against teachers as prison guards was hilarious. Not that I, or anyone for that matter I imagine, agree 100 percent with the whole nihilist communism angle.

>>399
then our resume would read of vast public works projects that secured the economy from depression, whilst the omitted parts were of our great distrust for our own actions and addiction to positions of power.

shit, i was going to try to troll, but yeah... we'd probably get the job anyway.

How about only 10% get to vote, to be part of that 10% you would need take some very basic tests which would cut out some of the stupid and all of the lazy. Then i'd say you might have 30% leftover, from this randomly select the 10% (if you just made the tests harder, you'd have corporations training people specifically for that test).

This would get rid of this "appealing to the lowest common denominator" style of politics.

>>410
You just described a variation of Sortition. Basically, instead of the entire nation voting on something, a subset votes. They get whatever they need to make their decisions, and make their vote at the alloted time. Wired did a writeup on this a couple issues back. Some computer scientist came up with a way to handle it while maintaining anonymity of the voters.

Something like this would shortcut the need for PACs to spend money on smear campaigns and possibly eradicate corporate financial control over the political process. On the other hand, it's an implicit declaration that most people aren't capable of handling the political process. I think it was Franklin Roosevelt who said that people who aren't invested in the political process in some way is better suited to a dictatorship than a democracy. Sortition implicitely acknowledges this as a truth.

>>413
*I* implicitly aknowledge that its the truth.

However, I think considering the list of choices complete after Democracy and Dictatorship is a bit off.

>>417
Wait, we're mixing thoughts here. Roosevelt's idea was that if an American does not serve in the US military, said American must serve by taking part in politics. By "Politics" he meant the arrangement of, or involvement with, any group assembled to solve a problem or set thereof.

Essentially, if you and the neighborhood parents get together to petition your street be made a one-way street, you have formed a political party. Roosevelt felt every able-bodied American should do this to better the country. He also felt that people who did not do this in essence wanted others to take care of the country's problems for them. In his view, such people were more appropriate for living under a dictatorship since a centralized, non-citizen authority (the dictator) made the decisions on what to do and the citizens did not need to involve themselves in the process (aside from not revolting). Roosevelt did not speak of sortition. In his view, if everyone did as he suggested, the current political system would work.

My fault with the sortition argument is that I mixed things up a little. I did not mean to imply the Roosevelt liked the idea of sortition. I meant to imply that the need for sortition implies that the American people fall in line with Roosevelt's view of a dictatorship-appropriate population. If the American people cannot be trusted to make informed, educated decisions (and with a population of 300+ million, they cannot due to scale alone), then sortition may well be necessary since every voting period it's a struggle to overcome apathy and disinterest.

I forget who, but a political scientist once noted that once a population reaches a certain size, and grows further, the citizenry no longer feel invested in their culture. They are simply all there in a common place as opposed to "citizens". This means no one is invested in improving things or creating a more equitable or stable environment. As I understand it, we've well shot past the threshold.American consumer culture also means that people would rather someone else come up with the solution. The solution, no matter what it is, will be tolerated on the basis of how much or little inconvenience it provides.

Consumer culture is, in some ways, a precursor to a dictator-friendly culture. I'm not saying there's a direct line, but the prep work is clearly there. The population is not interested in innovating solutions to problems, but rather interested in someone providing that solution. It's a bit of a stretch, but you can see how a dictatorship could seep in. At what other time could Karl Rove declare that Bush Jr.'s presidency was the start of a "permanent Republican majority"? In other words, very nearly the antithesis of a democratic government.

I've posted on this before, but the Occupy Movement, for all the good it has done in terms of highlighting wealth inequality, was essentially a consumerist movement (at least in the beginning). People just sat down as said (in essence) "we don't like what you've given us. Give us something else." Not "there's a problem here, let's find a solution and create a plan to enact that solution", but "let's sit around until the people in charge figure out how to make us happy". Life doesn't work that way.

The current political system is very geared towards defining a goal, defining who to contact to achieve that goal, and then coming up with a way to get that person or persons to agree to achieve that goal. This is why corporations are having such an advantage over the average citizen or group. They have the resources to push this line of attack virtually forever. This was not the intention.

The intention was a series of ad hoc groups forming and dispersing as needed depending on the problem and how many people wanted to solve it. Members of the various politcal parties are not supposed to be lifers. They are supposed to join when united against a common problem and then disperse to other parties when the problem is solved the party moves in a new direction. The lack of political literacy and thought is allowing emotional decisions without any logic to them. How many average Americans even know what socialism is? Yet it's the insult du jour whenever someone proposes something different than the familiar.

Jengatype asked "how do we fix American politics?" The question is better suited as, how do we get Americans to intelligently engage a system meant for use by people capable of intelligent discourse? Can it even be done at this point?

>>418
Thanks for re-invigorating this thread.

I think you may be onto something. The size of our governed populace has reached a point where the only current convention that could handle the weight of informing the masses is the Internet.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ENLARGE YOUR PENIS FOR $19.99 ?!?!

>>420
Heh. Your post number is 420...

Anyway, the Internet is a massive failure when it comes to functional democracy. When it was first popularized, people thought it would democratize the world and overthrow all dictatorships. Now we know better.

First, people tend to visit websites that offer information that they agree with already. So if you're a birther, you're less likely to go to a site explaining why the birther theory is wrong. The Internet, it turns out, is great for reinforcing a pre-existing view regardless of whether or not evidence exists to the contrary.

Second, the Internet has no control over information quality. If you have a site that provides valuable knowledge of a subject, it can be drowned out instantly by a campaign that puts up several more sites with bogus information.

I'm too tired right now to even touch on the problem that social networks present. Basically, the Internet isn't that good for almost any political purpose since it's impossible to control the volume and quality of information at hand. And if such controls did exist, they would be abused anyway, so it's moot.

And yes, I WOULD like to enlarge my penis! Is the solution in pill form, or must I inject?

>>421
>the medicine must be taken anally. and its an injection.

You forget that the gov ALREADY USES the 'net to inform. While these domains may not be the most frequented locations on the interwebs, they certainly serve the purpose as intended, and are (for most intents and purposes) unadulterated by outside media. Hell, most of them just got the "Web 2.0" memo.

>"It was different in my day, ya whippersnapper! nested tables as far as the eye could scroll!"

Adulteration of another form surely is present, but you shouldn't worry your silly little head about those things.

>>422

>You forget that the gov ALREADY USES the 'net to inform. While these domains may not be the most frequented locations on the interwebs, they certainly serve the purpose as intended, and are (for most intents and purposes) unadulterated by outside media. Hell, most of them just got the "Web 2.0" memo.

I would argue that this does not matter. This statement does nothing to negate my original point that the Internet has no quality control. I am not arguing in favor of quality control, but it's important to to note that the Internet is simply a conduit for information regardless of a datum's validity. Governments of the world put out tons of legitimate information, but it gets drowned out because people have learned to use the Internet to look up only things that they already agree with. This is why personalization is such a big deal. DuckDuckGo emphasizes that they don't do personalization on their search results because they recognize the importance of giving the user some result that was unanticipated. Google, however, is very into personalization, because Google understands that, generally speaking, people don't want to be exposed to something they didn't specifically request.

This is why I brought up the whole birther issue. Most people understand that Obama is a US citizen and that the birther issue is a nuisance and annoyance. Even the moderate conservatives understand that. Birthers, however, don't want to listen to evidence to the contrary and will not use the Internet to look up contrarian evidence. Instead, they will seek out sites that confirm what they already believe. To an extent, all people are like this. This carries strong implications for marketing campaigns and psyops. All one has to do is plant a seed of an idea, then provide supporting "evidence" in the form of sites and user profiles who can lead the way to a desired conclusion. After that, it's merely a matter of manufacturing more supporting evidence.

This is seen most directly with regards to the Japanese government and how it handles the memory of Japan's involvement in World War II. During WWII, Japan went into China and in particular took over the town of Nanking. Fathers were forced to rape daughters, sons were forced to rape mothers, women were taken in as sex slaves, and so on. All kinds of war crimes. Despite widespread knowledge of this incident, most Japanese today would tell you that the Nanking event never happened. The Japanese government, aware of how bad the incident makes Japan look, has engaged in a long-standing disinformation campaign to convince it's own people, and as many outsiders as possible, that Nanking is nothing more than a hoax. Further, the Japanese government has wiped out any reference to any aggressive act made by the Japanese during WWII. Whole generations not only have been raised to believe that Japan fought in a purely defensive fashion, but have actually aided the disinformation campaign by writing stories and making films with this concept in mind. This type of disinformation occurred well before the Internet, but the Internet only makes it easier to travel along this line of thought.

My ultimate point here is that people will find a way to confirm what they already believe, and there are too many forces out there that are willing to cater to this tendency. Kirk Cameron, the actor turned religious nut, propogates the idea that evolution was a Nazi-inspired hoax. If you were to believe this, or more exactly, if you WANTED to believe it, you could find a website out there that confirms it. It's just that easy. This was the point I was getting at.

>"It was different in my day, ya whippersnapper! nested tables as far as the eye could scroll!"

>Adulteration of another form surely is present, but you shouldn't worry your silly little head about those things.

Honestly, and perhaps I'm just too tired to reason it out, I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Are you agreeing that social networks are a potential hazard in quality information exchange, or are you implying I'm too old and out of touch to appreciate new technology? I'm all for communication tech. The more the merrier. That said, current social network implementations are, in fact, dangerous. They consolidate information interchange under the roof of one authority, be it Facebook, Google, Windows Live, or whomever. The major networks are not decentralized and for good reason; they are run by organizations that want or need the control that centralization brings. The problem affects people on multiple levels. For example, it's not difficult to censor information or retaliate against an offending party. Being wiped from Google's search results (or Yahoo's as in the case of a South American actress) can lead to significant issues depending on the business. Recall Google's Buzz network. Google was sued because they connected a woman automatically to her abusive ex-husband, giving him the opportunity to find where she had fled to and who she was seeing. The woman sued because Google had essentially exposed her to a life-threatening risk.

There is another level at which social networks are dangerous. People are far too easily acting out on these networks and the behavior is being noticed. Slashdot ran a story about a judge who wrote an opinion piece that stated, in effect, that since people don't seem to care about their privacy online, the police should not have to care either. As a legal opinion, this carries important weight. It can be used to effectively erode the right to privacy guaranteed by the American Constitution. This is something no government is really ever going to try and stop. It's a police officer's wet dream to be able to get whatever information is desired without having the requisite bureaucracy of checks and balances. This is to say nothing of their national equivalents. In combination with drones, which are now capable of viewing people in their backyards (a once private area), the notion of what is private and whether privacy is necessary is being altered to the point where nobody seems to care about it at all. I've had arguments with friends who feel that there should be no such thing as privacy. They just don't see the point of it and pointedly state they don't care what people know about them. The issue at hand, however, is that by exposing themselves, they expose those around them. They are effectively stating "I don't care about my privacy, and I don't care about yours either." The implications of that, I think, are fairly clear.

Anyway, that's why I wrote earlier that social networks are a problem.

To be honest, I don't see a solution to any of this.

>"It was different in my day, ya whippersnapper! nested tables as far as the eye could scroll!"

This was in jest, and not directed at anybody in particular, but at the general evolution of the 'net.

>Adulteration of another form surely is present, but you shouldn't worry your silly little head about those things.

This was just a sarcastic vagary of my distrust of government in general.

-------

You say it is unavoidable that a person will seek out like-minded information to further support their views, and that the internet is used more to that end than to seek the actual facts. I would liken that to a grown man that brags about a fathers fishing tale, heard from a bouncing knee 20 years ago.

>Daddy wouldn't lie about those things, and 73 pound catfish are "dime-a-dozen" in these parts.

In fact, I acredit racism to the same social mechanism. It's easier to adopt the views of those you respect that foster new ones, and seek new information supporting them. I'm not sure if this is a detriment or saving grace when you get to the bottom line of it all - but it's ever-present in many areas of the states (and not just racism, but other values as well).

I am more than willing to secede that we are all terribly misinformed on the state of the world. Most likely it's no master plan. Various unrelated mis-information campaigns, advertising and general propoganda eventually lead to this. Those with more influence than average will always seek to extend that influence for some form of profit.

>This statement does nothing to negate my original point that the Internet has no quality control.

I'm not sure what i was getting at to be honest, but I know I wasn't arguing to negate any point. If anything, I was arguing to further illustrate that the government -at least at face value- DOES seek to use the internet to inform just the same as mass media outlets and tinfoil hats do. It's failure or success can be determined only by the end-user, but it still has a dog in the race. The "web 2.0 memo" comment was me saying that their dog was lame, and only picked for its tendency to lift its leg when pissing, rather than it's ability to run.

>>427
>You say it is unavoidable that a person will seek out like-minded information to further support their views, and that the internet is used more to that end than to seek the actual facts. I would liken that to a grown man that brags about a fathers fishing tale, heard from a bouncing knee 20 years ago.

I may have worded the sentiment too strongly. I do think some people seek out information that is truthful regardless of what their preconceived notions are. There are many, however, that really only want confirmation of what they already believe. This isn't just speculation on my part. Ohio State University performed a study in which college students were found to gravitate to online news that confirmed what they already believed. Now, granted, this is a small subset of society, but if the ratio scales to the general population, it has significant implications.

Here's the link: http://www.livescience.com/3640-people-choose-news-fits-views.html

>In fact, I acredit racism to the same social mechanism. It's easier to adopt the views of those you respect that foster new ones, and seek new information supporting them. I'm not sure if this is a detriment or saving grace when you get to the bottom line of it all - but it's ever-present in many areas of the states (and not just racism, but other values as well).

I would argue that challenging preconceived notions is more important now than ever. Not so much for upsetting prior bias structures, but for analytically evaluating important decisions. Too many social and political decisions are being made because of "common sense" instead of thoughtful analysis.

>I am more than willing to secede that we are all terribly misinformed on the state of the world. Most likely it's no master plan. Various unrelated mis-information campaigns, advertising and general propoganda eventually lead to this. Those with more influence than average will always seek to extend that influence for some form of profit.

The irony is that there doesn't need to be a master plan. Roboticists have discovered that if a group of robots have a goal but no way to communicate with each other, they eventually act as if they were truly coordinating. This was discovered in an experiment where small robots had to move a large object too heavy for any individual robot. Without the ability to communicate they ended up moving the object in a coordinated fashion to a designated spot on the far side of the room.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10319-robot-swarm-works-together-to-shift-heavy-objects.html

Abstracting this out to current events, while there is no master plan for deception and misinformation, the various parts, acting independently, operate as if there was, in a practical sense, such a plan. That is not to say that the response must be to find "the evildoers" as if there was such a group, but to recognize the unintended coordination and counter it as best as possible. This would require truthful information, which must be sought, but which, as stated above, many people are uninterested in seeking.

It's an interesting little paradox.

>>428
An interesting paradox indeed. I dont think the robot experiment you posted is sufficiently parallel of any human condition, though. Robot crabs in a robot bucket, on the other hand...



>...challenging preconceived notions...

I would vote for any candidate for public office that ran on this platform. I'm not particularly progressive or liberal, but It would be refreshing to see someone approach the problems of the time from a new angle, instead of re-hashing tired old political solutions and anecdotes.

Kill the two party system

Stop coddling the minorities that don't do shit to improve themselves (IE; everybody who isn't Indian, Chinese, or Arab)

And kill the tribal mindset people have, but that would require Alpha Centauri levels of social fuckery, so that's unlikely

>>431
In theory we were never a two-party system. We have multiple parties as it is. Example: Republican, Democrat, Green, Rainbow Coalition, American Independent, possibly some Socialist and Anarchist parties as well. The problem is momentum. The Republicans and Democrats have absorbed so much mindshare that it has in effect caused a brain-drain for the other parties. If they can't get politically intelligent people and strategists behind them, all they have is public outrage which is both hard to muster to the extent of abandoning the two big parties, and hard to take advantage of due to incomplete resources (both money and talent).

It's worth noting that third-party candidates have made it into the White House in the past. When Theodore Roosevelt realized that neither of the two big parties would back him for President, he started the Bull Party, ran under their ticket and won the election. This can also backfire, though. When it was Al Gore v. Bush Jr., Ralph Nader was also running under his own party. The problem here was that Nader lacked political nuance and effectively saw Gore and Bush as the same type of person. He was happy to take votes away from Gore, which ultimately helped work against the potential, possibly necessary Democratic victory. Bush Sr. vs. Clinton saw the same thing with Ross Perot, who effectively ran under his own ticket because the Perot and Bush families had a feud with each other going back several years. Perot essentially ran just to make Bush fail.

So yes, we have a multi-party system. It's a matter bolstering the mindshare of the independent parties and getting them the savvy they need to work against the two big parties. This will, effectively, never happen. Republicans and Democrats may dogmatically hate each other, but they're smart enough to work together to prevent other parties from gaining traction. There's a reason these other parties so rarely get screen time on major media outlets. Nobody wants to let them in.

It's sad because Theodore Roosevelt's vision of a party system is so much more flexible than what we have today. In his speeches he put forward the idea of identifying what you want to accomplish and staying with a party that is trying to accomplish the same things. When that party moves into a different direction, you simply move to another party with goals aligned with your own. In this way, people are constantly changing parties in an effort to bring about their vision for a better country. This concept of being with a party for life has allowed too much dogma to seep in. Sure it happens with some people, perhaps with many people, but it shouldn't be the rule.

My thoughts, anyway.

The current American political system is very refined and especially excellent in marketing. The American way of marketing a career politician is so successful, almost the entire world of all sorts of government types mimics it.

Fixing it is complicated and would take years, since there's a natural resistance in government which is comprised almost completely of career politicians. They do not want it to go away, and they will only give as much as they have to until whatever movement the people start subsides.

Other than that.... some interesting factoids about this years Crap sandwich vs Turd Burger election, for any liberals reading. Each time a negative job report or anything else not good for Obama comes out, his campaign and Super-Pac is making groundless accusations about Romney and basically manipulating you with them. This week he's taking Romney's tax reports, which he released, and trying to make you think Romney has secret accounts overseas. Once again, Romney reported on these himself and released the tax returns, and the Obama campaign, due to a terrible job report, is trying to spin it so you think they uncovered the information, and are tongue in cheek making accusations they have no proof of or even reason to suspect. The fact checking websites all show Obama's campaign is full of it, but they are defending it anyways because they are trusting liberals to think "rich is bad" and toe their line for them.

Just say no. If you want to change things, start with making sure presidents who play the hypocritical political game only serve 1 term, and vote against them. Obama is everything he campaigned against last election. He isn't on your side, and he is lying to you.

i got an idea. nobody fucking vote.

>>452
This is true of both liberals and conservatives, and of Democrats and Republicans. I can't remember if it was the last Obama election, or if it was the Arizona immigrant status campaign, but there was a PAC sending out cards showing a white girl looking terrified while a brown hand covered her mouth. That's almost exclusively the mindset of a conservative action commitee.

Smear campaigns are nothing new and both sides do it. It's done because generally speaking all politicians know that the best way to get votes is through emotional appeal, AKA moral outrage. It's a reliance on people not paying attention to facts and voting with their (incorrect and inaccurate) gut.

It doesn't matter whether a Republican or Democrat or Liberal or Conservative get in the White House. What matters is whether or not the people know who they are voting for and why. It's been tough these days. In a Democracy, you get the leadership you deserve, not the leadership you want.

>Citizens United
>taking away rights
I hope you're not actually serious.

vote third party

Elections have always been football games.

>>476
Only because the voting public is so easily swayed by emotions. The reason attack ads appear so often is because they work. The reason they work is because no one is thinking about the issues, just responding to whatever emotional argument is being made, regardless of actual logic or validity.

No offense OP but while I think you tried to sound neutral, your post was pretty left-leaning.

>>487
It's just the liberal media, take no notice of it.