Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are
 

I want to introduce a concept to folks who may not be familiar with what I think is one of the most important ideas in Western political and social philosophy--namely the idea of justice as fairness, introduced by my favorite 20th century philosopher, John Rawls. In 1971, he wrote a book "A Theory of Justice" in which he had one of the best thought experiments anyone *ever* devised. I'll explain the thought experiment and then get into how I think this applies to Occupy Wall Street.

Imagine that we here have a chance to design a society from scratch. We're starting with an absolutely clean slate. We get a group of people together to hash out what kinds of rules and laws we are going to have. Now, here's the truly clever bit. Everyone is negotiating from what Rawls calls the 'original position' behind a 'veil of ignorance'. What this means is that no one knows whether they will be born into this society rich or poor, the ethnic majority or the ethnic minority, gay or straight, male or female, etc. Rawls posits that from that position there would be two broad principles by which to structure their society:

1) Equality in the way that basic rights and duties are assigned. If, for instance, there's a draft you don't get out of it by paying someone to take your place (which benefits the rich but not the poor). The son of the bank head and the daughter of the teller both get drafted (or the son of the teller if you prefer).

2) Arrange any social or economic inequalities so that they are both A) to the greatest benefit for the least advantaged and B) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

So, let's take Affirmative Action. In a Rawlsian society, it would not be based upon race but upon class. The reason being is that let's take two women--one we'll call Jacqueline and one we'll call Lynn. Lynn grew up poor. Have to leave in the middle of the night because the landlord is going to show up with the sheriff first thing in the morning to evict you poor. Jacqueline grew up, not necessarily rich but well-heeled. There was no robbing Peter to pay Paul in Jacqueline's childhood. Now, Jacqueline is black and Lynn is white. However, Jacqueline has a parent who teaches in the university system and she wants to attend a sister school and, as it turns out, one of her parents is an alum of that system as well. So she has two legs up. Lynn, on the other hand, has no such advantages. So Lynn, needs some kind of affirmative action while Jacqueline does not. Now, this might mean that Lynn is going to get into, say, UC Berkeley on a 3.75 cumulative GPA and 1800 SAT while Jacqueline is going to need a 4.0 and 2200 SAT. Is this unfair? Yes, it is! But the unfairness is directed toward the person who needs it most.

The second part of this is that *provided* that both Lynn and Jacqueline get into UCB but only Jacqueline can *pay* for it (because her parents had the money to set aside excess money for a college fund) then Lynn gets financial assistance. All of the good grades and stellar SAT scores mean nothing if you can't pay tuition and buy books. We would also want to make certain that even if Lynn went to school in a poor neighborhood and Jacqueline went to school in an upper-middle class neighborhood the schools were *equal* in terms of books, competency of teachers, facilities, extra-curricular activities and programs, music and arts.

Now, I personally think that although this is only a thought experiment it is a *useful* one. We need not scrap either capitalism or democratic governance in order to achieve this NOR is the Rawlsian society a utopia. Since regulated, well-functioning, entrepreneurial capitalism does a reasonable job distributing goods and services to the greatest number we need not get rid of capitalism, we need only *regulate* it properly and put in firewalls to prevent, for instance, monopolies and to allow labor to organize into unions. We need not do away with democracy just make it so that it isn't only the rich who can be elected to office.

There is potential in these ideas which, again, are not mine. I think that as we have to come up with both Capitalism 3.0 and Democracy 2.0 (or maybe even 3.0) it is useful to think about how we go about it and how we sell it so that we get the largest possible majoritarian buy-in. One of the reasons why I like the Rawlsian approach to social democracy is that it tries very hard to be fair, it tries to meet people where they are, and it does not call for radical solutions of the 'in order to save the village, we had to destroy it'. As a Rawlsian conservative my focus is on social stability. Society is not made up of eggs but of people and so the idea that we can only make an omelet (a better society) at the cost of breaking eggs is distasteful. So the solutions that attract me are ones that expand opportunity and maintain some level of stability.

I got the idea to throw these ideas out there based upon this piece in today's WaPo by Matt Miller.

Cheers
Aj

So am I reading that what you are proposing is that the corruption needs to be gotten rid of instead of the entire system?

I agree that tossing the entire egg basket seems impossibly extreme and destructive. I hope it does not come to that.

I think I must be several rungs lower in knowledge and brain power, but I see several problems right off the bat:

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

2. I don't agree that poor=lower standards for Berkeley or any college. If UCB demands a 4.0 and 2200, so be it. It's the same as the draft example, in my opinion, but based on class, not payoffs, and the other way around in that poor turns into an advantage.

I would be mad as hell if I were Lynn, because the standards were lower. I'd never know if I could have met them on my own merit. Instead, I got in solely on the "benefit" of my class. Also, I (as Lynn) would presumably have had more to learn and had to work harder because my family would not be college educated. I would feel that all that work was for naught because of some factor out of my control. So I don't believe in affirmative action based on class, and I would not take it for myself even if I was eligible under this (hypothetical) society. It's patronizing.

3. I can agree on financial assistance for school, but if I were queen of education, I'd trash the federal loan and grant programs and privatize all student aid. That would cut down the artificially high cost of education and re-introduce competition: bang for the buck, so to speak. But that's another post.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

Some regulation will be necessary, but I believe that we're in this mess because of rampant regulations and interference by government. We need much less, not more.

several observations and questions
 

The problem with all this is people. People not doing the right thing.

Who gets to decide what is fair?

With everything privatized with no regulations, who oversees things?

With no unions who stands up for workers?

I agree that corruption is a huuuge problem, but it seems like removing regulations is something that got us into this mess.

People do not do the right thing, the honorable thing...

I really don't know what the answer is, but thinking abt it is interesting.

I do want to say that I agree that social stability does seem to be in our best interest!

Yes, the upper-class IS being discriminated against but, again, the idea here is that if there is going to be inequality, if we're going to have a thumb on the scale (and as humans we can hardly do anything BUT) then Rawls' idea is that the inequality goes in favor of those *least* advantaged. At present the thumb on the scale clearly favors the *most* advantaged. Since someone is going to end up slightly ahead no matter what we do, we have to decide who we want to favor. Rawls says favor those for whom a bit of inequality in their favor will do the most good--that means those who have the least.

The reason I use GPA and SAT is because there are all manner of little advantages that the upper-middle class child of a pair of college professors is going to have that the working-class child will not. Some of those advantages, things like private SAT prep, a family library, etc. can translate to unearned advantage. So IF there are two candidates, let's say Lynn and Jacqueline both have 3.75 GPA and 1600 SAT scores then Lynn should get in if Lynn is from an impoverished background and Jacqueline is not. Now, if Jacqueline has a 4.0 and a 2200 then she should get in, period as should Lynn. But all things being equal, again, put the thumb on the scale of the person who is least advantaged because, as a whole, we will get the most bang for the buck.

I understand the argument you are making. I even share some of your stance on it. But IF we're going to have affirmative action, I think it should be class based not race based.

I'm a little dubious. I understand that in certain circumstances markets are better allocators but I don't know that student loans are one of those things for much the same reason I don't think that markets are the best allocators of health care. I see no real benefit for, say, Chase to provide student loans at a reasonable rate to poor people. I also don't want people's ability to get a loan be subject to a credit check even one based upon their parents. I would actually prefer we do student loans in a quid pro quo basis. If you have the cash to pay out of pocket, good on you. If you take out a loan with BofA to pay for school, bully for you. If, however, you can do neither then the deal I'd like to see society make is this: one year of work for one year of school. So let's say you want to be a doctor. That's eight years of school. We'll foot the bill. We'll pay for your books, etc. When you graduate you spend the next eight years in practice in either a rural community that needs a doctor or an inner-city clinic that needs one. Now, probably better than half of those people will be heading for the city the minute their 8 years are up but there will be others who will rather like being where they are. Either way, it is win-win-win. Communities get eager young doctors and, thus, local health care. Students who otherwise couldn't afford medical school get their dream. Society doesn't have a bunch of doctors getting out of school saddled with $200K in debt.

I have to say I strenuously disagree with getting the federal government out of education for one simple reason: national standards. I think it is utterly *insane* that a nation as technologically and scientifically advanced as America does not have a standard for what students should learn. We are the only industrialized nation that does not have a national standard that we expect every student to have attained by the time they graduate. So if California wants to set Algebra, biology, American history and Civics as criteria and Arkansas wants to drop biology and algebra under the present system that is fine. I think that is madness. There are reasons why the United States, alone of the G-8 nations, and the only OTHER nation in NATO, where knowledge of the basic principles of evolution are not well understood (the other being Turkey). There are reasons why American students under perform in math and science generally. It's because we have no national standard so if you are in a school district in Arkansas the teacher may--either to protect her job or because she believes it--not teach evolution in biology class while if you are in Maine, you're probably going to learn the amount of evolutionary biology one would need in order to understand why various bacterial pathogens have evolved drug resistance.

I'm unconvinced that we need less regulation. To me the anti-regulation idea is like, well, like this (admittedly, I'm taking this out of the educational context and putting it in a financial one). Imagine, if you will, that you are given a driver's license that allows you to drive drunk. If you get into an accident you won't be prosecuted. Even if you kill someone you won't be prosecuted. What's more, if you wrap your Porsche around someone's Kia and kill everyone in the Kia, you will have provided for you, free of charge, a brand new Porsche. Now, what possible reason do you have NOT to drive drunk other than the possibility that you, yourself, might be killed? Very little that I can see. This is the situation I see us in with regulation of the finance sector. If I work for a big investment bank and I make all the right moves and the company has a banner year, I make my salary and a bonus. If I make all the wrong moves and, in so doing, cause a pension fund to collapse and wipe out some company that was viable because I bought it, hollowed it out and then sold it at fire sale prices, I get my salary and my bonus. So heads I win, tails you lose. At that point, other than the sheer competitive joy of being the top dog, what *possible* reason do I have to care about my job performance? None. I'm getting paid and paid well whether my actions spread prosperity far and wide or concentrates it all within my little firm. Even if I do something that crosses the line into illegality there's a better than even chance I'm going to walk, with my salary and bonus. That is *all* a direct result of deregulation.

Cheers
Aj

Just....no.

It seems to me that a system like Aj described above would eventually make the need for such a system obsolete. As I'm sure you're aware poverty is usually generational, as is education / access to higher education. By helping Lynn out you're creating an environment for her where her children will require less of a leg-up than she did, her grandchildren even less, until eventually the playing-ground is level in terms of access. It's controlling the things that -can- be controlled.

This would be WORSE for low-income neighborhoods than it already is. You're aware of how poorly the "healthcare for profit" debacle has gone in your country, I presume?

How do you expect low-income families to pay to run the schools that their children will go to?

Interestingly enough, Finland has free education for everybody. This includes post-secondary education. It is, as I'm sure you would have deduced, run by the government. And guess what else? Finland is tied for the number one spot on the Education Index portion of the Human Development Index that the UN does every year. Looks like government involvement in Education has gone -very- well for Finland.

In some states, including Arkansas, there is a program by which most if not all of your expense incurred in becoming a teacher is waived if you agree to teach in some impoverished area, such as the Delta. I do agree with your idea, and think a program like this should be implemented nationwide, for many more majors.

I do agree with national standards, which would be the bar by which to measure success and failure in my hypothetical school system, and I think it should be a whole lot higher than it is now. Any other business with a 45% failure rate (that's the dropout rate in my school system, and a conservative guess) would be an abject failure. In fact, all states except Texas have adopted the "Common Core" program in which eighth grade in Wichita, Walla Walla and Worcester would be equivalent in subject matter, standards and skills taught, so we're going in that direction, however late. The major inequalities in school districts are not addressed, but I digress.

Besides that, I cannot think of a single area in which government has gotten involved (housing, education, health care, Amtrak) and costs have not ballooned along with beauracracy. The government is simply not efficient or cost-effective compared with privatization, so while I do say we need some regulation, it's government regulations passed on the banks that caused the high fees and shenanigans in the first place.

First, we've had affirmative action and the leg-ups for several generations, and we still have generational poverty, maybe more entrenched now than before. Schools are not making the mark. How long do we keep up such an experiment before we say "Enough. Here are the standards; do it or not".

As for my school idea, I had in mind something like the Finland model. It's still far less expensive than all the fads that America wants to try.

Maybe the unification of the Americas is the answer!

Wait, did not we get into this mess by cutting regulations for banks and financial institutions?

You’ve got to be kidding. Government regulations caused the economic disaster we are facing now.

Just consider the horror that privatizing prisons have caused. And in case prisoners are not worthy of concern how about private group home providers for children in foster care. South Dakota has become a powerhouse for private group home providers. NPR investigated them because of the inconsistencies in removing Native American children as well as complete disregard for the Indian Child Welfare Act. Native American children make up 15% of the child population, yet they make up more than half of the children in foster care.

Like any instance where Corporate America is involved the object is to maximize profits while providing minimum service. There is certainly no incentive to surpass the service provided by government. Corporate America will always do less while making obscene profits. I mean seriously look at the mess they made with the economy. They are cheerfully destroying financial stability around the world. And because they’ve done such a good job with the economy you want to put them in charge of education.

But then it was regulations the government passed that caused the problems.

I guess there really is no hope.

I give up.

I actually have to put in a couple of things. We've had affirmative action for *at best* two generations. Consider: so before 1965 (my sister was 2, I was 2 years from being born) there was no affirmative action. In fact, there was no equal employment opportunity what-so-ever! Both my parents were very intelligent and accomplished people and there were large numbers of universities that would not have hired either of my parents, even if my mother had been the second coming of Jacques Barzun or my father the reincarnation of John Dewey they couldn't have taught at, just to take one, Ol Miss.

So, the United States does not have legally enforced equal employment opportunity until 1965. We did not have what is considered affirmative action until Nixon and that was, if memory serves, in 1972. So at its very best we are talking two generations and a bit of change assuming a 20 year generational turnover. Secondly, as far as generational poverty being, if anything, more entrenched than before I don't think that is true. I probably will not have time or energy to hunt down and work the numbers until this weekend but I suspect what I'll find is that, certainly within black communities, there is less generational poverty. In fact, I know that to be the case because the black middle-class is larger now than it has *ever* been.

Anecdotally, here's the educational attainment between my grandmother, born at the beginning of the 20th century, and my generations (I'm not including my son at this point because he is still serving in the Army). My grandmother got to about the fourth grade. My father, her youngest, attained two Masters and a PhD. On my mother's side, her father had no schooling to speak of and I'm unsure if he could read and write his own name, my grandmother had maybe a sixth grade education. My mother attained a Master's and a PhD. My half-sister has a PhD and M.D. My eldest sister has a J.D. I am the slacker having not yet attained a M.S. (but I'm working my way there). That is three generations. My father's brother did not serve in WW II and so did not have the G.I. Bill. Because he didn't have the G.I. Bill he didn't go to college. Out of his kids (four to my parent's two and a half) only one of them went to college.

So saying that we've run this experiment for several generations doesn't really work. We can, for all practical purposes, write off the first half of the 20th century as far as equal opportunity in America. There was none. This is not to say that there was not a black middle class, there was but it was much smaller. What there wasn't was any pretensions that anyone could grow up and run, say, GM or become President. No black person in 1950 was going to have a corner office at the GM headquarters. I would be shocked to find out that GM had *any* black or female executives in 1950. We cannot even begin talking about it until 1948 when Truman desegregated the military.

As far as poverty alleviation programs, we can now write off the first quarter of the 20th century. Social Security, recall, doesn't come into existence until 1935. The Great Society programs all came into existence in the middle part of the 60s. By 2000 they were all, with the exception of Head Start, functionally non-existent by the term of the century. So we can't even really say we've had poverty alleviation programs for very long.

I don't have the data before me right now, but I can say that both observationally and anecdotally, the most generous thing I can say about poverty alleviation programs in the United States is that we made something that, if one were feeling particularly generous, could be called an effort. In fact, probably the two best poverty alleviation programs I can think of are the public school system (or it used to be) and the G.I. Bill.

I am deeply unconvinced that government is as inefficient and the private sector is as efficient as set out to be. Now, I haven't worked in the governmental sector in a quarter century after I took off my uniform for the last time. I have worked in the private sector most of the last 20 years and I've seen a lot of things, very few of them I would call something resembling efficiency. At any rate, I think that like the roads I think that education is altogether too socially critical to leave up to the vagaries of the private market. Corporations have one mandate and only one mandate and that is to make the largest profit possible. If corporations are left to run educational systems, they will squeeze every dollar out they can. On paper it may look more efficient but keep in mind that Edu Corp Inc. has to make a profit. No one in the boardroom and none of the stockholders will mind if, on the way to ever greater profits some kids are educated, but they will require the CEO and executive team to keep their eye on the ball and that ball has a big dollar sign. If the question comes down to another few points on the stock market or art programs, well, we don't want to turn out a bunch of artists anyway. This can all be true even IF every single teacher in the system is well paid and dedicated to being an educator. By mandate, a corporation must maximize its profits for the shareholders. Delivering a product is just a happy byproduct of that maximization. I think that education, along with public safety, defense, physical infrastructure are too vital to our society to be left up to the profit motive. They are intrinsic public goods.

Also, one other thing on the inefficiency of corporations. I give you Microsoft. I have worked with Microsoft products since 1991. They are, whether they deserve to be or not, the gold standard for office productivity applications. They are the default operating system but no one who works in the industry or intimately with computers as part of their day-to-day work (I mean working IT or software development within some other context) thinks that Windows is a great product. DOS was good. Hard to use but good. Windows 3.1 was, well, it was okay. Pretty much a direct lift from Xerox PARC but decent enough (Apple lifted from Xerox PARC too). Windows 95/98 were fairly decent operating systems but insecure as all hell. Windows ME was a travesty. Windows NT 4 was good as a enterprise/business operating system but buggy as all hell and, like 95/98 very insecure. Windows 2000 and Windows XP were the high water marks until recently but they were both bloated, buggy and, sing it with me, really damn insecure. Windows Vista was Windows ME with a nicer interface, 'nuff said. Windows 7, which I've had at work for about 3 or 4 months now, is actually a decent operating system. I'm rather impressed. However, until Windows 7 was put on our desktops I was bringing in my personal laptop (a Macbook Pro) and using that for my day-to-day work except where I had to use those tools we have that *only* run on Windows and even then I would run a remote session to my Windows box. My email, IM, browser, text editor, presentation and word processing, were *all* done on my Mac. I'm not the only one who did something like that.

Yet, Microsoft *still* owns the desktop and everyone in the industry knows they don't deserve it. It's just that they made themselves indispensable and the overhead to change from a Windows to a Mac or Linux environment is prohibitively expensive. So by sheer inertia they maintain their market position. Is Windows the number one operating system in use today? Yes. Is it the best operating system in use today? Not by a long shot. Yet, they *own* the home and end-user operating system business.

I'm not saying corporations can do nothing right. I am saying that government *can* do things correct. I don't think governments are good at, for instance, making consumer electronics and I think it is beyond its core competencies. Likewise, I don't think that private sector corporations are good at running things like educational system, it's beyond their core competencies. Education in America is broken but it as not always this broken. We *can* fix it but I don't think turning it over to the tender mercies of the market is the way to do it.

Cheers
Aj

Yes. We did. The repeal of Glass-Steagal is going to go down in American history as one of the most singularly stupid things EVER done by Congress. We actually had regulatory firewalls in place so pretty much *precisely* the kind of thing that happened couldn't happen. If you were a commercial bank, you couldn’t be an insurance company. If you were an insurance company, you couldn't be an investment bank. Then we tore down that firewall and banks snatched up insurance companies and then investment firms turned around and snatched those up and on and on. The meme that is out there is that these poor banks were just trying to make an honest buck and then along came the government and forced them to give loans to undeserving (read brown skinned) people. The fact that they bundled these arcane financial instruments called credit default swaps (which were a bet on people *failing* to pay their mortgages) is conveniently swept under the rug and into the memory hole because it doesn't fit the dominant meme that poor people are losers who deserve their hardships while rich people are winners who are being put upon by all of those loser poor people who, for instance, may have not had sufficient foresight to pick rich parents at birth.

Cheers
Aj

The movement toward deregulation is long in coming and started before Glass-Steagal. The contention is that the regulation limits market growth and stifles personal and corporate wealth. Canada and any other country like it that has greater regulations bad has also had greater social and economic stability and in fact growth. Charting the American-Canadian dollar exchange over the past ten years is an interesting if sad (for citizens of the US) revelation.

I appreciate designers and theorist like Rawls very much, AJ. I like visionaries, and I find the design elements and principles of permaculture, for example, to be a source of hope. I would like to believe there will be a myriad of acts that will tilt the United States toward something more like the simulacrum of democracy. Some of these will involve quiet conversations that reaffirm the best ideas of a democracy. Others will involve legislative and corporate changes. And still others will involve more dramatic and salient acts of civil disobedience.

Every generation has its time and its cause. And while I am sure my parents and older siblings did not understand the fervor with which I protested for Queer rights in the 80s and 90s and protested for a greater awareness of and compassion for AIDS that transcended homophobia and stereotyping, I hoped that they appreciate that my passion and involvement was for good reason. This generation may well be the first generation in some time to not only not have a financially secure future, but there is a good chance they will not live as long as their parents, reversing a standing trend. Do they have a right to be angry? Are they justified in having an emotional response to a parlous future of financial and environmental debt

Beyond the concerns of a generation and its cause, I wonder how quickly can a vision be morphed into reality? And as thousands gather in Oakland tonight and shut down the port, and thousands more gather across the country and world, and while a controlling faction becomes more entrenched in its position, is there time for visions? Is there yet time and momentum to put in play a peaceful shift?

King may be right that the "arc of the moral universe...bends toward justice.' But what of the intersecting arc of human compassion and patience? Do we have it in us to pursue and unflinchingly make manifest visions of harmony, equality and justice? Are we more paradise or purgatory? Can we design ourselves out of our nature? Is the gift of design and vision the nexus and the portal to a greater evolutionary event? Can we be or become our visions?

Thank you. When I read "several generations" I was stunned to see that people really think the civil rights movement of the 60's was several generatons ago. Affirmative Action was not implemented until after the civil rights movement.

I too believe that we should not throw out democracy and capitalism in its entirity. And no, I have never voted Republican and I know what it is like to be really poor.

Some government regulation, intervention is needed. I don't believe if humans were entirely left without "rules" of any sort that we would choose to share and be civil with one another. I am for building up the village even if it means at times my individual wealth will be static. But not by destroying the entire village, infrastructure we have in place.

Similar to poverty, wealth can also be generational. This means some people are born with advantage. If we do not share some of the wealth, give people hope, do you really think the masses will say Okay forever more?

I'm not sure what that means?

Derail....Sorry AJ! :)
 

I was referring to 2 things.

One, I think when we call the United State of America, "America", it discounts all of the other Americans living in North and South America and sounds very privileged and dismissive.

Two, I think North and South America should be more united, possibly as a single entity. Especially since many (if not most) of the problems of many of the other Nations on our continent (s) are the direct result of US policy over the years.

Thank you for asking! :bunchflowers:

It's not really a derail. It does relate. I do have a couple of follow-up questions. Why do you think that it is dismissive? No one is saying that Canada isn't on the North American continent and no one is saying that Brazil isn't on the South American continent. Brazil is, well, Brazil. Canada is Canada. I can't recall ever reading a Brazilian or Chilean saying "we too are Americans". Rather, when I've heard them make pronouncements of national pride they have expressed pride in being Chileans or Brazilians not in being Americans.

Secondly, what would it look like to have nations as disparate as Canada, the United States, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Chile, et. al. as one national unit? We may be headed that way although I think that it would make the troubles of creating the EU an absolute nightmare. Are you saying that Canada and the United States should impose their legal and value systems on everything south US border with Mexico because that is precisely what would happen. What's more, I think that on balance, it's what we would *want* to happen. Consider that in Nicaragua abortion (just to take one example) is *perfectly* illegal. By that I mean that if a woman gets an abortion she is going to the big house for a very long time. Are you saying that we should impose Canadian laws on abortion and birth control on, say, very, very, very Catholic Mexico or Nicaragua which might have some definite feelings about it? OR are you saying that we should impose Nicaraguan values about abortion and birth control on the United States and Canada?

The EU is a great idea on paper and it may yet work out, but my reading of what is happening with the EU is that the member nations are realizing that it is not nearly as easy to blend such disparate nations as France, Germany and Spain into one political and economic entity and I would argue that those three nations have much more in common with one another than either Canada or the United States has with any South American nation you care to mention. So we're talking about blending political, social-cultural and economic systems into one political and economic entity going form the Arctic to Antarctica. That's a pretty tall order.

Consider that the United States, which is relatively culturally homogenous, has trouble holding itself together between the northern and western coastal states and the southern states.

Lastly, this would be the dream of multinationals or it would be an utter nightmare for the people living south of the US-Mexico border. Consider that either the multinationals will pull out of the US and Canada and move, en masse, south of the US border causing the job market here to completely collapse because there's simply no way that Americans and Canadians can compete with salary levels in, say, El Salvador OR the cost of living in the poorer South American nations will leap, overnight, to the levels of the US and Canada. Chances are, we'd get the worst of both worlds. Jobs would be sucked out of the two rich North American nations and put in the poorer South American nations. This would force the cost of labor, making it even *more* of an employers market than it already is. At the same time, goods and services that are affordable in the United States would be prohibitively expensive in Nicaragua. Lastly, even jobs that are place dependent would be subject to the downward pressure on wages. What sane construction company is going to hire American or Canadian workers at, say, $15 an hour when they could just as easily ship the same number of workers up from, say, Brazil at a fraction of the cost because they'll be paid at $2 an hour. Raise the wages all the way down the strip? Congrats, you've now created a seven-fold increase in prices overnight.

I understand what you are saying but I think that the consequences of such a merger would be absolutely disastrous and I cannot think of any benefit

Lastly, and please take this question in the spirit it was given, how much time has to elapse before white people in the northern nations will grant brown people in the southern nations the compliment of assuming that they are, in fact, capable of running their own affairs for good or ill? I'm not saying that the United States has not intervened nor am I arguing that the interventions have had anything to do with helping the people on the ground in those nations. I *am* saying that eventually--whether that is today or a century down the road--whites in the northern countries are going to have to admit that sometimes, the autocratic dictator who plunders the country and hands out largesse to his cronies is a home-grown phenomena. If the United States puts the dictator in place, we did that. But if the dictator came to power by revolution or homegrown movement, at some point don't you think it's actually the responsibility of the people of that nation? To me, there's a strange kind of reverse racism in the sentiment that most if not all of the problems of nations south of the equator populated largely by brown people cannot *really* be held responsible for the conditions of their own nations. I've never heard someone blame Nazi Germany or the USSR on, say, the United States or Belgium. I've never heard anyone put the onus of Fascist Italy or Franco's Spain on England or Sweden. It is only *ever* nations populated by brown people who, apparently, do not choose their governments or make horrible, historic mistakes in allowing precisely the wrong people to grab hold of the reins of power. No, it's always--each and every time--the fault of this or that Western nation. I'm not saying it *never* is, I'm saying that sometimes Brazilians or Iranians or Congolese or Chileans do what the French, Germans, and British *all* did at some point in their history and realize that their national leadership is inept, corrupt, or evil. Let nations of brown people be, well, nations. Sometimes nations make national errors and wind up with dictatorships or kleptocracies. If the next government of, say, France would we blame the United States or would we blame the French?


Cheers
Aj

Don't give up. Just because some don't agree. keep on saying what you believe over and over...the positive thought is out there now, in our collective mind cloud!

Get rid of capitalism and Democracy. I guess Anarchism would be better?

I know a person who made a good thought about anarchism and he thinks that it would work if everyone can just participate on direct democracy. No one is brought into office just representatives who will execute what everyone has decided upon.

Does anyone think it would work?

Loving this discussion! :)

Actually people in much of South America (and I grew up there) HATE it that people in the US run around referring to ourselves as American. They are American too.

I agree that there would be problems, many you mention I had not thought of and do get your point.

Some random observations....

Not everyone South of the USA is Brown. Not everyone in the US and Canada is White. I don't see Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela etc as weak countries which need the great White people to the North to save them...I was thinking more of natural resources and having all we need to get us away from depending on China and OPEC. So did not mean to give that impression.

The EU mess is making me stop and think though that maybe I am being far too idealistic...especially financially.

Had not thought about all the division of church and state ramifications...agree it would likely be problematic to completely unite, but would like to see more Pan American synergy.

annnnd

Heck ya, blame the French for everything! ;)

NO,

I want water and electricity and trash PU and schools and infrastructure and am more than willing to pay takes for these luxuries!

Communism and Capitalism both look good on paper. Add people and its a disaster.

Straight up Democracy is problematic too due to the time it would take for everyone to vote on every issue.

Now that my brain is functioning again, I can address the things above. :)

I'm about three hours from finishing up Stephen Pinker's latest book The Better Angels of Our Nature. The core of the book is that as time has passed humans *have* become more compassionate and less violent. Yes, LESS, violent. Consider the following:

1) It is vanishingly improbable that anyone reading this knows someone who was burnt at the stake as a witch. I'm not saying someone in your lineage, I mean someone you've met.

2) No one here has ever been to a live bear-baiting.

3) It is vanishingly improbable that anyone here has ever had to fear being stabbed at the dinner table by someone wielding a steak knife.

4) No great power has shot at any other great power since the end of WW II. I'm not saying that there's been no wars, but no *great power* wars. China and Japan fought multiple wars in the past but haven't fought one in 65 years. France and Germany, England and France, Germany and Russia *all* had periodic bouts of warfare through the 17th, 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In fact, Europe is now experiencing the longest contiguous peace since, get this, the height of the Roman Empire! WW III never happened, sometimes despite all efforts to make it happen.

5) The number of crimes that could earn one the death penalty in western nations has gone from a whole raft of items to a very few (murder, possibly treason, possibly child rape). And in most European nations you simply can't *get* the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime. A century or two ago, you could get the death penalty for insulting the crown!

6) In the west, marital rape has gone from 'just the way things are' to a criminal offense. Spousal abuse has gone from a punchline on 'The Honeymooners' to something no sit-com would *ever* put in because it is socially unacceptable (again, that doesn't mean it never happens just that when it does, the abuser is not going to find a sympathetic ear when he claims that 'she had it coming').

7) Spanking, in the west, has gone from 'this is how you raise children' to child abuse. If half of what I endured as a child happened to a kid today, that kid would be removed from the home.

8) War has gone from something noble and 'the aspiration of every man and nation' to something repellant to large numbers of people.

So yes, I think that human societies can become more compassionate and peaceful, up to a point. I do not think we can nor do I think we should try, to have any kind of utopia. We *know* what happens when people try to create utopias and we should not trust anyone who suggests we should do so. I do think humans are moving to a stage in our cultural development(s) that violence is increasingly being constrained. The circle of moral concern has expanded to include more and more groups of people.

As far as your paradise or purgatory question, I think neither. But I do think that now is a better time to be alive, for larger numbers of humanity, ever. Even in poor nations the average life expectancy has crossed over the 40 year mark and in rich nations it is pushing up toward 90. At the end of the 18th century the average lifespan was ~37 years. At the end of the 19th it was about 45. At the end of the twentieth it was about 75. We have almost *doubled* the number of years people live on average in about a century and almost trebled it in about two centuries. Literacy, is spreading so fast that we notice illiteracy but not literacy. Two hundred years ago we would take illiteracy for granted and notice literacy. Beyond three hundred years, literacy becomes extremely rare outside of the noble classes. Beyond four hundred years, literacy becomes rare even amongst the nobles. Pick a statistic reflective of human well-being and I'll show you something that, graphed out over a few centuries, is moving in the direction we would want to. Health, equality and well-being are on an upward sloping curve, violence and war are on downward sloping curves. I think that's insanely great, as Steve Jobs would've said.

Cheers
Aj

No. In fact, I'm almost *certain* it wouldn't work. Anarchism is another one of those ideas that I would put in the category of 'great idea, wrong species'. Firstly, I do not trust direct democracy. There are 187 million whites in America. There's 300 million people in America. In a direct democracy the majority could impose an *absolute* tyranny on the minority with no restraints. Secondly, you have to have laws. Have to. Unless you are going to get rid of property (good luck) and get people to not prefer their kin and friends over random strangers (not happening) you will have conflicts of interests. Without laws there's no way to adjudicate those conflicts and they *will* happen.

Get rid of capitalism and replace it with what? There's a fantastic scene toward the end of the Terry Pratchett novel "Night Watch" which I'm going to share with you to illustrate the point about why getting rid of capitalism is a really bad idea. A revolution is starting, the hero--Sam Vimes--is a sergeant in the City Watch who is protecting the people against the army and the secret police. One person of true revolutionary fervor is having a conversation about how things will be once the revolution is complete with a shoe maker:

"Anyway, it says here in article seven on this here list--" Mr. Supple ploughed no. "--People's Declaration of the Glorious 24th of May," said Reg.

"Yeah, yeah, right...well, it says we'll seize hold of the means of production, sort of thing, so what I want to know is, how does that work out regarding my shoe shop? I mean, I'm in it anyway, right? It's not like there's room for more'n me and my lad Garbut and maybe one customer."

In the dark, Vimes smiled. But Reg could never see stuff coming.

"Ah, but after the revolution all property will be held in common by The People...err...that is, it'll belong to you but also to everyone else, you see?"

Comrade Supple looked puzzled.

"But I'll be the one making the shoes?"

"Of course. But everything will belong to The People."
"So...who's going to pay for the shoes?" said Mr. Supple.
"Everyone will pay a reasonable price for their shoes, and you won't be guilty of living off the sweat of teh common worker," said Reg shortly. "Now, if we--"
"You mean the cows?" said Supple.
"What?"
"Well, there's only the cows, and the lads at the tannery, and, frankly, all they do is stand in a field all day, well, not the tannery boys, obviously, but--"
"Look," said Reg. "Everything will belong to The People and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?"
The shoemaker's frown grew deeper. He wasn't certain if he was part of The People.

Elsewhere in the book, Vimes reflects on 'The People'

"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people."

Both passages illustrate what I think is wrong with the idea of throwing out capitalism and democracy. Let's say we did. What would you replace it with? Would you get rid of money as well? At which point how would we do trade? Barter? I can't build a laptop computer--well, I probably could but I can't build the *components*. Where are the components going to come from? If I'm not getting paid, why on Earth would I get up at 4:45 in the morning to be to work at 7:30? Love of my employer? Not hardly. I do it because I get paid to do so, as it turns out I happen to rather enjoy my work but I wouldn't do it for free. So what would you replace capitalism with?

Now, back to democracy. Constitutional democracies are not perfect systems but they are the least bad system devised so far. But let's say we did everything through direct democracy. How would you go about protecting minority rights? How would you go about *preventing* people from, say, selling goods or services on the black market?

What would happen in an anarchy is that it would last about two weeks. Then the person who could convince the most people with guns to side with him would become Supreme Leader for Life. If you want to know what a nation without either capitalism or democracy looks like, you can do no better than either North Korea or Somalia. At least North Korea has a government. Somalia doesn't even really have that. There's no capitalism or democracy in Somalia, instead he who has the guns is he who makes the rules.

Governments are what Thomas Hobbes called a Leviathan. One purpose of having governments is to have an entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In an anarchy, no single entity has a monopoly on the use of force and so people will be *hyper-sensitive* to Hobbesian traps. Hobbes said that in the absence of a state (he didn't say what kind of state) things would degenerate into a war of all against all. A Hobbesian trap, then, is when you think I'm going to come over the wall and take your tomatoes and so you put up defenses to prevent me from doing so. Seeing that you are arming up, I start to arm up. A *perfect* example of a Hobbesian trap, and one civilization escaped by the skin of our teeth, was the nuclear build-up of the Cold War. Once the United States detonated a nuke, the other great powers *had* to get one however they could. The Soviets developed their own and missiles to deliver them. So we developed our own missiles. We put missiles in Turkey, they put missiles in Cuba and so on.

Cheers
Aj

Not even a little bit. It sounds nice to refer to this sort of governance as "direct democracy". "Mob rule" just sounds so icky, you know? But that's what it is. I'm endlessly amazed whenever a person who is any sort of minority is in favor of this sort of system. I know several people who are, and every one of them is a straight, white, man.

In this sort of system, if the majority decides they don't want queer people getting married, well, tough shit, queer people! The majority has spoken! In fact, the majority has just voted that it's totally legal to kill queer people. I hope you're good at hiding!

Personally, I'm very much in favor of the checks and balances that are supposed to exist in our current system. As a queer woman, mob rule doesn't go well for me.

Honestly, while I do know some people who make this argument - I'm just not on board with that. I am okay with people from the US calling themselves American and me not calling myself American. I like calling myself Canadian because I like being Canadian. I like being Canadian to the degree that (no offense intended) it hurts my feelings a little if someone thinks I am an American.

Oh god no! Please no. No. Just no. No.

Side note: Canada actually doesn't -have- any laws about abortion. No, I mean it. There are no laws on the books about abortion at all. No rules about how or where or when or at what point during pregnancy. All abortion is legal in Canada, full stop. I could get an abortion at 9 months pregnant if I felt like it (and could find a doctor willing to go along with it, but that's another story).

But anyway, no. I have no interest in EVER merging with any country in North America. I'm not even okay with the US and Canada becoming one country. Not even a little bit okay. We're fine, thanks. We do not need to join forces with you. We're very likely better off -not- joining forces with you.

The whole EU thing, I get. A little. I do think that, for example, Belgium and France have more in common than not and so certainly have a better shot at making it work than the US and Mexico do. Maybe Canada and the US have as much in common and Belgium and France do - maybe. But I just don't see it working for us.

For starters the US is, to my understanding, pretty stoked about being independent from England. And we LIKE that the Queen is our (mostly symbolic) "head of state". We're good with it. It's part of our heritage. How do you reconcile that between two countries?

Then add on top of that the very different ways our governments are run, certain laws we have in Canada that would never fly in the US, certain lacks of laws we don't have in Canada that would make heads spin in the US, health care and equal marriage in Canada, all that free speech right to carry a gun stuff in the US.

It'd just NEVER work. Our countries are far too different.

Maybe Canada should join the EU.

ETA - I do not want to join the EU either. I do want Canada to buy a warm island somewhere that I can move to legally so I never have to see snow again, however.

We call ourselves Americans because the name of our country is the United States *Of America*. What the hell else are we supposed to call ourselves? USians? United Staters? And why would anyone call a person from Brazil an American? People from Brazil are Brazilians. If I'm referring to the continent as a whole I'll say "North Americans" or "South Americans" but if I'm referring to a specific country, I'm an American, Bete is a Canadian, one of my professors is a Chilean. What other words am I supposed to use?

And this is precisely the point I was making. Sure, deep blue-state me would be perfectly happen adopting Canada's lack of laws governing abortion. Deep red-state someone else would have a BIG problem with it. Deeply Catholic Nicaraguans would probably have a *gigantic* problem. And woe betide the person who tried to take that away.

I think that two minutes after the accord merging everything from the Arctic to Antarctic was signed, there would be screams about Western cultural imperialism as we imposed our legal and cultural mores on nations down south.

[qutoe]
For starters the US is, to my understanding, pretty stoked about being independent from England. And we LIKE that the Queen is our (mostly symbolic) "head of state". We're good with it. It's part of our heritage. How do you reconcile that between two countries? [/quote]

You don't. I mean, I think that for the most part Americans are pretty neutral about the whole monarchy thing but I don't see us adopting Her Majesty as our head of state (and, quite honestly, I do rather like that our head of state and our head of government are embodied in the same person).


Cheers
Aj

The funny thing about anarchy is this:

For you to honestly believe it would work you'd have to have a pretty altruistic view of human nature. You know, the doctor will be very happy to care for your sick mother because she is very excited that you tend the chickens. The dude next door would never rape you because he is a good person and knows you are a good person who would never steal his car. Blah blah social contract blah blah.

That's pretty stupid and naive, for starters.

But on TOP of that. Right on top of that - you have the fact that most "anarchist" groups are populated by dickheaded 25 year old white boys who break windows and do more harm than good when they show up at a protest. The behaviour of the average self-described anarchist ALONE is evidence enough that anarchy would never work.

This. So very much this. I know a few anarchists. In fact, there's a large group of them who are in the same Sociology of Social Problems class with me this semester. Their ideas about how the world *should* work are absolutely laughable. Their certainty that they're right and anyone who disagrees with them is stupid is chilling. They're also very quick to suggest that Occupy Portland should be rioting to get what they want, rather than just peacefully protesting. Anarchists are the last people I want anyone listening to regarding governance of a nation.

Well nobody would get to take it away because we'll just adopt that whole "right to bear arms" thing from you guys and then -nobody- will be able to take away our abortions (or our Queen).

The whole thing is just such a bad nightmare, really.

Anarchist - [an-er-kist] - noun: A jerkwad who likes to break stuff and has conveniently found a self-righteous explanation for their crappy behaviour.

"Now that my brain is functioning again, I can address the things above. :)

I'm about three hours from finishing up Stephen Pinker's latest book The Better Angels of Our Nature. The core of the book is that as time has passed humans *have* become more compassionate and less violent. Yes, LESS, violent. Consider the following:

AJ, I think you may have to be my go-to person for injections of optimism. I've added the book to my wish list, and I'll wait for the soft cover. Thank you for the reference.

1) It is vanishingly improbable that anyone reading this knows someone who was burnt at the stake as a witch. I'm not saying someone in your lineage, I mean someone you've met.

But you have heard of "water boarding" and you may well know one of the 400K in the United States who have been victims of political torture, which, it turns out, is still sanctioned in 100 countries.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/r...e/welcome.html

2) No one here has ever been to a live bear-baiting.

I have seen a toothless, chained bear in Russia used for panhandling. Certainly we know other acts of animal cruelty exist everywhere, such as the release and termination of an exotic animal zoo in Ohio last month.

3) It is vanishingly improbable that anyone here has ever had to fear being stabbed at the dinner table by someone wielding a steak knife.

:-)

4) No great power has shot at any other great power since the end of WW II. I'm not saying that there's been no wars, but no *great power* wars. China and Japan fought multiple wars in the past but haven't fought one in 65 years. France and Germany, England and France, Germany and Russia *all* had periodic bouts of warfare through the 17th, 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In fact, Europe is now experiencing the longest contiguous peace since, get this, the height of the Roman Empire! WW III never happened, sometimes despite all efforts to make it happen.

Greece is at a tipping point, and much of the EU could follow if the economic situation grows worse. Just because an active volcano has a long period of dormancy does not mean it can't or in fact won't erupt.

5) The number of crimes that could earn one the death penalty in western nations has gone from a whole raft of items to a very few (murder, possibly treason, possibly child rape). And in most European nations you simply can't *get* the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime. A century or two ago, you could get the death penalty for insulting the crown!

True. But we are still in fact using the death penalty as the final act of insult and injury in a series of injustices.

6) In the west, marital rape has gone from 'just the way things are' to a criminal offense. Spousal abuse has gone from a punchline on 'The Honeymooners' to something no sit-com would *ever* put in because it is socially unacceptable (again, that doesn't mean it never happens just that when it does, the abuser is not going to find a sympathetic ear when he claims that 'she had it coming').

You do know that marital rape and spousal abuse continue in large numbers and most likely affect/have affected someone you know, including yours truly. "One in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime."

"Between 600,000 and 6 million women are victims of domestic violence each year, and between 100,000 and 6 million men, depending on the type of survey used to obtain the data."

http://www.dvrc-or.org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/

7) Spanking, in the west, has gone from 'this is how you raise children' to child abuse. If half of what I endured as a child happened to a kid today, that kid would be removed from the home.

Funny, one of my students is writing about this (others have). It's clear she's struggling with whether or not to continue this with her own children.

8) War has gone from something noble and 'the aspiration of every man and nation' to something repellant to large numbers of people.

As much as I really want to believe this, how can I when main stream films now resemble a hybrid of video games and porn films - thread bare, derivative and scant dialogue and character development for the sole purpose of taking the viewer to each new orgy of violence (war-driven or otherwise). For example, I just saw the trailer for Immortals last night at the gym. It seemed to me like one extended battle scene that picked up where 300 left off. Please tell me how many top grossing straight-dramas (adult and not a comedy) you can find that don't have at least one act of glorified violence in it:

http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2011&p=.htm

If the military branches have started to capitalize on gaming technology and the gaming mindset. The ads now make it seem as though the transfer from basement Xbox or Wii to live military engagement is seamless or perhaps the video game done one better.

So yes, I think that human societies can become more compassionate and peaceful, up to a point. I do not think we can nor do I think we should try, to have any kind of utopia. We *know* what happens when people try to create utopias and we should not trust anyone who suggests we should do so. I do think humans are moving to a stage in our cultural development(s) that violence is increasingly being constrained. The circle of moral concern has expanded to include more and more groups of people.

Has it expanded, or have alternate realities allowed us to detach from violence and its consequences even more? Whether or not we want to claim an absolute state of paradise, if we don't pursue Utopia, is dystopia always the default? And does dystopia, or the idea of it, scare us less? Does it feel more comfortable and more in sync with our natures?

As far as your paradise or purgatory question, I think neither. But I do think that now is a better time to be alive, for larger numbers of humanity, ever. Even in poor nations the average life expectancy has crossed over the 40 year mark and in rich nations it is pushing up toward 90. At the end of the 18th century the average lifespan was ~37 years. At the end of the 19th it was about 45. At the end of the twentieth it was about 75. We have almost *doubled* the number of years people live on average in about a century and almost trebled it in about two centuries.

Actually, that trend is reversing and will no doubt continue to reverse, "particularly among women."

http://www.americanscientist.org/iss...sal-of-fortune

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/201...h-inequalities

Literacy, is spreading so fast that we notice illiteracy but not literacy. Two hundred years ago we would take illiteracy for granted and notice literacy.

Well, we know literacy is tied to crime, and we know we are filling prison beds with amazing numbers here in the U.S. "One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study....Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending."

I've been teaching since 1985 (another frightening statistic in itself), and those is purely non-scientific and empirical, I am seeing problems with vocabulary, reading levels, understanding grammatical concepts like fragments and run ons and other issues that I have not seen to this degree of seriousness. Whether it's in offering the correct pronunciation of the word "library" (not lie-berry), or the introduction of a word like "gist" or simply explaining to my students that cutting and pasting from an encyclopedia is not researched writing, I am amazed at the education my adult students didn't get and what the implications are for this going forward.

I'm really most curious about this question of designing ourselves out of our natures. I'm curious about the purpose and power of visions and alternative presentations of "reality." Can we redesign ourselves? Should we? And are our visions like Rawls' intrinsically important to growth evolution, or are they just another alternate reality, another distraction?

And on that note, I'm more than ready for lunch. Now where did I leave that steak knife? ;-)

Count me in on this, too. Frankly I find much meaness and bullying behavior from most anarchists. Often, this looks to me as quite the same as one Dick Cheny, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck.

I have no interest in every single person in my country thinking exactly like I do. I do, however, want mutual respect of ideas and an ability to work together to promote liberty and justice "for all." Which takes accepting that everything will not be exactly as I would like it. But, that we all find common ground in ideas that do promote equal opportunity for the entire population.

I know, I have a streak of idealism- the fact is, I do find what is good in all and try to figure out how that can best be utilized for the whole.

Bet's take on the 25 year old white boys... usually pretty spoiled white boys as anarchists fits with what I have seen as part of and looking from the outside of social movements since the mid-1960's. In fact, you can count on them to want to run everything!

US Citizens? From the US? Estados Unidenses? Norte Americanos?

People from Brazil do live in America. South America.

Other people who live in the Americas hate it that we act like we are the only Americans.

Smart, intelligent, educated people in other countries in the Americas, other than Canada apparently, call themselves American and they are.

It is very US centric to say they are not, in my opinion. They do not agree that what to call ourselves is their problem.

For me I am willing to say that people in Latin America are responsible for their choices when they are actually allowed to make them without covert or overt interference from the right wing agenda pushing United States of America. However, that is not likely to happen anytime soon. One only needs to look at what happened recently in Honduras to understand that. No matter all the fancy footwork it was clear to other Latin American governments that the political strategy of the U.S. was to blunt and delay any efforts to restore the elected president, while pretending that a return to democracy was actually the goal. Haiti had the U.S. extensively involved in overthrowing the elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide not once but twice. The U.S. has lost some ground over recent years but that just means they are in there fighting all the harder to to get it back one country at a time. And as always the smaller, poorer countries that are closer to the U.S. are the most at risk.

Personally I think a united Latin America would be a better idea.

All abortion is legal in Canada but current provincial policy forbids abortions from being performed in PEI. There is also free medical care in Canada but in PEI the government will only cover the cost of the abortion in a hospital in a different province under the recommendation of two doctors. So if you live in PEI even though you are supposed to be entitled to free medical care and abortion is legal in Canada you would not be able to get an abortion that was free just because you wanted one. So I suppose if P.E.I. can do it then I imagine very catholic latin american countries could also get around abortion laws.

I imagine it is disturbing and it might even piss some people off that the U.S. hogs the term American for itself. And not in the way that people are European or Asian but as their nationality. It might not annoy Canadians as much as Latin Americans because, although I know some that don't like it but think it is just part of the typical thoughtless arrogant behavior one expects from Americans, Canada hasn't been subjected to the same kind of imperialistic behavior as Latin America.

Most US citizens really don't think about South America or the role the US has had and continues to have in coups, dictatorships, wars and even drugs and arms dealings.

Really glad to you do! and really get and care how it might feel to a non-US citizen.

I don't know that it would benefit to have a united Latin America, it might divide the US even more on issues like language, immigration and geopolitical borders. Would Brazil be considered Latin? I mean yes, linguistically it should be, but in the US we seem to use Latin and Latino/a for people who speak Spanish and do not live in Spain, not people who speak languages bases on Latin.....which BTW I find confusing a bit. What of other (yes small) countries who don't speak Spanish in South America?

But that is not witch burning. It isn't. That isn't any of a number of tortures used by, just to pick an example, the Inquisition in Western Europe. It also isn't widespread. It is vanishingly improbable that anyone reading these words lives in fear that the church will burst through their door and drag them kicking and screaming to their doom with no due process of law just because someone said "my dog died, she's a witch!"

Please, please, please understand that violence or other social unpleasantness isn't a binary switch. The logic you appear to be using above is that if there is ANY violence or torture then violence and torture have not been reduced. But that doesn't work. Let's say that there were 15K homicides in the US last year and 10,000 this year. Would that not be an improvement? Or should we say that 10,000 murders is the same as 15,000 and so nothing has improved? I would argue that the fact that witch burning is *unknown* in the West and hasn't happened either in Western Europe or North American in about 200 years! This can be true even IF water boarding is still going on. What's more, look at the difference of reaction--in the West--to water boarding now and witch burning (or lynching) in the past. I'll take lynching first. Within the lifetime of my parents (born in 1922) lynching went from a Saturday or Sunday afternoon diversion for the whole family (presuming the family was white) to a *crime*. People used to send *postcards* of lynchings and now anyone even suggesting doing so would regret it immediately. Consider that the men who killed James Byrd in Texas were convicted of murder while their grandfathers would have walked for the same crime (probably their fathers as well). That is vast improvement. Isn't one lynching in 1997 an *improvement* over 10 lynchings in 1907? I would say that is a fantastic improvement.

Much the same applies here. Again, I am not saying that violence or cruelty has disappeared. I AM saying that it has *drastically* been reduced and become far *less* socially acceptable. Michael Vick went to jail for dog fighting. In 1940 he would never have even had a run-in with the law over dog fighting. Does dog fighting still go on? Regrettably, yes. Is it legal in the United States or Western Europe? No. Is it socially acceptable? In most communities, no. Does that mean that dog fighting never occurs anywhere on the planet? No. Does that mean that dog fighting is socially unacceptable *everywhere* on the planet? No. It doesn't have to be either there's no murders or there's a bloodbath, there's either no animal cruelty or it is rampant, there's either no witch burning or torture is ubiquitous and socially acceptable.

Wait, are you putting the potential economic collapse on the same category as war? Sure, this long peace *may* end in 5 minutes but every minute that it continues is *still* the longest contiguous peace that Western Europe has seen since the height of the Roman Empire. I'm not talking about internal harmony nor am I talking about economic prosperity, I'm talking about war. Could an economic collapse bring war to Western Europe again? Yes, but I doubt it will happen. No one has anything to gain from a great power shooting war in Europe that can't more easily be gained through trade.

Okay but that doesn't change the fact that Western Europe, to a country, has abandoned the death penalty. Nor does it change the fact that number of crimes for which one could get the death penalty has gone from multiple to a very few.

Yes, I'm aware of it but it is no longer socially acceptable. The point isn't that marital rape *never* happens or that spousal abuse *never* happens. It is that it is no longer socially acceptable in the English speaking world or Western Europe *at all*.

Okay, here's an example of what I'm talking about. Your student is struggling with this, my mother didn't struggle with it. She made me walk into a hospital on a broken leg because I had a hairline fracture and I could not tell her what I had done. If she had pulled that kind of stunt just 10 years later (this was 1981), chances are the doctor would have reported her to CPS.

I didn't say that people weren't getting vicarious thrills from violent movies, I said that, for instance, Western Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia no longer consider war part and parcel of their national pride. At the start of WW I, young men poured out to fight seeking glory they were *eager* to sign up and go fight. That doesn't happen as often any more. All of this can be true even IF the top grossing movies are all violent. Would you rather have people watching violent movies or playing violent video games or engaging in actual trench warfare? Another item. Consider the body counts of wars. While American presidents are too eager to send kids into combat, they are also VERY sensitive to the body counts in ways they weren't before. We are also far more restrained in warfare than we were.

Consider that no President could survive an American casualty total like WW II (407K), the Civil War (650K) and Vietnam (58K). An American president who sent kids into combat and broke the 10K casualty mark would probably be in for a very tough election cycle unless the US had been attacked. Also consider that nothing like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo could happen again. Yes, I know, lots of people were killed in both the Second Gulf and Afghanistan wars but no Iraqi or Afghani city was bombed anywhere *near* what Dresden or Tokyo endured in WW II. Nothing even close. Dresden was reduced to rubble. Then there's this number--zero. That is the number of times a nuclear weapon has been used in anger since the August of 1945. We *could* have used them in Korea but we didn't. We *could* have used them in Vietnam--and even considered it--but we didn't. We *could* have used it in Afghanistan-and yet again we didn't. Neither has anyone else. Israel could solve its Iranian problem with a nuclear bomb but it has restrained from doing so. India and Pakistan have fought three wars in just over 60 years and have managed not to go nuclear. Then there's the war that *didn't* happen--the Soviet Union never crossed into West Germany which almost *certainly* would have resulted in a nuclear exchange. Have there been wars between 1945 and 2011? yes. None of them have involved nuclear weapons even though the United States has lots of them.

I think that if you want a dystopia, work for a utopia. It's not that dystopias scare me less, it's that dystopias *terrify* me because my reading of history is that if you really, really want to get people to do absolutely horrific things to other people all you need do is convince your people that there's a plan that will make it all right, that the land of milk and honey is just over the hill and as soon as the people standing in the way or resisting the glorious plan to take us to utopia are removed from the scene, then paradise will be here on Earth.

Alexander Solzhentisyn, who knew a thing or two about what happens when nations become gripped by ideological fanatics said it best:

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble—and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.


This is not a dystopia, not even by half. How do I know? George Bush was a warmonger who approved the torture of people in contravention of international law. Barack Obama, for all his virtues, is a little too conciliatory to deal with the madness that is the Republican Congressional majority. John Boehner is a little tin-post oompa-loompa. Eric Cantor is a smarmy little twit.

Now, one of two things is going to happen. Either I'm going to be arrested and put in prison for those statements or I'm not. In a dystopia, I would NEVER write those things about the national leadership because I know what would happen to me. People in North Korea, if they *had* Internet access, would never dare to say something like that about either Kim the Elder or Kim the Younger. America is far from a perfect society but I'll take the US over North Korea, Iran or Saudi Arabia.

[quote]
As far as your paradise or purgatory question, I think neither. But I do think that now is a better time to be alive, for larger numbers of humanity, ever. Even in poor nations the average life expectancy has crossed over the 40 year mark and in rich nations it is pushing up toward 90. At the end of the 18th century the average lifespan was ~37 years. At the end of the 19th it was about 45. At the end of the twentieth it was about 75. We have almost *doubled* the number of years people live on average in about a century and almost trebled it in about two centuries.

Actually that trend is reversing in the United States. The trend continues in Japan, Canada, Germany, England, France, Spain, and Belgium. It is reversing in the United States and it is doing so for reasons that are both predictable *and* fixable.

Again, happening for very predictable reasons and of the major industrialized nations ONLY in the United States. We are the outliers in the overall trend.

I do not think we can, nor do I think we should try. I think we reform what we can and ameliorate that which cannot be reformed for whatever systemic reason.

Cheers
Aj

So if Brazilians get to be Brazilian, and Canadians get to be Canadian, and the English get to be the English what word would you suggest we use for ourselves? Are you suggesting that, in the interest of respect for people in South America, we should perhaps change the name of the country from the United States of America? If so, what would you suggest the name of the country be? Or should we be Unionists or Statists? Or USians? If Americans is *not* the right short-name for citizens of the United States, what is? It's one thing to say "you shouldn't do that" it is quite another thing to say "and here is what you should do". I'm serious, Apoc, what would you prefer citizens of the United States call themselves? Citizen of the USA? Citizen of the United States? Citizen of the US? What have we done that of ALL the people in the world now, in the past or indefinitely into the future can call themselves Germans if they are from Germany or French if they are from France or Mexican if they are from Mexico but we, only we, cannot have a short name for ourselves as citizens of our nation? Why is it only us who must go through lengthy circumlocutions when the English can call themselves English even though they had an empire that lasted quite some time?

ETA: If it is because of our empire, shouldn't the same apply to the Japanese, the Chinese, the French, the British, the Turks, the Germans, the Russians and the Persians? ALL of them had empires at one point or another. Some much more recently than others and every last one of them was somewhere on the line of brutal. Shouldn't they *also* be stripped of their national names? Now, this is based *solely* on the idea that Americans--uniquely amongst nations--has been so overwhelmingly horrible to other nations that it is an *insult* to others for us to have a short-name for ourselves as a people because they are also Americans in as much as they occupy the Western Hemisphere. If it is not because of our imperial actions, then what *is* it based on because this seems to me to be a case of "America must pay for her crimes" and stripping the citizens of their national name is a good place to start.

Cheers
Aj

Two words, British Empire.

Cheers
Aj