What do you believe is the fundamental problem with [American] government?

[smokinrav]

View attachment 4992649

Isn't that Jim Jeffries?

 

[Lucky Luke]

Is it possible that the working man/woman is a marker for the previous century? I’m throwing this out there.

I'm not sure i understand what your saying. Could you explain a bit better please?

 

[hanimmal]

more like, the rich have been living off everybody else for past 10,000 or so years.

40-50 yeras ago things were better? Don't think so. It took about 300 years to get rid of rule by hereditary monarchs. It took that long because we don't really know how to live together in dense populations with so much destructive capability within easy reach. It took so long because we needed to develop alternatives to autocratic rule. We are such a young species. I wonder how people can be so certain that their answers are best for the rest of us. It's an egocentric error.

I think he meant the industry leaving to the nations that would allow them to pollute and exploit as much as they wanted to was about 40-50 years ago.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

Religion had a much more powerful grip on people's lives 200 years ago than it does today.. I call that progress.

I'm not so pessimistic about people's ability to adapt to the new world we are making for ourselves. Not saying we aren't fucking up. just saying what you're doing is looking back and extrapolating existing trends forward. Humanity keeps changing and so the farther out your extrapolation goes, the more off the mark it gets.

i'm not so sure about that..."humanity" doesn't change that much, society does, and while the two are inextricably intertwined, they are not the same thing. Humanity, at least to me, is the state of the race, the "gestalt" that results from our fears, hopes, prejudices, desires, and actual needs.
society is a construct we all form, whether consciously or unconsciously, that supports those fears, hopes, etc....
The driving forces are the same as they've ever been, the desire for safety, the need for food and shelter, the desire for power, the desire for freedom. if the driving forces don't change, then humanity as a whole doesn't change, at least not very much...
if you change the way people try to obtain those things, you change society, but not humanity...

 

[CatHedral]

I'm not sure i understand what your saying. Could you explain a bit better please?

Looking at it with less weed on board, I’m not convinced I had a point.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

Looking at it with less weed on board, I’m not convinced I had a point.

i think you did have a point...Societal changes have made the working class less important, their work can be farmed out to foreign interests, they vote less than white collar people, they're usually too busy to attend protests...as a whole, they're less important to the political system than they once were, and they're concentrated into certain areas, where it's easy to manipulate what they see on billboards, what kind of businesses they have access to, even what kind of food they eat. they're still the largest class, with the smallest voice, and the largest "opiate of the masses " consumption...mma fights, "reality" tv, the overblown importance of celebrity, ridiculous, outrageous podcasts and radio programs promoting insane paranoid conspiracy theories with no proof and no fear of censure....
they don't need a "party of the people" they need to wake the fuck up and remember they are people

 

[Fogdog]

i'm not so sure about that..."humanity" doesn't change that much, society does, and while the two are inextricably intertwined, they are not the same thing. Humanity, at least to me, is the state of the race, the "gestalt" that results from our fears, hopes, prejudices, desires, and actual needs.
society is a construct we all form, whether consciously or unconsciously, that supports those fears, hopes, etc....
The driving forces are the same as they've ever been, the desire for safety, the need for food and shelter, the desire for power, the desire for freedom. if the driving forces don't change, then humanity as a whole doesn't change, at least not very much...
if you change the way people try to obtain those things, you change society, but not humanity...

OK

My point is that it's only been about 300 years since we started to shift from societies based upon the rule of a monarchs and autocrats of various names. It was shocking to society at the time when the US formed a government that did not have a king. For good reason too. Before then, in agriculture-based economies, a weak or inept king meant invasion, civil war, crop failures and all that goes with it. Religion was used to keep people in line with their god-given kings. But that form of government was too slow and inefficient for modern times and larger, urban-centric societies. With the industrial age, grew the industrial working class, who not only had the power to shut an economy down but also, access to bombs and other weapons such as guns. By the end of the 1800's, monarchies were seen as backward and non-competitive.

The last absolutist monarchs in Europe were removed from office a little more than a hundred years ago. I was taking exception to @Bagginski 's statement that the rich have been living off "us" for the past 40-50 years. It's more like 10,000 years. As far as the US is concerned, we have never really had universal voting. The fight right now is how many brown skinned people will white people allow to vote. One can draw a line between the beginning of the US to today and say we made progress, but don't say that to the people who were excluded.

What is true is that FDR's new deal and LBJ's defense of the Civil Rights Act were set back by the mostly white population that resisted to change and their conservative fiscal polices favored the wealthy. 40-50 years of that and we are looking at billionaires one-upping each other over corporate space flight. But I think the shift toward autocracy is a downward deviation from the historical trend. For more than 300 years, the trend in human society is away from absolutist autocracy and toward a multicultural democracy. Not because it's "good" but because it outcompetes central government.

 

[CatHedral]

OK

My point is that it's only been about 300 years since we started to shift from societies based upon the rule of a monarchs and autocrats of various names. It was shocking to society at the time when the US formed a government that did not have a king. For good reason too. Before then, in agriculture-based economies, a weak or inept king meant invasion, civil war, crop failures and all that goes with it. Religion was used to keep people in line with their god-given kings. But that form of government was too slow and inefficient for modern times and larger, urban-centric societies. With the industrial age, grew the industrial working class, who not only had the power to shut an economy down but also, access to bombs and other weapons such as guns. By the end of the 1800's, monarchies were seen as backward and non-competitive.

The last absolutist monarchs in Europe were removed from office a little more than a hundred years ago. I was taking exception to @Bagginski 's statement that the rich have been living off "us" for the past 40-50 years. It's more like 10,000 years. As far as the US is concerned, we have never really had universal voting. The fight right now is how many brown skinned people will white people allow to vote. One can draw a line between the beginning of the US to today and say we made progress, but don't say that to the people who were excluded.

What is true is that FDR's new deal and LBJ's defense of the Civil Rights Act were set back by the mostly white population that resisted to change and their conservative fiscal polices favored the wealthy. 40-50 years of that and we are looking at billionaires one-upping each other over corporate space flight. But I think the shift toward autocracy is a downward deviation from the historical trend. For more than 300 years, the trend in human society is away from absolutist autocracy and toward a multicultural democracy. Not because it's "good" but because it outcompetes central government.

The current plutocratic trend might have the ponies to supplant absolute monarchies, warts and all.

 

[Fogdog]

The current plutocratic trend might have the ponies to supplant absolute monarchies, warts and all.

So, Chinese government.

Do you think the current oligarchy/plutocracy will last another 50 years? I don't.

 

[CatHedral]

So, Chinese government.

Do you think the current oligarchy/plutocracy will last another 50 years? I don't.

Oh.
No idea.
But it will be compelling to watch.

Those folks have managed to fuse communist politics with capitalist wealth creation.

The hybrid has legs.

We may be in for serious competition from the newest hottest authoritarian powerhouse. I notice they are building superhighways like our last contestant.

 

[Fogdog]

Oh.
No idea.
But it will be compelling to watch.

Those folks have managed to fuse communist politics with capitalist wealth creation.

The hybrid has legs.

We may be in for serious competition from the newest hottest authoritarian powerhouse. I notice they are building superhighways like our last contestant.

So, the Soviet Union.

It was another example of a tiny group with all the power. Every government that is controlled by a small powerful and wealthy clique follows the same pattern: Bold promises, grandiose aspirations, a police state that does not hew to rule of law and does not deliver on its promises, corruption at the top gets worse, which makes people who follow their laws out as fools. Eventually, nobody follows written laws or regulations. Government becomes a hated joke. After a few decades, the system gets stressed and fails.

I think the Chinese government is following the same pattern. They have doubled down on police state and their systems for monitoring it's population is world class but I don't think they can maintain power when the system gets very stressed.

 

[CatHedral]

So, the Soviet Union.

It was another example of a tiny group with all the power. Every government that is controlled by a small powerful and wealthy clique follows the same pattern: Bold promises, grandiose aspirations, a police state that does not hew to rule of law and does not deliver on its promises, corruption at the top gets worse, which makes people who follow their laws out as fools. Eventually, nobody follows written laws or regulations. Government becomes a hated joke. After a few decades, the system gets stressed and fails.

I think the Chinese government is following the same pattern. They have doubled down on police state and their systems for monitoring it's population is world class but I don't think they can maintain power when the system gets very stressed.

I hope that you are right. I would dislike if this was China’s Weimar moment. Should a capable autocrat step in, I worry.

 

[Bagginski]

OK

With the industrial age, grew the industrial working class, who not only had the power to shut an economy down but also, access to bombs and other weapons such as guns. By the end of the 1800's, monarchies were seen as backward and non-competitive.

Which is, of course, exactly how Europe managed to avoid war as it climbed to equality and self-government from the rubble of autocratic states squabbling for status and influence…which…[paper rustling] didn’t happen.

I was taking exception to @Bagginski 's statement that the rich have been living off "us" for the past 40-50 years. It's more like 10,000 years.

Please share your sources of information - except for yours, there are no dependable records of human civilization 10,000 years ago - or even 3000 years ago, so you really should let the world see them! I’m sure it will revolutionize our understanding not only of history in detail, but of the evolution of human society itself. You could make huge bank giving researchers access - you really ought to do it!

Or, maybe you know as much about those 10,000 years as you do about the period I mentioned that you took exception to. Which is to say, not enough to back you up.

 

[Fogdog]

Which is, of course, exactly how Europe managed to avoid war as it climbed to equality and self-government from the rubble of autocratic states squabbling for status and influence…which…[paper rustling] didn’t happen.


Please share your sources of information - except for yours, there are no dependable records of human civilization 10,000 years ago - or even 3000 years ago, so you really should let the world see them! I’m sure it will revolutionize our understanding not only of history in detail, but of the evolution of human society itself. You could make huge bank giving researchers access - you really ought to do it!

Or, maybe you know as much about those 10,000 years as you do about the period I mentioned that you took exception to. Which is to say, not enough to back you up.

Nah, civilizations that were ruled by wealthy and entitled class for about about the last 10,000 years. I know you just want to argue but what difference does it make if I'm off by about four thousand years?

Sumeria is the earliest record of what we call civilization. Excavations on large Sumerian cities date back to 4500 BC or 6500 years ago. Their societies were organized with a war lord on top, his military and a theocracy that kept the 99% in line. That autocratic system was pretty much the status quo (with plenty of exceptions that didn't last) until the mid-1600's AD in England, though Anglophiles might argue earlier beginning with the Magna Carta.

Who Were the Ancient Sumerians?

Sumer was humanity's first great civilization. Even in today’s society you can still find traces of Sumerian inventions in agriculture, language, mathematics, religion and astronomy.

www.discovermagazine.com

Roughly 10,000 years ago, villages started popping up across Mesopotamia. The people who lived in the region raised animals and grew grains, even as they continued to hunt and gather. Over time, those villages expanded and their people became increasingly dependent on farming.

Archaeologists still aren’t sure exactly what life was like for these early cultures. However, similarities in pottery styles and stamp seals placed on a variety of containers suggests some level of administrative control emerged between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago.

You asserted that the rich have been living off the rest of us for 45 or 50 years and I don't disagree, I'm just saying your estimate is about 9950 years too short. Maybe it's only 6450 years. If so, I'm still right and you are still wrong.

The past 40-50 years HAVE benefitted the 1% with most productivity gains made during this time going to them and not the people who did the work. Here is what is different this time compared to 500 years ago. There is a large working class that is educated, aware they are being taken advantage of and able to wrest control away from those who hold power when the time is ripe.

 

[CatHedral]

Which is, of course, exactly how Europe managed to avoid war as it climbed to equality and self-government from the rubble of autocratic states squabbling for status and influence…which…[paper rustling] didn’t happen.


Please share your sources of information - except for yours, there are no dependable records of human civilization 10,000 years ago - or even 3000 years ago, so you really should let the world see them! I’m sure it will revolutionize our understanding not only of history in detail, but of the evolution of human society itself. You could make huge bank giving researchers access - you really ought to do it!

Or, maybe you know as much about those 10,000 years as you do about the period I mentioned that you took exception to. Which is to say, not enough to back you up.

By six thousand years ago we entered the historic age. Continuous written records.

 

[Fogdog]

By six thousand years ago we entered the historic age. Continuous written records.

Yes, and so it's a guess because there is no written record before then. There is evidence that hierarchical societies were already in place before the record was written. The exact date is unimportant. Just looking at history since then, with few exceptions, human society was run by autocracies. Only recently have large numbers of people held political power through the vote and by collective action.

 

[CatHedral]

Yes, and so it's a guess because there is no written record before then. There is evidence that hierarchical societies were already in place before the record was written. The exact date is unimportant. Just looking at history since then, with few exceptions, human society was run by autocracies. Only recently have large numbers of people held political power through the vote and by collective action.

I agree with your extrapolation. Ten thousand years have given us some tasty sites. We lack records, but the degree of cooperation needed to build and operate such sites convinces me they had a state of laws.

 

[hanimmal]

On a interesting note that I think is sorta relevant. 22,000 years ago (give or take a millennium) humans were established in North America.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-science-travel-fossils-new-mexico-97cb4b2ea0f499d6ea5fbfebab243413

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fossilized footprints discovered in New Mexico indicate that early humans were walking across North America around 23,000 years ago, researchers reported Thursday.

The first footprints were found in a dry lake bed in White Sands National Park in 2009. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey recently analyzed seeds stuck in the footprints to determine their approximate age, ranging from around 22,800 and 21,130 years ago.

The findings may shed light on a mystery that has long intrigued scientists: When did people first arrive in the Americas, after dispersing from Africa and Asia?

Most scientists believe ancient migration came by way of a now-submerged land bridge that connected Asia to Alaska. Based on various evidence — including stone tools, fossil bones and genetic analysis — other researchers have offered a range of possible dates for human arrival in the Americas, from 13,000 to 26,000 years ago or more.

The current study provides a more solid baseline for when humans definitely were in North America, although they could have arrived even earlier, the authors say. Fossil footprints are more indisputable and direct evidence than “cultural artifacts, modified bones, or other more conventional fossils,” they wrote in the journal Science, which published the study Thursday.

“What we present here is evidence of a firm time and location,” they said.

Based on the size of the footprints, researchers believe that at least some were made by children and teenagers who lived during the last ice age.

David Bustos, the park’s resource program manager, spotted the first footprints in ancient wetlands in 2009. He and others found more in the park over the years.

“We knew they were old, but we had no way to date the prints before we discovered some with (seeds) on top,” he said Thursday.

Made of fine silt and clay, the footprints are fragile, so the researchers had to work quickly to gather samples, Bustos said.

“The only way we can save them is to record them — to take a lot of photos and make 3D models,” he said.

Earlier excavations in White Sands National Park have uncovered fossilized tracks left by a saber-toothed cat, dire wolf, Columbian mammoth and other ice age animals.

 

[Fogdog]

On a interesting note that I think is sorta relevant. 22,000 years ago (give or take a millennium) humans were established in North America.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-science-travel-fossils-new-mexico-97cb4b2ea0f499d6ea5fbfebab243413
View attachment 4996170

Yes, we are a fairly new species. People talk as if history and human development has reached its pinnacle. I think the only way this it true is if we off ourselves either accidentally or on purpose. My latest rant has been to say that the trends away from autocracy or small plutocracy started about 300-500 years ago after almost 6000-10000 years of nearly continuous rule by a tiny, elite, wealthy class headed by a monarch/king/despot. So, roughly 270,000 years after homo sapiens arrived, we began to organize in large social systems we call civilization and have been learning how to get along ever since.

 

[CunningCanuk]

Yes, we are a fairly new species. People talk as if history and human development has reached its pinnacle. I think the only way this it true is if we off ourselves either accidentally or on purpose. My latest rant has been to say that the trends away from autocracy or small plutocracy started about 300-500 years ago after almost 6000-10000 years of nearly continuous rule by a tiny, elite, wealthy class headed by a monarch/king/despot. So, roughly 270,000 years after homo sapiens arrived, we began to organize in large social systems we call civilization and have been learning how to get along ever since.

You could go further back. Let’s not forget the Greeks had a little fling with democracy too.