Welcome to the Oligarchy, Peasant

[brother_dour]

First, let's start with the article, and a few choice quotes:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/87719/princeton-concludes-what-kind-of-government-america-really-has-and-it-s-not-a-democracy

"A new scientific study from Princeton researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page has finally put some science behind the recently popular argument that the

Comments

[mahnmut]

That was either the most amazing Jedi mind trick, or the best Kool-Aid ad I've heard in a year. Either way, well done, bro!

[ddstory]

Completed your trip to the Dark Side you have, my son.

[brother_dour]

I don't think you even looked at the article in question. The authors statistically, positively linked the probability of a policy becoming official to its support among the 90th percentile of wage earners. They also proved statistically that the correlation was so strong that the average voter's vote is statistically insignificant.

So, yeah, there's nothing to fix here if you a) are the 90th percentile or b) think they somehow know more about what is best for the rest of us than the rest of us do.

But back to your assertion that that more laws basically impact the rich more than the poor. There's two problems with that.

1) Not supported historically. The wealth gap between the richest 1% of Americans and the 50th percentile is greater now than it was in 1900, when regulations were few and far between. If your theory were true, we would expect to see the opposite occur.

2) there is credible data (T. Hungerford, Congressional Research Service, 12/12/2012 among many others) that suggests that the impact of tax cuts on

[underlankers]

Actually, we've never been a 'democratic' republic, not since the people who made money hand over fist from other human beings as property got together with proto-capitalists to illegally supplant the existing system of government. And to be frank, the idea that limiting the rights of Southerners to murder people in cold blood because of the amount of melanin in their skin is a tragedy is one of many, many reasons why conservatives of color are few and far between, and primarily Uncle Ruckus wannabes.

[jerseycajun]

and primarily Uncle Ruckus wannabes.

Wow. You went there.

Was using "Oreo's" just too cliche'?

[brother_dour]

No. 'Uncle Tom' was too cliche. Ruckus is basically a parody of a stereotype.

[jerseycajun]

For all intents and purposes, for the context it was used here, I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to discern a meaningful distinction between the various terms in this context. Ruckus is indeed a parody of a stereotype in his original context. Here, it's used as a way to characterize and psychoanalyze a group of people the speaker vehemently is biased against, in order to say the same thing "Uncle Tom" and "Oreo" have historically been used as shorthand for: 'self-hating race-traitor'. And that's an ugly racial epithet no matter how you slice it, when it's applied to something as far-afield and broadly encompassing as 'being conservative & black'. As if broad political catch-alls like 'conservative' stances plus melanin levels are indications of psychological disturbances. Puh. - Friggin. - Leeze. That's logic on the level of Victorian-era mental disorder diagnoses.

[montecristo]

The only equality that can be objectively defined is political equality, and that can only exist where political power is limited, if not despised and shunned near universally.

"We" are not a "democratic republic" except in name, symbols, and popular mythology. A "limited government" is an oxymoron, because it is the monopoly on the initiation of force that essentially distinguishes a government, and any agency having a monopoly of impunity to initiate force is not limited in any meaningful sense.

[montecristo]

You cannot have economic equality because economic comparison must resort to valuation and value is subjective, individual, context-dependent, and consists of both the material and non-material, the quantifiable and the non-quantifiable. You cannot make Joe Blow a painter equal to Leonardo da Vinci no matter how much Joe wants it, if he doesn't have the talent. You cannot guage the nature of his desire nor its extent, nor can you see what subjective value he places on the practice necessary to improve. Money is merely the product of trade. If Leonardo and Joe both trade paintings to Sam nobody else can get inside their heads and determine what the "proper," "equal" valuation for all of the trade items is. Therefore, there is no way to make Sam, Leonardo, and Joe all "equal" with respect to economics or outcome. The best that can be hoped is that Joe, Leonardo, and Sam, and everyone else, respect the natural rights of people and do not indulge in the crime of force initiation.

[montecristo]

No you can't. What you are arguing is that your particular, subjective, evaluations of "opportunity" are objective and are to be taken as such. They are not. Opportunity itself is a subjective value and cannot be equated objectively. Opportunity is not intrinsic to matter or circumstance but is rather an evaluation performed in the mind.

The idea that a petty lord can be sovereign over a parcel of land at the expense of other people is fundamentally flawed.Everyone is "a petty lord" where he stands. You cannot wish this away. You could divide up the entire surface of the Earth among all of the individuals living at the time and it would end up getting concentrated again because some people are better able to capitalize the properties of a piece of land better than others. If you are no good at managing a farm it is economically better to sell a farm you have and work as an employee on someone else's farm than starve. No whim or wish can change this. Land will be used. It will be used by humans. Some human mind will determine the

[montecristo]

Someone will decide how a particular piece of land is used. Someone will decide what is "to everyone's benefit" even if that impossible criterion is somehow imposed on everyone. The person who makes those decisions is the owner. Ownership is the right of exclusive disposition. It is only individual minds which think, decide, and act. There is no wishing that away in reality although there are plenty of attempts to do so in theory.

that single owner will never, ever be able to do everything necessary to make that piece of land useful completely ON HIS OWNPatently false. You have obviously never cultivated a garden or built a house. Nevertheless, even if that assertion were true (and it isn't) that does not preclude individual ownership with trade for capital goods and services

[montecristo]

...there is a class of owners and a surplus of people left who own nothing which the owners can then exploit to work for them.

Nowhere realizable in practice or even theory. There is no human being who owns nothing. In fact, there is only a small percentage of human beings (such as infants) who do not own capital.