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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (9083)	12/16/2010 10:34:24 AM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Respond to of 10087

"Can anyone explain this to me?" Way over my head, sorry.

To: Lane3 who wrote (9083)	12/16/2010 1:09:07 PM
From: Sr K	Respond to of 10087

it's a version of "money talks"

To: Lane3 who wrote (9083)	12/16/2010 1:38:22 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

Hi Lane, <"we can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few or we can have democracy but we can t have both" --Brandeis > is Simpleton linguistic logic. <Can anyone explain this to me?> It's sounds sort of right in an on the one hand this or the other hand that way. I'd go further and say people can vote the money they provide to government but can't vote opm. "I vote that the government takes your money and gives it to me" is a fundamental flaw of democracy. The slogan should be changed to "No representation without taxation - every dollar gets a vote". Even if people could only vote the money they put in, that would still be democracy if 90% of people couldn't vote on opm. With referenda on non-spending laws, such as "Is it unlawful to beat children and women with whips?" everyone could vote. With Tradable Citizenship, there would be great incentive to vote to make things better. At present, the tragedy of the commons electoral systems is "I'd better vote to get my piece of the action before it's all over and the country is bankrupt". Mqurice ... thanks for referring me here one-less

To: Lane3 who wrote (9083)	12/16/2010 1:55:37 PM
From: neolib	2 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10087

Can anyone explain this to me? The desperate poor start to resort to non-democratic means to survive, while the wealthy tend to protect themselves by resorting to non-democratic means also. Think Mugabe. You can buy votes & protection if you are rich enough. This usually ends badly for everyone, including the rich. Plenty of African "Presidents for Life" have in facted ended their Presidency by lossing their life prematurely. Lots of examples.

To: Lane3 who wrote (9083)	12/16/2010 5:34:16 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Respond to of 10087

"Of the various problems that might derive from concentrated wealth, a threat to democracy would not seem to me to be one of them. Democracy is about one vote per person. The non-wealthy overwhelmingly outnumber the wealthy. It would seem to me that the threat would be to the wealthy, who can have their wealth voted away." Concentrated wealth is a threat to any form of government... Consider the Russian Tsars.....squandering obscene amounts of wealth.... They weren't voted out, they were taken out... Consider that when you read of hedge fund managers getting billion dollar bonuses....