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View Poll Results: What should we do about capitalism? | |||
Replace it with socialism, through parliamentary reforms | 5 | 15.63% | |
Replace it with socialism, through revolution | 5 | 15.63% | |
Use more public regulations to counteract some of its consequences | 13 | 40.63% | |
Scale down public regulations to let the free market run its course | 6 | 18.75% | |
Nothing, it’s fine as it is | 3 | 9.38% | |
Voters: 32. You may not vote on this poll |
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06-23-2022, 05:28 PM | #181 (permalink) | |
Juicious Maximus III
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
Posts: 6,525
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But yeah, it's a **** show either way.
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06-23-2022, 09:23 PM | #182 (permalink) |
Music Addict
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 2,358
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i still think the "good" dictator is the way to go sometimes like Singapore, south korea and Tawain palau and some other pacific island nations i know on a smaller scale
and he does not even need to be all about the people yadda yadda just pretty much make the best business decisions kinda like a really successful CEO that runs a country |
06-23-2022, 09:56 PM | #183 (permalink) | |
Zum Henker Defätist!!
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Beating GNR at DDR and keying Axl's new car
Posts: 48,199
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Stop reading Curtis god damn Yarvin, you psycho.
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06-24-2022, 12:46 AM | #184 (permalink) |
Juicious Maximus III
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
Posts: 6,525
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I think democracy and capitalism is fun, but I don't think it's suited for the current cliamate / environment in terms of overcoming the challenges we collectively face or coexisting with the rest of nature in a way that's sustainable and good for our long term well-being.
Some utopian democracy could feasibly work, but it would require that people are much less stupid and distracted and focus on the things that are actually important. But what people want isn't always what people need and so how to create a democracy that focuses more on real needs than wants, I don't know how to achieve that. Possibly, a meritocracy would be better where specialists and competent people in various fields make the policy decisions and then democratic processes control other things or perhaps has some control over who runs these meritocratic committees.
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06-24-2022, 02:10 AM | #185 (permalink) | ||
the bantering battleaxe
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Cute Post Malone's mom
Posts: 3,394
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I think you're right about the issues of democracy but I don't agree that there may be a better alternative. Unless something changes very fundamentally in our world, a 'meritocracy' (or any way at all of selecting the people who can have power) will be a plutocracy. I think the changes in order to make democracy work would be less difficult, and it comes with less danger. Leaving only the policy part to specialists but having a democratic process of electing and controlling them is good, but that's just how our democracy is supposed to work
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06-24-2022, 04:36 AM | #186 (permalink) | |
Juicious Maximus III
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
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On behalf of the town and its citizens, we manage a lot of funds and stuff like where to do rehabilitation efforts and what objects go on those plans is a typical meritocratic process. Determining the funding for that is a democratic process. At least in terms of infrastructure, I do think that meritocratic processes often end up with better decision making overall. A typical example here might be city expansion. Politicians may decide to expand the city, build more houses and develop new areas. Sometimes, this happens with no consideration or blatant disregard for wastewater infrstructure. We need capacity, or else sewage isn't going to reach our facilities, but will instead go to a water recipient (usually the local fjord in our case). A way to hopefully avoid problems is to have competent people sorta upstream when the plans are discussed, but their competence is lacking and anyways tend to be very theoretical. They never got their hands dirty and don't know the practical reality of running these things. For politicians, they get case notes beforehand and perhaps someone to show them a presentation, but I get the impression there's just too much for them to digest and a complicated reality doesn't always distill into a neat 10 minute powerpoint presentation. There can be a gap between what's a sensible, fact based decision and what ends up as policy that can be hard to close. For wastewater infrastructure where people can't see the cracks or know the problems, a thing that politicians do care about is that citizens should not feel burdened economically, so wastewater across the country is perpetually underfunded. This leads to pollution and other problems. A stance on immigration can be kinda sexy, but we gotta fix the holes in our leaking pipes that you never even see isn't quite as interesting politically. At least here, that sort of thing doesn't win any elections or even come up. I do feel like there is a similar theme in road development. Here, if there's an important stretch of road that goes through regions, many local governments want a say in the location of that road. They may want the road closer to their towns for the business and taxes it can bring and for convenience. But on the other hand, you might think hey, this makes the road longer than what was the original intention. Big transport may have to travel further. That's more pollution into the atmosphere, you have to remove more nature, perhaps you get the road close to drinking water sources, etc. But from the point of view of one local government, they may have little to gain by seeing a bigger picture or abstaining from making those kind of demands because their neighbours probably will anyways and so you may end up with something like a tragedy of the commons. Politics of course has subterfuge built in because you have to entice voters to your cause and there's just a lot of incentives etc. that doesn't promote reality based decision making. I also feel like the decisions they make are more often short term decisions instead of based on the really long term. My rant is getting long now, but something slightly related about measures, I also mentally divide measures into measures that actually make a difference or measures that change attitudes. Take carbon emissions for example. I was at a conference where a local government was using drones and a heat seeking camera to find leaky windows as a way to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. To me, that's a measure that targets attitudes. It looks cool on an instragram post. In reality, if you spent a bit of that time flying drones getting someone to build 1 meter less road (asfalt and road production has huge emissions), you probably could've made up for years of window hunting. We see something similar with water saving. It's something everyone can do and it engages kids and it kinda makes for good policy because people feel like they can contribute. But in reality, how much water you use when brushing your teeth means absolutely nothing when we lose 30% of all water produced from leaky pipes which amounts to thousands upon thousands of m3s. Promote instead better funding / more taxation and you may actually make a difference. Anyways, I like democracies, but still feel like long term important decisions could often benefit from at least a bigger degree of meritocracy.
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Something Completely Different Last edited by Guybrush; 06-24-2022 at 04:42 AM. |
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06-24-2022, 04:41 AM | #187 (permalink) | ||
the bantering battleaxe
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Cute Post Malone's mom
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Yeah I agree about that. That is actually why I dislike the type of populist politician who calls for deciding everything by referendum to make things more 'democratic'. I think all that does is make democracy more direct, which is not necessarily good. It leads to uninformed decisions and doesn't help to solve the disconnect between politicians and other citizens
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06-25-2022, 09:05 PM | #188 (permalink) | |
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Last edited by Ayn Marx; 06-25-2022 at 09:28 PM. |
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06-26-2022, 01:19 PM | #189 (permalink) | |
From beyooond the graaave
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: The state that proudly brought you Disco Duck
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America still thinks of itself as a meritocracy because to us money is merit.
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06-27-2022, 05:48 AM | #190 (permalink) | |
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