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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (163660)	6/5/2005 5:42:02 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I agree with having the smallest number of laws possible for our society to function. What that number is, however, I have no idea. The basic problem I have with any 'free market' analysis is the erroneous assumption that people act in a rational manner. pbs.org "One lesson thus far: The brain isn't quite as rational as the discipline of economics has long assumed, a finding that could have major implications right now given current economic uncertainty -- the falling dollar, rising interest rates, stock market volatility." ============ I also have a problem that any 'free market' analysis also makes the erroneous assumption that markets are perfectly free of friction and costs and information is perfectly available to all participants at all times. Obviously, in the real world, none of this is true. Therefore, the ideologies that rise from the idea of the rational human being acting self-interestedly in a friction-free perfect-information market are, IMO, bogus. I also do not think that Democracy is a natural condition of the human species. Ditto individualism. We are a herding, flocking species naturally given to hierarchical organizations. IMO, Democracy and Freedom are unnatural or 'civilized' states. That's why they are so hard to create and maintain. It's very easy for us to fall back into our natural state of tyrannical herd behavior. ========= I don't like a usage tax because it's very regressive. As with tyranny, concentration of money (and therefore power) must be prevented through laws including progressive taxation. I also like mandated education because an educated populace is our only true defense against tyranny.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (163660)	6/6/2005 12:56:29 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Is draft the same as slavery? In a non-democratic society it is. In a democracy when the nation as a whole decides if it is worth the war, then no; it is just the price of being part of that society.> What if the democracy decides, by 70% vote, which is a big vote, to just send the melanin-rich young males to the war? What if the draft is just for some males, of a certain age, decided by those getting the short straw in a lottery and who don't have Daddy who can get them a cushy number flying aircraft? Democracies are not harbingers of ethics. They are just, usually, less bad than totalitarianism or dictatorship. Those who try to draft, press-gang, or conscript somebody against their will, deserve to be seen as enemies who deserve a bullet through the brain in self-defence. Societies which run on such authoritarian conficating principles are invariably unpleasant for those on the receiving end of the bad stuff. They are excellent for the slave-drivers [though not compared with better societies]. Neither might, nor majority vote, make right. A majority vote in favour of putting the negroes back in their place is not right in an ethical world of libertarianism. But it's okay in the regular democratic systems. New Zealand has apartheid now under development. It's not going very well, which isn't surprising, and the high rate of miscegenation will doom it within a couple of generations. Mqurice