My opposition to direct democracy is that there is no way to protect minority rights. Direct democracy would, I suspect, be one-man, one-vote, one-time. Imagine if very large swaths of the Southern states, along with the mid-Western states had the power, in one fell swoop, to make the United States an officially Christian nation where homosexuality was outlawed? Do you think they would? I do. Do you think someone could design a campaign that would make it sound like that would be a great idea? I do. Do you think people would believe it? I *know* they would. How do I know? Because in February of 2003 a decisive majority of the American people believed--against ALL logic--that Jerry Falwell (Usama bin Laden) was the largest contributor and booster of the ACLU (Saddam Hussein's Iraq) and had *direct* involvement in attacking the United States. Half-an-hour on Google, would have given any of my fellow citizens all the information they needed in order to know that they were being sold a bill of goods and *why* it was a bill of goods. So forget the time it takes to vote, I'm concerned about the *consequences* of the vote!

Btw. in case there's anyone lingering that thinks it would be a good idea to have direct democracy consider that every single time an anti-gay marriage measure has been on the *ballot* (instead of in the legislature) it has been passed. Every. Single. Time.

The thing is, social contracts don't *work* in anarchies because there's no enforcement mechanism. Unless we're going to all go back to HGF lifestyle (thank you, no!) living in groups of no more than about 150 we can't *have* a social contract without enforcement mechanisms. Cheating is just too easy a strategy. You're absolutely correct, the doctor isn't going to care for your sick mother because you tend the chickens. It's not happening.

There are a number of things that would recommend conservatism (real conservatism not right-wing radicalism) or even the Republican party (not the current electoral coalition but an older Republican party, ask your grandparents) to various minority populations. There is simply *nothing* in anarchy to recommend itself to a minority population because they simply do not have the numbers to protect themselves should the majority decide that the minority is the problem. Couldn't happen? Tell that to *any* group of emigres living in populations where they have become middle-men merchants and are starting to accumulate a bit of wealth for their troubles. Tell it to Indians in South Africa, or the Chinese in Indonesia, or Jews pretty much anywhere, anytime in the last 1500 years or so. I think they probably have some *very* definite ideas about the desirability of the rule of law, specifically those parts that protect minority rights.

Cheers
Aj

Wait. Aren't North America and South America two different continents? That's what I was taught in elementary school - has something changed in the last 30 years that I'm unaware of?

North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, Antarctica. Right? So all people from Canada, the US, Mexico, all the countries in Central America, and the Caribbean countries are all North Americans. Not Americans. If the continent is called NORTH America - why not North Americans?

Unless of course North and South America are the same continent now and I didn't get the memo. Which is possible. I hate georgraphy. I don't even know where Mississippi is.

That's okay, 40% of American college graduates put Hawaii in the North Atlantic because, you know, NOTHING says tropical like icebergs.

cheers
Aj

In my defense, I know where everything in -Canada- is. And I'm good at the New England states, because I like New England. And I know where Washington and Oregon are. And California. And pretty much any state that touches Canada.

But still - how many continents are there these days?

ETA - so when all of North America merges into one country...what are we going to do about that whole "The US doesn't like Cuba" thing? If we're all one country, how can we best prevent (former) USians from vacationing in (former) Cuba? I suggest wristbands. So then (former) USians can be like underage people at a concert.

Same number, seven.

Umm, wait, does that mean that I would become a subject of Her Majesty? I believe that Canadians *can* risk their very immortal souls and Precious Bodily Fluids by going to Cuba. I'm actually really curious to go there, just because.

Cheers
Aj

FYI, not all Canadians are happy about being her "Majesty's" subject...

Fortunately I don't have an immortal soul, so I'm not worried about the effects of going to Cuba. ;) I've never been personally, but just about every person I know has vacationed there at some point. I have a few friends who go there EVERY winter.

Cuba is interesting. It's like a failed experiment that has enough triumphs that people may not notice that it's failed. Their education and health care systems, for example, are exceptional (Cubans are living longer than Americans). Environmentally (you know, not destroying the planet) they are also ahead of the game.

I have mixed feelings when people say that people in Cuba live in poverty because they don't have all the fancy toys and crazy giant houses that some people think of as markers of wealth - since everybody has pretty much the same things and their basic needs really -are- being met (which is more than I can say for people living in poverty in either of our countries) I tend to not think of Cubans as "poor". People not actually owning the houses that they live in in Cuba is less of a concern to me than people living on the streets in Vancouver.

I do wish that there was a way that they could continue with everybody getting their needs met...without all of the awful shit that has also gone along with it. Can't everybody have a similar quality of life without all the spying/lack of privacy? Can't everybody have access to healthcare and live long lives there without a rigged game judicial system? I don't understand why it's not possible to keep the things that are fair and do away with the things that are grievously unfair.

Well of course not. I'm sure that nobody thought that 100% of Canadians were 100% in favour of the Monarchy.

I, personally, am from the "I don't really give a shit, since it's just symbolic and the existence of the Monarchy in absolutely no way effects Canada either way" camp (unless the Queen or the Governor General have been refusing to sign bills into law that they don't like and I am not aware of it - which I highly doubt.)

It's part of what makes Canada. Our ties to GB is likely one of the things that made Canada go in one direction (we prefer evolutionary change of how things are done) while the US has a history that favours more revolution. We would likely be a different country than the one we turned out to be - and I like the country we are.

This is why, when talking about any of the truly utopian ideas that people still flirt with, I always say 'great idea, wrong species'. Marxism, socialism, libertarianism and anarchy are all, on paper, fantastic ideas and with some other species they would be intuitively obvious and work. If ants or bees could talk they would find Marxism and socialism self-evident. If orangutans could talk libertarianism and anarchy would make perfect sense and be intuitively obvious.

The reason it *never* works is that, well, people have self-interest. Let's say I run an egg farm. I have no incentive to produce more eggs than my quota requires. If I do, I'm not getting paid any extra since I'm paid a fixed amount for a fixed amount and I can't *sell* them because that would be a class-crime because I would then be trying to turn a profit. However, because everyone *else* is in the same boat, there's shortages because no one has any incentive to produce surplus. It literally profits them not at all. Not officially. However, there are perverse incentives to produce a *little* above quota to sell on the black market. If I have 3 dozen eggs and only need two, maybe I sell my surplus eggs for some coffee. I love coffee. Now, as long as I don't get caught all should be well. But then I get caught. Well, since the cop is in the same position as the rest of us, maybe there's something I can offer her to show my appreciation for the protection she gives to the People. So now I have a little thing going on the side with the cop and the coffee supplier. Black markets will pop up in any situation where there is scarcity imposed if it is at all possible. Even in North Korea where the control is probably as absolute as has been achieved has thriving black markets. Even though they are seriously illegal.

So in order to prevent the first crime--making extra eggs at all--there has to be strict monitoring of what happens on the collective farms. Well, who will watch the watchers? So you have informants who might get little perks for their dedication to the cause of the People. Now you have a police state. It is simply *impossible* to prevent people from pursuing their own self-interest no matter how ideologically unsound it might be.

With all that I whole good, true and sacred I wish it weren't this way but it is.

Cheers
Aj

Honestly, at this point in American history I wish we'd waited to throw off the chains of colonial oppression at the hands of His Majesty's government. Slavery would have ended earlier (Britain outlawed it in the early 19th century). We'd probably be a lot less violent. I'm not saying that England or the English are the One True People but I really wish we were a bit *more* like our Canadian and English cultural cousins. Staying apart of the British Empire until the latter part of the 19th century or the early part of the 20th (maybe after WW II which we would have gotten into earlier if we were still under the Crown in 1939) would have done America a great deal of cultural good.

Cheers
Aj

People suck.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

I do think that part of our leg up on you is our French population. Being a country that was formed basically by merging some French settlements with English settlements - we had to learn early on to compromise and work towards solutions that are for the greater good for the whole. We're kind of a country that was FORMED on the principle of give and take, you know?

ETA - and if you all had stuck it out until after WWII then it would have saved you guys from getting DC burned down and us from getting Toronto burned down. Thanks a lot.

Need to read more in this thread, however here is some ideas to throw out there and ponder with this perfect society where we can have people agree on principles.

I wouldn't say Russia and Germany are experiencing the most peace since the height of the Roman Empire.. If anything it's under raps. Considering history repeats itself, Nazism is still ongoing and growing again.
All the support for Syria and all I have to say is Al Qaeda.
If all the latin countries united together, the citizens would all battle and kill each other.
Let's not forget the Indigenous Australians, the Aborigines. They are thinking of adding them as a whole new race. They are some of the first inhabitants according to some. Whether they are in the U.S. Or Australia or wherever, add them to the melting pot. What do you do with them now?

Violence is down in the U.S. Could it be because all the fighting is in other countries where our military is deployed? And what is considered violence? It could have different meanings to different people. If American spies are found or a U.S. Citizen kills someone in another country, more than likely they get death right then and there, no questions asked. If an immigrant or even an alien comes to the U.S., breaks the law or murders an American on American soil, they get thrown in prison or sent back to their country.

I think the social hierarchy has always existed in every country throughout the world.

The world and the U.S. still has slavery.

In my opinion there will never be fair justice. Something or someone will inevitably change. Change is constant and ongoing with people not being happy for one reason or another and feeling something isn't fair for someone. People agreeing on rules and laws, that will never happen. Hence, voting on amendments, petitions, additions to laws.

I won't even talk about religion. No one country or even within a country agrees with that one.

"This is why, when talking about any of the truly utopian ideas that people still flirt with, I always say 'great idea, wrong species'. "Marxism, socialism, libertarianism and anarchy are all, on paper, fantastic ideas and with some other species they would be intuitively obvious and work. If ants or bees could talk they would find Marxism and socialism self-evident."

So why present theories on justice and describe systems of thought that tilt towards Utopian design? And other species already do largely exist in a state of checks and balances guided by "peacekeepers" like the Woodland Fungus that I posted a September 20, 2011, Science Daily article about in the biomimicry thread today:

"Likening what happens in woodlands to the popular Nintendo Wii game,
Spore Wars, Ph.D student Tom Crowther's study has just been published in
the international journal Ecology Letters. His findings reveal that, by
feeding on the most combative fungi, invertebrates ensure that less
competitive species are not entirely destroyed or digested."

So where is that intervening force in the human race or in our communities? Where is the tolerance and in fact protection of "less competitive" voices - a tolerance and protection that Rawls' or any good judicial system must in fact be predicated upon?

And as we live now in the age of seven billion (thank you for the post on this, AJ), with nine billion looming closer than we think, and in a world of dwindling resources, how will any system of thought, any societal structure that rewards competition, hierarchies and hegemonies play out?

I think we know. And I think some part of us imagines we are heading for a time of brutal realities and choices with no hope of Utopian systems of thought, however worthy or even practical they seem in theory, let alone in praxis. And I think that scares the stuffing out of us. As well it should.

Wait, are you saying that there has been a shooting war between Russia and Germany *after* WW II and no one has noticed? Because I didn't say that Russia or Germany were having the longest period of *internal* harmony I said that ALL of the European powers were at peace for the longest continuous period since the the Roman Empire. That doesn't say anything what-so-ever about internal strife. It's simply that after the Pax Romana passed European nations went to war with one another with startling regularity. The last convulsion of major European powers shooting at one another ended in 1945. Since then, no major European power (Germany, France, England, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Italy) has shot at any other major European power. This is the first time in 2000 years that the Europe has been this peaceful. That doesn't say anything about internal strife. So, what shooting war has taken place between any of 7 nations on that list since 1945? (The 1956 and 1968 Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia don't count because neither the Hungarians or the Czechs were major powers *and*, given the realities of the Warsaw Pact all of the nations east of the Russian borders could fairly be termed provinces or colonies of the USSR at the time so an argument could be made that these were internal strifes. Which is decidedly *not* what I'm talking about)

I don't follow you here.

Probably so.

Umm, again, I'm not sure I follow you. The Aborigines may or may not be genetically unique enough to be considered their own racial group but there's no doubt that they were the first humans in Australia. As far what to do with them, you call them 'citizen', hand them a ballot, and let democracy take its course.

No, absolutely not. There are far too *few* people in uniform such that even if every single member of all five armed forces were deployed constantly and never rotated back into the United States, that *still* couldn’t account for the dip in violent crime that started in the early 90s.

Murder, armed robbery, rape, assault, lynchings, arson.

I am using violence in the way that sociologists and criminologists use violence.

Actually no. Not even at the very height of the Cold War. The KGB, the CIA and MI-6, all had an informal agreement designed to keep their national governments from having a reason to start a shooting war. It was this: we will not kill your spies in our country and you don't kill our intelligence officers in your country. For the most part that agreement was held to for forty years.
There's only a handful of nations that still use the death penalty and I can think of three instances, within the last 24 months, of Americans caught in nations who were not subject to summary execution. That woman in Italy who just came home, those hikers in Iran and some journalists in North Korea.

Well, if the immigrant is a US citizen then they stay here. If that person is a resident alien they can be sent home. That is how it should be. If someone commits murder, don't you think they *should* be thrown in prison? I do.

Yes, and it always will.

Okay, here you have gone way too far, ruffryder. I am descended from *property*. PROPERTY ruffryder. Whoever they were, my ancestors came in against their will and were considered property. Like the chair you are sitting on. Like your car. Like a horse or any other piece of *livestock*. Point out to me anywhere in the United States, where people who have done no wrong or harm, are put in chains, put on *sale*, bought up like so much cattle, forced to work without pay, any children they have are considered the property of the owner of their parents, and the penalty for disobedience is physical violence and the penalty for attempting to run away is either mutilation or death. Find me ANYWHERE in the United States where this is happening and is backed up by the force of law. If your can't, then out of respect for the 30 million or so Americans whose ancestors were ALSO property please stop spitting on the lives and legacies of our ancestors for rhetorical purposes. I don't like it when people try to make, for instance, needing to have a job or pay taxes the same as being OWNED by another human being and knowing that your children will also be OWNED as will their children and their children after them. I take a very, very dim view when people piss all over the graves of black slaves because they want to ratchet up their 'America is singularly evil' rhetoric one more notch to show that they are truly on the side of the oppressed.

Slavery ended in the United States in 1865. It was made illegal by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution which are, last I checked, still in force. Maybe OTHER black people are sanguine about people pulling out slavery and saying it is still in force today but I'm not. I honor my ancestors and like a number of Jews I know who get completely pissed off when people compare this or that injustice to the Holocaust when there's no death camps, no masses of civilians being taken to gas chambers, no roving squads of soldiers rounding up random civilians and shooting them right then and there in the streets, I get pissed off when people mistake whatever injustice they are exercised about with legal slavery.

Btw. why is it that so few people can see improvement? Can someone explain to me why the fact that 10,000 murders < 15,000 murders doesn't register with people as improvement? I get the feeling--I may be wrong--that if the United States got down to one murder a year, people would STILL say "there's still murder, nothing at all has changed!" I don't understand it. Two people on this thread have all but said that and I don't get it. What part of a decrease in violent crimes, while still staying above zero isn't improvement?

There will never be *static* justice but that does not mean there will never be *justice*. My great-grandparents on both sides of my family were born slaves. My grandparents all lived under conditions of ruthless segregation. My parents lived about two-thirds of their lives under that same system. Segregation for me is a hazy memory. Segregation for my son was something he heard me and my parents talk about and was a subject covered in history class. Segregation for my granddaughter will be something she will only ever read about or see portrayed in movies. If that isn't progress, please explain to me what progress is.

Why do we have to agree on religion in order to live in peace and comity?

Cheers
Aj

:| cause all Latinos hate one another so if they get together as one they'd kill one another? Really!?

Oh brother..

I also think that the sex trade enslavement of children and women in this world exists

I think for us to have a Utopia you'd have to wipe a lot of shit from this world and start all over cause humans can't help themselves.

"all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;"
"the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;"
"the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;" and
"work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children."

an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally, more than at any other time previously;
thousands annually trafficked in America in over 90 cities; around 17,000 by some estimates and up to 50,000 according to the CIA, either from abroad or affecting US citizens or residents as forced labor or sexual servitude;
the global market value is over $9.5 billion annually, according to Mark Taylor, senior coordinator for the State Department's Office to Monitor;
victims are often women and children;
the majority are in India and African countries;
slavery is illegal but happens "everywhere;"
slaves work in agriculture, homes, mines, restaurants, brothels, or wherever traffickers can employ them; they're cheap, plentiful, disposable, and replaceable;
"$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world" compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today's dollars;
common terminology includes debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (or de facto bondage for Haitian children sent to households of strangers), forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking;
explosive population growth, mostly to urban centers without safety net or job security protections, facilitates the practice; and
government corruption, lack of monitoring, and indifference does as well.

I have comments to make all around, I had quoted so many posts, this was endless, so here goes sans quotes.

I have a huge problem with us saying that if the nations to our South united they would kill each other. To me, that sounds pretty racist.

I also have a problem with us making fun of the fact that it bothers other Americans living in countries on the American continent that the US insists that only we as US citizens are American. Corkey, not talking about you, we agree on this. All of us are American. People live in South America, people who think we are ass hats for insisting we are the only Americans.

Bete, yes North and South America. However, like Eurasia, North and South America are connected. Some people separate them, some don't. I am fine with using the terms North Americans and South Americans.

I know our calling ourselves Americans will not change, especially when the most intelligent among us are not even willing to think about how it might feel to an average person living in South America to be told only US citizens are American...

Again, to say or agree that people in South America would kill each other of they united makes my head want to explode. Do y'all really think we are so superior??? Becasue that is what it sounds like.

Using the longitude is cute...but very sarcastically dismissive.

Love and respect you guys, but maybe I have not had enough coffee to find this amusing.

When you have been and spent time in South America, maybe you will see how small this seems.

Yeah and this. Slavery alive and rampant. When and where will it end. The world is NOT a better place now, there are no "good old days" when the world was safe.