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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (212196)	7/24/2009 12:40:35 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

>>Only if you live in an uncivilized, lawless dictatorship.<< you missed the point. the government could choose to be a dictatorship or fascist lite or a number of other forms of government the public might find distasteful. i'm not saying they've done it, i'm saying they could choose to do it. >>The US, for example, while far from perfect, most certainly is not a lawless dictatorship.<< it is, however, fascist lite in the sense that corporations (and those who run them) are partnered with the government. >>The failing of America lies less with the government than it lies with our understanding of how to effectively participate in the public discourse needed to keep the government on track in serving us and acting as our agent for purposeful social action.<< i believe the fundamental problem is that people are selfish and want more than they are willing to contribute. therefore, we put people in office who offer more services and require less payment. the latest is they will dramatically cut health care costs while not cutting an iota of service. NOT! hence, the massive deficits this nation likes to run. of interest is that a decent person who would like to run the government correctly CAN'T GET ELECTED. people don't want to hear the truth, that they have to pay for services rendered - in total. that guy/gal will NEVER get elected. the impact is that whoever has a chance of winning the office has to be an accomplished liar - and sociopaths tend to fit that bill the best. the problem lies in the fact that liars tend to have a low level of morals and can easily be purchased by the folks with the money. this is important b/c when your trillion dollar debts go bad, you need someone who will extract the losses from the public to make you whole so you can get your million dollar bonuses and $100 million stock options. >>Ideology that blithely dismisses government as "bad" does little more than communicate that you do not have the capacity to play any sort of meaningful role in the discourse.<< i thought this fact was obvious. i live well under my means and i'm in the small minority. very small. we can't elect anyone reasonable since almost everyone else wants something for nothing - or at least a guy who will lie and tell them they can deliver something for nothing. >>Ideology makes life easy -- it means you don't have to bother to expend any energy thinking -- you have the answer to everything without giving it any thought because you boil everything done to one thing, your belief that government is evil.<< there are two types of governments - 1. the one that has failed and 2. the one that is on the path to failure. review some history and i think you will see this theme is the rule and there aren't really any exceptions. that's not to say that some governments don't exist now - they do. they have to. but will they in 500 years? my bet is not. they aren't sustainable long term b/c the greed at the top always ends badly. >>The only time that you do not need a government is if you are living alone on a rock -- and even then you would want to govern yourself, or else live a life that would make the other animals on your rock think of you as less than they -- for even the lowest of animals and insects govern themselves in some way.<< the romans needed government, too. it is still standing, no? no? why?