You poor, deluded fool... tsk tsk...
A good government, whatever that may be, would be like a good waste management company or cellphone service provider: beneath our notice. Communism, like representative democracy, makes huge demands on our attention, and therefore, also just like representative democracy, is doomed to fail.
>A good government, whatever that may be, would be like a good waste management company or cellphone service provider: beneath our notice.
So, I can only assume you want to be ruled by Verizon and/or any efficient dictator.
>>4
On the episode of futurama when Bender meets "god", "god" tells him "if you do things right, people hardly notice you have done anything at all".
Instead one of government's main jobs is to make sure to be a pain in everyone's ass and lie to them everyday. Government sucks. It would be nice if government were like the garbage company...I put my trash in the bin, haul it to the road, a truck show up, empties it...do again next week. No problems...perfect. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...we do not get that boys and girls. We get a government that wants to fuck each and ever one of our lives up on a near daily constant basis.
People SHOULD be worried about the North American Union...but our top story is Senator Kennedy has a brain tumer. Well fuck him I hope he fucking dies slow and mother fucking horribly.
No...>>4 has the right idea.
>So, I can only assume you want to be ruled by Verizon and/or any efficient dictator.
I'm not ruled by the power company, and if I were living under a perfect government, I wouldn't be ruled by them either.
I considered myself an autonomist and left communist for a very long time, but nowadays I've become more moderate and consider myself a democratic socialist. But I'm still on the more radical end of the democratic socialist spectrum
sort of syndicalist i suppose. after reading man in revolt i've come to question some of the end of history universal redemption cryptochristian socialisms. but having said that, marx was mostly right with regard to value.
I consider myself a person who gives two fucks about the government and the world around me.
I wouldn't go so far to call myself a communist or a socialist. But I do reject and hate the capitalist/christianity system of which I am forced to live under. I do not believe the ultimate goal in life is to make money nor do I believe in a heaven that I must attain a large amount wealth so I can gain admittance. Bullshit!
I whole reject this alleged way of American life. I may be forced to work everyday and pretend to be a capitalist but I at least they cannot force me to believe in their "god".
"gives two fucks" means I do not care. Learn your ass the english language, or least what fuck means.
I remember being that young and thinking all kinds of stupid shit was correct. When are the mods going to get this minor off our boards?
Probably when being a minor becomes a bannable offense.
Well guess what, you are old now and what I said in #9, #12 IS CORRECT. Both in content and grammar. If you want to nit pick the English language, go to digg.com with the rest of the losers.
Ask your teacher next time you have a Language Arts class.
You're free to move!
China, Vietnam, North Korea, none of these places force you to do anything... Oh wait! They forcoe you to to just about anything they want!
>>21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government
Do you really thing totalitarian communism and capitalist western democracy are the only two possibilities for people to govern themselves?
>>22
sure, knock yourself out with a hundred different theoretical systems of government. but variants of capitalist despotism and capitalist democracy are the only two forms of governments i've ever heard of in practice, barring small-scale communes (like kibbutzim) existing within a capitalist state.
statewide communism has only existed as a prop to justify totalitarian oligarchy and/or the confiscation of land & property from the wealthy; under the hood it's had little practical difference from capitalism except for failures caused by government mismanagement of the economy, and economic policies of such states tend to gravitate steadily back towards laissez-faire capitalism.
i would agree with >>11 that in the modern world you cannot escape being beholden to money, except perhaps through slavery in a dictatorial/tribalist regime. thus, the dichotomy >>19 described.
Well there was Chile pre- Pinochet under President Allende. Despite being popularly elected and accending to power bloodlessly, we backed a fascist military dictator (Pinochet) to get him out of office just becaus ehe was communist. Aleende fixed many problems for the vast majority of the poor without entirely eliminating the upper class. Yes, he took many of their assets away to redistribute them but he didnt take it all. His redistribution put the wealthy where they would have been is he had placed socialist income taxes in rhetroactively. Incidentally, he di this with the consent and approval of parliament, which was still popularly voted for and included many upper class, wealthy citizens.
Nevertheless, as beautiful as the Marxist Ideal of communism is, communism fails. Allende was the ONLY leader to date to have done communism on a large scale with a big nation and had it work without having to resort to dictatorial powers the way china and cuba did. (not thet neither china nor cuba really true communisms any more, as cuba is giving citizens privatized farms and china has been a quazi-capitalist 1 party oligarchy for atleast 30 years.)
to be sure, >>21 pointed it out. Survivalism is a viable option. Form comunes and micronations and act autonomously as small countries. hell, if you have the resources and the number, you can, legally succede. assuming you have enough people for industry and you can make trade agreements, you could get official recognition from another nation.
>>24
It didn't work in Chile. No one knows if it would have--the track record of this particular politico-economic system in the real world shows that the norm was somewhere between North Korea and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge--but Allende was overthrown in a matter of months.
The Allende regime, while it lasted, certainly produced considerable propaganda about how much better it was doing things than anyone had ever done before.
Totalitarian states do that a lot. When and if everything goes in the shitter, the propaganda will for a while deny what everyone knows but is afraid to say aloud for fear of the secret police, then turn to blaming long-despised minorities and/or "foreign agitators" for the nation's problems. Remember, everything good is from the Maximum Leader, everything bad is because of those goddamn ungrateful Jews, or Kulaks, or Miskito Indians, or Hmong, or Sunnis, or capitalists, or those insidious British, or insert your favorite scapegoat here. See Venezuela and Zimbabwe for current examples.
Only a child expects such a regime to speak the truth. Once upon a time, around 1965, Pravda would publish pictures of the Eight Cosmonaut-Heroes of the Soviet Union on the front page. Then there would be a ghastly accident on the launch pad at Baikonur and five would die. The next day Pravda would publish shrill denials that anything untoward had taken place, plus a crudely airbrushed photo of the Three Cosmonaut-Heroes of the Soviet Union, with the five dead men crudely airbrushed out above the waist, but the three men would still have sixteen legs and feet. Anyone who noticed this and remarked on it in public, of course, was a good candidate for a one-way trip to Siberia, if not the Lubyanka.
The truth is not in them. They will not speak the truth except by accident. Figuring this out is one of the milestones along the road from childhood to adulthood. Realizing that there's something similar going on with your own government's Official Truth about a great many things, and recognizing the same phenomenon at your place of employment can become an endless source of quiet amusement once you accept that you live in an imperfect and hypocritical world and stop giving a shit.
>>25
um i understand that the world is imperfect. as for Allende being a propaganda bastard, he didnt need it. he was popularly elected and it was acknowledged by just about everyone but the super wealthy who lived in chile at the time that he was not this oppressive dictator. people need to learn to separate economic structures like communism and capitalism from political ones like totalitarianism and democracy. You can have a capitalist totalitarianism (like Nazi Germany) as well as a democratic communism ( like chile under allende). It did work untill the us backed a fascist military junta that was for free trade and no civil rights. it is the lone example of a funtioning democratic communism and is the exception, not the rule. By your own admission, the Allende "regime" did not last long. The praise he got was not from his regime. it was from people allive before during and after his administration. Pinochet was indeed backed by the US because we were afraid of the communists. The fact is that he didnt need propaganda and he didnt need russia. Allende was actually relatively distant from the rest of the communist bloc because he wasnt a ruthless dictator. HE NEVER DISOLVED PARLIAMENT. they had parliamentary government with elections just like they do in the UK today. how the fuck is that a totalitarian state? U sir, are either a troll or an anti communist bastard that isnt even willing to accept that there actually were benefits to it. either way, gtfo
>>26
no u. Allende was a Soviet puppet, and there was considerable popular opposition to the Allende regime, and even a source as biased to the far left as Wikipedia admits this.
Pinochet dragged Chile kicking and screaming into the 20th Century and is still hated for it by the usual suspects.
friendly reminder that chile has one of the highest gini coefficients in south america
if by "Pinochet dragged Chile kicking and screaming into the 20th Century and is still hated for it by the usual suspects"
u mean tortured and disappeared thousands of Chilean citizens for dissenting, then yes i agree. as for "a source as biased to the far left as Wikipedia admits this." O'RLY?
"Pinochet's neoliberal economic policies' benefits have been sharply contested. In 1973, unemployment was only 4.3%. Following ten years of junta rule in 1983, unemployment skyrocketed to 22%, while real wages declined by more than 40%. In 1970, 20% of Chile's population lived in poverty, but by 1990, the last year of Pinochet's dictatorship, poverty had doubled to 40%.[20] Between 1982 and 1983, the GDP dropped 19%. In 1970, the daily diet of the poorest 40 percent of the population contained 2,019 calories. By 1980 this had fallen to 1,751, and by 1990 it was down to 1,629. Furthermore, the percentage of Chileans without adequate housing increased from 27 to 40 percent between 1972 and 1988, despite the government's boast that the new economy would solve homelessness.[20] Meanwhile, inequality of wealth increased. In 1970, the richest one-fifth of the population controlled 45% of the wealth compared to 7.6% for the poorest one-fifth. In 1989, the richest one-fifth controlled 55% of the wealth while the poorest one-fifth controlled only 4.4%.[21]" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
compare to any other source you find reputable. encylopedia britanica? maybe some primary sources, like copies of the employment rates and gdp reports? maybe encarta as another secondary source? how about you ask the average chillean who lived under both and was not part of the super rich elite?