I pretty much agree with most of your post. especially the overpopulation problem. Research has shown clearly that the best way to reduce poverty and overpopulation, and war for that matter, is to educate the girls and the women.
Imagine if Bush had spent that $3 trillion he pissed away on those wars, on education here and in the Middle East? And then spent the other $2 trillion on green energy and supported universal health care.. We would be of the Pearl of the world today.
The one paragraph I would take issue with is the following one.
| <<I agree that the Republican right has been bad for the country. However, the reason that the examples of good government you have given exist is that they all have relatively small or heterogeneous populations with adequate resources to meet the needs of their people.>>
I don't think the problem with our lack of sophisticated social programs like they have in the Scandinavian countries is due to a lack of resources. We're a very rich nation. Remember those other nations have much higher taxes than we do. They tax the rich and fun their social programs with the revenue. Friends of mine that go to countries like Denmark are always struck by how few rich or poor there are and how big the middle classes. And it is thriving. As well, it is how we spend those resources. It is the actual social plans themselves.
E.g. in Denmark prisoners don't live in 8 x 10 concrete cells, they live in comfortable condo type quarters. Putting people in small concrete cells just destroys them and we don't care. In most other Western nations they treat their prisoners not only with more empathy, but employ modern social science.
Fact right now in this campaign you can hear how some of the right-wingers talk about wanting to be able to hire the prisoners out to private industry. It reminds me of the black chain gangs in the South between the late 1800s and the early 1900s when plantation owners were essentially sold black convicts to work on their plantations. Anyway that mindset.
I spent half my life in state government as a planner. When I worked for the state office of alcoholism and drug abuse, and the state office of emergency medical services, and the Valdez oil spill coordination for the governor's office, my job in all those instances was to design programs that worked. Over the years, my primary job was to review hundreds of plans for alcoholism and drug abuse, and emergency medical services system and addressing the Valdez oil spill. So I have had the opportunity to study and think about social programs for a good portion of my working life.
And as the simple point of information, I did study for two years social systems in my Masters of public administration program at the University of Washington. One of my courses, that I took from the Dean required us to know all of the foreign policy from the 1500s including, the second world war bombing patterns. The reading list was 60 books.
My point, is that I have some professional familiarity with what social systems work and those that don't work and the theories behind them e.g Max Weber. The Republicans have been in control since Reagan was elected and he said government is the problem. That's pure nonsense. And so for 40 years Republicans who have wielded tremendous power in this country have not only not tried to put modern-day sophisticated social programs together, they've tried to destroy the programs.
We even can see a historical analogy to this, if we go back and look at the 30s when FDR was advancing so many modern social programs like Social Security and bringing the plutocrats under control. He was fought every step of the way by the right wing.
That right wing has always been centered in the South if one thinks about it. Even the Civil War itself was essentially northeastern liberals against Southeastern conservatives.
And they're not exactly for modern-day sophisticated thinking regarding social programs. The grand irony, being that the South uses social programs like food stamps and welfare as much or more than any other part of the country. And another irony is that they vote "en masse" for Republican's that would take those social benefits away and don't even seem aware of it.
Virtually every state in the deep South is a mess as far as their economic and social programs go. They wouldn't even take Medicaid even though they have a huge poor population. There are lots of programs that require sophisticated thinking, that one just requires good sense.
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