Originally posted by Mr Parker
Like a third party because both parties are corrupt.
I hate it when people say this, because it reeks of constant b!tching without any real understanding of political theory.
Duverger's law. Plurality rule gives a 2 party system. If you want to have 3 parties actually competing against each other for a sustained period of time, you'll need to have a proportional electoral system.
That essentially means changing the US Constitution.
Originally posted by BicnarokThis shit clouldn't change shit. We're on a message board, and its all rhetoric. It's all a system that will corrupt. There is no perfect system, and all things are speeding towards entropy. The corrupt system is so strong it would take demolition and assassination in order to change it. Basically you need a revolution, and most of the people who want it changed so much are pussies who also believe in giving the government their guns.
Me niether, that´s the problem nowadays, people are too comfortable they can´t be arsed to read stuff which could change stuff.
Re: We Need To Redesign Every Level Of Society - We Need A Change
Originally posted by TheCleansing
The World I picture is a beautiful World. A World where every single person is free to build their own house, on an open space of land, without being taxed for building it, without having to pay for the land they build it on. I picture a World where all resources of the Earth are provided for each and every citizen freely and evenly so that nobody lacks what another person has,
You're thinking in a very marxist way. There's one problem:
and so that every person can have access to the same things that everyone else has access to. There should be no "I have this and you don't" mentality in the World. It should be "Man, I have this awesome thing, you would love this. Would you like to have this? If so....we should make sure that you and everyone else who wants it can get it as well". That's the way it should be.
Also, in Marxism (which I don't altogether disagree with, I actually believe it to be a wonderful idea in theory, but horrible in practice,) all anyone has to do to realize that he can live happily without contributing is to stop contributing. In your ultimate society where everyone works and everyone gets redistributed wealth, if you stop contributing, you still get wealth. It doesn't take long before everyone stops contributing.
Secondly, whoever holds the power of the government and redistributing isn't going to take long to realize how much he can dip his finger in the pot and mooch just about anything he wants. This is what happened to soviet russia.
I picture a World where people work but they work for the common good of everyone else around them. I made a thread in a different section that went into the subject of free electricity. I do believe that all utilities (which are basic necessities for all Human Beings to keep their health up, to keep themselves clean, etc.) should be free for all Human Beings who live in that society. Now the only problem that some people have with that scenario is that they say, if all utilities are completely free, who would want to work and what would be the reason for it? How would the companies that provide for these utilities continue to provide them without a workforce?Exactly. I'll bet your answer doesn't cover this. This is a very naive view of the world. electricity comes from somewhere. There's a reason it costs money, and that's because it costs resources to make.
Well I have an answer to that which to me is as simple as apple pie. Wouldn't you rather live in a World where you worked for 8-10 hours a day, just as you do now, and would still continue to receive your electricity, your water, your internet access, your television channels, your heat, your air conditioning, and all of those things, even if it meant that you didn't receive any "pay" (green pieces of toilet paper with presidents faces on them)?What If I wanted a better car? I mean, i can't get a better car without pay? Or am i forced to have someone choose my car? How about my television? I want a ps3 instead of an xbox360. Does the commonwealth give this to me? What If I was shitty at my job and got fired? How would I be taken care of during that time? There's a reason money exists. It's because it works.
Now here you are onto something. Originally the pieces of paper were gold certificates, at least in the good old USA, and therefor back-up-able by the US government. Now it's fake and worthless. This was a bad Idea. They just print whatever they want now and the money becomes less and less worth anything. But, what are you going to do?
Wouldn't you (as I would) still choose to work in an environment where you never had to ever receive a bill in the mail for any of these things, but that you still continued to receive them, and in return for your free utilities, you just wouldn't receive worthless paper currency which is the cause of almost every single nations national debt?
Originally posted by TheCleansingSo everyone gets everything they want just for working? Do you realize that this is an impossibility? Even with all the money in America spread around, that wouldn't be enough for that. this is ridiculous.
What if....we did away with all paper currency. In the favor of labor. Labor would still be there. We would still work everyday just like we do now, nothing would change in that area, no productivity would be lost, but that instead of worrying ourselves to death over how we are going to pay our bills, we will trade our paper currency for labor, and give up our addiction to our currency for our productivity? This is the perfect scenario I have gone over in my head time and time again. Instead of receiving the $200 paycheck (a paycheck that gets weaker and weaker in purchasing power as the days pass on) that a person gets per week or whatever it is for working full time at a gas station, that instead of that, the person could trade that entire paycheck that they use to pay their bills with (which can be reduced in it's effectiveness by deflation, inflation, etc.), and if those problems were eliminated by trading that paycheck for free utilities and the right to live in their own house, with their own utilities, with their own yard, with their own family, with their own animals, with all of the things they want to live with, that they could do all of those things without having to use an indebted currency to pay for them with?
you're asking for a government where the people have no control over what happens to them, they just let someone else take care of them. it doesn't make sense. The instant the government fails to do so (like governments are oh-so-often doing) we are out on a limb. Imagine our kids who have never had to figure anything out because everything was provided for, and suddenly the government can't supply them with something? They're ****ed. Theirs a reason money exists. It's because it works.
I bet...that if you were to ask any citizen, anywhere, whether they would work the same hours, or even a couple more, per day, if the trade off was that they would never have to see another bill for any of the things they use on a daily basis again, that most if not all would agree to that in a heartbeat. Who wouldn't accept that deal? I know I sure would. And I would put my money on the fact that everyone else would accept that deal as well. Some people say, no, if everything was free, nobody would choose to work. I disagree, I believe that if the mental stress of working for pennies on the dollar and receiving a paycheck that most people depend on every single pay period (and worry constantly about the day that they stop receiving it), that if that process was entirely eliminated in the favor of working for the right to use all of the things we need to live a healthy, full filled lifestyle, that most people would opt for that instead of the current system we have today.
So what am I advocating? It's simple. I advocate that our system as it currently operating is not only not working, but that it is slowly beginning to crash, and that soon it will show itself to be obsolete. I advocate that every person in a country like America, should be given the option to live wherever a place is open for occupancy, as long as they agree to work a set amount of hours per day, for whatever company it is that has a position available. Even if it means working 10 hours a day instead of 8. As long as the trade off is complete peace of mind, complete tranquility, and the right to feel comfortable with your own Life.So would this mean a government takeover of all companies? I mean companies gotta work for something, and if not money, then why make a company? What would this do to ingenuity and mother necessity?
"I don't care, I'm just here to pay the bills." It would make grunt workers out of geniuses. Why go to college when you could just start working in order to live the same as everyone else?
It's just that, a dream, a pipe dream.
This is what I dream about for the World. One thing I know for sure, is that societies are slowly moving in this direction. If you look at society from the beginning of the metropolis environment, going all the way back to the first ones created, you will notice that even though Rome started to move in this direction, with more things available for the citizens, with less restrictions on living the way a person wanted to live, with the added benefit of technology increasing as well (even though Rome had many many problems of it's own - problems that we have since corrected), than you will notice that since the Roman days, societies have been slowly improving around the World. There are less and less restrictions on society and on the individual, which is a good thing (although there have been times in history where for whatever reason a government or tyrannical leader chose to go backwards and clamp down on it's citizens), but for the most part I see the World slowly creeping towards the day where every citizen is treated fairly and given the freedom to feel more and more comfortable with their Life. To feel safer, healthier, happier, and more fulfilled.
this is what conservatives believe. Your socialism, however, will never fly. Socialism could never be put effectively into practice.
Unfortunately, at the moment, it does appear that the American Government is falling into one of those periods where for whatever reason they are attempting to move backwards in this process instead of forwards, and are slowly starting to clamp down on the American citizens and their right to a happy Life. This is not a good thing at all, and as it has always been in the past, no matter how far the American Government chooses to go in this direction, sooner or later, they will stop moving backwards and start moving forwards again. This is because this is what every individual craves, the right to have the freedom to live the Life that they would like to live, a freedom that I believe is completely natural and God given, and should not ever be tramped upon by any outside entity. Yes, there should be laws put in place to protect citizens from certain types of behavior, but there should be no restrictions on anything that doesn't hurt another individual but that a person utilizes to make their live more enriched and full. Those things are only positive, and can't hurt anyone else in the process.
The World I dream about is not Heaven, but it is a model of Heaven. It will never be complete Bliss, but it can be a piece of that Bliss. It can be everything we ever wanted it to be. And there is no reason why it couldn't be. Everything else could be built around this model, all other aspects of society could be taken care of after. For example, people would say, ok well, what about other services and goods that are offered by companies that provide them? Such as beer, such as gambling, such as movies, etc. How would we receive those with the "work for what you get" system that I envision and not the "pay for what you get whether you worked for the green toilet paper that you are using to pay for it or not - whether you stole it, blackmailed for it, stepped over someone else to get it" system that we have today.There could be work hour credits, or time credits, that people could use to purchase the goods of today. Perhaps if a person worked an extra 2 hours every day per week, than they would rack up some "work credits" that could be used to purchase the goods that they want to purchase. Perhaps once a person has racked up say 10 extra hours per week (aside from the hours that apply to the free utilities that they receive in their living quarters), perhaps those extra 10 "work credits" could be applied to purchase goods. And a system could be put in place where 10 work credits could have a hell of a lot more purchasing power than the $10 of toilet paper that we use today. Perhaps the extra 10 work credits could be used to buy what we would today use around $200-300 to purchase with the worthless currencies that are falling apart that we use today. And why not? What would be wrong with that scenario? That would be enough to cover food, fun, and educational activities that we all partake in anyways (because remember, under this system, there would be NO bills). Folk, it's the same concept as when a dollar at one time went a hell of a lot further than it does today.
I didn't read this last bit. Too long and blocky. But you get the Idea, such a society could never exist.
As long [...]with.