Not all Sanders supporters fit your notion of "Bernie lovers". — creativesoul

I haven't given a definition of Bernie Lovers!!! :yikes:

Bernie supporters closely resemble the past supporters of Ron Paul on the Republican side: they are highly excited about their candidate, they are usually young and follow issues. They are thinkers. And they believe (with obvious reasons) that the party machinery is against their candidate.

I just wanted to hear what people think of Buttigieg as there hadn't been many mentions.

But anyway, from his speech (the one that Pelosi ripped) I think Trump is starting to prepare for a Sanders/Warren or similar vote: a lot of red paint is readied for use. And knowing Trump, it is going to be extremely ugly and the voters can be even more divided in the end than in 2016.

Yes, it's true, Iowa doesn't portray how things are going to go, and if Buttigieg has concentrated his efforts on Iowa, then he can punch above his weight-line. With New Hampshire the lines are more firmly drawn...and this case likely for a close race.

In the meantime, Trump is at his highest job approval rating — NOS4A2

W H O P E E ! ! !

Highest approval ratings of sitting US Presidents:

G.W.Bush 90%
G.H.W.Bush 89%
Truman 87%
JFK 83%
F.D. Roosevelt 83%
Johnson 79%
Eisenhower 77%
Carter 74%
Clinton 73%
Reagan 71%
Ford 70%
Obama 69%
Nixon 66%
TRUMP 49%! :starstruck:

Oh you have to pop the champagne for this one, NOS4A2. I can see how you with your fellow Americans are cherishing this moment of coming together, holding hands and singing Kumbayah on this moment of true national unity in the approval of the sitting US President.

It's all so evident even from this small forum for Philosophy.

The Bernie lovers here haven't said a word about Buttigieg. (At least haven't noticed)

Telling.

Personally I want deregulation and the lowering of taxes because I oppose taxes and government intervention into our private affairs — NOS4A2

How deregulation is made and just what is the role of the state is extremely important. Let's remember that Bernie Madoff was the chairman of the NASDAQ for a while. Hence there ought to be supervision to deter illegalities and outright crime. And typically that kind of supervision will be painted as excessive intervention of the government also.

Secondly, in many cases deregulation of the financial markets has created a huge speculative bubble, which in turn has created a huge boom-bust cycle. Still, free markets do a lot of good also.

I do favor markets and capitalism, but I object the ideological juxtaposition into simplified yes/no views on the subject. Just as we don't have only two choices of government: either an authoritarian police state or total anarchy. I know, both the libertarians and the marxists will get angry about this view.

And how are we to understand homeless and the death of homeless people exposed to the elements and prevented from sheltering themselves? I would say predicting a rise in death rates was accurate and our blindness to what is happening is a serious problem. — Athena

But simply that is not true. If you look at this from the global perspective, malnutrition and people dying in famine has dramatically fallen. The great story has been the rise of prosperity in China and India. Yes, there is still povetry, but if you look at the global perspective, then do use the global perspective.

I don't know if it is good or bad news that increasingly women are choosing careers over becoming mothers, I just know many women who are old enough to be grandmothers are disappointed by their son's attraction to women who do not want children, and therefore little chance of them being grandmothers. — Athena

The real change in behaviour has been that people don't get children in order for there to be someone to look after them when they are old. You don't get children in order for them to work the fields. An argument might be that these days only one working in the family doesn't cut it and that bringing up children takes a lot of money. Yet it is a universal phenomenon that when the country becomes more prosperous, when women participate in the workforce and don't stay just home, the fertility rate drops. Some may be surprised just how many countries are below the 2.0 fertility rate.

I think this is about status and changed values, following declaring women who choose to stay home are "just housewives", devastating the status women once had because of who they married and their domestic skills and caring for family, and being civic leaders in charitable organizations. Who wants to be "just a housewife"? — Athena

This is also a universal phenomenon. And one should contrast to what was earlier: the mother having to also work meant simply that the man was incapable of taking care of the whole family. Huge difference to this day.

Also, it should be noted that an educated, intellectual woman wasn't at all thought positively of before, not even by other women. The term Bluestocking was name given to ridicule educated women.

This thread is about democracy, so who understands what democracy has to do with family? — Athena

Because population growth has a lot to do with family.

And Michael Lee basically argued in the OP that Democracy won't solve the huge problems humanity is facing (written in the Limits of Growth), especially when the democracy is electing people like Trump, i.e. when we elect "candy store clerks" and not "doctors" who will solve the problems.

My argument was that this isn't so simple and the idea of our society being on the cusp of total collapse is an exaggeration. Starting from the fact that Limits on Growth should not be put on a pedestal, but viewed also critically, even if lot of the observations are correct.

DNC has now a history of problems with electronic devices & systems. Now it's like really hilarious.

How out-off-tech can a political party become? If there would be class on the subject in the school below for the DNC organization:

Was the report originally sponsored by Westinghouse? — alcontali

I have no idea. I doubt that this was the intension.

Yet a good forecast ought to also extrapolate at least something similar to the advance of technological and scientific innovation as in the previous time: if you make a forecast about the next 100 years, then assuming that technology will also change like in the last 100 years isn't totally wrong. It simply cannot be a variable that is fixed. Of course, in 1972 they couldn't see everything what actually would happen:

Solar energy had then been used basically only in satellites and in 1973, one year later of the report University of Delaware constructed the first solar building, named “Solar One”, which got it's electricity from solar panels.

Generating electricity from wind came to be a serious project in the US only after the Oil Embargo and while still in 1990, wind energy produced 1% of the total energy, now it produces something like 7% in the US.

Thus it's genuinely difficult to extrapolate from that a situation where wind and solar energy now produces more terawatts than all the dams and hydroelectric plants in the world in 1972.

In 1972, The Club of Rome released their findings in the book the Limits to Growth about what is likely going to happen to humanity during this century — Michael Lee

Actually, The Club of Rome was mostly speaking of the last century, where the utter doom scenario would already had taken hold and the final collapse would be already here. Now, as we are living in 2020.

It is a perfect example of the stupidity of an oversimplified model where exponential growth is compared to known resources without much thought given to technological change. They even admit this:

We have not found it possible to aggregate and generalize the dynamic implications of technological development because different technologies arise from and influence quite
different sectors of the model

(See Limits to Growth)

For example, when discussing technological change in energy production in chapter "Technology and the limits to growth", the authors see only one and only one alternate candidate in energy production to replace fossil fuel based energy production, and that is nuclear fission power. Absolutely nothing is said about renewable energy as we know them now, wind, solar, wave and geothermal energy etc. This clearly shows their absolute ignorance of what technological innovation really means when you take many decades into account.

Just think about it for a moment. If you have assumed that there is nothing else than nuclear power to replace fossil fuels, would you think your models for energy production in the early 1970's would have been right? The writers write off arguments of technological improvements only as views of "technological optimists". This arrogant and basically condescending view of "technological optimists" is the most serious flaw. Just look at the following graph, which makes you understand how and why in the start of the 70's people didn't care a thing about alternative energy resources:



Going forward:

We have also assumed that, starting in 1975, programs of reclamation and recycling will reduce the input of virgin resources needed per unit of industrial output to only one-fourth of the amount used today. Both of these assumptions are, admittedly, more optimistic than realistic.

So, let's look at hindsight just how "optimistic, not realistic" that idea of one-fourth of resources being recycled. Let's look at how this has gone in the UK with metal use:



The use of lead has nearly succeeded in this and only zinc is lagging only with 20% a recycling rate. But of course, the forecast didn't end today.

Yet any criticism AT ALL of the Club of Rome and their famous 1972 report and other dire forecasts of imminent utter doom is nowdays absolute heresy and you obviously have to be a "climate denier", anti-science, even to say anything else. It's the new bible. As if noting them means that you wouldn't believe in climate change.

And It hardly matters that the model used in Limits of Growth predicted death rates to rise because of resource scarcity putting population levels to fall starting ten years from now. Of course the Club of Rome can be quite correct of the Population growth reaching a high point and then getting smaller very soon, but that is because of wealth and prosperity, people voluntarily choosing not having children. Not because of wide-scale famine.

So, obviously this is totally false...as the Club of Rome is Right!

But the above statistics don't matter. In fact, anything contrary doesn't matter!

As the following Guardian article from 2014 puts it, the report Limits of Growth was correct! After finding an academic paper forecasting imminent collapse of the global economic human population now six years age, the journalist(s) of the paper cherish these findings and attacks those that dared to criticize the sacred text from 1972: See Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse.

That collapse talked in the 2014 paper ought to have started this year. And that the previous 48 haven't gone as predicted by the Club of Rome hardly matters. Nope, it was correct.

For wielding power, obviously.

For wealth, I'm not so sure. Not all of those hungry for power desire wealth and riches, especially those who have an ideological push and/or see themselves being on a mission.

Then there are the one's who obviously do like gold.

And the gold that they get by wielding power.

They could have this agreement not to um,...ah, F***, who am I kidding.

Yes.

Using hired people and bots to paint your competitor to be this filthy child molesting serial killer who kicks small pet animals works so well.

Perhaps it's a tight race without any "official candidate vs others", so they really have to count the votes.

Imagine thinking that receiving the endorsement of the union representing the third largest employer in the country isn't important or noteworthy. — Maw

And there are multiple far larger trade unions in the US. If Bernie would get an endorsement from NEA (National Education Association), a 2,9 million union, that would represent far more people than the US Postal Office.

But that wasn't my point. My point (even if a bit off the topic) is that the labor unions are small midget size oddities in the US. And when there isn't large union representation (and they don't have to be leftist, thank God) to take on the employers, then the employers have the field day to do whatever they want...and have just done that. Then people complain that wages are stagnant and managers earn so much more than the average employee.

Devil is in the details with things like writing laws on hate speech.

The simple guideline would be that the majority of the people have a basic understanding of when something becomes so harmful and against the rules that it would be considered illegal, a crime. Being annoying (or stupid) isn't a crime. It's the agitators that makes these issues problematic.

Anyway, we ought to have this thing called a representative Parliamentary system to decide these issues where to draw the lines. The solution isn't simply to ask a private enterprise to figure it out (usually by hiring some consultant) and threaten with break up.

Bill Clinton.

NAFTA.

The Internet Boom (early 1990's to 2000) was in full swing.

The prosperity of the 1990s was not evenly distributed over the entire decade. The economy was in recession from July 1990 - March 1991, having suffered the S&L Crisis in 1989, a spike in gas prices as the result of the Gulf War, and the general run of the business cycle since 1983. A surge in inflation in 1988 and 1989 forced the Federal Reserve to raise the discount rate to 8.00% in early 1990, restricting credit into the already-weakening economy. GDP growth and job creation remained weak through late-1992. Unemployment rose from 5.4% in January 1990 to 6.8% in March 1991, and continued to rise until peaking at 7.8% in June 1992. Approximately 1.621 million jobs were shed during the recession. As inflation subsided drastically, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to a then-record low of 3.00% to promote growth.

For the first time since the Great Depression, the economy underwent a "jobless recovery," where GDP growth and corporate earnings returned to normal levels while job creation lagged, demonstrating the importance of the financial and service sectors in the national economy, having surpassed the manufacturing sector in the 1980s.

See 1990s United States boom

I disagree partially with the view of Soros that Facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or platform and It should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site". A publisher of let's say a newspaper is in different. What they have to control is very limited. There are great examples on how you determine these issues in the traditional media. Facebook users aren't traditional media.

Should then Facebook be looking at what is published on it's site? Yes, but the guidelines ought to be totally clear to everyone and come from the government itself and defined that illegal activity isn't tolerated. Upholding laws on what is defined criminal doesn't infringe on the freedom of speech. It shows utter weakness of the state that the service provider is then let to handle the problem itself.

Now you get the worst of both Worlds. Facebook gets public condemnation and populists demand intervention and the Internet companies are in a scramble to do something and usually make many stupid decisions. What is defined to be acceptable is left to a lousy algorithm or the whims of some clueless worker. And if one wants to start a propaganda campaign, attack others and do whatever, anything goes.

But despite Soros’ claim, it isn’t Facebook posting misinformation and other claptrap. — NOS4A2

The company posts few if anything. Yet it cannot control shrewd manipulation. Many times it likely doesn't know what is written in other languages that English.

Churchill and Roosevelt were formally installed as leaders by way of elections. Does that alone make them leaders? — TheMadFool

No, but they didn't get into power by killing their competitors, like Stalin and Hitler did.

That truly is a big issue. A big dividing issue.

People who don't have a problem to kill their own peers to gain power are problematic people, especially in a World where democracies, republics and nations having constitutions are the norm. You see, once a leader does that the whole social interaction changes. They cannot stop looking over their shoulders. They cannot close that Pandora's box once they have opened it.

Anyway, democracy is a simply a simple safety valve which usually works. That's all there really is to it: a safety valve.

The American Postal Workers Union, which represents 200,000 members, has endorsed Bernie Sanders — Maw

Wow. 200 000 in an 300 million country.

Btw, American Postal Service has 644 000 employees, so if even in a government organization you have only 31% belonging to a union, things aren't well for organized labor. But it isn't even so: in the 200,000 members there are also retirees.

The Big Picture:

In 2019, the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions--the union membership rate--was 10.3 percent, down by 0.2 percentage point from 2018, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported

Disgraceful. That is itself grounds for impeachment. — creativesoul

Well, Clinton was impeached on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power. With the obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50, but nowhere near the 2/3 majority. And btw, no Democrats senators did vote for convicting Clinton, although 5 democratic House members were in favor of impeaching Clinton.

The two camps inhabit two distinct simulacra (a la Baudrillard) buttressed by Facebook fact- and alt-fact-bubble algorithms. — ZzzoneiroCosm

And it's not going away.

When Occupy Wall Street / Tea Party were still hype, I remember putting this below on the forum and started to talk about the similarities of the two and how there could be a middle ground.



But no. Hardly any response to this. The other side was totally clueless, a joke. And annoying. That was the bottom line.

So I guess we may see fist fights on the street with two groups of people, which are both against corruption in the political system. Somehow I have this feeling that there's one side for whom that might be a favorable option. Divide et Impera.

The Senate majority are not doing their job. — creativesoul

They are doing their job, because the majority of the Senate are Republicans.

And because the vast majority of Republicans choose to favor Trump and/or don't think there's nothing wrong, why wouldn't they do what they do? The line "yeah, this might be impeachable, but..." uttered by some sounds very logical and actually quite honest.

They have an election to win. They won't win it if Trump would be convicted. When Trump is acquitted it strengthens the idea of Teflon-Don and how awesome he is and utterly whimsical the Democrats are. After all, Republicans don't like Democrats (and vice versa).

Once Trump joked: "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters,". If he'd really do that, which he likely wouldn't (let's make that clear), Republicans would genuinely believe that he was attacked by this person and had to defend himself and all of the so-called witnesses saying it wasn't self defence are part of an utterly nasty conspiracy against Trump. That the incident was an elaborately staged by the Dems with the help of the Deep State. And surely one of the witnesses was a Democrat (we are talking about NYC) and had voted for Hillary, clear proof of the conspiracy!!! Besides, Trump used a gun to defend himself! How better can he show that he's genuinely for the 2nd Amendment! He's a hero.

The Republicans would look how their voters views fall on this matter and then decide what to do. You might think that the absurd story above is an exaggeration. It partly isn't. It's not actually even about Trump. It's about the polarization of Americans to two camps who cannot get along. It's a political system hijacked by two political parties instilling this polarization to prevent the people from falling off to support either one or the another. You have to understand the logic when people vote for a candidate "to shake things up".

Have a happy election.

A small government would be the sort of night-watchman state proposed by libertarians and minarchists, where a minimal state is required to defend the rights, properties and freedoms of its citizens. — NOS4A2

And with that the state intervenes nearly everywhere.

Many believe the state should also intervene in economics, the environment, and even private life. — NOS4A2

Like you as above. If a state upholds the rights of all individuals/citizens, then that intervention happens in all of those areas in some way or another. How much is the real question. And how much intervention comes from the question what are the rights of the citizens.

Wellcome to the forum, Aristocles!

I found it odd when thinking about the incompetence of many politicians as to why this is the case, for surely it would be the so that if an individual was chosen to govern the state they would be confirmed as able through some rigorous method. — Aristocles

If the one who ought to govern simply cannot, then power lies with other people. And do notice that representative democracy doesn't mean that all positions of power are given to representatives of the people. Behind the media focus there are allways the career professional civil servants or people like the military generals. They have gone through the hierarchial system, which hopefully trains and picks the most able people into leadership positions.

One just has to think about absolute monarchies, where power is hereditary. The hereditary nature is used to prevent power struggles that may rip the society otherwise apart, but of course this may backfire in that not only the new sovereign can be mediocre, but truly incapable of acting in any kind leadership role. Yet this doesn't allways lead to problems. If there is an able court, an effective regime under the sovereign and no real problems, a monarchy with an incapacitated sovereign can easily chug along. And this ability has lead to the modern ceremonial monarchies.

(From first to the present prime minister of one country out of 16 (at present). One can be a ceremonial head-of-state, but even that gives power to a person assuming you have something important you want to say.)

The system of popular vote which forms the backbone of democracy has the potential to fail on its own due to the fact that people will vote for those they like and not those who are good rulers. — Aristocles

Sure. But usually we can trust that the people are rational and have sound judgement. When the society and the economy performs OK and the people aren't hopeless or extremely divided, democracy works. Yet if there are huge social problems, deep divides and a lack of social cohesion, democracy can easily turn into ugly mob rule.

These days I've read about the Spanish Civil War and it really is difficult to understand how polarized a nation can become. I think when people hate so much others that they start digging up the bones of the dead to desecrate them, something abnormally pathological has gripped the people. But it happened in Spain and lately during the Yugoslav civil War, so in our lifetime too.

We must be a thoughtful public which is educated too about wether nonsense is being said by an individual. If we teach people how to be more rational through the greater understanding of the self and make it a place in education then the likelihood of things such as the test I mention above and a more rational society to survive will increase despite human nature. — Aristocles

And respect your fellow citizens, even if they disagree with you.

I've always thought that the biggest problem is that we adapt far too easily to bad things. If politicians should all of the sudden start shooting each other, use thugs and mobsters and politics would become literally a battlefield, usually many would just shake their heads and wonder how it all came to this, but take it as the new normal. And those who say we should respect each other and uphold the laws would be declared to be naive and out of touch.

Ah, the time when Scotland will be Independent again.

I myself will allways opt for Brussells rule to Moscow rule. The cacophony of the EU is far better than the single voice of Mr Putin. You see, all alone we'd have to listen to Vlad.

Yes, obviously Michael you have changed today to be a foreigner to me like all the Americans here.

At least I have Benkei, a fellow citizen of the union, with whom I will continue to build the great European home called the EU. :wink:

It's the perception of the government and public attitudes in the society towards the government that define just how "big" or "small" it is.

For example, in the American discussion usually a huge part called the "Armed Forces" is left out of the whole conversation as even the hard core libertarians accept that there has to be an armed forces. Even if they are 'citizen soldiers'.

If you look at the graph there are two peaks - one at the extreme left consisting of the incompetent and one at the right consisting of the highly competent. — TheMadFool

Yes, I agree. The extreme left is hugely incompetent and doesn't understand things. :grin:

Dunning-Kruger effect is surely real, but also there is a genuine distrust of institutionalized leadership. If only those that have passed a formal school or test can take political power, then that school itself holds a lot of power. And in a representative democracy the representatives should really represent the people.

Anybody should understand that implementing Plato's ideal society where people are divided to workers, soldiers and guardian king philosophers, those that decide just where a person will be have a lot of power. And those calling themselves 'Guarding Philosopher Kings' might not care a god-damn thing about philosophy, but are there only for the power and the wealth. Anybody opposing them will be put to be the lowest class worker there is.

Remember that 'rule of the best' is called Aristocracy. How did that work in the end in real life?

The US military absolutely has a vested interest in its soldiers being financially stable and this often a very pertinent issue because you have often young people from lower class backgrounds getting decent, stable paychecks for the first time in their lives. There's much more that could be said about this: The GI bill encouraging college attendance and the VA home loan giving someone the option to purchase a home with 0% down to name a couple. — BitconnectCarlos

This is one of those smart moves the US have ever done, which likely has had a huge effect. 16 million Americans served in WW2 and not to care about them after the war would have been a political, social and even in the long term an economic disaster.

After WW2 my country (Finland) didn't have the resources and just gave the young veterans small parts of land to cultivate or a meager payment. Giving the young veterans a free education would have been a great idea, but I don't think there would have been the resources back then. The country had to handle also 420 000 people (over every tenth person those days) that had been evacuated from areas annexed by the Soviet Union and give them a new homes, which amazingly was done. That the US armed forces is a way for many Americans to get a degree, which otherwise would be out of touch for them, tells actually a lot about the US.

In fact, many war-ridden countries would desperately need an equivalent of a GI bill to truly put the conflicts and insurgencies into the past. To dismantle an armed forces and just leave huge number of people (men) that know only how to use weapons unemployed is a really stupid idea, but of which there is the wonderful example of Paul Bremer's decree of dismantling the Iraqi Army and not care about the consequences. What possibly could go wrong with 400 000 military men being made unemployed and be let alone to their own devices in a country that you are btw. occupying?

(At first, they participated in a demonstration, then something else:)

I'd be interested to read what academics have said about the military and if you've read that material I'd be interested in hearing it. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't know of classics in this field, but usually the field would be called Civil-Military relations. There the military is viewed from another viewpoint than from the military/war fighting viewpoint (as in military history). In some countries this is quite painful if there has been military junta and literally many of the academic people have been jailed and/or shot by the military. You can guess how they view afterwards the military. Another thing is that understanding the military without seeing it from inside can be puzzling and hence the term of Civil-Military culture gap is used often in the US. Only 0,5% of Americans serve in the military and only 22 million (of those living) have served in the military and that is a small minority. Those who served under the Draft are starting to be quite old.

Of course having universal conscription or not has an impact on these issues. In Finland roughly 75% of all males still do their military service, where everybody starts with basic training, then some are picked into the NCO school and from there some are picked into the Reserve officer shool. After this conscription is over then the best of the reservists are picked for advance positions. This in turn creates a great example of the meritocracy of our society. You can imagine how different the US Army would be if 75% of the boys from your school class would have served in the army. It was this before the all volunteer force. At basic training you meet variety of people, people who you would never otherwise work with. Later in your the war-time position your peers are likely to in same type of work as you are. For example, the majority of male university professors in Finland have either been or are reserve officers. Males who are in managerial positions are likely reserve officers or NCOs. In politics, there are only few male Members of Parliament that haven't done their military service and of those, the majority are reserve officers or NCOs.

It would be the same as if you would divide the people to those that have an university level degree and those that don't and then start looking at how is the political and business elite made by these two groups. The school drop-out billionaires are literally a few. The educational system is a hierarchial system also.

t the Republicans are partisan hacks who will say and do anything to protect their own. — Michael

Unwavering support for the POTUS from the GOP is what Trump supporters like.

Who cares about things like truth and following the rules? Politics is all lies and cheating, you know...

The real awesomeness of the US system of non-commissioned officers is that it too represents a hierarchy where on top you have the sergeant majors of the military branch, who then work the commander of the branch. This actually works as many armed forces have a real problem in lacking the essential professional 'hands on' leaders that non-commissioned officers provide and just have a basic divide between officers and men (the problem that Soviet Union/Russia for example has had). The system also makes older non-commissioned officers well respected and not just "junior" officers.

(The Commandant of the USMC with the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps interviewing a wounded Marine sergeant. Not a coincidence that the two are together.)


Of course hierarchial systems are prone to become too unyielding: the divide to officers / noncommissioned officers and the enlisted shouldn't become a barrier. If the most capable person isn't used because he or she is in the wrong formal category for the job, there is something wrong with the system.

Just how well the whole system of officers/sergeants/enlisted men works actually tells extremely much of the society itself. Poor performance of a military can be traced back to problems in the society itself, especially if the officers come from one rigid class/caste and the enlisted from another. Militaries are a reflection of the society that produces them. We may often the say that military was lead poorly, but rarely is it about just having poor generals in charge. (A dictator with poor judgement is another thing.)

The simple fact is that societies, where authoritarian leadership is typical and where subordinates have no say and are assumed just to follow orders, simply don't work effectively. It creates class division and weakens social cohesion. It prevents innovation. In wartime this can be literally observed: if the enlisted have not been taught to think and use their own initiative, once the officer is out, they are often paralyzed and cannot work as an effective team.

Perhaps in academic circles too much is importance is given to the social control aspect of these hierarchies, along the lines of Michel Foucault, and the simple pragmatic reasoning just why things like the military are hierarchial with centralized leadership are sidelined.

And btw. the military is a great topic for this thread when we are talking about political leadership, because they have the weapons. That many countries have this "merry go round" of going from democratic leadership to military rule, which is then followed by democratic leadership while in other countries the armed forces can stay firmly in their role in preparing for outside threats is interesting. Here the issue isn't so much about leadership, but there being the ability to lead the sometimes quite dysfunctional institutions and organizations.

(When civil-military relations aren't the best:)

The same thing could be said for good-looks. It's one trait amount many that helps. — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, that problem with good looks is a bummer. Luckily some people have found a great solution for this. These women look so same to me.



But seriously, our ideological drive towards equality, however benign the aims of it are, crashes with meritocracy. Everybody should understand that even a functioning meritocracy, however much there is social mobility and possibility for everyone to pursue one's own goals, is still inherently and categorically unequal.

This may be naive thinking on my part but if people want a doctor, a qualified and experienced one at that, for their aches and pains, i.e. they look for experts in the problems that concern them, why is it that they don't impose the same exacting standards for their leaders (presidents, senators, governors, etc)? — TheMadFool

Simply because the idea of leaders coming from a school and then assuming leadership roles in a Democracy or a Republic goes totally against the idea of a representative democracy.

And of course there indeed are schools in nearly every nation where one part of the leaders of the nation all come from: that is the higher military schools where captains and majors are educated to become field officers. Not your Officer Schools or institutions like West Point, but the advance schools where from all the generals come from. The system dates back to the Austrian and Preussian militaries and the idea of there being a General Staff.

(Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth US. Notice how old these students in the picture below are compared to university students. In this picture (from 2013) it is highly likely that there are many future generals of the US Army, though likely the South Korean officer in front won't be)


The example of the military shows that a true leadership school works only for very hierarchial organizations where higher level leaders are chosen by a formal process.

7 hours, 33 minutes and a few seconds...

Everyone from Clinton to Bush to Obama promised to move the embassy only to break their promises. — NOS4A2

And all those Presidents understood that it was a good carrot to use with Israel to get them to seriously negotiate with the Palestinians. They understood that the move (without any agreement or solution in the conflict) would appear to put the US squarely on the side of Israel (hence basically given an OK for Israeli annexation done in the Six Day War).

Of course there isn't much credibility in the argument that the US is a neutral party in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

But here Trump wasn't actually appeasing Israel (with the Embassy move). He was first and foremost appeasing one of his most important campaign financiers.

Yeah, clearly you haven't been following it closely, but it's obvious now you're only interested in hearing comments about it insofar as it's viewed negatively. — Maw

Your comments, apart from saying "Increasing wages can only get so far when 1% of the US population own over 40% of the wealth, while the bottom 80% own less than 10%." have been quite in line with your ordinary condescending attitude, like "This is so goddamn dumb", "exceptionally embarrassing argument", "this little circle jerk you're having with yourself", which is normal fashion to you. Still, I've responded to your arguments if you give them.

I answered how their proposals aren't at all similar to the example you provided in the opening post. — Maw

The only difference is the level where the tax starts. There's genuinely no other difference. And in the Finnish example, the wealth tax started when you basically with our currency had people who's wealth was over a million, i.e. millionaires.

It's not similar to Benkei's example. — Maw

Benkei gave an example of an implementation of a wealth tax.

Trump appointed "scum" to the office of National Security Advisor. What does that tell us about Trump? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Trump serves to those that give him campaign donations!

It was the idea of the same guy that purposed to Trump that moving the Embassy to Jerusalem would be a great idea (which Trump obediently did). But hey! He gave Trump over 80 million campaign donations!

Give money to Trump, Trump does what you want. :blush:

Yes.

And do notice many of Trump's policies ARE THE SAME as with (ghasp!) Obama!

For example, Obama didn't like European members of NATO spending so little on defence. So does Trump, yet Trump has gotten them to do something about it.

The innocent politics he does, has been good. He has been criminal on occasions, but shouldn't the people he's working good for, pardon him? — Qwex

I agree. On occasions!

Putin has also done great things. No, really, I'm serious. The fall of the average life expectancy of Russian males has been stopped and is rising under his term in power. That's really a great thing.

So let's forget he instigated three wars, one inside of Russia and two with Russia's neighbours. But he doesn't have anything against my country, so should I be all smiles? I guess so.

OH NO!!! :scream:

Trump's beautiful wall! It fell down!

Wind is part of the Democratic conspiracy. Damn Californian wind.


A newly built chunk of Trump's new border wall blew over in the wind and landed in Mexico

If by "working institutions" you mean massive state intervention, I agree. — Xtrix

Why should it be massive? Or what do you define massive?

Would you say in Switzerland the state intervention is massive? Some would say so. I wouldn't. I think the country is an example that libertarianism and social democracy coexisting and that in reality things don't go along ideologically pure lines idealists cherish.

In a truly free market, without rent and interest, yeah. — Pfhorrest

No, literally. If you have wealth, cash, moolah, you can buy products and services. The rich can do that more than poor. What you can earn with your labor is a different thing.

Trade is what actually creates new wealth; lending just siphons off of that. — Pfhorrest

Why?

If then trade is so good and renting so bad, what is so wrong with renting something than buying? If I travel to a foreign country where I would want to explore the surroundings with a bicycle, why would I have to buy a bicycle and then sell it a week later? I theoretically could do that, but renting a bicycle would less difficult.

The same if true if people genuinely have the option of a) renting a flat and b) going to the bank and get a loan that they can afford in buying a flat. If the financial markets work, then both of the options would be reality for people.

All else being equal, yes. The problem is that all else is not equal, and you can get (and stay) wealthier just by starting out wealthier, despite being less productive a worker than people who started out poorer and, despite their greater productivity, remain poorer. — Pfhorrest

And if your wealthier, typically you get better education, better possibilities and so on. Social mobility is very important for a society. Without it, there's huge underlying problems.

. Here if you rent a large two room or a normal three room apartment, you could with the same money buy a smaller flat of your own and pay similar amount some years and then have the flat for yourself. — ssu

Maybe that's true in places where land is dirt cheap and three-room apartments are "normal". — Pfhorrest

It isn't dirt cheap. I was talking about Helsinki. The highest prices are equivalent of something like Paris. The reason why the prices are so high is because the interest rates are historically so low. Still, a cleaner can buy a small flat quite close to the city center. Of course the reason is that a cleaner get's multiple times the income of a cleaner in a poorer country. Same job, totally different income.

My parents have spent their entire lives paying for housing and still own no housing to show for it, despite having paid over that time more than the current cost of a house. I have spent my entire life paying the lowest rent I can possibly find (in the area where I was born and raised and where my entire life is so don't just say "why did you move somewhere expensive" or "why don't you just move back somewhere cheap"), saving and investing at ridiculous rates (currently up to over a third of my take-home income) trying to save up enough money for a down payment on anything available for purchase such that the interest alone (which is, again, rent on money) wouldn't exceed my existing rent, so that I can actually finish paying off a house before I die and not spend my entire life having to pay just for the privilege of having somewhere to sit and stave to death in peace.

I have never wanted to rent. I have always wanted to own. I have always lived in the place I want to continue living. But owning within my lifetime has always been out of reach. — Pfhorrest

And this is a problem quite generally in every poor country.

It is a genuine cause for povetry, for a country to lag behind, for there not to exist a large wealthy middle class. The fact is that then the financial sector simply doesn't work. If an ordinary person working in an ordinary job cannot go to the bank, cannot get a loan and cannot pay that loan back and still live decently, the financial markets in the economy simply don't work! If ONLY the rich can get loans with a decent interest, then simply the market doesn't work.

Simply put, when there is no option other than to rent for people who work, then the entire society has a huge problem.