A word on governments
So, we've been covering an awful lot lately in class about national socialism, which of course brings up the concepts of socialism, fascism, totalitarianism, democracy, republics, and all the others out there. So I thought I would take a minute to list what is good, what works, and why it does or doesn't in my view.
Dictatorships, also fall into the gernal catagory of totalitarianism. Dictators don't need a congress, and they don't need anyone's permission. What the dictator says goes, period. So, how can this be a good thing? If a dictator is smart with economics, or accepts good advice from smart people, he (find me an example of a female dictator in recent times) can run a country in a way that will not drive it into poverty. For poor examples, look at stalinistic russia. Rather than running the country in a way that would be self sustaining, Stalin insisted (to say the least) on building nuclear weapons as part of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear weapons policy of the cold war era. The end result: His country starved while he stockpiled missles.
This is an example of a stupid dictator. Like I said, a smart one can make a county run smoothly. The whole issue comes from the issue of how do you get a good one into office in the first place. And if he is a propper dictator, how do you get rid of him if he goes bad?
This naturally brings us to our next talking point: Democracy. Everybody loves democracy, right? Well, everybody but the dictators. The idea is that everybody's voice is heard. As a result the best representation for the people will be elected and allowed to control the land for their term. Probems? Only the fact that people are really really stupid. Honestly, most people don't know what is good for themselves, and really don't even know what they want. They know nothing of economics, or social policy, or buisness management. They just want the person that tells the prettiest lies.
If you ask a person if they want both lower taxes and better roads, they will of course say yes. If a polotician promises to give them those shiney new roads while still lowering thier taxes most people will just jump for joy. So then when the polotician finally gets into office, and neither lowers the taxes nor fixes the roads, but instead spends all the tax money on other ventures that he promised he would to his campaign contributers, everybody acts surprised.
The problem with democracy, aside from the fact that voters are dumb as bricks, is that elected officials want to stay elected. Is it for money, is it for power, I don't know. It could be for a number of reasons. But whatever it is they like it, and want to stay there. So what do they do? Something rather childish, and completely understandable. They do whatever they want for the first half of their term, then after that they start working on their appearance for reelection. Rather than doing their job, they try to keep their job. Is there a good way around this? Not really.
What options do we really have? Vote AGAINST a politican at given intervals to get them out of office? Or maybe have monthly popularity polls? Even this doesn't ensure that a country is run correctly. A country run by the people is almost as bad as a country being run by a bunch of drunken monkeys. People just don't know what is good for them.
Which of course brings us back to dictatorships. A good dictator is better than a truckload of bad representatives any day of the week, but a bad one has a tendancy of making certain segments of the population "dissapear".
Truth be told, there is no "right" system for governing people. You will invariably wind up with either evil villains in power, or lying poloticians. And the few honest men that manage to assend the ranks of polotics are invariably drowned out by the ones that should not be there.
So what are we? We, as it so happens, are not a democracy. We are a republic. We are represented by people we elect, and they make our decissions for us. So how should these decissions on a national level be made? Well, by population seems fair, so the states with the greatest number of people are represented with more power than states with fewer people. But to do this assigns an unfair advantage to bigger states, simply by defenition. So there is also a second group where all states have the same number of people representing them. Through this, we have the house of representatives, and the senate.
Next comes the issue of political parties. Frankly, the world is totally fucked for political parties. You have two options (not talking dems vs. reps here, but we'll get there soon, don't worry). The first option is to make all the parties equally eligable for all positions within the government (judiciary, legislative, and executive).
Problem there is, it plays merry hell with getting an honest majority. You wind up with all these little piss ant parties joining up to fight the big ones, but never really agreeing on anything. That way even if the majority of people in a county are represented by one single party, what they want never gets passed (of course this brings back the whole "can people really be trusted to make their own decissions" debate with regard to being represented by people they choose). So the majority is not accurately represented.
Second option: Make it so that only two big parties stand a chance. The problem here is that the two parties become so polarised against one another that there is no good middle ground. One will always be liberal, and the other conservative, and you have to pick devil number one or devil number two to run your country. Say hello to the reps and the dems, everybody. Neither knows how to run a country propperly, and they love to name call one another, and squabble, and generally be hipocritical little shits.
However, all things considered, we have it pretty good. "how can a system that is run by polarised oposite partis, with their own heads up their asses, voted into office by complete incompotents be a good thing?". I'll tell you how. The government of this country was designed in such a way that change is slow. Painfully slow. It takes years, even decades, for things to get passed into law. Even then, the whole legal system is so fucked that with the right lawyer you can litterally get away with murder (yup, talking about you OJ). So no matter how fucked the system is, as long as we have the polar oposites in congress and capitol hill fighting one another for power, things sit pretty tight where they are.
And of course, is something ever actually does get passed into law than the ACLU can run around screaming like a banchee about how somebody's civil rights are being violated, and take it to the supreme court, and get it all reversed anyway. We are lucky enough to live in a country of political stagnation and where speed and efficieny would truly be the end of us all.
Dictatorships, also fall into the gernal catagory of totalitarianism. Dictators don't need a congress, and they don't need anyone's permission. What the dictator says goes, period. So, how can this be a good thing? If a dictator is smart with economics, or accepts good advice from smart people, he (find me an example of a female dictator in recent times) can run a country in a way that will not drive it into poverty. For poor examples, look at stalinistic russia. Rather than running the country in a way that would be self sustaining, Stalin insisted (to say the least) on building nuclear weapons as part of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear weapons policy of the cold war era. The end result: His country starved while he stockpiled missles.
This is an example of a stupid dictator. Like I said, a smart one can make a county run smoothly. The whole issue comes from the issue of how do you get a good one into office in the first place. And if he is a propper dictator, how do you get rid of him if he goes bad?
This naturally brings us to our next talking point: Democracy. Everybody loves democracy, right? Well, everybody but the dictators. The idea is that everybody's voice is heard. As a result the best representation for the people will be elected and allowed to control the land for their term. Probems? Only the fact that people are really really stupid. Honestly, most people don't know what is good for themselves, and really don't even know what they want. They know nothing of economics, or social policy, or buisness management. They just want the person that tells the prettiest lies.
If you ask a person if they want both lower taxes and better roads, they will of course say yes. If a polotician promises to give them those shiney new roads while still lowering thier taxes most people will just jump for joy. So then when the polotician finally gets into office, and neither lowers the taxes nor fixes the roads, but instead spends all the tax money on other ventures that he promised he would to his campaign contributers, everybody acts surprised.
The problem with democracy, aside from the fact that voters are dumb as bricks, is that elected officials want to stay elected. Is it for money, is it for power, I don't know. It could be for a number of reasons. But whatever it is they like it, and want to stay there. So what do they do? Something rather childish, and completely understandable. They do whatever they want for the first half of their term, then after that they start working on their appearance for reelection. Rather than doing their job, they try to keep their job. Is there a good way around this? Not really.
What options do we really have? Vote AGAINST a politican at given intervals to get them out of office? Or maybe have monthly popularity polls? Even this doesn't ensure that a country is run correctly. A country run by the people is almost as bad as a country being run by a bunch of drunken monkeys. People just don't know what is good for them.
Which of course brings us back to dictatorships. A good dictator is better than a truckload of bad representatives any day of the week, but a bad one has a tendancy of making certain segments of the population "dissapear".
Truth be told, there is no "right" system for governing people. You will invariably wind up with either evil villains in power, or lying poloticians. And the few honest men that manage to assend the ranks of polotics are invariably drowned out by the ones that should not be there.
So what are we? We, as it so happens, are not a democracy. We are a republic. We are represented by people we elect, and they make our decissions for us. So how should these decissions on a national level be made? Well, by population seems fair, so the states with the greatest number of people are represented with more power than states with fewer people. But to do this assigns an unfair advantage to bigger states, simply by defenition. So there is also a second group where all states have the same number of people representing them. Through this, we have the house of representatives, and the senate.
Next comes the issue of political parties. Frankly, the world is totally fucked for political parties. You have two options (not talking dems vs. reps here, but we'll get there soon, don't worry). The first option is to make all the parties equally eligable for all positions within the government (judiciary, legislative, and executive).
Problem there is, it plays merry hell with getting an honest majority. You wind up with all these little piss ant parties joining up to fight the big ones, but never really agreeing on anything. That way even if the majority of people in a county are represented by one single party, what they want never gets passed (of course this brings back the whole "can people really be trusted to make their own decissions" debate with regard to being represented by people they choose). So the majority is not accurately represented.
Second option: Make it so that only two big parties stand a chance. The problem here is that the two parties become so polarised against one another that there is no good middle ground. One will always be liberal, and the other conservative, and you have to pick devil number one or devil number two to run your country. Say hello to the reps and the dems, everybody. Neither knows how to run a country propperly, and they love to name call one another, and squabble, and generally be hipocritical little shits.
However, all things considered, we have it pretty good. "how can a system that is run by polarised oposite partis, with their own heads up their asses, voted into office by complete incompotents be a good thing?". I'll tell you how. The government of this country was designed in such a way that change is slow. Painfully slow. It takes years, even decades, for things to get passed into law. Even then, the whole legal system is so fucked that with the right lawyer you can litterally get away with murder (yup, talking about you OJ). So no matter how fucked the system is, as long as we have the polar oposites in congress and capitol hill fighting one another for power, things sit pretty tight where they are.
And of course, is something ever actually does get passed into law than the ACLU can run around screaming like a banchee about how somebody's civil rights are being violated, and take it to the supreme court, and get it all reversed anyway. We are lucky enough to live in a country of political stagnation and where speed and efficieny would truly be the end of us all.