Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are [Archive]

dreadgeek

11-02-2011, 01:26 PM

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 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/justice-inequality-and-the-99-percent/2011/11/02/gIQAcmtdfM_story.html) in today's WaPo by Matt Miller.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-02-2011, 01:41 PM

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.

Gráinne

11-02-2011, 03:24 PM

Apocalipstic

11-02-2011, 03:36 PM

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.

Apocalipstic

11-02-2011, 03:53 PM

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

dreadgeek

11-02-2011, 03:54 PM

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".

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

betenoire

11-02-2011, 04:14 PM

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".

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.

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.

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.

Gráinne

11-02-2011, 04:15 PM

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.

Gráinne

11-02-2011, 04:20 PM

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.

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.

Apocalipstic

11-02-2011, 04:23 PM

Apocalipstic

11-02-2011, 04:24 PM

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

Cin

11-02-2011, 04:46 PM

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.

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.

dreadgeek

11-02-2011, 06:27 PM

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.

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

dreadgeek

11-02-2011, 06:33 PM

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

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

SoNotHer

11-02-2011, 07:07 PM

Greyson

11-02-2011, 10:50 PM

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

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?

betenoire

11-03-2011, 12:23 AM

Maybe the unification of the Americas is the answer!

I'm not sure what that means?

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 08:55 AM

I'm not sure what that means?

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:

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 09:58 AM

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

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 10:00 AM

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.

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!

loremar

11-03-2011, 10:15 AM

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 10:21 AM

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! ;)

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

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 10:25 AM

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 10:27 AM

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?

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 11:06 AM

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?

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

SecretAgentMa'am

11-03-2011, 11:25 AM

betenoire

11-03-2011, 11:28 AM

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.

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.

Two, I think North and South America should be more united, possibly as a single entity.

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

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?

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.

SecretAgentMa'am

11-03-2011, 11:38 AM

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 11:40 AM

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).

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.

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.

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

betenoire

11-03-2011, 11:42 AM

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.

SecretAgentMa'am

11-03-2011, 11:48 AM

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.

betenoire

11-03-2011, 11:55 AM

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.

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.

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.

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

SoNotHer

11-03-2011, 12:03 PM

"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/reports/motivatedtorture/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/issues/pub/reversal-of-fortune

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-06-15/news/bs-ed-life-expectancy-20110615_1_life-expectancy-health-care-health-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? ;-)

AtLast

11-03-2011, 12:10 PM

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.

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!

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 12:16 PM

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?

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.

Cin

11-03-2011, 01:19 PM

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.

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 01:43 PM

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?

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 02:04 PM

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.

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.

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

[B]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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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*.

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.
[COLOR="DarkOliveGreen"][B]
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.

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.

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:

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.

[COLOR="DarkOliveGreen"][B]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?

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.

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.

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

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.

[COLOR="DarkOliveGreen"]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.

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.

[B]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?

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 02:11 PM

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.

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 02:12 PM

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.

Two words, British Empire.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 02:24 PM

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?

Cheers
Aj

I'm serious here too, while admitting we will probably continue to disagree on this subject...and thats OK :)

Let's say France had decided to name itself the United States of Europe and expected everyone to call them and only them "Europeans"?

It would be obnoxious? Yes?

To me, its the same situation, the continent was named America and the US decided to go with naming itself the United States of America and to expect everyone to call US citizens and only US citizens "American"...and for the excuse to be that it would be awkward not to.

To me? Obnoxious.

Cin

11-03-2011, 02:29 PM

I'm endlessly amazed whenever a person who is any sort of minority is in favor of this sort of system.

That's what people say about being conservative or republican.

Not that I think anarchy is the way to go. Just noticed the similar argument.

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 02:31 PM

It allllll sounds good on paper.

The answer is somewhere in the middle.

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 02:31 PM

I'm serious here too, while admitting we will probably continue to disagree on this subject...and thats OK :)

Let's say France had decided to name itself the United States of Europe and expected everyone to call them and only them "Europeans"?

It would be obnoxious? Yes?

To me, its the same situation, the continent was named America and the US decided to go with naming itself the United States of America and to expect everyone to call US citizens and only US citizens "American"...and for the excuse to be that it would be awkward not to.

To me? Obnoxious.

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be? And how do you propose we go about convincing large numbers of citizens that we *should* change the name of our country? How would you make that case?

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 02:35 PM

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be?

Cheers
Aj

I am not saying we change it, it seems way too late for that (and everyone already hates us)...I am saying we take a couple more seconds to say "US Citizens". :)

I am from the USA or US.

That is what I try to say :)

It would go a long way to mend fences.

SoNotHer

11-03-2011, 02:38 PM

I appreciate your comments and your perspective. And I think many would cheer the "glass half full" pov. I do not have time today to respond again. Unfortunately, I have something rather unpleasant and unavoidable to deal with right now. But suffice to say, counter claims can be made.

One specific point of order - yes, life expectancy is decreasing in the United States (where I live), but it has long been decreasing in other countries like Russia. And after the Fukushima Daiichi explosion, I would withhold any proclamation about life expectancy in Japan. The short and long-term effects of that melt-through are far greater than we know.

"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.

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

Cin

11-03-2011, 02:42 PM

Two words, British Empire.

Cheers
Aj

Sorry I don't see the connection. I don't see any continent named
Britain. Besides in my experience one just can't talk people out of their feelings. They are allowed to not like something. And some people from other parts of America don't like it that the people of the United States call themselves Americans and say they live in America and that people always want to come to America as though they had a monopoly on America and could just disregard the millions of people who live outside of the U.S. but also live in America.

Oh, I forgot this one. America love it or leave it.

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 02:43 PM

Cin

11-03-2011, 02:44 PM

Okay, so what would you suggest that the United States of America change it's name to? You've done the easy part, saying "this is wrong and should not be done" now, what about the hard part of "and this is how you make it right". I'll accept, for the moment, your argument and stipulate that the United States should change its name from the United States of America to something else. So what *should* that name be? And how do you propose we go about convincing large numbers of citizens that we *should* change the name of our country? How would you make that case?

Cheers
Aj

Maybe we could just keep our name and just stop being so myopically obnoxious.

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 02:45 PM

Maybe we could just keep our name and just stop being so myopically obnoxious.

Ohhhh, if only!

Cin

11-03-2011, 03:02 PM

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?

LOL. Everything IS about the U.S isn't it? Even though last I looked, despite their behavior, the United States doesn't actually own Latin America.

Strangely enough though when I mentioned it I was thinking about how it might actually effect Latin America itself. But I suppose when you live so close to a country that reminds one of a gigantically powerful 5 year old you do not want to do anything to piss them off too much. Still do you not think it would benefit Latin America to unite?

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 03:06 PM

LOL. Everything IS about the U.S isn't it? Even though last I looked, despite their behavior, the United States doesn't actually own Latin America.

Strangely enough though when I mentioned it I was thinking about how it might actually effect Latin America itself. But I suppose when you live so close to a country that reminds one of a gigantically powerful 5 year old you do not want to do anything to piss them off too much. Still do you not think it would benefit Latin America to unite?

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

Cin

11-03-2011, 03:08 PM

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 03:10 PM

Any thoughts on whyyy the rate of violence is going down in the US? I think it because abortion is legal. If the Repugs get their way and it becomes OK to deny people bortions and birth control, will violence return in pre 80's numbers per capita?

Actually, the reason is that the United States is simply following the trend, albeit slower, that has been going on in Western Europe since the Enlightenment. For certain cultural reasons (some of it having to do with the Westward expansion) the United States has held on to its reluctance to surrender the legitimate use of force to the government longer than other nations. The United States is the only major industrialized nation that seems to still believe in 'frontier' (read ad hoc) justice. In Canada and Western Europe people have accepted that if someone breaks in your house, you call the cops. You don't go hunting for them and you don't pull out your hand cannon and start blasting away. In the United States, non-trivial numbers of people still live 'as if' they are on the frontier where there might not *be* a sheriff. They believe this even *if* they live in a major metropolitan area.

While the overall trend is downward in the nation whose geographical center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W, we will still lag behind Western Europe probably for the rest of my life.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 03:13 PM

Actually, the reason is that the United States is simply following the trend, albeit slower, that has been going on in Western Europe since the Enlightenment. For certain cultural reasons (some of it having to do with the Westward expansion) the United States has held on to its reluctance to surrender the legitimate use of force to the government longer than other nations. The United States is the only major industrialized nation that seems to still believe in 'frontier' (read ad hoc) justice. In Canada and Western Europe people have accepted that if someone breaks in your house, you call the cops. You don't go hunting for them and you don't pull out your hand cannon and start blasting away. In the United States, non-trivial numbers of people still live 'as if' they are on the frontier where there might not *be* a sheriff. They believe this even *if* they live in a major metropolitan area.

While the overall trend is downward in the nation whose geographical center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W, we will still lag behind Western Europe probably for the rest of my life.

Cheers
Aj

I wonder of that has anything to do with who settled this country and the mentality passed down.

Very interesting! :) TU for the thread!

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 03:28 PM

I was thinking about Undocumented Workers and the wall and how the US acts already about its newest immigrants.

If the US had a united, organized force to the South, I doubt the US would behave well about it..which might not be in the interest of anyone...except maybe China and OPEC.

Actually, if I were the Chinese I would positively *encourage* the Latin American nations to unite. I would recognize them the minute they declared themselves a nation and I would be a gigantic, geopolitical Santa Claus, just *giving* this new Latin American nation all the military hardware they could ever possibly want in exchange for, say, some air bases in the northern most part of the newly created nations and perhaps docking rights for my navy. I would then spend the next decade or more, training the military of this new Latin American nation so that the Chinese and Latin American navies would be better integrated than NATO (which actually is pretty integrated).

The only fly in the ointment for that plan would probably be Russia because if I was Russia I would *absolutely* do that since that was, in fact, part of why Russia got involved in the region in the first place. As a strategic point it is just too, too, juicy a piece of low-hanging fruit for a world power interested in being able to block the United States from owning either the Pacific or Atlantic oceans or, for that matter, being able to even secure anything outside of its territorial waters. (If I were in a generous mood, I might let the United States navigate between the Pacific coast and Hawaii.) Then, when all my pieces were on the chessboard, I would make my move.
I would invade Taiwan and then *dare* the Americans to do something about it.

This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I think that the historical record bears it out. Nations will still continue to do 'Great Game' geopolitics, trying to set themselves up in the strategic catbird seat. Even IF the United States pulled within the *continental* borders (quitting both Hawaii and Alaska) Russia--which still has dreams of imperial greatness and China--which is playing a very long, subtle game that I doubt most Americans even realize the outer dimensions would continue to do geopolitics. They would continue to make strategic alliances that would benefit them militarily. The dream of the two major Asian powers (China and Japan) is to own the Western Pacific ocean. The dream of Russia is to own the North Atlantic. I'm not saying that the United States *should* do anything about it, it would be nice, however, if the people of the United States understood, however, that nations have strategic, geopolitical interests which they *will* pursue. Right now, we don't on either side. The Left seems to believe that nations simply don't *think* that way with the exception of the United States and the Right seems to think that the United States is the only nation that actually has any business *having* strategic interests.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 03:31 PM

Apocalipstic

11-03-2011, 03:47 PM

On that note, we agree.

I get stuck on my moral issues with geopolitical borders and warmongering. Too much of an idealist, but agree....

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 06:19 PM

I am not saying we change it, it seems way too late for that (and everyone already hates us)...I am saying we take a couple more seconds to say "US Citizens". :)

I am from the USA or US.

That is what I try to say :)

It would go a long way to mend fences.

Dare I ask how? I can understand "please, don't overthrow our governments, if you don't mind" or "if it's not too much trouble, you can give the mining of our harbors a miss" or "that's okay, you can keep your foreign aid" (although I bet people would be very upset if we cut the Latin American nations off) or even "look, he may be a kleptocratic son-of-a-bitch but he's *our* kleptocratic son-of-a-bitch, thank you very much". I can see how taking those sentiments into account would mend fences but not calling ourselves Americans? Are you saying that, for instance, a trade deal that might have led to more economic and cultural exchange between the US and Brazil would fail because the US delegates call themselves Americans but if they, again unlike every other people on the face of the Earth, made the extra linguistic effort to say, 'citizens of the United States' then the deal would go through? Are you going to suggest that citizens of 38 00 N, 97 00 W doing business in Brazil or Costa Rica would have an easier time of it if, instead of calling themselves Americans, they used, so that it is impossible to insult anyone, the circumlocution "I'm a 38Norther by 97 Wester"

Please help me understand precisely *how* not calling ourselves Americans would mend fences? "We can let the mining of the harbors go buy, since you call yourself a 38 Norther by 97 Wester." I mean, it would take some time to get used to the idea but calling ourselves by our longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates has the virtue of it being *impossible* to insult someone because there really is only *one* nation whose geographic center is 38 00 N, 97 00 W.

Cheers
Aj

SecretAgentMa'am

11-03-2011, 06:40 PM

Here's my issue:

People who are from the Democratic Republic of Congo are called Congolese, not Democratic Republicans or anything else.

People who are from the United Republic of Tanzania are called Tanzanian, not URians or Citizens of the United Republic.

People from the Central African Republic are called Central Africans, and no one seems to complain that they are claiming to be the only Africans or the only people from the central area of the continent.

People from the Federated States of Micronesia are Micronesian, not Federated Staters or Citizens of the Federated States.

So why is it that people who are from a country called the United States of America are obnoxious for calling ourselves Americans? People of every single country on the planet call themselves by a name that comes from the name of the country and differentiates them from citizens of other countries. Why are we different? Why are Americans not allowed to call ourselves Americans without being accused of being obnoxious? Why are we obnoxious and no one else is? It seems to me very much like blaming a child because you don't like the name their parents chose for them, and demanding that they call themselves something else to suit you.

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 06:45 PM

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.

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

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

The 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.

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

That's what people say about being conservative or republican.

Not that I think anarchy is the way to go. Just noticed the similar argument.

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

Cheers
Aj

Corkey

11-03-2011, 07:00 PM

I don't get it, if I'm not an American than what am I? There are so many descriptors of what an American is that I don't see how my being one is any different that some one from Latin America. We're still Americans. Personally I'm from Turtle Island but thats another thread.

betenoire

11-03-2011, 07:14 PM

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

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

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 07:34 PM

betenoire

11-03-2011, 07:38 PM

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

cheers
Aj

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

But still - how many continents are there these days?

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 08:04 PM

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

But still - how many continents are there these days?

Same number, seven.

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

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

Cheers
Aj

Softhearted

11-03-2011, 08:19 PM

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

betenoire

11-03-2011, 08:32 PM

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

Cheers
Aj

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

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

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

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

betenoire

11-03-2011, 08:47 PM

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

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

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

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

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 09:26 PM

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

11-03-2011, 09:32 PM

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

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

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

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

Cheers
Aj

betenoire

11-03-2011, 09:45 PM

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

People suck.

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

Cheers
Aj

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

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

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

Artdecogoddess

11-03-2011, 10:19 PM

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

Cheers
Aj

Aj,
Hello - I snipped the above quote out. I lived in Maine in 2006. There was a ballot initative to include LGBT folks in civil rights protections for housing, education, accomidations and banking. This ballot initiative passed. It took literally 20 years of work - and it was denied at least 2x, but it passed in the end via a ballot. I think its super important to include the few times LGBT folks and allies have succeeded in winning protections.

ADG

ruffryder

11-03-2011, 11:32 PM

SoNotHer

11-04-2011, 12:32 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 07:01 AM

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

I wouldn't say Russia and Germany are experiencing the most peace since the height of the Roman Empire.. If anything it's under raps. Considering history repeats itself, Nazism is still ongoing and growing again.

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

All the support for Syria and all I have to say is Al Qaeda.

I don't follow you here.

If all the latin countries united together, the citizens would all battle and kill each other.

Probably so.

Let's not forget the Indigenous Australians, the Aborigines. They are thinking of adding them as a whole new race. They are some of the first inhabitants according to some. Whether they are in the U.S. Or Australia or wherever, add them to the melting pot. What do you do with them now?

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

Violence is down in the U.S. Could it be because all the fighting is in other countries where our military is deployed?

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

And what is considered violence?

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

It could have different meanings to different people.

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

If American spies are found or a U.S. Citizen kills someone in another country, more than likely they get death right then and there, no questions asked.

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

If an immigrant or even an alien comes to the U.S., breaks the law or murders an American on American soil, they get thrown in prison or sent back to their country.

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

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

Yes, and it always will.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers
Aj

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 08:07 AM

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

Oh brother..

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

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

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

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 08:23 AM

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

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 08:31 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 08:33 AM

betenoire

11-04-2011, 08:37 AM

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 08:42 AM

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 08:42 AM

Trafficking of children and women does happen in the US today, no doubt.

But, you know. To compare actual legal slavery which did happen in the US (out in the open, legally, socially acceptable, ENCOURAGED, in gigantic numbers - if I remember correctly there were over 4 MILLION owned slaves in the US at the time slavery was abolished) to modern-day sex trafficking in the US (which is hidden, illegal, and there are several actual task forces in your country devoted to finding and freeing these women and children) is just kind of....wow.

I mean, the biggest evidence of change in human nature is the fact that what was considered normal and okay then is not considered normal and okay now. You can't deny that.

I do agree that crucifying people along the freeway is frowned upon these days. Agree 100%.

However, there here and now is what matters. International slavery is a huge problem and one we try our best to sweep under the rug and ignore because in our eyes its not as bad as it used to be. In my book its worse. Why? We know better now.

We still are OK with war and torture and political killings and secret prisons and thats just the US government.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 08:44 AM

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Yes.

What is happening today.

Becasue what is happening right now is the only thing we can do anything about!

betenoire

11-04-2011, 08:53 AM

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Are you intentionally misreading me?

The point is: there has been progress. What was once perfectly okay, legal, encouraged is now the sort of thing that your government spends hundreds of millions of dollars to try to stop. That's progress. That's evidence of a shift in what "normal" means. That's evidence that the people we were 200 years ago are not the people we are today.

The point is not: Brandy clearly thinks that sex trafficking is no big deal and that only one kind of slavery counts.

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 08:55 AM

Yes.

What is happening today.

Becasue what is happening right now is the only thing we can do anything about!

AND continued to get swept under the rug, not to mention sweat shops, farm work, sex rings, hotel workers, so on and so on mostly women being enslaved everyday.

I really don't see progress just because the Government has a special task force, I don't see this progress when I see Latinos picking lettuce for 125 bucks a day.

That's what I read that just because "America" has a law we're more civilized cause I don't see it this way as a woman who continues to see, help, and scream for those who haven't felt this change.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 08:55 AM

I think in some areas there has been progress in others not.

I will get it in my head that we value human life more than we did 100 years ago...and then I turn on the news.

SoNotHer

11-04-2011, 09:02 AM

If you took all of the money spent on every sporting event across the world in one year, that number would be still subsumed by the amount of money spent on pornography. And yes, there is a correlation to pornography and trafficking.

I have worked in this issue trying to affect change, and what I have too often found is everything from ignorance to denial to laughter about the "world's oldest profession" and complacency and complicity from the street to the highest levels. And the beat goes on, and women, men and children are marketed and sold for sex. So I sit up and pay attention when someone actually writes passionately about this issue and posts statistics because that's all too rare. Human trafficking will not change until we all become passionately involved in ensuring justice and force that complacency and complicity out into the light.

And to the other point - people have a right to call themselves whatever they wish, and if a continent has the word "America" in its name, why wouldn't it take umbrage if another continent, or country, lays sole claim to the word?

Both seem pretty clear to me.

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

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 09:09 AM

I may have fucked up by saying stuff cause I'm not as good with academic wording and I don't have your educations but I'm a Mexican woman living here in America as a non citizen, I have my past history on these issues to and continue to see my kin, people shit on and continue to be over worked under payed and sometimes killed. I'm ok with using my voice even if it's a voice from someone who didn't even finish highschool. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:13 AM

Cin

11-04-2011, 09:13 AM

Are you intentionally misreading me?

I don’t think anyone is purposely misunderstanding what is said here anymore than anyone purposely misunderstood when it was being said that people in the U.S. should take the time to consider what it sounds like to other people from other countries who also live in America when we say things like “This is America love it or leave it” and instead understood what was being said, despite explanations to the contrary, that the United States should change its name, perhaps even use its longitude and latitude address.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:19 AM

I totally get that looking at things differently is difficult. Change is difficult.

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 09:21 AM

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Wait, are people *really* going to put the *illegal* kidnapping of girls and the *illegal* selling of same in the same category as legalized slavery and then say that slavery is still LEGAL in the United States? Is that actually the argument you are making here, Snow? Because that sounds *precisely* what you are saying and I am absolutely stunned that any person intelligent or educated person--and I assume everyone here is both--actually thinks that legalized slavery and illegal sex trafficking are the same things. By this logic, the prisons are filled with people who should not be in prison because murder is still legal.

Here's the argument that is being made:

Me: Slavery is illegal throughout the Western world and also in most other nations (I think there's one or two laggards.

Others: Slavery is still practiced in the United State because sex trafficking happens *therefore* slavery is still legal in the United States.

Here's that logic applied to people in prison for murder:

Murder still happens. What happens is legal. THEREFORE, murder is still legal. By that argument--and not a single one of you can argue that this is not a logical consequence of your statements--we should free every single rapist and murderer held in prisons world wide because until rape doesn't happen, rape is legal. Until murder doesn't happen, murder is *legal*.

So let me challenge all of you arguing that slavery is still *legal* in the United States.

1) Find me a historically valid account of a slave ship captain being arrested for transporting slaves out of Africa. Not a slave ship captain who was arrested for some other crime, but for the actual act of taking captured slaves from Africa to America.

2) Find me a historically valid account of a slave taker who was charged with the crime of kidnapping for capturing blacks in Africa and selling them to the slave ship captain.

3) Find me a historically valid account of a slave owner who was prosecuted for EITHER murdering one of his own slaves OR for raping one of his own slaves.

4) Find me a state in the United States that still enforces slave return laws.

5) Find me a state in the United States where blacks can be summarily executed for learning to read or teaching others to do the same. Please provide the last known date, after 1865, that a black person was legally executed for the 'crime' of learning to read.

6) Find me a state in the United States where it is *legal* to own a person such that if that person is a woman, and that woman has a child, the person who owns the woman also *automatically* owns the child. Here, ownership means "that which you can dispose of as you please". If I wanted to, I could take a sledgehammer to my Audi and destroy it and as long as I did it on my property and disposed of the waste properly, there's not a damn thing anyone could *legally* do to stop me. IF slavery is still legal in the United States then one of you should be able to provide me with an example, within the living memory of at least one person on this board (so, within, say, 60 - 70 years) where someone was born in this nation, the child was immediately sold--at a profit--to another person and became that person's property such that they could *sell* that person to another human being. The example needs to be such that if our hypothetical person were to run away, they would have committed a crime. If someone aided them in running away they would have committed a tort OR a crime or both. Bonus points if you can, in your example, provide the trial transcripts of the fugitive slave.

Once again, the statement I made was NOT that there was no sexual slavery in the United States or any other nation. I said that throughout the world slavery is now illegal. It is most definitely illegal in the United States. A couple of people have now stated that slavery is still legal in the United States because of the presence of sexual slavery. The burden of proof is now squarely on your heads to provide a specific example where legalized, chattel slavery is being practiced in the United States and backed up by the force of the state.

If you cannot provide those examples (and I'm this side of certain you can't) please explain the logic where the presence of sexual slavery in the United States means that slavery is legal and explain why people here are not screaming to have *actual* murderers and rapists released since the logic being deployed leads to the conclusion that murder and rape are also legal and should not be punished since their practice means they are legal. Thank you.

Cheers
Aj

SoNotHer

11-04-2011, 09:21 AM

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:23 AM

Did Snow say Slavery was legal in the US?

If the point is we can do better, then let's.

The_Lady_Snow

11-04-2011, 09:33 AM

Aj I'm pretty sure that's not what *I* said, I should have pointed out more clearly that slavery exists, illegal but you sure the hell wouldn't know it from the numbers, the women and kids left behind.. (SuperBowl Sunday a fine example)

If you're idea of this new world is going to work we gotta look at allllll the ugly I think that may be where I went wrong.

*shrugs*

weatherboi

11-04-2011, 09:34 AM

I was under the impression She was arguing that it exsists...not that it is legal. I have read no where that She stated it was legal slavery.

Human trafficking is considered a modern day 21st century form of slavery...what is wrong with stating that opinion??

I don't think anybody here is negating that illegal slavery is different from 21st century slavery...what i see is people trying to make light this present days form of slavery.

I will say it seems to me that people do value other peoples pasts and histories in some sort of hierarchy form and fashion. This comes off as valuing one kind of slavery/oppression over the other.

Julie

11-04-2011, 09:35 AM

In history, there is *perhaps* not a single civilization which did not experience some type of slavery.
Even European Christians experienced slavery by Muslim Masters and during the Roman Empire - Or so, that is what history (tainted or not) tell us.

I come from a long history of slavery. My people have been enslaved for close to 6,000 years and most recently ending when Hitler lost his reign. Does this make me the oldest descendant of slaves? Perhaps -- BUT, we certainly do not know this to be true. We do not know the history of the other lands during this time and certainly not thousands of years before.

What about the enslavement of the Maya and Inca tribes (and the other indigenous tribes of nations)? How do we look through time and not imagine the civilizations being built hundreds and thousands of years ago - even notably in Egypt? Do we dare say, these great structures were built by the hands of willing men and women? I would be foolish to think not.

And today, while The United States and many other countries are fighting the war on Human Trafficking - this is still happening today. Not only in the USA, but in a bountiful of other nations. Women and Children are sold as sex slaves, workers and traffickers of drugs. Not by their own choice - but by the hand of masters who enslave and own them. Legal or NOT - you cannot dissect the word "Slavery," and make it work for one people and not another.

In some form or another - Most of us did not originate from the America's - Some of us were forced here as slaves and some of us came to escape slavery in our homelands. There are VERY FEW pure white people on this land, except perhaps the White Christian Europeans who landed here, only to take the land from the Indigenous people of this land.

I am Julie and I am the direct descendant of a very strong people. My people have survived thousands of years of slavery and slaughter - As have many of the people here. African and Latin Descent and Many others -- Even as stated above, those European White Christians, who later enslaved many of us.

Can we be ANGRY at the United States for even allowing the African slave trade? Damn right. It shames me beyond belief that this country in which I was born was so self-righteous and entitled. I am sure those in other countries feel the same shame as I do.

Julie

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:39 AM

Snow, you have not gone wrong. What you are saying is true and you have incredible insight on this subject.

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 09:42 AM

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

Ummm, so may I ask why it is I am not enslaved since only the last few generations of my family have been free? I'm rather mystified by this. YOUR words are that the world is NOT a better place. I agree that there are no good old days when the world was safe. THESE are the good old days and I'm absolutely shocked that so many intelligent people draw no distinction between legal, sanctioned, open behavior and illegal, prohibited, hidden behavior.

So according to you, Snow, and Miss Tick the fact that slavery happens *anywhere* means that slavery is *legal* in the United States and Western Europe. Because that is the point of contention. I did not say that slavery was gone from the face of the Earth. I said that slavery was *illegal* in almost every single country. At least four people on this thread have now made this connection and not one of you have, as yet, offered an explanation for how you get to that conclusion. Again, if I had said that slavery was everywhere gone from the United States you could take me to task for not seeing sexual slavery but I didn't say that. I went back and checked to make certain I didn't say that and I didn't. I was talking about legality. So now, since we are having an argument that slavery anywhere means slavery is legal *everywhere* (or if not everywhere at least in the United States) then I think the burden of proof is on those of you making this argument to demonstrate that slavery is LEGAL--the key phrase here is LEGAL.

Again, the chain of logic looks like this:

Slavery is still practiced in the world-->The United States had slavery--->THEREFORE slavery is legal in the United States-->THEREFORE the United States still has slaves being held legally.

The substrate logic is this:

If X happens then X is legal and socially sanctioned. Because if that's not the argument being made then this whole thing is some kind of very strange derail. Since your logic is sexual slavery is still taking place, therefore chattel slavery is still legal in the United States you *must* be using the construction "that which is done is legal, regardless of what the law might say". So, since slavery is legal in the USA because sexual slavery happens *anywhere*, then murder must *also* be legal in the United States. So explain to me why you are not advocating for all convicted murderers and rapists to go free since the mere fact that someone goes out and murders means that it is both *legal* and *socially sanctioned*. If it applies to slavery (and if it doesn't what are you arguing) then it must also apply to rape, theft and murder. Since it manifestly does not, why the one and not the others?

As a rule, liberal democracies do not put people in prison for actions that are legal. If liberal democracies are putting murderers in prison but murder is illegal because people commit murder, then murder is not a *crime* and since we do not put people in prison if they have not been convicted of a *crime* every single murderer is being held illegally because their actions were neither illegal or socially proscribed.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:50 AM

Ummm, so may I ask why it is I am not enslaved since only the last few generations of my family have been free? I'm rather mystified by this. YOUR words are that the world is NOT a better place. I agree that there are no good old days when the world was safe. THESE are the good old days and I'm absolutely shocked that so many intelligent people draw no distinction between legal, sanctioned, open behavior and illegal, prohibited, hidden behavior.

So according to you, Snow, and Miss Tick the fact that slavery happens *anywhere* means that slavery is *legal* in the United States and Western Europe. Because that is the point of contention. I did not say that slavery was gone from the face of the Earth. I said that slavery was *illegal* in almost every single country. At least four people on this thread have now made this connection and not one of you have, as yet, offered an explanation for how you get to that conclusion. Again, if I had said that slavery was everywhere gone from the United States you could take me to task for not seeing sexual slavery but I didn't say that. I went back and checked to make certain I didn't say that and I didn't. I was talking about legality. So now, since we are having an argument that slavery anywhere means slavery is legal *everywhere* (or if not everywhere at least in the United States) then I think the burden of proof is on those of you making this argument to demonstrate that slavery is LEGAL--the key phrase here is LEGAL.

Again, the chain of logic looks like this:

Slavery is still practiced in the world-->The United States had slavery--->THEREFORE slavery is legal in the United States-->THEREFORE the United States still has slaves being held legally.

The substrate logic is this:

If X happens then X is legal and socially sanctioned. Because if that's not the argument being made then this whole thing is some kind of very strange derail. Since your logic is sexual slavery is still taking place, therefore chattel slavery is still legal in the United States you *must* be using the construction "that which is done is legal, regardless of what the law might say". So, since slavery is legal in the USA because sexual slavery happens *anywhere*, then murder must *also* be legal in the United States. So explain to me why you are not advocating for all convicted murderers and rapists to go free since the mere fact that someone goes out and murders means that it is both *legal* and *socially sanctioned*. If it applies to slavery (and if it doesn't what are you arguing) then it must also apply to rape, theft and murder. Since it manifestly does not, why the one and not the others?

As a rule, liberal democracies do not put people in prison for actions that are legal. If liberal democracies are putting murderers in prison but murder is illegal because people commit murder, then murder is not a *crime* and since we do not put people in prison if they have not been convicted of a *crime* every single murderer is being held illegally because their actions were neither illegal or socially proscribed.

Cheers
Aj

I never said it was legal. I get that slavery is a touchy subject, but we never said it was legal.

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 09:53 AM

We all have different paths, and we all have different voices. And if your voice or any other voice wasn't welcome here, then the thread should not be called "Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are."

You have a right to speak, and I appreciate what you have written.

No one has said that anyone can't speak here. Good god. However, I'm not going to just sit here and let people take my statement and then run it three times around the barn so they can, once again, inflate the United States into the most evil nation ever to plague the Earth.

Again, my ancestors came here as *property* not *people*. If one of my ancestors ran away and was caught if they were *lucky* they would be maimed. The law did not protect them. Their children could be sold--not taken from them because of abuse but "I lost a boatload of cash at the poker table, I'll sell a couple of slaves to raise the money". You, Snow, Apoc, are all arguing that this system is still legal in this nation because in another nation women and girls are being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The argument, again, is NOT about whether it still exists, it is whether it is legal and socially sanctioned and to what degree that is true. Y'all are saying it is based upon the evidence of sexual slavery and sex trafficking. I say it is not legal or socially sanctioned because someone who kidnaps a woman in the United States has to fear being caught by the police and tried and imprisoned if caught. You are saying that kidnappers do not fear this because grabbing young women off the streets in the United States is perfectly legal because it happens. The kidnapper then sells the kidnapped to some other piece of walking scum. You are saying that the person who bought the woman has nothing to fear because holding her against her will is perfectly legal. The pimp then turns the woman out as a sexual slave. You are arguing that, once again, the pimp has nothing to fear either from having the woman as a prostitute or holding her against her will. The basis of this argument? The fact that sexual slavery is happening means that in the United States of America a man who kidnaps, sells, holds against her will and prostitutes a woman has nothing to fear from the law because these actiosn are legal. This is the argument being advanced. I would like someone making this argument to explain upon what evidence they base this belief that slavery is *legal* in the United States of America.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:54 AM

OK, so in moving forward.

Can we help make things better?

Do we really even want to if it means changing our minds?

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:56 AM

Cin

11-04-2011, 09:56 AM

So according to you, Snow, and Miss Tick the fact that slavery happens *anywhere* means that slavery is *legal* in the United States and Western Europe. Because that is the point of contention. I did not say that slavery was gone from the face of the Earth. I said that slavery was *illegal* in almost every single country.

I think people got it from when ruffryder said:
"The world and the U.S. still has slavery."

And you said;
"Okay, here you have gone way too far, ruffryder"

I guess we don't think he went way too far.

betenoire

11-04-2011, 10:04 AM

I think people got it from when ruffryder said:
"The world and the U.S. still has slavery."

And you said;
"Okay, here you have gone way too far, ruffryder"

I guess we don't think he went way too far.

But the point is that degree matters. The whole point that I was making (since I'm not willing to speak for Aj what with her being a grown woman and all) was that the fact that what was once legal is now illegal IS EVIDENCE that the world is a changing place.

It just seems to me that people are tackling this with an "all or nothing" approach. Like some people seem to believe that the only signifier of progress or improvement is if ALL evil is drained from the world. Like maybe some people here believe that nothing has changed until everything is ALL better.

But degree does matter.

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 10:07 AM

I never said it was legal. I get that slavery is a touchy subject, but we never said it was legal.

Then what are you arguing about, Apoc? Here's how this started from my perspective:

Me: Slavery is now illegal in just about every nation.
Ruffryder: Slavery still exists in the United States
Me: That may be the case but slavery is still *illegal*.
You and Snow: Yes, slavery still exists in the United States.
Me: Yes, but it is still *illegal* in every Western nation and most every other nation on the planet.
Chorus: But sexual slavery still exists!
Me: That is the case but I did not make an argument that slavery was non-existent, I made an argument that slavery was *illegal*. The existence of slavery may be legal, but for slavery to exist it need not be legal.
Chorus: Sexual slavery still exists!
Me: but it's not LEGAL!

Now, it is perfectly reasonable, given the opening premise that slavery is illegal for me to interpret the arguments of you, roughryder, et. al. as being that if slavery exists anywhere then slavery is still *legal* therefore nothing has changed. Because I wasn't saying a damn thing about whether or not sexual slavery exists--I'm nowhere near stupid enough to entertain that possibility. From my perspective, the illegality of slavery in the vast majority of nations is a *vast* improvement over human history. The argument y'all seem to be making is that it either isn't an improvement or it's still legal for no OTHER reason than that sexual slavery still exists.

I'm sorry Apoc, you know I have a great deal of respect for all of you but either I can't read, someone decided to derail the thread, or y'all are saying that because sexual slavery still exists nothing has changed vis a vis slavery even though it was perfectly legal throughout the world until the 19th century and now is illegal pretty much everywhere.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 10:15 AM

I think people got it from when ruffryder said:
"The world and the U.S. still has slavery."

And you said;
"Okay, here you have gone way too far, ruffryder"

I guess we don't think he went way too far.

Okay, so let's work on some definitions. When *I* use the term slavery, at least vis a vis the United States I mean this:

the LEGAL system where people of group X were forcibly removed from their homes, put on ships, brought to another country, and held in a lifetime of servitude which was--and this is the important bit--sanctioned by both law and society. So when roughryder said "the world and the U.S. still has slavery" what was being said--given the definition above--is "the United States still has LEGALIZED slavery". Legalized, Miss Tick. Anything outside of that definition may be slavery but it is not *legal* slavery. The society is not set up to *preserve* slavery. I was talking--and I thought I had made myself clear that this was what I was talking about--the system of chattel slavery that existed in the United States from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Roughryder was saying that this system still exists.

Every single one of you arguing that slavery still exists in the United States is saying "legalized slavery in the USA is still in force and the society still is arranged by both law and custom to maintain that system". I never said that illegal slavery was gone, I was talking about the legal system of slavery.

The fact of sexual slavery in the world is something we should all be concerned about but it is *ancillary* to the point I was making. Yet, people are arguing this ancillary point and since I was talking about legality, not existence, and since I see the fact that a system that plagued humanity since *at least* the time of agriculture (so 12000 years) became ubiquitously illegal over 99% of the globe is an improvement. That is the point I was making. That is the point that you, roughryder, Apoc and Snow all disagree with.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 10:22 AM

Trafficking of children and women does happen in the US today, no doubt.

But, you know. To compare actual legal slavery which did happen in the US (out in the open, legally, socially acceptable, ENCOURAGED, in gigantic numbers - if I remember correctly there were over 4 MILLION owned slaves in the US at the time slavery was abolished) to modern-day sex trafficking in the US (which is hidden, illegal, and there are several actual task forces in your country devoted to finding and freeing these women and children) is just kind of....wow.

I mean, the biggest evidence of change in human nature is the fact that what was considered normal and okay then is not considered normal and okay now. You can't deny that.

Unfortunately, people can and people do deny it. This morning's derail is proof that they do not see this as a *vast* improvement.

Cheers
Aj

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 10:36 AM

[FONT="Arial Narrow"]
[SIZE="3"]So why present theories on justice and describe systems of thought that tilt towards Utopian design?

Because a Rawlsian conception of justice isn't utopian. Not even by half. Here's why:

Firstly, the original position/veil of ignorance thought experiment is not practical it is simply a thought experiment to get us to the two principles that self-interested, rational agents would choose if they were able to and knew *nothing* about where they would land in the social hierarchy. However, you'll note there *is* a social hierarchy.

So, rational actors, operating with full knowledge of their current social position would behave as follows. I'm a black woman so whatever rules we're going to make in our new society, I'm going to ensure that me and mine are advantaged. If that disadvantages white men, so be it. If I'm rich I'm going to make sure that what I do advantages, or at least doesn't hurt, the rich etc. But what if I don't *know* whether I will be rich or poor, the racial majority or minority, male or female, etc. Would I willingly agree to a system of social principles that would cause me harm? No. Would you? No.

But notice here that Rawls *presumes* social hierarchies. Built into the thought experiment is this assumption: I'm a doctor and my best friend is a lawyer. We're both well off and have kids who are just finishing post-grad work. My daughter is becoming a lawyer and her daughter is becoming a doctor Knowing this, over drinks, I arrange for her child to interview at my practice (where she will be hired) and she arranges for my child to interview at her law firm (where she will hired). Now, does the poor child who worked hard and got into law school have that advantage? No. Rawls *assumes* this will not change and nothing can be done so it *can* change. However, we *might* be able to put in social structures that *mimic* the advantages the poor kid does not have.

This is why it is not utopian. A utopian premise would be either there would be no rich and no poor (completely egalitarian) or that even IF there are rich and poor there will be no benefit to being rich (no connections). Rawlsians assume that there will be rich and they will be connected. Rawlsians assume that there will be majority populations and minority populations and that minority populations may be subject to discrimination, etc. So the Rawlsian tries to figure out how to balance the scales in as light-handed a way as possible. Utopians assume human nature can be changed, Rawlsians assume it can't but that society can be rigged in such a way that any inequalities benefit those who have the *least* and not the *most*.

Our current society is rigged to bring the greatest benefit to the most well off and the least benefit to the least well off. Rawlsians want to reverse that but at no point do we maintain the illusion that there will be a society where there won't *be* people who are better off than others, just that we can tip the scales so that least well-off aren't stuck in utterly hopeless positions relative to the most well-off. That's not utopian at all.

Cheers
Aj

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

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

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

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

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 11:23 AM

Then what are you arguing about, Apoc? Here's how this started from my perspective:

Me: Slavery is now illegal in just about every nation.
Ruffryder: Slavery still exists in the United States
Me: That may be the case but slavery is still *illegal*.
You and Snow: Yes, slavery still exists in the United States.
Me: Yes, but it is still *illegal* in every Western nation and most every other nation on the planet.
Chorus: But sexual slavery still exists!
Me: That is the case but I did not make an argument that slavery was non-existent, I made an argument that slavery was *illegal*. The existence of slavery may be legal, but for slavery to exist it need not be legal.
Chorus: Sexual slavery still exists!
Me: but it's not LEGAL!

Now, it is perfectly reasonable, given the opening premise that slavery is illegal for me to interpret the arguments of you, roughryder, et. al. as being that if slavery exists anywhere then slavery is still *legal* therefore nothing has changed. Because I wasn't saying a damn thing about whether or not sexual slavery exists--I'm nowhere near stupid enough to entertain that possibility. From my perspective, the illegality of slavery in the vast majority of nations is a *vast* improvement over human history. The argument y'all seem to be making is that it either isn't an improvement or it's still legal for no OTHER reason than that sexual slavery still exists.

I'm sorry Apoc, you know I have a great deal of respect for all of you but either I can't read, someone decided to derail the thread, or y'all are saying that because sexual slavery still exists nothing has changed vis a vis slavery even though it was perfectly legal throughout the world until the 19th century and now is illegal pretty much everywhere.

Cheers
Aj

OK, so we misunderstood each other. I agree that slavery (as it existed earlier in US history) is no longer legal in the US nor in most places in the world and this is a vast improvement over government sanctioned slave trade.

I don't think it is a derail however, in a thread about to justice, to point out that slavery does exist worldwide and is not given enough attention. It preys on the weakest among us and should be taken very seriously.

Because the slave trade today is subrosa, it almost makes it more difficult to go after. Denial and all.

I don't want this to be about who is suffering more or who has suffered more, but the US in effect does have legally sanctioned "workers" and "political prisoners" in our country and overseas than in my mind are slaves of the US gvt. I dream of a US and world that is better than this. I think justice demands it.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 11:49 AM

dreadgeek

11-04-2011, 12:22 PM

What I really do want to argue about is the comment about Latin American countries killing each other if they united.

I kind of need a logical explanation on how that was OK for Ruffrider to even say, much less for AJ to agree with.

Its sitting on my heart and I hope I am misunderstanding what y'all mean by this.

What I meant by this is that if the Latin American nations were to attempt to unite and one nation were a hold out, then the Latin American nations that *were* in on unification would do what any other group of nations, surrounded by a nation that was standing in their way would do--they would invade that nation, conquer it and create a Pax Latin Americana. I'm not saying--nor would I say--that Latin Americans are violent who will slaughter each other if the sun rises. I'm saying that the people living in Latin America are, for better or worse, the same species living in Western Africa and Asia and North America etc. If Canada *ever* got it into its head that there was some compelling reason to conquer the United States and if they could get enough nations to go along with it, Canada would invade and conquer the United States in a heart beat. Does that mean that I think Canadians are violent? No! It means I think that Canada, as a nation, will do what it perceives to be in its strategic interest. Right now, it pleases Canada to be about as dovish a nation can be. At present there is no reason to believe that this will change. However, if there ever *is* a reason for it to change it *will* change because that is how nations--ALL nations behave.

My agreement with roughryder was merely the acknowledgement that border disputes *happen*. Despite the image that people seem to have that only Europe and the United States are uniquely territorial and war-like that is not the case. At present Venezuela is providing aid to rebels in Colombia. They are doing so because it is either in their strategic interest to do so or it is in their ideological interest to do so or both. I'm not--let me be clear--NOT--saying that Venezuelans are a uniquely violent people nor am I saying that Colombians are a uniquely violent people. I am saying that there is internal strife *inside* Colombia. For reasons known to the Venezuelan chain of command they are providing material aid, technical assistance, troops on the ground or all three to those rebels. Chances are, the Venezuelans are doing so because they perceive it in their interest to do so.

Should the day come that Brazil should decide that a Pax Brazilia is in their national interest they will take whatever steps to conquer or otherwise influence the nations of South America to do their bidding. Those that refuse will be subjugated if the Brazilians can get away with it.

ALL of that can be true without making ANY comment about the relative levels of violence of Brazilians specifically, South Americans generally, or any other group other than two: human beings and that same species grouped together in a nation-state. If human beings can get what they want by trade instead of trade, they will do so. If they perceive that the only way they can get what they wish is through violence they will use violence. Nations behave the same way. As long as it is more profitable for Brazil to trade with Bolivia, that is what will happen. Should it become more profitable for Brazil to conquer Bolivia *that* is what will happen.

The whole idea behind mutual defense blocs (NATO, Warsaw pact, etc.) is to raise the stakes of attacking any member nation that signs on to the pact. If Brazil wants to conquer Bolivia and knows no one will come to the aid of the Bolivians, Brazil will conquer Bolivia. But what if Bolivia and Peru, Argentina and Venezuela have a mutual defense pact? Well now, what was an easy job of conquering one country suddenly becomes a much more difficult job of taking Chile while having to worry about your flanks. What was simply a strike to the Brazilians west suddenly becomes being vulnerable from attacks on their Northern and Southern flanks PLUS their coast. Well, now that's going to give the Brazilian high command a moment of pause. This logic--and it is logical--is why WW III never happened. If Russia *could* have invaded Western Europe, driven all the way to the English channel, rested and jumped the channel to take England without *ever* having to worry about the USA getting involved they would have done just that. They never even tried (although they trained for it) *because* they knew that the USA would get involved.

Again, all of that can be true without saying anything about the war-like tendencies of the Russian people.

So, again, my point is that if Latin American nations decided to create a Pax Latin Americana and there was a holdout, for whatever reason, the members of the coalition would simply do the easy thing and conquer the holdout if for no other reason than to not have non-contiguous borders. My comments were about geopolitics, not about race.

Cheers
Aj

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 12:28 PM

What I meant by this is that if the Latin American nations were to attempt to unite and one nation were a hold out, then the Latin American nations that *were* in on unification would do what any other group of nations, surrounded by a nation that was standing in their way would do--they would invade that nation, conquer it and create a Pax Latin Americana. I'm not saying--nor would I say--that Latin Americans are violent who will slaughter each other if the sun rises. I'm saying that the people living in Latin America are, for better or worse, the same species living in Western Africa and Asia and North America etc. If Canada *ever* got it into its head that there was some compelling reason to conquer the United States and if they could get enough nations to go along with it, Canada would invade and conquer the United States in a heart beat. Does that mean that I think Canadians are violent? No! It means I think that Canada, as a nation, will do what it perceives to be in its strategic interest. Right now, it pleases Canada to be about as dovish a nation can be. At present there is no reason to believe that this will change. However, if there ever *is* a reason for it to change it *will* change because that is how nations--ALL nations behave.

My agreement with roughryder was merely the acknowledgement that border disputes *happen*. Despite the image that people seem to have that only Europe and the United States are uniquely territorial and war-like that is not the case. At present Venezuela is providing aid to rebels in Colombia. They are doing so because it is either in their strategic interest to do so or it is in their ideological interest to do so or both. I'm not--let me be clear--NOT--saying that Venezuelans are a uniquely violent people nor am I saying that Colombians are a uniquely violent people. I am saying that there is internal strife *inside* Colombia. For reasons known to the Venezuelan chain of command they are providing material aid, technical assistance, troops on the ground or all three to those rebels. Chances are, the Venezuelans are doing so because they perceive it in their interest to do so.

Should the day come that Brazil should decide that a Pax Brazilia is in their national interest they will take whatever steps to conquer or otherwise influence the nations of South America to do their bidding. Those that refuse will be subjugated if the Brazilians can get away with it.

ALL of that can be true without making ANY comment about the relative levels of violence of Brazilians specifically, South Americans generally, or any other group other than two: human beings and that same species grouped together in a nation-state. If human beings can get what they want by trade instead of trade, they will do so. If they perceive that the only way they can get what they wish is through violence they will use violence. Nations behave the same way. As long as it is more profitable for Brazil to trade with Bolivia, that is what will happen. Should it become more profitable for Brazil to conquer Bolivia *that* is what will happen.

The whole idea behind mutual defense blocs (NATO, Warsaw pact, etc.) is to raise the stakes of attacking any member nation that signs on to the pact. If Brazil wants to conquer Bolivia and knows no one will come to the aid of the Bolivians, Brazil will conquer Bolivia. But what if Bolivia and Peru, Argentina and Venezuela have a mutual defense pact? Well now, what was an easy job of conquering one country suddenly becomes a much more difficult job of taking Chile while having to worry about your flanks. What was simply a strike to the Brazilians west suddenly becomes being vulnerable from attacks on their Northern and Southern flanks PLUS their coast. Well, now that's going to give the Brazilian high command a moment of pause. This logic--and it is logical--is why WW III never happened. If Russia *could* have invaded Western Europe, driven all the way to the English channel, rested and jumped the channel to take England without *ever* having to worry about the USA getting involved they would have done just that. They never even tried (although they trained for it) *because* they knew that the USA would get involved.

Again, all of that can be true without saying anything about the war-like tendencies of the Russian people.

So, again, my point is that if Latin American nations decided to create a Pax Latin Americana and there was a holdout, for whatever reason, the members of the coalition would simply do the easy thing and conquer the holdout if for no other reason than to not have non-contiguous borders. My comments were about geopolitics, not about race.

Cheers
Aj

Thank you for explaining what you meant AJ. I think its an important distinction.

Cin

11-04-2011, 01:34 PM

I don’t know exactly how to articulate my feelings around this. Perhaps because it is about feelings more than it is about facts. And that’s hard because with facts you always know where you stand. Either it’s a correct fact or it’s not. But for a good deal of this I don’t have facts. There aren’t any yet. It isn’t a fact that China is looking to assert itself in South America. It isn’t a fact that they aren’t. China may say that it isn’t interested in empire-building or intervening in the affairs of other countries but I doubt that can even be helped. As China emerges as a super power, the stakes will continue to change until imperialism is almost accidental or unintentional but rather unavoidable.

But I don’t think it is true that a unification of Latin America would either mean that the people of Latin America would end up killing themselves if one nation doesn’t want to join or that China and Japan (a dynamic duo that I think is still a long ways off) would unite to isolate the U.S. and own the Western Pacific ocean. Or that Russia will arise like a phoenix from the ashes and somehow find money to buy off a unified Latin America.

I also don’t believe countries should only be allowed to make decisions that are in the best interest of the United States. That would be nice for us. But hardly very fair.

I think we could handle a united Latin America. We might have to actually be a little nicer to them. In our dealings with other countries there is just something about the way we control things even while we supposedly set them free that is troubling. But I really am not going to get into a litany of wrongs that the U.S. and its corporations have done to the people, the natural resources and the environments of a variety of other countries. I will just take a moment to say that if I was a country surrounded by weaker nations that were geographically important to me I would have done everything in my power to make sure that the things I did to these nations were always in the their best interest so I could keep them as allies. It’s just good politics. At least I would imagine it is. It’s certainly how I try to treat my friends. I don’t take advantage of them, steal their stuff, dump my crap in their yard because the repercussions for me are nil, unlike if I dump in my own back yard nor do I interfere in their personal affairs.

This isn’t about South America but just our militaristic way of being in general. There is a choice. One can choose a militaristic stance right from the get go so as not to appear weak or whatever. Or one can choose to lay back a bit and watch which way the wind is blowing. I just think we need to start thinking economically rather than militaristically if we even want anything left to worry about defending. If we keep spending so much of our money on offense disguised as defense there may be little left to concern ourselves with. I wish we would stop sniffing around Iran. And China really has all it can handle right now worrying about its own people. They are certainly an economic power, and with that comes a certain degree of imperialism however, history so far has shown that China is not an imperialistic country.

And scare tactics just suck. Maybe it’s just realism to others but to me it’s scare tactics to talk about China and Japan uniting and owning the Western Pacific and Russia controlling the North Atlantic. It’s scare tactics to say the United States would end up isolated, cut off and unable to move anywhere but within territorial waters. It’s scare tactics to me because it opens people up to all sorts of possibilities that they are willing to do just to try and feel safe and secure. We have to protect ourselves from some threat or other to our freedom. And every time we start talking about threats to our freedom other people in other countries start to die. I’m not saying not to be aware of the possibilities but for too long now the rich have used our fears and fed them to the war machine and we have been at the mercy of a litany of fear that is transformed into violence, blood and death. And they make more and more money.

It also makes little sense to me that simply the unification of Latin America would cause China, Russia and Japan to make moves that would most likely cause world war. If they were interested in a war of that magnitude I can’t imagine that they need a united South America to do it. I don’t think it is a lack of unification that stops China from inching its way toward the Americas. And those little piss wars where poor countries are destroyed for fun and profit seem to always happen.

It’s like our policy is always shoot first and don’t bother asking questions later.

It reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell me when i was little. I think it is a kind of Portuguese proverb or some such. But I don’t think it loses much in the translation. There was this farmer whose plow broke and he needed to borrow one. So he started the 5 mile walk to his neighbor’s farm to ask to borrow his. All the way there the farmer kept remembering all the things he had done for his neighbor over the years. And he would think what if his neighbor refused to lend him the plow. He would say “But I gave you that axe when you needed it” and then he would remember “I lent you my wheel barrel more than once over the years” And on and on it went. When he finally reached his neighbors farm he knocked on the door. When his neighbor answered the farmer had worked himself into such a state that he screamed “keep your fucking plow you asshole”.

I don’t know I’m kind of all over the place. I have a hard time thinking in militaristic terms. It’s upsetting. I feel a bit sick. It doesn’t feel like justice and fairness we can do better than we are to me at all.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 01:45 PM

Cin

11-04-2011, 01:49 PM

I can't see China and Japan uniting either. Historically they have hated each other and Japan has acted pretty badly in regards to China...but I am not sure AJ meant that they would unite? Just that both would like control of the Pacific? But either way, I agree.

It has always made me feel a lot sick to think about the political chess games we engage in and how horrible the fall out seems to be eventually.

My dream is to see North and South America united, a very unpopular opinion in this thread. Lol.

I do think China and Japan will join forces. Not soon. But they will. I know the Chinese people really don't like the Japanese. Bad blood there. However they will push past it I believe. And the governments will do what governments do best regardless.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 01:50 PM

I do think China and Japan will join forces. Not soon. But they will.

Don't they hate each other? Really bad and of long standing good reason?

Oh and an add on from last post... Not all South America is poor. Not sure of you meant that, but if you did....

Cin

11-04-2011, 02:05 PM

Don't they hate each other? Really bad and of long standing good reason?

Oh and an add on from last post... Not all South America is poor. Not sure of you meant that, but if you did....

I wasn't talking about any country at all in particular. I was thinking about Afghanistan when I wrote it. And that whole post wasn't only about South America. I know i was all over the place and I'm sorry And that particular part was in reference to the wars that super powers engage in through other smaller and poorer countries. Usually little countries that of course have something of value.

I think the strategic advantage of China-Japan alliance will far outweigh their bad history.

SoNotHer

11-04-2011, 02:18 PM

Well this thread has gone down quite a road. I think Apocalipstic has the right idea in circling back to the beginning.

Keeping in mind that folks can be justified in feeling as they feel and thinking as they think, even if we do not share those feelings or thoughts, how do we move forward?

If we cannot come to some consensus about some basic ideas in thread of a dozen or so people, how exactly to we have justice, equality, harmony and sustainability in a world of seven billion?

OK, so in moving forward.

Can we help make things better?

Do we really even want to if it means changing our minds?

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 02:24 PM

SoNotHer

11-04-2011, 02:26 PM

Now that did make me laugh! :-) Yes, where's a "War of the Worlds" broadcast when you need one!

Get attacked by another planet?

ruffryder

11-04-2011, 08:32 PM

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

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

Cheers
Aj

Thrown in prison for committing murder.. I believe in the death penalty not someone riding out their life in prison getting to read and lift weights and have a life.

We don't agree on religion. That is the point. And we will never live in peace because of it.

ruffryder

11-04-2011, 08:39 PM

There will be a drug war if the latin countries got together. All of them will want to be the head honcho. You all are going to tell me there will not be? Look at El Paso Tx, Mexico border and look at Columbia. . not to mention Puerto Rico and Cuba. Drugs. I'm not being racist. I'm being realistic. Forget I said latin countries. That was brought up prior to my statement. I used it to make a point that no matter what countries you try and put together to live as one. There will be war.

ruffryder

11-04-2011, 09:00 PM

Wait, are people *really* going to put the *illegal* kidnapping of girls and the *illegal* selling of same in the same category as legalized slavery and then say that slavery is still LEGAL in the United States? Is that actually the argument you are making here, Snow? Because that sounds *precisely* what you are saying and I am absolutely stunned that any person intelligent or educated person--and I assume everyone here is both--actually thinks that legalized slavery and illegal sex trafficking are the same things. By this logic, the prisons are filled with people who should not be in prison because murder is still legal.

Here's the argument that is being made:

Me: Slavery is illegal throughout the Western world and also in most other nations (I think there's one or two laggards.

Others: Slavery is still practiced in the United State because sex trafficking happens *therefore* slavery is still legal in the United States.

Cheers
Aj

What I was saying with my comment about slavery is that it existed. I didn't know we were talking about legal or illegal one way or the other. It exists. Perhaps that was what snow was getting at too. I cannot speak for her.

As for things being legal and illegal, why bother? People do illegal shit all the time. It is legal for them in their mind to do illegal things till they get caught then it becomes illegal and they face whatever punishment is deemed for the crime committed.

ruffryder

11-04-2011, 09:22 PM

No one has said that anyone can't speak here. Good god. However, I'm not going to just sit here and let people take my statement and then run it three times around the barn so they can, once again, inflate the United States into the most evil nation ever to plague the Earth.

Again, my ancestors came here as *property* not *people*. If one of my ancestors ran away and was caught if they were *lucky* they would be maimed. The law did not protect them. Their children could be sold--not taken from them because of abuse but "I lost a boatload of cash at the poker table, I'll sell a couple of slaves to raise the money". You, Snow, Apoc, are all arguing that this system is still legal in this nation because in another nation women and girls are being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The argument, again, is NOT about whether it still exists, it is whether it is legal and socially sanctioned and to what degree that is true. Y'all are saying it is based upon the evidence of sexual slavery and sex trafficking. I say it is not legal or socially sanctioned because someone who kidnaps a woman in the United States has to fear being caught by the police and tried and imprisoned if caught. You are saying that kidnappers do not fear this because grabbing young women off the streets in the United States is perfectly legal because it happens. The kidnapper then sells the kidnapped to some other piece of walking scum. You are saying that the person who bought the woman has nothing to fear because holding her against her will is perfectly legal. The pimp then turns the woman out as a sexual slave. You are arguing that, once again, the pimp has nothing to fear either from having the woman as a prostitute or holding her against her will. The basis of this argument? The fact that sexual slavery is happening means that in the United States of America a man who kidnaps, sells, holds against her will and prostitutes a woman has nothing to fear from the law because these actiosn are legal. This is the argument being advanced. I would like someone making this argument to explain upon what evidence they base this belief that slavery is *legal* in the United States of America.

Cheers
Aj

With all due respect Aj, we have all said slavery is not legal. Those voicing their opinions and talking about slavery are talking about what does exist, "legal" in the past and "illegal" now. We are dissecting and talking about each point you made with your initial post and discussing why or why not we agree and what we think about it now in our civilization and why it will never be peaceful or never be a "perfect society." Does anyone think slavery could ever be legal again in the U.S? because I think it can! I won't get into specifics. Just look at Hitler. It takes someone or a military with his mindset to come in take over and guess what. . yeah. Aj if we sat there with your initial post, which we all basically agree with we wouldn't be having a conversation here. We are all taking certain points and expanding on them. That's all. Is that what we do in this thread or not? Or are you asking us specific questions or just wanting us to agree?

I would like to take the the issue of slavery one step further however and say it is illegal in the U.S. I will not agree that it is illegal however in all countries. When Middle Eastern countries allow thier men to torture, abuse, and kill their wives for whatever reason they may want, that to me is legal slavery.

Apocalipstic

11-04-2011, 09:32 PM

All the more reason for a unified North and South America. The war on drugs could be ended.

betenoire

11-04-2011, 09:42 PM

All the more reason for a unified North and South America. The war on drugs could be ended.

How would that end the war on drugs? You think the citizens of what is currently the US are going to suddenly not be obsessed with the drug trade? It'll never happen.

Here's what will happen if North and South America become one huge cumbersome impossible to travel from one end to the other because it's just too giant of a land mass to be reasonable as a country country: The US will bowl over the rest of us. They will not compromise. The rest of us will be absorbed into the US life and the US mission and the US whim. It's not like merging is going to make everybody more like Canada. Merging all of North and South America isn't going to get equal marriage rights for all - it'll probably LOSE the rights that we Canadians currently enjoy. You know why? Because the US has the most fire power and the most money. So they'll get whatever they want.

I'm not sure why anybody would wish that on the rest of us. If the US is as awful and obnoxious as everybody says it is (and, you know, there are a lot of things I don't like about the US and I very clearly prefer Canada times a zillion) why would you expect that they would play nice if the countries were to amalgamate? It'll never happen.

ruffryder

11-04-2011, 09:47 PM

Then what are you arguing about, Apoc? Here's how this started from my perspective:

Me: Slavery is now illegal in just about every nation.
Ruffryder: Slavery still exists in the United States
Me: That may be the case but slavery is still *illegal*.
You and Snow: Yes, slavery still exists in the United States.
Me: Yes, but it is still *illegal* in every Western nation and most every other nation on the planet.
Chorus: But sexual slavery still exists!
Me: That is the case but I did not make an argument that slavery was non-existent, I made an argument that slavery was *illegal*. The existence of slavery may be legal, but for slavery to exist it need not be legal.
Chorus: Sexual slavery still exists!
Me: but it's not LEGAL!

Now, it is perfectly reasonable, given the opening premise that slavery is illegal for me to interpret the arguments of you, roughryder, et. al. as being that if slavery exists anywhere then slavery is still *legal* therefore nothing has changed. Because I wasn't saying a damn thing about whether or not sexual slavery exists--I'm nowhere near stupid enough to entertain that possibility. From my perspective, the illegality of slavery in the vast majority of nations is a *vast* improvement over human history. The argument y'all seem to be making is that it either isn't an improvement or it's still legal for no OTHER reason than that sexual slavery still exists.

I'm sorry Apoc, you know I have a great deal of respect for all of you but either I can't read, someone decided to derail the thread, or y'all are saying that because sexual slavery still exists nothing has changed vis a vis slavery even though it was perfectly legal throughout the world until the 19th century and now is illegal pretty much everywhere.

Cheers
Aj

Wow this is what I said copied and pasted from my first post here .. this is the derailment. Not sure what anyone said after me but this is what I said:

"The world and the U.S. still has slavery." That's all. Nothing to do with legal or illegal. Your last post is talking about the U.S. forgive me, but that was my post about slavery. Whether you are only talking about the U.S. or not I mentioned it because their has been talk about countries joining together and my point was made about slavery existing still whether it's legal or illegal. Some places it is legal! .. and if you consider joining some of these countries with the U.S. then who is to say it will stay illegal in the U.S? It was just an observation by everyone that "slavery still exists." If you only want to talk about illegal slavery, then ok. In the U.S. slavery is illegal. We all agree.

Apocalipstic

11-05-2011, 10:50 AM

How would that end the war on drugs? You think the citizens of what is currently the US are going to suddenly not be obsessed with the drug trade? It'll never happen.

Here's what will happen if North and South America become one huge cumbersome impossible to travel from one end to the other because it's just too giant of a land mass to be reasonable as a country country: The US will bowl over the rest of us. They will not compromise. The rest of us will be absorbed into the US life and the US mission and the US whim. It's not like merging is going to make everybody more like Canada. Merging all of North and South America isn't going to get equal marriage rights for all - it'll probably LOSE the rights that we Canadians currently enjoy. You know why? Because the US has the most fire power and the most money. So they'll get whatever they want.

I'm not sure why anybody would wish that on the rest of us. If the US is as awful and obnoxious as everybody says it is (and, you know, there are a lot of things I don't like about the US and I very clearly prefer Canada times a zillion) why would you expect that they would play nice if the countries were to amalgamate? It'll never happen.

I get what you are saying. Hell, if it was not so damn cold, I would have moved to Canada years ago! If I were Canadian I would not want to be part of the US either...

I think the war on drugs has created the drug trade as it stands. If drugs became decriminalized and there were not international borders to traffic across I think the violence would stop or at least way lessen.

I do get your point that the US would try to take over everything instead of being a collaborative union and I think that's a fair accesement. There are pros and cons of a union with many of the countries, but not with all.

Cin

11-05-2011, 11:22 AM

All the more reason for a unified North and South America. The war on drugs could be ended.

Can you actually declare war on inanimate objects?

And maybe I'm a skeptic but considering all the documented involvement that U.S. agencies have had in drug trafficking from heroin to cocaine it's hard to believe that their hearts are really in winning this war.

Cin

11-05-2011, 11:26 AM

I'm not sure why anybody would wish that on the rest of us. If the US is as awful and obnoxious as everybody says it is (and, you know, there are a lot of things I don't like about the US and I very clearly prefer Canada times a zillion) why would you expect that they would play nice if the countries were to amalgamate? It'll never happen.

Exactly.

I still think South America could benefit from some kind alliance. Not necessarily become one country, but a very strong allegiance.

Kat

11-06-2011, 01:47 PM

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....

Never mind that this is a common misrepresentation of anarchic theory, which primarily involves elimination of the State, with a shift to essentially communal living -- how is "mob rule" any different from "democracy"?

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!

But you've just described democracy in the U.S. right now! If a simple majority wants to ban gay marriage, it's banned (which is exactly what happened in Oregon seven years ago when a few counties legalized it for about 6 weeks.) Ditto any "freedom" that we may currently believe is a given, but probably won't be much longer (abortion, anyone...?) If enough ignorant fools vote for or against something in this country, it becomes law. That is the very definition of mob rule...

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.

Well, I have long been what I like to call an "anarchic realist" -- I believe in anarchy as an ideal that can never possibly attained if human beings are involved.

Chipmunks, on the other hand...

Apocalipstic

11-07-2011, 03:09 PM

Apocalipstic

11-07-2011, 03:14 PM

One of the things that really interests me here and in the OP is how continuing to have affirmative action but basing it on income would play?

I remember taking the ACT back in High School and noticing at the time how much easier the language part was for me since the only people I had heard speak English for large parts of my childhood were my parents who were very well educated in English and Speech. It did not seem fair that I only had to answer what sounded right to me, the English I heard at home.

nowandthen

11-07-2011, 04:14 PM

Can you actually declare war on inanimate objects?

And maybe I'm a skeptic but considering all the documented involvement that U.S. agencies have had in drug trafficking from heroin to cocaine it's hard to believe that their hearts are really in winning this war.

I had a paradigm shift around the term "war on drugs" back in 1995 when I was doing HIV outreach in rural areas out side of Houston Texas. I went to a conference in Austin for work and was in a workshop with a women who was doing outreach work in LA. She was in recovery and self-identified as Latino work in low income and communities of color and gave a great talk. The one thing I took away was here description of "war". She asked us if we knew what happened in a war, we gave different answers. She described it this way, " In a war, people die and we take prisoner". If we look back to the Reagan years, and the "war on drugs until today what have we seen? The government flooded the streets with crack, we had the drug laws that gave more time for rock cocaine vs powder, we got tough on crime with 3 strike laws, and we created the private prison industry.

So language that sound good on the outside actually is a system that has created what Michelle Alexander book, The New Jim Crow exposes which is system of laws that have created a permanent underclass that is in one form or another under the surveillance of the state (Jail, probation, metal institution, work release, etc). So for me the war on poverty is the same thing, war is a devastation not a construction that creates a world without poverty, in fact it recreates the need as a tool of marginalization, blame the victim for not have bootstraps. Ah, the 1% are good :)

Apocalipstic

11-07-2011, 04:41 PM

I had a paradigm shift around the term "war on drugs" back in 1995 when I was doing HIV outreach in rural areas out side of Houston Texas. I went to a conference in Austin for work and was in a workshop with a women who was doing outreach work in LA. She was in recovery and self-identified as Latino work in low income and communities of color and gave a great talk. The one thing I took away was here description of "war". She asked us if we knew what happened in a war, we gave different answers. She described it this way, " In a war, people die and we take prisoner". If we look back to the Reagan years, and the "war on drugs until today what have we seen? The government flooded the streets with crack, we had the drug laws that gave more time for rock cocaine vs powder, we got tough on crime with 3 strike laws, and we created the private prison industry.

So language that sound good on the outside actually is a system that has created what Michelle Alexander book, The New Jim Crow exposes which is system of laws that have created a permanent underclass that is in one form or another under the surveillance of the state (Jail, probation, metal institution, work release, etc). So for me the war on poverty is the same thing, war is a devastation not a construction that creates a world without poverty, in fact it recreates the need as a tool of marginalization, blame the victim for not have bootstraps. Ah, the 1% are good :)

I so agree with this.

The word "war" seems to indicate someone has to win and someone has to lose...and who is losing?

Cin

12-10-2011, 03:48 AM

I still think South America could benefit from some kind alliance. Not necessarily become one country, but a very strong allegiance.

Some movement in that direction.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/09-5

Out of the Backyard: New Latin American and Caribbean Bloc Defies Washington
by Benjamin Dangl

Rain clouds ringed the lush hillsides and poor neighborhoods cradling Caracas, Venezuela as dozens of Latin American and Caribbean heads of state trickled out of the airport and into motorcades and hotel rooms. They were gathering for the foundational summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a new regional bloc aimed at self-determination outside the scope of Washington’s power.

Notably absent were the presidents of the US and Canada – they were not invited to participate. "It's the death sentence for the Monroe Doctrine," Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said of the creation of the CELAC, referring to a US policy developed in 1823 that has served as a pretext for Washington's interventions in the region. Indeed, the CELAC has been put forth by many participating presidents as an organization to replace the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), empower Latin American and Caribbean unity, and create a more equal and just society on the region’s own terms.

The CELAC meeting comes a time when Washington’s presence in the region is waning. Following the nightmarish decades of the Cold War, in which Washington propped up dictators and waged wars on Latin American nations, a new era has opened up; in the past decade a wave of leftist presidents have taken office on socialist and anti-imperialist platforms.

The creation of the CELAC reflected this new reality, and is one of various recent developments aimed at unifying Latin America and the Caribbean as a progressive alternative to US domination. Other such regional blocs include the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) which has successfully resolved diplomatic crises without pressure from Washington, the Bank of the South, which is aimed at providing alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the Bolivarian Alliance of Latin America (ALBA), which was created as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a deal which would have expanded the North American Free Trade Agreement throughout Latin America, but failed due to regional opposition.

The global economic crisis was on many of the leaders’ minds during the CELAC conference. "It seems it's a terminal, structural crisis of capitalism," Bolivian President Evo Morales said in a speech at the gathering. "I feel we're meeting at a good moment to debate ... the great unity of the countries of America, without the United States."

The 33 nations comprising the CELAC make up some 600 million people, and together are the number one food exporter on the planet. The combined GDP of the bloc is around $6 trillion, and in a time of global economic woes, the region now has its lowest poverty rate in 20 years; the growth rate in 2010 was over 6% - more than twice that of the US. These numbers reflect the success of the region’s social programs and anti-poverty initiatives.

In an interview with Telesur, Evo Morales said the space opened by the CELAC provides a great opportunity to expand the commerce of Latin America and the Caribbean in a way that does not depend on the precarious markets of the US and Europe. In this respect he saw a central goal of the CELAC being to “implement politics of solidarity, with complementary instead of competitive commerce to resolve social problems…”

While the US is the leading trading partner for most Latin American and Caribbean countries, China is making enormous inroads as well, becoming the main trade ally of the economic powerhouses of Brazil and Chile. This shift was underlined by the fact that Chinese President Hu Jintao sent a letter of congratulations to the leaders forming the CELAC. The letter, which Chávez read out loud to the summit participants, congratulated the heads of state on creating the CELAC, and promised that Hu would work toward expanding relations with the region’s new organization.

The US, for its part, did not send a word of congratulations. Indeed, Washington’s official take on the CELAC meeting downplayed the new group’s significance and reinforced US commitment to the OAS. Commenting on the CELAC, US Department of State spokesman Mark Toner said, “There [are] many sub-regional organizations in the hemisphere, some of which we belong to. Others, such as this, we don’t. We continue, obviously, to work through the OAS as the preeminent multilateral organization speaking for the hemisphere.”

Many heads of state actually saw the CELAC meeting as the beginning of the end for the OAS in the region. This position, held most passionately by leaders from Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, was best articulated by Venezuelan President, and host of the CELAC meeting, Hugo Chávez. "As the years pass, CELAC will leave behind the old OAS," Chávez said at the summit. “OAS is far from the spirit of our peoples and integration in Latin America. CELAC is born with a new spirit; it is a platform for people's economic, political and social development, which is very different from OAS.” He later told reporters, “There have been many coup d'états with total support from the OAS, and it won’t be this way with the CELAC.”

However, the presidents involved in the CELAC vary widely in political ideology and foreign policy, and there were differing opinions in regards to relations with the OAS. Some saw the CELAC as something that could work alongside the OAS. As Mexican chancellor Patricia Espinosa said, the OAS and the CELAC are “complementary forces of cooperation and dialogue.”

A test of the CELAC will be how it overcomes such differences and makes concrete steps toward developing regional integration, combating poverty, upholding human rights, protecting the environment and building peace, among other goals. The final agreements of the two day meeting touched upon expanding south to south business and trade deals, combating climate change and building better social programs across the region to impact marginalized communities. In addition, the CELAC participants backed the legalization of coca leaves (widely used as a medicine and for cultural purposes in the Andes), condemned the criminalization of immigrants and migrants, and criticized the US for its embargo against Cuba.

Various presidents at the CELAC spoke of how to approach these dominant issues. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the CELAC should “monitor and rate” the US anti-drug efforts. As long as the US continues its consumption of drugs, Ortega said, “All the money, regardless of by how much it’s multiplied, and all the blood, no matter how much is spilled” won’t end the drug trade.

Yet there are plenty of contradictions within the CELAC organization itself. The group is for democracy but includes the participation of Porfirio Lobo from Honduras, the president who replaced Manuel Zelaya in unfair elections following a 2009 military coup. The CELAC is for environmental protection, yet its largest participant, Brazil, is promoting an ecologically disastrous agricultural model of soy plantations, GMO crops and poisonous pesticides that are ruining the countryside and displacing small farmers. The group is for fairer trade networks and peace, yet various participating nations have already signed devastating trade deals with the US, and corrupt politicians at high levels of government across the region are deeply tied to the violence and profits of the transnational drug trade.

These are some of the serious challenges posed to Latin American and Caribbean unity and progress, but they do not cancel out the new bloc’s historical and political significance. The creation of the CELAC will likely prove to be a significant step toward the deepening of a struggle for independence and unity in the region, a struggle initiated nearly 200 years ago and largely led by Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, whose legacy was regularly invoked at the CELAC conference.

In 1829, a year before his death, Bolívar famously said, “The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.” Yet with the foundation of the CELAC under the clouds of Caracas, the march toward self-determination is still on.