It doesn’t work in any massive society e.g USA.
The only countries with extremely low social inequality are small and homogenous.
India is MUCH larger in pop than the U.S. It is multi ethic, multi-lingual, has multiple (often conflicting) religious influences and still has significantly less wealth disparity than the U.S.
It can work. Not sure why you think it can’t.
Homogeneity really helps. But if a society isn’t homogenous, I can’t fathom why they still couldn’t work towards a fair society. Just because it’s harder in a mixed society doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing.
If your looking for an excuse to not work for a fair society, find one that is at least plausible.
I suppose that it may be easier for the powerful to exploit others in a non-homogeneous society, as the masses of less powerful can be easily played off against each other or the non-homogeneous are simply not inclined to work together for their common good. Pressing for conflict among the less wealthy, promoting racism, religious differences, and nonsensical political disputes, would be beneficial to maintaining the status quo for the wealthy.
Why change the pathway of America to experiment with other systems when the system we have is already the best in the world? Our system is a system that has created the best civilizations mankind has ever known and has evolved from pre-history. Why redesign a car when the engine is running ruff. Just tune-up the engine and get down the road would be the thing to do.
The pathway of democracy has always been a part of America. That pathway has become undermined by new rules that make money speech and corporations people, hence giving the wealthy an even greater advantage of potential and often actualized exploitation over the rest. Exploitation, and an unfair administration of justice, in favor of the wealthiest, has also been a historical part of America, but we have striven to, and sometimes have actually moved closer to a more perfect Union. So we keep trying.
I can’t disagree with you. But the point I was trying to make is that what the founding fathers did was use a system that was well known and understood to be the system all successful civilizations used in the past. Our founding fathers never did get the Laws of Nature totally finished and working. And all the problems we are experiencing today are from the unfinished parts of the Laws of Nature. We need to finish setting up our civilization. If the Democrats keep going down the road they are on. Then the Republican have a good chance of winning the House in the next election. Trump may have the chance to finish the Laws of Nature for America.
If Trump gets another term, he may very well have clinical dementia before his 2nd term is up. With control of all of Congress, there will be very little that could prevent him from doing his most spurious impulsive actions. Most of these have been prevented or slowed down, so far, but he will no doubt also install at least one, probably more Supreme Court Justices. He will pretty much control all of the govt. He wants an all out Muslim ban? done. He wakes up wanting to close the entire border. Done. He impulsively wants to send the military to do things that Posse Comatatus would normally preclude? Done. He wants to torture asylum seekers by absconding with their children? Done. A FOX news commentator says we should leave NATO? Done. He decides Ted Nugent would be the perfect guy to run the Space Force? Done. He decides we need to Nuke some country or entity, to show we’re tuff and mean business. Done, Done, and Done. He is motivated by aggrandizement. He is a man of extremely poor character. Other nations of the world are already deciding that the USA is too chaotic to look to for leadership, or even to trust anymore. Several more years of Trump will cinch that. Bye Bye Ms American Pie.
How about Harry Reid, Hillary and Obama? They put us on a pathway that really is not good for democracy. When you get down to the Root of the changes that are required to finish the Laws of Nature. I, like many thought Obama may try and do it. Instead he quickly went another direction. The one that has kept on the pathway and is really giving democracy the best hope of getting finished is Trump.
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson
The reason I bring this up is because Jefferson invented progressive taxation. Jefferson was a progressive liberal. And just look at a progressive two hundred years ago. And with the stimulus funding that just took place. We today are nothing like the progressives that created this country. We really should get back on track.
America’s inheritance was the Law of Nature. People from Europe came over to help get the Laws of Nature up and running. It had failed in the war in France to get implemented. America was now its best hope. The Laws of Nature was implemented in parts in Europe and got rid of slavery in Europe. As it did latter on in America. But I can’t stress enough, we got to finish what was started and given to us as inheritance of past knowledge. We would not be having today’s problems if we had finish our system of government the way it was designed to operate by common people and not gods and kings.
This postings no doubt is going to deep for understanding. As most Americans do not understand how our laws came to be. But Tim and Rat, I bet you guys have an idea.
India is MUCH larger in pop than the U.S. It is multi ethic, multi-lingual, has multiple (often conflicting) religious influences and still has significantly less wealth disparity than the U.S.It’s also a massive dump in every way. The poor in America are probably better off than the Indian middle class.
I suppose that it may be easier for the powerful to exploit others in a non-homogeneous society, as the masses of less powerful can be easily played off against each other or the non-homogeneous are simply not inclined to work together for their common good. Pressing for conflict among the less wealthy, promoting racism, religious differences, and nonsensical political disputes, would be beneficial to maintaining the status quo for the wealthy.There is naturally higher social trust in small, homogeneous societies. People automatically feel closer to each other and have each other’s backs — including the more powerful. All of that becomes impossible in a big society.
It can work. Not sure why you think it can’t.Homogeneity really helps. But if a society isn’t homogenous, I can’t fathom why they still couldn’t work towards a fair society. Just because it’s harder in a mixed society doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing.
If your looking for an excuse to not work for a fair society, find one that is at least plausible.
We know it can’t work because high levels of inequality come with the territory of massive societies. There aren’t any examples of this not happening throughout history.
Biology, geography, political science all point to the small, homogeneous society as the only possibility for social equality. The “big” are doomed to fail.
There aren’t examples of anything happening in history, until it happens. There are things that have happened that had never happened before in history.
An effect of increasing wealth disparity tend to be a weakening of democracy. It is also, at some point basically unjust. On a purely practical level, in the long term, it leads to a weakening economy.
You do not propose solutions. One would be to establish tax structures and policies that reverse, to some extent, the depth of inequality and thus, at least, stave off the failure that you suggest is inevitable.
thatoneguy: "We know it can’t work because high levels of inequality come with the territory of massive societies. There aren’t any examples of this not happening throughout history."Other than the fact that's a really crappy attitude that would guarantee we'd never advance as a society (or individual or group) and is completely irrelevant, you make a great point.
You don’t have to respond to comments on here if you have no good points. I won’t be insulted if you take your time to come up with an intelligent reply. These ideas you stick in your posts are kind of a waste of yours and my time.
Think about stuff and then craft a thoughtful post. If you do: you might realize we’re not as dumb as you think; you might agree with some of our points; we can enjoy and seriously consider your ideas; these exchanges can be pleasant and productive; we might learn something if your ideas are good ones we’ve never thought about before.
Sorry if I come across as a jerk sometimes. I really am a nice guy. This is the only place I can discuss all these topics, so it’s frustrating to wait for you to make good points, but instead you try to make us wrong even if your counter-argument isn’t even an argument. I promise that if you make a good point, I will be the first to agree with you, so please consider our ideas and be honest if you realize we made a good point. This isn’t a war, this is a discussion- ideally, we can all win.
What’s wrong with regulations?
I know people who would love to get rid of regulations to allow the economy to grow. I would like to send those people to their own planet, so they can live with the consequences.
It’s difficult to explain to people who only see the costs of regulations, how critical they are. Unfortunately they increase costs and make some companies lose money and have to lay people off, but those same regulations make us safe (in many ways), prevent greed from destroying the planet, improve the conditions of workers, help level the playing field for workers, and a ton of other things.
I’ve been on job-sites where the rules for working there were so ‘safe’, that they were actually unsafe and prevented work from being done- so I know that not all regulations are good. But, generally, they’re not just good, they’re essential for our society to function well.
Capitalism without regulations is like a person with no self-discipline. Fun for awhile, maybe, but it ends poorly.
Come on guys. How many regulations did we have when America had major growth and industries? About 700. Today we have more than we can count. over 8,000 new regulations per year. No one knows the true number of regulations. If you can’t count the number of laws, how is it possible to be responsible for you to know all the laws? How can you afford to pay attorneys every time you want to turn around.
In his book Three Felonies a Day, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day. And that was back in 2011. Who knows what it is today.
When you have dirty bath water, it is good to dump it, but how many babies are also being dumped with Trump’s war on regulations? If u don’t catch my metaphor, I am saying that there are critical safeguard regulations that should stay in place to protect us all. But WHOOMP there they go!
Nobody is saying to get rid of all the laws. We need to reduce the regulations and build the morals back to where we don’t need all those laws. The laws of America are to be equal to all Americans. How many people believe that is true today?