On 22 Sep 2015, at 23:55, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno, I am at a loss with your explanation. I lived the active
first 50 years of my life in Europe and never heard about such
'liberalism' (for a short time was even connected to the Hungarian
Liberal Democratic Party).
In my counntry the right party has the name "parti libéral", for
example. Liberal means "open to free markets".
May be that is only in West Europa.
"Liberal" was in no connection with right/wrong, or even right/left,
only pointed to some freedom of action in the political arena. And
the other thing:
Democracy IMO is an oxymoron, the full "demos" cannot exercise it's
full "cratos" for ruling,
Democracy means, for me, presence of election. It can be partial, like
in the beginning where woman did not have the right to vote, or like
in the antic greece were election was for the educated class, and not
for slaves, or it is "universal", meaning everyone can vote. In some
country it is "everyone *must* vote (in Belgium election are
obligatory).
Then a democracy can be corrupted, and/or under the influence of
corporatism, and/or sick etc. Democracy is not the final state of
politics, it is the prerequisite of having a representative politics.
If the main powers (mainly justice and press) are not independent, a
democracy can be de facto a tyranny disguised into democracy. I think
that is the case today (since prohibition).
It is the like the Islamic bill or right, which is a copy of the
universal definition except that they have added "as long as it
verifies the Charia" for each principle (which of course changes the
very idea). The same with Obama who signed a text which respect the
human right except for a category or people, but something have to be
universal to make sense. The human right applies to all humans, or
there is no more human right at all.
becuase every person has different aims, goals, interests, etc.
Those, who call a "majority-rule" a democracy are establishing a
minority whose interests are trampled down by the so called
"majority" which is not even so sure, to BE a majority indeed.
Voting is cheating, candidates LIE in the campaign and the voters
compromise their (real?) interests for the least controversial lies.
What is even worse: the "elected" persons don't even follow their
own lies later on in practice. They go after their (untold???)
interest. Impeachment is difficult.
Yes, but that is because our democracies are sick. It is not because a
car is broken that a car is not supposed to be driven.
And I wish the minority having no power, but a problem with more than
two parties is that the minority can have tremendous infuence. Indeed
the minority will often makes the difference when the majorities
disagree. But the french Condorcet has already studied the
impossibility of satisfying everybody by a voting procedure, and
democracies can evolve, and we can change the rules, ... unless the
system has been corrupted.
It is not because we can die of cancer that we are not alive. It is
the same with democracy, they can get sick, and the election might no
more represent what the people desire.
I am opposed to referendum and participative democracies, because this
can give all the power to the media.
One word about 'capitalism' - with a caveat not to fall into Marxist
traps:
it is the open exploitation of the power of wealth over the have-
nots, be it by employment, marketing, or production policy. Not the
"haves" - mind you, but the oligarchs, super-wealthy owners,
political donors, etc. etc. established since Adam Smith.
I disagree, even if in practice, some facts can lead to the
perversion. But the non-democratic ruling consist in putting the
perversion right at the beginning. Free-market is a win-win game, when
it is not perverted by a minority (like today). The rich needs, in
that case, to enrich the poor, as they have interest to make the poor
into clients. It works, in the sense that most democracies have much
less people starving than tyrannies. Now, when the rich exploit the
poor, it means that the democracy is not functioning.
Growth is NOT maintainable with the limited resources existing.
Computer science provides a non limited resources.
And a
(cut-throat?) Competition as life? thanks, but no thanks. .
I would defend the universal allocation, and the right of laziness,
but for this, we have to be lucid and realist on the economical
difficulties which can rise in that case.
I personally hate competition, but it is right, and without
progressing in politics, instead of regressing, it is a necessity.
Do you mean cooperative and collaborating goodwilling people dead?
On the contrary, without a democracy, cooperation is quickly
impossible. It leads to the ruling of the strongest, like with mafia.
democracy, I think, is the main tool for cooperation. people do my
milk, and I teach math to their kids. That is win-win.
The hard problem here is that after a long productive cooperation,
some people or group of people can multiply the gain immensely by
cheating, and up to some amount, they can hide the cheating by
corruption. I have no definite solution for this, but I don't think
that is a reason to abandon the democracy, by which I mean a voting
system (I recall). We can try to have laws making corruption harder,
but there is no absolute vaccine against that.
I don't think that stopping prohibition will restore automatically a
sane democracy, but I am sure that not-stopping the prohibition will
perpetuate and aggravate the sickness of the current democracies. So
stopping prohibition is the first thing to do. It is the main engine
of corruption and terrorism of all kinds. Then we must find a way to
keep the main powers independent. Maybe find a way to stop financial
lobbying, etc.
Bruno
On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 7:55 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 21 Sep 2015, at 22:49, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno wrote.
That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the
Marxist sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal =
right, in europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power
as much as possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become
itself competitive by allowing any human to choose the state, real
or virtual, to live in (= to pay tax for).
Capitalism (in Adam Smith's sense?) means FOr Profit, Growth,
competition, etc.
That is what I would call life.
Liberalism comes from your langiage (Liberte' - freedom).
Liberalism means "right" in Europa. It means that adults can sign
(job) contracts to do things and are free to sell them to any
adults, or kids if it is legal, without any or very few intervention
of the state. This leads necessarily to grow, profit, competition.
It is opposed to economy planned by a state, like it was in China
and the ex-URSS where all companies were owned by the state. Today
we have mafia, which is like an unregulated liberal economy, except
that violence is used between the competitors for the market
attribution.
Democracy allows, in principle, to vote for the left when the
country go too much on the right, and to vote for the right when the
country go too much on the left. But this works only if the system
is regulated by different powers which are kept well separated,
which is not really the case today (the Press is rarely really
independent, nor is Justice; even some academies are under the
influence of non academical powers, usually of the type religious).
Bruno
JM
On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 19 Sep 2015, at 21:16, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno,
even before (your?) prohibition-S there was some capitalistic
system in the US,
leading to inequality and injustice in the economical status of
the population.
I am not talking Marxism.
The diverse prohibition-S (and other installments) just made it
worse.
The basic question is "FREEDOM" - in my terms: no restrictions of
one's acting decisions AS LONG as it doesnot hurt the 'freedom' of
others.
That is capitalism, or equivalent. I don't use capitalism is the
Marxist sense, but in the sense of european liberalism (liberal =
right, in europa). The idea is that the state is limited in power
as much as possible. Ideally, it might even disappear, or become
itself competitive by allowing any human to choose the state, real
or virtual, to live in (= to pay tax for).
Within such all subchapters are viable.
We might agree, and have only vocabulary problem. If you defend
freedom, we are on the same political side.
(About 'offer/demand': how local would you go with it? the
neighbor's demand may be high and drives up prices, while a local
overproduction is not even paying for
susistence of the workers. Global is not practical.)
Global is new, and we have to adapt and revise many things. But
that cannot be enforced: it needs good education and less lies.
Prohibition must be stopped, like any violent crimes, but as you
say, it is not the deeper culprit, which is 1500 years of
authoritative argument in the most fundamental human science,
itself supprted in part by billions years of nature's brainwashing.
We are too much mammals, we can learn from the invertebrates.
Let each of us do what is possible. The necessary will care of
itself.
Bruno
JM
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 18 Sep 2015, at 21:37, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno:
could you please define "free market" (system?) into YOUR terms?
Free, but not free indeed, as you wrote:
"only with a regulating system making it not breaking some
laws,... "
Basically that was the state in the US before prohibition.
Free market means free contract between adults, and laws must
ensure the respect of the contracts, not the content of the
contract.
where could you STOP the list of those 'laws'?
Laws must evolve, jurisprudence, etc. I am OK with punishing
people doing false advertisement in the matter of health.
I would like we avoid making something illegal because it cures
some important disease, and of course is a threat for those doing
money on that disease, like today with cannabis and cancer to take
a notorious example. I think that the illegality of cannabis is a
crime against humanity, given that the danger have been debunked,
and the benefits have been proved (in the sense of having been
able to be repeated in all laboratories which are not dependent of
a big lucrative organization.
Is a 'regulating system a power?
Like the immune system in biological organism. It is a sort of
power, OK.
(I had a similar problem with identifying "free speech"- not only
by the Supremes'
"MONEY"definition). If market is free, it has a goal: P RO F I T
Imaking. It would
undergo the rules of offer and demand, leading to inequality.
That is why a regulating system is very important: it verifies if
the law of offer and demand is respected. It prevents as much as
possible genuine competition.
The word "free"is ambigious and hard to control. Free travel? we
see it in EU.
And so on.
I agree with you. "free" designates often plausible "protagorean
virtue", which in machine theology can be shown to be destroyed
when asserted on people. That is the case with free-thinking,
which leads to more hidden dogma, or free-exam, etc.
But I am not sure for free-market, which just means that the state
does not intervene in the content of what is sold, with few
exceptions (perhaps) like radioactive material, or anything which
is known to be problematic (meaning the proof of the problem exist
and are not political propaganda). If you study the case of
cannabis, all statements on its danger comes from paper which have
not been made available to the public, and was contradicted by all
papers available to the public. The cannabis set-up was gross,
immense, obvious, and nobody was failed, except the general public
and the physicians. Many doctor, askd to vote for the inegality of
marijuana, said that they were not aware that marijuana was
cannabis, at that time, and took some time to realize the
maneuver. We had to wait 10 years before the paper by Nahas gave
the protocols used to prove that cannabis demolish brain cells,
and indeed, now we have them, and it is just ridiculous (the
rabbit were smoking ten joints simultaneously for seven days
24/24, and the neurons have been shown since dying from asphyxia,
just to give one example among many).
Bruno
John Mikes
On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Bruno Marchal
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 10 Sep 2015, at 23:17, John Mikes wrote:
Excellent historical analysis, Smitra. Thanks. I was a
contemporary witness
during my adult years (40s to 70s) and vouch for your ideas.
Bruno, however, picked prohibitionism as the main (sole?)
culprit what does not match my conclusions. It was part of it,
for sure.
I think I agree with all what Saibal said, but I believe that
nothing can progress in any direction as long as prohibitionism
exist. It might be that stopping prohibition is not enough, but
it is a necessary step. It is not that difficult, as the lies
exists only since 75 years. It is another matter about theology
(1500 years of lies), and matter (billions years of lies).
I found as main culprit the dissatisfaction of the overwhelming
majority of people with their lives as slaves in a capitalistic
system to work for less than what they may have produced.
Well, the term "capitalism" is ambiguous. I am all for the free
market, but only with a regulating system making it not breaking
some laws, like defamation of products and misinformation of the
public. We must avoid mafia-like merchandising of fears, diseases
and wars. Only a few minority makes big benefits, but it go with
a lot of suffering.
Also the 'ownership' claim of Nature, including her products,
beyond the effort the claimant has put into getting them, plus
an ownership of the so called law-enforcement forces to suppress
any opposition - making the advanced society an economical
inequality of haves and have-nots, the latter being forced to
work FOR the former for their mere survival.
Free-market is a win-win strategy. The "capitalism" of today is
everything but free-market. The rich get enrieced by stealing the
money of the less rich. It is not free-market, it is organized
banditism.
Governments are exponents of the rich and powerful and force the
have-nots into their armies to die in wars for the interest of
the wealthy. It is called patriotism. The exploited slaves
(dead, injured casualties of wars) of the system are called heros.
Just to vent off
I agree with you, but I think that it is not the system which is
faulty, but a well prepared perversion of the system, that the
founders of America were quite aware of the possibility.
They did not find a way to solve the problem, except by the US
Constitution, which has been indeed eroded more and more (and is
virtually dead with the NDAA 2012, actually).
It is not a question of politics: it is a question of good and
bad people. The liars, the lied which parrots, and the lied which
lives the lies.
The applied human science, except for laws and democracy (in
principle) is still governed by the "the boss is right"
principle. People are still discouraged to make the thinking and
take the responsibility. Only in movies.
Bruno
John Mikes
On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Bruno Marchal
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 31 Aug 2015, at 16:52, smitra wrote:
The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big
inertia, it takes them a long time to see that the World has
changed and that they need to focus on other issues than they
currently are engaged with. In some cases that can lead to
escalation of a pointless conflict that has its roots in past
issues that are no longer relevant, as is the case with the war
on drugs. And that then can cause a lot of harm.
But I think the general issue is this huge inertia. So, when
Gorbachov was in power and he was ready to deal seriously with
the West, it took us a very long time to engage with him. A
point on which we never engaged with the Soviets in a
constructive way was Afghanistan.
The Soviets were willing to withdraw from Afghanistan, even
before Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like
leaving behind a stable government. We never wanted to engage
with the Soviets on that, because of pur mondset that the root
of all evil was communism, and the Soviets were just talking
bullshit about our allies there, the Jihadists.
Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just
ridiculous. We knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of
Afghanistan, their communist puppet government dismantled, the
Afghan population would be able to form a democratic state. We
were so sure about this that we never critically analyzed all
the hidden assumptions made here.
It later turned out that we were wrong and that the Soviets were
right, not in their general approach but about seeing the threat
of Jihadism that we helped to fuel. Also they were right about
the dangers of having failed states. Our ideology at the time
was that a failed state would quickly get itself organized into
a flourishing democracy if you could only keep the evil
communists out.
Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position
was weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his nationalist
opposition who were critical of the West politically stronger.
When Yeltsin took over he had to deal with an economically weak
Russia while in the background there were forces lurking who
were extremely critical of the West. In any country you'll have
the opposition that tends to question the government's policy
especially if things are not going well economically and
especially when there has been a recent radical change. In the
years after the collapse of communism that move was
democratization, liberalization of the economy etc. etc.
It's easy for us to say that the Russians who were critical at
the time were stupid, just look at the opposition in the US
against a universal health care system. Now, if we could turn
back the clock and had dealt with Afghanistan differently, then
the outcome of that might not just have prevented the rise of
international Jihadism, you would also have had the pro-Western
reformists in Russia to be in a politically far stronger
position. Likely you would not have had Putin in power today, or
Putin may not have become that anti-Western (he wasn't when came
into power).
Another thing is that we would have improved the UN Security
Council System to deal with complex problems. As it currently
functions, the UNSC is a panel of prosecutors who are the
World's policemen, prosecutor, jury and judge at the same time
without a requirement for members to recuse themselves when they
are involved.
The system works fine in emergency situations, like when Iraq
invaded Kuwait, just like a police can intervene effectively
when there is a bank robbery going on. But when the emergency
situation is dealt with, we all know that you need a proper
justice system to deal with the problem on the longer term. We
know that what cannot work is a system where the local police
can have a caucus with other police officers from neighboring
areas to deal with that. Even if you assume that police officers
can be 100% objective, you would still not have much faith in a
system where the police officers could be the prosecutors
juries, judges, appeals judges and Supreme Court judges all at
the same time.
This i.m.o. is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Iraq under
Saddam Hussein (supported by both superpowers in the 1980s)
could never prove that it had no WMD within the current system
once some prosecutors decided to throw the book at him.
Had instead the Western powers thought critically about how to
improve the international institutions instead of seeing the
collapse of the Soviet Union as a big gain in their power within
the current system, the UNSC could have been reformed. You can
think of a system where the UNSC continues to exist in its
present form but that it creates a new institution where judges
rule on contentious fundings of facts. The UNSC could then have
referred difficult dossiers like the Iraq WMD case, Iran's
nuclear program etc. to such an institution where decisions are
made on the basis of real evidence instead of political rhetoric.
I think I agree with your analysis, but I think there is much
more, which is the disparition/erosion of the separation of
power, which is part of the making of the rhetoric.
So, I put most of the blame of the current situation on the
West's failures to just think about the long term during the
late stages of the Cold War.
As long as prohibitionist are not all in jail, or amnestied
perhaps, some corporatism will will continue to make huge
profits in diseases and war selling.
The war on terror is fake, because if that was genuine, the most
urgent thing which would have been done is to stop prohibition,
which is the fuel, even the main engine of international crimes
and terrorism, and it is know today that whatever drug is
prohibited, the consumption of it is multiplied by a large
factor (which is normal as you offer the market to the criminals).
I mean that it is not just our incompetence, there is a part of
unwillingness. We tolerate the lies on important things, like on
cancers, indeed we tolerate that people think for us about what
is good or bad to us, but that's contradict already the intent
of most of the founders of America.
As long as prohibitionism is not abolished, I think we must
remain skeptical about any *official* theory by default. Liars
lie rarely only once. Prohibition rotten everything.
International prohibition can only lead to international chaos,
mafia wars, well disguised.
Bruno
Saibal
On 30-08-2015 22:34, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/30/2015 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
- the governments know that prohibition is the main fuel of
criminality and terrorism.
So Muslims flew planes into buildings government (which one?)
prohibited something (what?).
Brent
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