indefinite duration for every political mandate. Potentially : a lifetime.
No more “terms”, no more re-election → less money, time and energy spent needlessly.
Less influence and less power for lobbyists.
Less media circus.
** giganormous wages for every elected politicians : it will make them immune to corruption, blackmail, etc.
*** even better : make the whole State their own private property.
The national debt will become their own private debt. Soon we will soon less irresponsible bullshits, and more good old, “household-like” economical policies.
*** make political positions hereditary : politics will become less short-sighted. Sustainability and long-term outcomes will become real concerns.
**** reduce the number of political seats. When 1 guy is enough to make a decision and sign a paper, 1 political seat is enough.
[/quote]
Are you serious? [/quote]
That’s called monarchy.
It “worked” many times, in many countries, and in many eras.
Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was at least sustainable.
And it was way smaller than our modern states.
Most of the benefits of minarchy, but without the fatal flaw of being totally utopian.[/quote]
[quote]Severiano wrote:
Interesting that we agree about so much. [/quote]
In an ultra macro sense, I’m sure we agree more often than not. It is the “how to get there” part that we will find our heads butting.
Yes and no. I don’t think ‘corporate personhood’ in and of itself is as big of a deal. That isn’t to say your sentiment is wrong, it isn’t. Big money runs shit. The problem is people getting benefit for spending this much.
We wouldn’t have to restrict the amounts donated if they didn’t have as much to gain for donating in the first place. As in, if the government had less power to control the citizenry, there wouldn’t be a return on those donations, and they woudln’t happen.
So yes, we agree the $ in politics is an issue, but we disagree on how to get it out/lessen it/have it at least be less important.
[quote]
Why did the Occupy movement bother you so much? [/quote]
They are mad at the wrong people. It should have been occupy Penn Ave. They were largely upper middle class, well educated, entitled white kids bitching and moaning. Generally when people push class warfare talking points and propoganda, they have alter motives that tend to end very poorly for citizens, quick breeze through history shows this. It is hard to take anyone that thinks shitting on a sidewalk is okay, serious.
I could go on and on…
Been this way since the 19th century at least.
Stuff like this is where partisian bickering starts. You toss out this idea, like it is somehow a reality.
And add that to the fact that 99% of people that say stuff like this can’t name a single policy that does like they claim, has never owned or ran a business, and has very little risk in their everyday finiancial life, and you get a partisian argument going.
You are basically begging the question.
You are not going to agree with every stance of either party. And if you do, you are a hack and need to not be listened to.
It is that simple. People are going to vary in opinion.
I do’t vote on social issues, and certainly not ones that aren’t actually issues, but rather manufactured talking points to distract from actual issues.
Rather than toss out the equally insluting dem version of that statement I’m just going to say that being conservative escapes you. That isn’t an insult or a knock on your intelligence. My wife is a step above communist and I love her to death and she is very smart.
I can’t sell you, or anyone on conservatism. It is about the individual, and that person being the best they can be to the best of their ability. It is about freedom and it is about rule of law.
PArt of your problem is establishment republicans have lost a lot of the core values the party is supposed to rep along the way.
This has been going on for hundreds of years at this point. I don’t see it changing. [/quote]
About the very end part, we don’t need to take part in voting for people who we don’t feel respresent us closely enough. Otherwise we end up voting for the least worse candidate every time. It might be smarter to vote for a 3rd party person, and do things like spend your money politically since the corps/ special interest groups decide the politics of our politicians.
Me, I wont buy certain brands or eat at certain restaurants. I’m not exactly rich so I can’t do this all the time, and I’m not ALWAYS informed of what I purchase, but at least I understand the big picture.
I tend to be a pretty mixed bag when it comes to politics and my understanding of the way things work.
I’ve often kidded around with my sis who’s in a business grad school about forcing companies to disclose who they do business with. Like, when you roll up to a McDonalds or Chicken Little, sometimes outside of the establishments there is a grade as far as health inspection… Why not have a list of who these companies give donations to so we can spend our money politically?
Seems fair and democratic. Businesses that don’t donate or are agnostic when it comes to politics could advertise that as well. This way people can really vote… Kinda strange, but that’s the way I understand reality these days. The vote, it doesn’t mean shit, the money and how we spend it does when it’s all boiled down and made simple for the rest of the folk to understand.
[quote]kamui wrote:
That’s called monarchy.
It “worked” many times, in many countries, and in many eras.[/quote]
The list of things that have “worked” in the past is long and full of things better not revisited.
[quote]
Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was at least sustainable.[/quote]
I would wager that there are a number of headless corpses who would disagree if they could.
Small government is not an end in itself but a means to an end. We fear that bigger government engenders more tyrannical government–i.e., a government that begins to become more like a monarchy. Cutting out the middleman and jumping straight to the monarchy hardly seems like a solution.
indefinite duration for every political mandate. Potentially : a lifetime.
No more “terms”, no more re-election → less money, time and energy spent needlessly.
Less influence and less power for lobbyists.
Less media circus.
** giganormous wages for every elected politicians : it will make them immune to corruption, blackmail, etc.
*** even better : make the whole State their own private property.
The national debt will become their own private debt. Soon we will soon less irresponsible bullshits, and more good old, “household-like” economical policies.
*** make political positions hereditary : politics will become less short-sighted. Sustainability and long-term outcomes will become real concerns.
**** reduce the number of political seats. When 1 guy is enough to make a decision and sign a paper, 1 political seat is enough.
[/quote]
Are you serious? [/quote]
That’s called monarchy.
It “worked” many times, in many countries, and in many eras.
Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was at least sustainable.
And it was way smaller than our modern states.
Most of the benefits of minarchy, but without the fatal flaw of being totally utopian.[/quote]
Haha This was brilliant, Kamui. Precisely. [/quote]
So are you being facetious or do you actually want an monarchy here?
indefinite duration for every political mandate. Potentially : a lifetime.
No more “terms”, no more re-election → less money, time and energy spent needlessly.
Less influence and less power for lobbyists.
Less media circus.
** giganormous wages for every elected politicians : it will make them immune to corruption, blackmail, etc.
*** even better : make the whole State their own private property.
The national debt will become their own private debt. Soon we will soon less irresponsible bullshits, and more good old, “household-like” economical policies.
*** make political positions hereditary : politics will become less short-sighted. Sustainability and long-term outcomes will become real concerns.
**** reduce the number of political seats. When 1 guy is enough to make a decision and sign a paper, 1 political seat is enough.
[/quote]
Are you serious? [/quote]
That’s called monarchy.
It “worked” many times, in many countries, and in many eras.
Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was at least sustainable.
And it was way smaller than our modern states.
Most of the benefits of minarchy, but without the fatal flaw of being totally utopian.[/quote]
Haha This was brilliant, Kamui. Precisely. [/quote]
So are you being facetious or do you actually want an monarchy here?[/quote]
None of the above.
Many posters in this thread seem to think that reducing term durations, wages, powers and mandates etc would somehow reduce the size of the State and/or slow its cancerous growth.
I doubt it.
I simply tried to show that this goal (which i may or may not approve) would be easier to achieve if we were taking the opposite way.
it’s neither a joke nor a serious apoloygy of monarchy, it’s simply a reductio ad absurdum.
Many posters in this thread seem to think that reducing term durations, wages, powers and mandates etc would somehow reduce the size of the State and/or slow its cancerous growth.
I doubt it.[/quote]
Exactly.
Observation of fact. Government has grown consistently throughout human history. Few and far between are the cases of a government reducing it’s size considerably, especially in a voluntary or self-imposed manner. The few major slights to the growth have been civil wars and revolution, bloody or otherwise.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
You need term limits for beauraucrats and other government paper-pushers, too.
Up-or-out like the military for upper management.
Keep the drones/enlisted no more than 5-6.
Government of any kind should not be a career except in exceptional circumstances.[/quote]
Ehh, so how do you develop things like Quality Assurance for things like Aircraft Maintenance?
A lot of the time Sticks have a good understanding of theory of operation, but they don’t know their assholes from their elbows when it comes to maintaining an aircraft. Certain work in the Military requires a high level of understanding, the sort that takes years to develop.
Otherwise, we may as well just hire contracted civilians/ prior military a lot of the time, and pay them 5-10x more to do the same job, and that’s being conservative, and that’s what happens from time to time now with certain types of work.
It seems smarter to keep people, and pay them more rather than to force them out, pick up the civilian job that the government ends up paying for anyhow and then the government ends up paying more anyhow.
This isn’t to say there aren’t jobs in the military that anybody can do… S shop sort of stuff, supply, etc… Also, I’d have beef with pushing grunts away, some of those guys belong where they are, and would do the country no better service than to remain grunts.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
You need term limits for beauraucrats and other government paper-pushers, too.
Up-or-out like the military for upper management.
Keep the drones/enlisted no more than 5-6.
Government of any kind should not be a career except in exceptional circumstances.[/quote]
Ehh, so how do you develop things like Quality Assurance for things like Aircraft Maintenance?
[/quote]
Funny you would pick QA for aircraft.
Oddly enough, I’ve worked with a private company that developed engines for aircraft and been through all the FAA trace-every-part crap with receipts for every nut and bolt and pre-approvals for contractors.
99% of what government does is interfere with quality assurance by imposing stupid and arbitrary requirements.
The process adds probably 1000% (yes 1000%) to the cost of developing and producing engines.
It was such a hassale that, finally, the company said “screw it” and moved operations to China and makes the engines for chinese military drones and industrial aircraft (like ones that spray chemicals on crops – I don’t know the English word) — because the Chinese are ironically more free.
Huge loss of jobs, not to mention a transfer of very useful military-useful technology to a potential enemy.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
You need term limits for beauraucrats and other government paper-pushers, too.
Up-or-out like the military for upper management.
Keep the drones/enlisted no more than 5-6.
Government of any kind should not be a career except in exceptional circumstances.[/quote]
Yeah. We should get rid of everyone in the Intelligence Community and Foreign Service once they start getting good at their jobs. Who needs experience anyways? These 30 year old analysts and diplomats surely are at the apex of their careers at this point in their lives.
We should get rid of everyone in the Intelligence Community and Foreign Service once they start getting good at their jobs. Who needs experience anyways? These 30 year old analysts and diplomats surely are at the apex of their careers at this point in their lives. [/quote]
If we ‘liberate’ a few more countries, allow a few more embassies to be overrun, we won’t have to get rid of them.
If you consider Julian Assange as a major threat to your profession and you count killing a man nearly a decade AFTER he inflicts mass casualties on American soil as a success, you really need to find another line of work.
We should get rid of everyone in the Intelligence Community and Foreign Service once they start getting good at their jobs. Who needs experience anyways? These 30 year old analysts and diplomats surely are at the apex of their careers at this point in their lives. [/quote]
If we ‘liberate’ a few more countries, allow a few more embassies to be overrun, we won’t have to get rid of them.
If you consider Julian Assange as a major threat to your profession and you count killing a man nearly a decade AFTER he inflicts mass casualties on American soil as a success, you really need to find another line of work.[/quote]
OBL was a good lot more than just a guy who killed Americans a decade ago. He was the most powerful symbol of the most exigent threat to American security of our time. He was also planning more attacks. I don’t believe that the raid that killed him could be characterized as anything other than an unqualified success.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
You need term limits for beauraucrats and other government paper-pushers, too.
Up-or-out like the military for upper management.
Keep the drones/enlisted no more than 5-6.
Government of any kind should not be a career except in exceptional circumstances.[/quote]
Yeah. We should get rid of everyone in the Intelligence Community and Foreign Service once they start getting good at their jobs. Who needs experience anyways? These 30 year old analysts and diplomats surely are at the apex of their careers at this point in their lives. [/quote]
That is not what he is saying, there are certain positions were experience can be a good thing.
In my field we usually have a high drive to improve or promote (especially in my department), either our skills or our rank.
But in many government positions moving the piece of paper from the left side of the desk to the right side doesn’t require much special training.
OBL was a good lot more than just a guy who killed Americans a decade ago. He was the most powerful symbol of the most exigent threat to American security of our time. He was also planning more attacks. I don’t believe that the raid that killed him could be characterized as anything other than an unqualified success.[/quote]
Let me say it this way; You might have something wrong with your intelligence community when Jimmy Carter gets a Nobel for negotiating the cessation of nuclear arms development in N. Korea and we learn afterwards no such thing occurred. You might have something wrong with your intelligence community when H. W. Bush talks about bringing Democracy to the ME and they get surprised 4 yrs. later by an ‘Arab Spring’.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t consider the raid to kill him anything other than a success either, but your statements stand in support of my assertion and your thinking is too contemporary and narrow.
The fact that AQAP is waging an, even marginally, effective asymmetric war is testament to the ineptitude or inefficacy of our monstrous intelligence service. By our own assertions the US is fighting a ‘global war on terror’ and took a decade to track probably the single most notorious man on the face of the Earth in his flight from Afghanistan all the way to… Pakistan. Even if it had happened faster, I think there are few analysts who would label the escalation from a regional war to a global war a success.
If you generously allow ‘30 yrs.’ to extend back to Nov. 4, 1979, the US could be considered known for getting involved in revolutions via it’s intelligence community only to be surprised when the native people raid the local US embassy or consulate. No matter how successful the raid in Pakistan, Chris Stevens still died.
OBL was a good lot more than just a guy who killed Americans a decade ago. He was the most powerful symbol of the most exigent threat to American security of our time. He was also planning more attacks. I don’t believe that the raid that killed him could be characterized as anything other than an unqualified success.[/quote]
Let me say it this way; You might have something wrong with your intelligence community when Jimmy Carter gets a Nobel for negotiating the cessation of nuclear arms development in N. Korea and we learn afterwards no such thing occurred. You might have something wrong with your intelligence community when H. W. Bush talks about bringing Democracy to the ME and they get surprised 4 yrs. later by an ‘Arab Spring’.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t consider the raid to kill him anything other than a success either, but your statements stand in support of my assertion and your thinking is too contemporary and narrow.
The fact that AQAP is waging an, even marginally, effective asymmetric war is testament to the ineptitude or inefficacy of our monstrous intelligence service. By our own assertions the US is fighting a ‘global war on terror’ and took a decade to track probably the single most notorious man on the face of the Earth in his flight from Afghanistan all the way to… Pakistan. Even if it had happened faster, I think there are few analysts who would label the escalation from a regional war to a global war a success.
If you generously allow ‘30 yrs.’ to extend back to Nov. 4, 1979, the US could be considered known for getting involved in revolutions via it’s intelligence community only to be surprised when the native people raid the local US embassy or consulate. No matter how successful the raid in Pakistan, Chris Stevens still died. [/quote]
The armchair “analyst” provides a compelling case against the “imperial hubris” of American Foreign Policy. In a mere 250 words I might add. Lucasa’s line of reasoning is anything but “contemporary” and “narrow.”