How Would You Make A Better USA

No, America's wealth was produced by hard work, innovation, and natural resource harvesting. Since that Era of America's history where wealth production took place, we've been largely living under a series of leftist re-distribution administrations, and yes, during those years, the "Wealth" shown in the yearly GDP was largely a fake paper fancy.

There is still some real wealth in America, but sadly, thanks to Liberal spending, the real debt is far larger.

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Not true. Lobbying money isn't spent lining politicians pockets, that's already illegal. Lobbying money is spent to run campaigns, which means: television ads, yard signs, bumper stickers, radio time, speeches, etc. That's what lobbying money pays for.

Every single person gets 1 vote. You can turn off your TV, radio, and not pay any attention to signs or speeches and vote for your candidate. That's your choice, or, you can watch the TV ads paid for by donations and watch the speeches, and make a more informed decision based on what you've seen. All that the money does is get out the message. Hey if you, Johnny-C, wanted to you could create an ad telling the people in your community what you think about the corporate fat cats and pay to air it on TV or plaster it on this forum (we're getting ads as it is).

That does absolutely nothing to deny votes or diminish voices, it only works to sway opinions. It's f***ing freedom of speech.

 

How do you determine who is eligible to get the money? And what is wrong with me giving my neighbor $20 so he can buy lawn signs to support his city council bid?

No money changes hands right now, Johnny! BRIBERY IS ILLEGAL!

Organizations CAN NOT OFFER MONEY TO 'ANYONE IN GOVERNMENT' already. It's called BRIBERY.

So I don't know what you mean when you say "get the money out of politics." It's not like Bill Gates can write a million-dollar check to Barack Obama in exchange for some favorable rulings or to get the government to buy a bunch of Microsoft products...

You want to "give the people a voice." The way you do that is to organize with like-minded individuals and pool your resources so you can get your message out.

You mean salary? That's already a 'set amount.' Of course, it is Congress that sets the amount! Wouldn't it be great to set your own salary and benefits?

 

So you just go out and build houses and roads for nothing?

 

It is freedom of speech, yes, but if you control the medium in which that speech is delivered, it's no longer free speech for everyone but free speech for those with the money and resources to get those mediums to be your loud speaker. Some guy yelling on the corner of a street does not have the same effect of national television ads, especially considering places that simply have a television on in a waiting room or break room, etc.

So therefore that was the entire reason the Citizens United ruling was detrimental. It's made the playing field deliberately sloped towards one side of the conversation when concerning the public collective. Control the people's exposure to information, control the people.

 

That's stupidly ludicrous. Because Joe Schmoe can't afford to buy as much air time as the Koch brothers, it's not free speech? So are you telling me that because Joe Lungs can stand on the street corner from sunrise to sunset preaching the Good Word, Joe Black Lungs doesn't have freedom of speech? Are you telling me that because Joe City can walk out of his apartment to a street to yell out his message, Joe Country who has to walk over a hundred miles to get to a street corner doesn't have free speech.

No, you're being absolutely stupidly ludicrous.

 

Why do you so obviously support a system that skews the entire political spectrum? This makes no sense unless you are somehow benefiting from this skew...I urge you heavily to watch the 2012 presidential 3rd party debates and see how much they differ from the main debate that was highly publicized.

And by the way, if one person is the loudest, how is that equal distribution of information? That's the point. By levelling the playing field it means that the typical public funded organizations that want to support or smear a candidate or push their agenda can and won't be drowned out by some insanely rich guy who can outspend any day of the week that public organization. It's not about silencing one in favor of the other, it's leveling that playing field. Overall, large multinational corporate businesses have tipped power into their favor in every aspect imaginable. They control the tone of elections of officials, they control which issues are popular or not (how much Bradley Manning coverage was there on a major news network? Look it up...), they control public consciousness along with controlling capital hill. Those donations to pacs supporting candidates aren't free. They're investments and those businesses drowning out opposing forces for their candidate expect a return on that investment.

 

You should know by now, anything that increases Liberals Power, is labeled as Freedom or Free Speech.

Anything that questions Liberalism, or dares to defy a Liberal, is Racism.

Do not waste time trying to convert or convince a hardcore Leftie, instead focus your energies on organizing and motivating the indecisive Center and dejected Right into getting rid of the Left.

I believe that this tactic is what Unifer was trying to communicate in his unfortunate post about getting rid of all Liberals above.

The fact is, we do not want any political power to be able to "Get Rid" of any other. We do need to vote most of today's Liberals out of power.

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Wait wait wait wait...liberal power? Am I missing something? An overwhelming amount of money is funneled into PACs that support Republican party members...and the money funds both sides. I don't get how this is an issue of liberal or conservative anything. This is a hijacking of the political system at it's core.

 

There is no point in trying to convince the hard core Leftie in full denial mode...

But for those indecisive Centrists and Apathetic Righties:

http://www.qando.net/?p=15320

And I conquer, it all comes down to a Breach of Trust.

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No, opposite actually, for every "Koch brother" let's say, there's about 3 other Liberal money sources of equal wealth.


8 out of the 10 richest counties voted for President Obama in 2012. Wall street donated to Obama over all Republicans by about 5 to 1 in 2008. I think that lessened in 2012, but by the end, it was clear who they were breaking for.

 

I no where did deny that Dem's suck the teet of big money. However, the final tallies of money tip in the balance of republican representatives across the entire spectrum from state to federal.

I'm not some apologist or a 'lefty' as Mr. K keeps calling me, ironically.
I have no trust of anyone in power right now. I consistently listen to what someone says and then check opensecrets to see if they genuinely believe the words they speak or if they have a hand up their ass puppeteering their mouth.

 

I come from a 27 year career in Military Service and Military R&D, so for the most part, I am a supporter of the American Military, and I believe we've overall done a good job of being the world's policeman.

But we, as a Nation, are simply exhausted from that role, and need to take a couple of generations rest from the role.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMebW460cE

[video=youtube;keMebW460cE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMebW460cE[/video]

She's So Heeaaaavvvvvyyyyyyyyy! ​

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Nope. Equally, two of the three biggest Campaign contributors, support Democrat platforms, or you can also say, 7 out of the top 10.

Good, then you should like SuperPACs, for they disrupt the incumbent effect, with the 6 best run states in the nation all having Superpacs "OK'd" long before Citizens United.

If you want a level playing field, they give us that, believe it or not.

 

Are not Unions, particularly government service worker Unions the Left's equivalent of SuperPacs?

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To start off, I need to provide a little background information about myself. I'm a computer scientist specializing in machine learning or sometimes called a data scientist. Data science requires a pretty sizable technical background in mathematics, logic, statistics, and computer science. Through my rigorous training, I developed a certain understanding that most people will never come to understand. I developed an understanding of the limitations of the human mind. And the acceptance of these limitations was a rather humbling experience.

I'd like to put forward the proposition that if more people understood the limitations of the human mind, it would make America a better place.

Our life expectancy, while historically high, is relatively short. Due to our short lifetimes and finite minds, we are not able to acquire all of the knowledge acquired by mankind; instead, the breath of human knowledge is spread out over atomic individuals, and each individual carries a small chunk of the overall knowledge obtained by mankind collectively. In addition, the overlap between knowledge of two individuals can vary from mutual inclusion to mutual exclusion. In other words, they can share varying amounts of common knowledge. But more importantly, individuals are rather limited to specializations. Most fields of study are beyond the limits of individuals to master in entirety. For example, a new born child could immediately begin studying mathematics, but he or she would die of old age before mastering the whole breath of mathematics itself.

Outside of our areas of specialization, we are mostly limited to only two guaranteed defensible positions in argumentation.
1. We may be able to construct a valid argument of authority. But keep in mind that two conditions have to be met for it to be valid:
a) We are able to cite a expert who specializes in the given area of discussion.
b) The expert from a) has community standing and consensus within the community of specialists of the subject matter.

2. We have to take an agnostic position. The experts are still debating, how would we know the answer?

But most importantly, outside of our own areas of specialization, we have to be as careful as a mouse exploring a hawks nest. We have to face the realities of our limitations. We can construct modus ponens about any given topic; however, we aren't in the position to evaluate evidence about any given topic. So it's very easy to get the form of argument right but the conclusion very wrong.

I wonder how many arguments on this forum have been made without any care to the limitations mentioned above?

I suppose it's possible that I'm putting forward an argument against democracy. At the very least, I'm highlighting a fundamental flaw in the philosophy of democracy. After all, democracy puts forward the proposition that common citizens in general will be able to arrive at the best solutions. But what happens if citizens are not mindful of their limitations? Maybe one day someone will figure out how to construct a government that more closely relates to how information is spread over a population. Or maybe one day a technological breakthrough will happen that will allow us to overcome some of our limitations. Who knows?

 

But America is NOT a Democracy. At least not in strict Poli-Sci theory terms.

That I know of, there is not a Direct Democracy Nation in existence, and never has been.

America is a Democratic Republic. The concept behind it is that while the Majority of the Common Citizens may not be able to discern what is best for themselves and the nation as a whole, they are able to somewhat discern who might be able to judge that well, and also hold accountable any politician who does a poor job of it.

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We are technically a Republic where the general consensus of a democratic vote is left up to a republic to make the major decisions overall, presumably by people aided by experts. So it's technically supposed to operate similar to how you describe. The idea was to split the power between leaders and their people rather than straight appointments by people already holding power to make decisions. The education of the general public is presumably and ideally provided by some of those experts in specific fields to educate the public so they may decide which leaders fit the view of the public.

So control of information has derailed this process overall. I don't think anyone in this thread claimed to be an expert at anything nor are they in a position to make these decision at all and no real technical details were given about the plans (mine in included) and I think everyone is approaching the question as though they have the power to single hand-idly make these things happen as they imagine with an iron fist to 'make it happen' which is also next to impossible since our government was designed to create checks and balances to keep this from happening en-mass.

As well, it should be taken into consideration that candidates in the Republic have a myriad of things to balance and no single candidate I think has ever been elected on a single issue, but many people who are maybe more informed on one issue but in a group, these different issues come together to decide the leaders of the Republic, if that makes sense. For instance, 100 people voting may have 1 thing each they are making their decision on based on their focus of concern and usually, that concern is what they pay most attention to in terms of information they soak in concerning the candidates. So that would be a collective spectrum of knowledge deciding a leader.

In practice, I'm sure it's more simple than that, but ideally, it works like this.

Interesting post.

 

That lobbying is so-called "free speech", is rather controversial; even so, it IS legal. And regardless of what anyone may say, a tremendous amount of money is involved in the process, and that means INFLUENCE. Anyone who thinks the money is not influencing politicians, isn't thinking realistically.

I can personally envision a time where the courts may not view lobbying as free speech, because of the controversy surrounding such activity (even today).

However one wishes to slice it, money influences our politics far too much, and it is dangerous to the function of democracy itself.

The more money we rip out of our politics, the more of a voice ALL of the American people will ultimately possess.

 

Of course, you are correct.

And ANYONE who would play down the absolute corrupting influence of money in our politics, is someone I would not regard very highly... no matter who they are or what they said.

Get the money out... or all this stuff people are talking/arguing about is virtually for nothing. The way things are, without more and more money... the voices of the working Americans are pushed-under and nearly drowned-out. It's doesn't take any deep political scholar to see that has happened to many people already.

And once the people are no longer truly HEARD in this society, that will be a VERY dangerous time indeed.

 

Well said!!

I sometimes wonder who the people living amongst us are, who either cannot or will not see that 'money' is essentially THE problem with American politics. And as you say, they must receive some distinct benefit by advocating for a system so easily corrupted within itself.

Money talks loudly, when it is plentiful. Who does not know that??!!

 

When in doubt, turn to a dictionary.

Definition for democracy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy?s=t

A more in-depth view of the word:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/

So yes, America is a democracy. Our democracy is implemented with a republic model. Direct democracy is just another model for implementing democracy as opposed to a republic or a parliament.

Definition of pure democracy (aka a direct democracy)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pure+democracy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pure democracy

 

A republic can be a democracy, or it could even be a dictatorship. A lot of people confuse the model of direct democracy as a type of government with democracy itself.

I was mostly referring to posts in general or politics in general. Just find any hot button issue and take a peek at the debate. Take global warming for example, there is a very strong consensus on global warming by the climate science community. But one wouldn't know it by looking at the public at large. A great deal of non-experts have convinced themselves that their in a position to evaluate climate science evidence when their not. And more often than not, they also have conformation bias on top of it. So we can't get passed conversions about the merits of global warming despite broad international consensus in the expert community. And global warming is just a single issue of many we could select. But this phenomenon really calls into question the ability for democracy to handle a certain class of problems. Namely, problems requiring an expert background are very difficult for democracy to process.

 

I don't think this has as much to do with people qualified to make decisions to 'think about this issue of climate change' so much as people paid to act like they aren't sure. When you have talking heads in the contrary to science puppeteered into creating the confusion, it's not necessarily a fault of the people but a fault of the establishment.

 

Abolish corporations and break up monopoly corporate interests.