Sadly, libertarianism can't work, because it depends on an educated populace with roughly equal access to accurate information.

Libertarians can't govern.

But, arguably a libertarian vote is better than a vote for the two-parties-which-are-actually-one.

Because it crashes the system faster.

But leaves unanswered the question of what kind of government model can actually work.

Not that we have any choice. The corpocracy conquered us, is already in charge, and can't be stopped.

In a sense, our great hope is that the parasite of corpocracy will attack the east, leaving the near-dead body of the US free enough to recover.

Our best chance is to learn how to survive inside the dying body of the american century.

Let's skip straight to a Technocracy.

Technocracy is a form of government in which engineers, scientists, health professionals and other technical experts are in control of decision making in their respective fields.

Worth considering. Certainbly worth modeling it out, and thinking about the ways it could work and teh ways it would fail.

Last night I found myself working out in my imagination the implications of having a scientist as president, rather than a lawyer or professional politician.

The problem of course is that while our current rulers are in power a technocracy is impossible by definition.

The interesting question is, how do you take advantage of the convulsion that is coming, our own ineviitable "american spring of rage", to try something new.

It wont be easy. Many will die. The corpocracy expects riots and is very prepared to kill and torture as many americans as needed to stay in power.

Anyone espouses higher income tax rates is either a masochist or a loser who plans on remaining a loser.

What happens here tho is likely to be different from the mass demonstrations of the arab spring of rage.

Our society is structured differently. The middle class is suburban not urban - and all the corpocracy has to do is control the price of gasoline to restrict travel.

It's interesting to think about what an american spring of rage would look like.

I suspect it will be more like a "spring of meh" - apathy and helplessness and FUD escalated to the level of a slow moving general "productivity strike" and consumer strike.

Hitting the corpocracy where it's weak, it's soft consumer economy underbelly. Starving it so it HAS to depend on asian consumers for power.

The great tragedy of our time is that obama turned out to be a corporatist right/centrist. I say turned out, but it was clear during the campaign that he was a right/centrist.

The brief oppurtunity we had to change course was stolen from us by the corpocracy's control of the dems.

Which was of course the corpocracy's plan all along. When you are a collection of immortal super-persons and semi-immortal plutocrat families, you have the kind of perspective and training and control over information that make sit easy to insert a ringer like obama into the political machine.

It's tragic to see right/centrist corporatist neo-liberal policies be handed out by the dems as if they were actually good for the people.

While the infrastructure rots, and nothing gets done, and resources we need to change course are sold off.

Have you not clued in yet that he's nothing more than a troll that posts shit to stir people up.. He never posts facts or backs up anything he says. He's just a one liner keyboard warrior.

The "spring of rage" will look much like it did during the Vietnam and Civil Rights era. Millions of people taking to the streets...virtually every major city and University burning...virtual anarchy.

You have greater faith in the courage of the american people than I. I suppose I should be humbled.

We shall see.

Such mass riots are fairly easily channeled and suppressed tho, by a police and military with corpocrat backing and modern crowd control and information control technology.

The way that crowd protests have been managed and made meaningless this past decade, as example the protests against these "wars of choice" and free trade, does not bode well for protest and crowd resistance in america.

Tho, one can make the argument that the people have access to their own technology.

What I expect to happen is this - protests will start, then the corpocrats will trigger off and fund counterprotests by the tea party or whomever they chose as their brownshirts, setting groups against each other like dogs in a pit.

Then the mercenaries move in with advanced crowd control technology "to restore order", backed by the police and military.

It's a tested formula.

You have all of these ideas and conspiracies about "the man" but I honestly don't understand where you're going with this. What are you going to replaced the corporations with? Other morons who just happen to have less money? What is this ideal utopia you speak of? Who you replace is going to do the same thing any other lead plans on doing and that's getting into the pockets of the rich and letting them control what they need. This is capitalism and while it has its flaws, I challenge you to find something better, realistically speaking of course.

It's just the same thing from the majority of people on the net. "Two sides of the same coin", "get rid of the greedy corporations". And replace them with what? I'd rather have rich people run our country than poor ignorant ones, wouldn't you?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_883827.html
In recent weeks, Congressional support has been forming around the idea of another "repatriation tax holiday," reports the Wall Street Journal. The would mean corporations doing business overseas would be permitted to pay only 5.25 percent tax on earnings brought back to the United States for a temporary time period, as opposed to 35 percent corporate tax rate on domestic profits.

Proponents of the proposal claim a tax holiday will bring much needed capital back to the U.S. economy for investment. But not everyone agrees.

Following the conclusion of the last tax holiday, in 2004, corporations actually increased the rate at which they moved investments out of the U.S, according to a study by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. The decision to move overseas, the study claims, was at least partly in anticipation of there being another tax holiday.

That's because it was only temporary.
What our govt. calls a "Tax Holiday" is business as usual in some countries. And since taxes are usually the biggest expense a company has (It's definitely my NUMBER ONE cost to do business)...it only makes sense to move somewhere else.

Hell, even The Beatles and The Stones left England because of the insane tax rates. Of course companies in 2011 are going to do the same.

And does anyone ever ask this: If a "tax holiday" brings in more money to the U.S. , then why don't we make it PERMANENT and bring all the companies in the world running to the U.S.?
Hell, they all want to be here anyway. But when you combine high labor costs AND the govt. trying to take most of your money...they just won't come here.

Both parties spend too much, but the Dems waste much more money on unconstitutional and unproductive social programs.

Reagan spent heavily on the military to bankrupt the Soviet Union, and it succeeded. Give the man a standing ovation.

Yea, I was wishing the same thing, that Obama would be further to the left.

:1orglaugh

:upsidedow

:Oh crap

:helpme

Hahaha. Still no link, punk? :1orglaugh

They are not any easier to channel today than they were during the Vietnam and Civil Rights era. Tens of millions took to the streets and set on fire virtually every major city and University. There were major battles between those that were protesting and those that were against the protesters and between the Police/National Guard and the protesters. There was large numbers of people injured/killed and arrested. It was a time of virtual anarchy in the country that went on for years and did not stop until the Government pulled all troops out of Vietnam in '73 and Civil Rights were granted.

Any and every protest since that era has been minute in comparison and have been easily controllable.

Said the weekend warrior pretending to be in my business.:1orglaugh

One of the risks of using rhetoric the way you do is that it leads to a tendency to distort ALL information, not just the political information you think you are attacking.

In this case, for instance, you attribute to me talk of conspiracies and uptopias, when I almost never use the first term and never use the second.

However, lets leave aside the information distortion, and look at the questions.

You say that whatever replaces the current system will also tend to be corrupted. Obviously this is true.

But, we can at least fix the gaping loophole that allows the corpocracy to rule - by instituting a strong policy of electoral reform and strict public funding of candidates.

We have to ban the legalized bribery of private funding of candidates, and by doing so, make politicians fear the voter more than the funder.

I'd like to take that a step further and institute laws controlling the revolving door between political office and government employment and corporate employment, but let's take that one step at a time.

Electoral reform alone might be enough to solve many of the problems of our era - the political problems at least, most of which are based in our institutionalized system of legal bribes in exchange for favors, of deep and endemic corruption of public service.

You set up a false choice between rule by the rich and rule by the ignorant poor - altho, I'd liek to point out that in the tea party phenomena we see an exampel of the fusion of rule by the rich AND rule by the ignorant poor.

However, I don't see the real problem as being one of rich versus poor - the real thing that is happening is the competition between managed and unmanaged economies (technically between more managed and less amanged economies).

And the managed economies are winning - the corporations are moving production to the areas of the planet ruled by managed economies, and america's less-managed economy is being abandoned in favor of more-managed economies.

So, your false choice is also an incorrect model - this isn't about wether the rich rule or the poor rule - it's about managing the economy.

True.

I hope you are right. I hope americans are that brave.

I also hope more americans arm themselves.

"You" in the general sense, not you personally. The people on this forum.


Do you think most voters are brainless or informed? If it's the former, I'm not sure how this is going to change anything, other than idiotic candidates. If it's the latter, well then I praise you for your optimism.

This goes back to my question. What if the majority of voters are morons? Should the politicians fear those morons?

Now THAT is interesting.


It wasn't a false choice because I'm not sure there is a middle ground. We have to come to terms that most people on this earth are NOT intelligent so I'm not sure what choices there are.

This is a whole new discussion in itself. I think we both recognize the pros and cons of both types of economies, yet I still lean towards the unmanaged.

And who do you propose manages the economy? The 'informed" voter or politician who at one point or another is going to sacrifice his morals?

Face it, our only true hope for the future, is a government based on Mixology!

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VD3kzQGuQnc/0.jpg

Once enough alcoholic beverages are mixed, served, and drank THEN we can finally begin thinking clearly... and start burning down Washington.

Remember our mantra... Drink More, Think Less!

Good luck to all, and to all a good night!

Point proven... :thumbsup

The problem is clear, the reason is clear, the solution is clear. But the paid of the solution is immense.

Many Western countries run their economy like Greece and Ireland. The spand more than they earn and borrow to meet to the gap. This worked fine 30 years ago. Today the production power houses are in the 3rd World.

China, India and others are growing economies on exporting goods to the West.

You either spend what you earn or you tax to meet the gap. Borrowing more and more won't be an option for ever. And who are we borrowing from?

Chinese, Arabs ????

Wars in countries that really don't matter. It's nice to be a World Policeman, but only if you can afford it. Look at who produces the arms to fight those wars. The arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, the World Policeman race will do the same if our leaders are not careful.

Looking at your presentation, I'm seeing two major points you are trying to make.

The first is that this country has an excess of stupidity. The second involves the planetary conflict between more-managed and less-managed economies, which, for the moment, the united states is losing.

Yes, I agree, this country has let itself become stupider. I suspect you and I have very different ideas about that stupidity, but sure, we have a serious problem as a country, in that we have embraced stupidity, lack of education, and the cult of personality.

I get the feeling you think this is a permanent state, something inherent in teh people, whereas I think it's a cultural effect, something we have done to ourselves, and that people have the potential to be less stupid.

However, it will talke years for america to become less stupid, and right now I don't see any reason to believe americans want to be less stupid, I think we want to be more stupid.

HOWEVER - we have been ruled by the rich since reagan, and rule by the rich has been just as stupid as anything else we americans have done. The rich create bubbles, let the infrastructure rot, and they have destroyed the american productive economy and threatened national security by letting our infrastructure and logistics base decay.

So, the rich have been just as stupid as anybody. Basing the post 9/11 economy on building unneeded homes and derivative securities and weapons manufacturing was as dumb a fucking idea as anything any birther or 9/11truther ever dreamed up.

And it doesn't matter wether you (or I) think americans are stupid - unless you are going to end our psuedo-democracy, they still get to vote.

---

As for more-managed versus less-managed economies - yes that is a huge topic.

But, the country needs to create 41 million jobs in teh next decade to catch up to where we were 20 years ago, before free trade.

This is a national security issue, not just a consumer or economic iissue.

If you can show me any force, any principle, any trend, that indicates that an unmanaged economy has any way to create 40 million jobs, or 20 million jobs, or even 10 million jobs, I'll be very interested in discussing it.

I cannot see any unmanaged force that makes that possible - until the time comes when the american working class standard of living has been reduced to the chinese working class standard of living, and there is no economic incentive to place all manufacturing in the third world. (leaving out of the picture, for the moment, the question of the price of oil and transport.)

Americans are stupid, but are they stupid enough to passively accept that new order - a superrich elite ruling over a working class making a few dollars an hour?