subject:"Re\: Telmo On the US COnstitution"



On 21 Nov 2013, at 18:55, Jason Resch wrote:





On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 21 Nov 2013, at 15:50, Jason Resch wrote:





On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:


Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities  
for

peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on  
modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling  
slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the  
later amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it  
into a gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with  
SOME exceptions, thank you).


 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an  
innovation historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for  
the 21st.

My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,  
governing a so called government into committing crimes  
(international and domestic) originally excluded

from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call  
it: econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and  
forcing own interest on other countries? (Not to

mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and  
refused to sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing  
Gödel's mind (about not signing it to get the green card or the  
nationality).
Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something  
like a Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said  
that it could!



There was a letter describing the event which was long thought to  
be lost, but was recently found as described here:


http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

See the bottom of page 7 in this 2006 letter by the IAS: 
http://www.ias.edu/files/pdfs/publications/letter-2006-spring.pdf


Interesting links. Thanks.






I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and  
corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


Yes, I think where things stand today is the result of something  
different from the flaw Godel found.


Are you sure?


I just mean that while the effect is more or less the same  
(subverted democracy), I think the means is probably different than  
an exploitation of the same flaw (whatever it was) that Godel found.


What we have today isn't so much a corruption of the laws by which  
government operates, but a corruption of people in the government.


My guess is that the inconsistency Godel found in the constitution  
involved a means of using the laws against themselves, rather than  
what we see today which is a selective enforcement of laws.   
Applying laws in full force against some, while not applying the  
laws at all against others.  This, coupled with bought and paid for  
lawmakers and a broken forth estate make it easy for those with  
power and wealth to use the government as a tool to further their  
power and wealth.


The constitution should not make this possible, but I have not read  
all the amendments.








For me both prohibition and 9/11 are ... unsolved.

I would be happy to know Gödel's argument that the US constitution  
permits dictatorship.



I am also very curious about it.  I've sometimes thought about  
whether a constitution can be designed with game-theoretical  
principals such that it would be impossible (or highly improbable)  
for groups to obtain disproportionate levels of power.  Another  
interesting idea is that of an AI which, like an automated theorem  
prover, can decide on the constitutionality of a given law.  The  
source code for this could be open source so all can verify it.   
This might be called an AItocracy.


Interesting idea. Laws should be formalized, but that can be very  
difficult to do, and can be double edged. Even if the code source is  
open, the code could hide easily bugs that could be exploited by  
unscrupulous bandits. But your idea deserve to be developed, and use  
with care.









The existence of prohibition of Foods and Drugs in the Land of the  
Free is for me still a mystery.


To forbid or discourage research on a plant is ... applied  
obscurantism.


Where does that come from?


Likely from a lot of places, the prison lobby, law enforcement  
unions, money launderers, synthetic drug companies, paper companies,  
and so on.


It has been too quick. I begin to think this was well prepared. I  
think prohibition of marijuana has been in a large part a recycling  
and correction of the prohibition of alcohol, which did not work well  
(for the bandits) because alcohol

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:

 Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
 when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
 laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
 As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

  There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
 Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,



 The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But
 apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on this. Some
 sites on this  have just disappeared.


 It changed nothing because it didn't happen.  First, the NDAA authorizes the
 defense budget and other things.  The Supremes would not have found it
 anti-constitutional.  The controversial provision you may be thinking of
 was clause that affirmed the Presidents power to detain people without trial
 as set out in the 2001 resolution following the 9/11 attack.  The ACLU has
 challenged this provision and a case was brought in 2012, Hedge v Obama.  A
 district court ruled that the indefinite detention provision was
 unconstitutional and gave an injunction against its use.  This went up
 through the layers of appeals courts.  The Supreme Court threw out the
 injunction on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring
 the case - and so in effect upheld the law without actually ruling on
 whether or not it is constitutional.

 This is an aspect of U.S. law inherited from English law, that only persons
 who are actually harmed by a law can challenge it in court.  More modern
 democracies, seeing the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court in being able
 to nullify unconstitutional laws, have explicitly provided for court review
 of laws without there having to be a plaintiff and a case.

Brent,

I would say you're making an implicit extraordinary claim here. This
claim being that the reason why certain fundamental rights (like the
right to a trial) are not being is bureaucratic impediment, as opposed
to these impediments being created for the purpose of preventing the
application of said rights in practice.

I argue that this claim is extraordinary for the following reasons:

- The President signed the NDAA. He also swore to defend the
constitution and he's supposed to be a constitutional expert, so it is
not likely that he is not aware that citizens have a fundamental right
to a trial. He was not forced to sign the NDAA by bureaucracy (he
might have been forced in other ways, but here we get into pure
speculation). It was fully within his powers not to sign it or to
demand changes;

- Harm is a very subjective word. If the Supreme Court was interested
in upholding fundamental rights, it could easily interpret loss of
fundamental human rights as harm;

- The bureaucratic impediments seem to work mostly in a direction of
loss of freedom. Empirically, it does not look plausible that they are
just neutral attrition -- they prevent Guantanamo from being closed,
they allow for total surveillance, they allow the Federal Government
to go after marijuana businesses that were authorised by their states,
they allow for free speech zones, they allow for random road check
points and so on;

- The constitution is the highest law. If people were serious about
following it, they couldn't possible let some lower level law get in
the way. It's a truism that anything that prevents the application of
constitutional principles is unconstitutional, and a lot of people in
the USA swore to defend the constitution.

Telmo.

 Brent


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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 22 Nov 2013, at 14:38, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net  
wrote:

On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,



The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But
apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on  
this. Some

sites on this  have just disappeared.


It changed nothing because it didn't happen.  First, the NDAA  
authorizes the
defense budget and other things.  The Supremes would not have found  
it
anti-constitutional.  The controversial provision you may be  
thinking of
was clause that affirmed the Presidents power to detain people  
without trial
as set out in the 2001 resolution following the 9/11 attack.  The  
ACLU has
challenged this provision and a case was brought in 2012, Hedge v  
Obama.  A

district court ruled that the indefinite detention provision was
unconstitutional and gave an injunction against its use.  This went  
up
through the layers of appeals courts.  The Supreme Court threw out  
the
injunction on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing  
to bring

the case - and so in effect upheld the law without actually ruling on
whether or not it is constitutional.

This is an aspect of U.S. law inherited from English law, that only  
persons
who are actually harmed by a law can challenge it in court.  More  
modern
democracies, seeing the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court in  
being able
to nullify unconstitutional laws, have explicitly provided for  
court review

of laws without there having to be a plaintiff and a case.


Brent,

I would say you're making an implicit extraordinary claim here. This
claim being that the reason why certain fundamental rights (like the
right to a trial) are not being is bureaucratic impediment, as opposed
to these impediments being created for the purpose of preventing the
application of said rights in practice.

I argue that this claim is extraordinary for the following reasons:

- The President signed the NDAA. He also swore to defend the
constitution and he's supposed to be a constitutional expert, so it is
not likely that he is not aware that citizens have a fundamental right
to a trial. He was not forced to sign the NDAA by bureaucracy (he
might have been forced in other ways, but here we get into pure
speculation). It was fully within his powers not to sign it or to
demand changes;


Right. It is his administration which proposed the bill, and refused  
to change the language.
Also he signed a counter-statement promising that he will not apply  
it. This shows he is aware that it is a bad law. But then why sign it?  
Why taking the risk that some future president apply it? (Also he  
promised to never do counter-statements of that kind in his first  
election campaign, so what?)
The patriot act *has* been applied to some CIA whistleblower  
(explaining they knew about 9/11 month before the attack). I can  
provide link or video.






- Harm is a very subjective word. If the Supreme Court was interested
in upholding fundamental rights, it could easily interpret loss of
fundamental human rights as harm;


Yes. And the NDAA can be considered as a threat on the American  
Citizens.
If the NDAA is applied, Obama should be the first to be detained  
without trial ...






- The bureaucratic impediments seem to work mostly in a direction of
loss of freedom. Empirically, it does not look plausible that they are
just neutral attrition -- they prevent Guantanamo from being closed,
they allow for total surveillance, they allow the Federal Government
to go after marijuana businesses that were authorised by their states,
they allow for free speech zones, they allow for random road check
points and so on;


If you react to much to a terrorist attack, you fall in the trap of  
the terrorists. You make their act successful, and you do a big  
advertising for terrorism. Every expert knows that the fight against  
real terrorism is a matter of discretion, patient infiltration and  
without any public response.

The expression war on terrorism is a semantical aberration.




- The constitution is the highest law. If people were serious about
following it, they couldn't possible let some lower level law get in
the way.


Right.



It's a truism that anything that prevents the application of
constitutional principles is unconstitutional, and a lot of people in
the USA swore to defend the constitution.


And thus, the mystery.

Bruno





Telmo.


Brent


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 21 Nov 2013, at 22:53, Richard Ruquist wrote:


Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their  
tax burden for over 100 years.


Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash  
usually followed by war.
That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the  
crash was followed by the Civil War within a decade.


Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,
and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash  
of 1929-WWII.


In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they  
caused investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real  
estate crash of 1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and  
caused the 1929 crash.  We have already experienced a real estate  
crash in 2008. and today we see the stock exchange reaching never  
before heights.
So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the  
1920s are repeated,

the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.

The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was  
reduced to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to  
Reagan, the top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those  
rates the rich tended to turn profits back into their companies and  
the recessions were rather mild. But after Reagan reduced the top  
rates to 28%, the incentive to accumulate wealth was strong  
resulting in a series of investment bubbles. Recall the internet  
bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation resulted in the  
invention of derivatives.


So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we  
are headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just  
because the very rich are making so much money, especially in  
derivatives which continue to exist despite being the cause of the  
real estate crash. It is said that the value of the derivative debt  
is orders of magnitude bigger than the value of the entire world.


That sounds like a form of comp (;)


I am not entirely convinced. I think other factors have to be taken  
into account, and that the correlation you describe can be the symptom  
of some other problems. I really don't know, I need more data, and  
clever algorithms to manage them :)


I agree on deregulation and the foolishness of many pseudo-economical  
ideas, which here also can only help to influxes black and grey money,  
this little by little amounts in the financial circuits, slowly but  
persistently,  which makes the bandits taking the banks into hostages.  
Something like that.


I distinguish black money (100% of the value is based on a lie), and  
fake money (the sur-price of a legal medication which would be  
replaced by a less expensive medication if it was not illegal).


What is the real value of one dollar?

It is the value of work + speculation. The speculation can be based on  
evidences or lies. The amount of lies creates a fake value, which  
leads to economical catastrophes. But if the rich is a bandit, he  
speculates on those catastrophes too.


Solution? Step 0: education. Step 1:  stop prohibition of food and  
drugs. Denationalize food and drugs, in all nations. Allow free  
competitions in the art of life. We can take the complains into  
account and still enforce some respect for the neighbors, but not much  
more.


Alas, we live at a time where a lot of humans still like (or are  
encouraged) to delegate their thinking to the local authorities, and  
the problem is that the bandits and authorities can exploit this.


Bruno






On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
snip
If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central  
power
should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their  
local

powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.

I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
danger with ideologies.

I agree.



My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
societies.

OK.


My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
sociopathic manipulations.

About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of  
the little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are  
right, but since sometimes I am not

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread Richard Ruquist

The New Scientist article that Liz linked says essentially that crises
happen when workers outnumber the available jobs
especially elite jobs:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html#.Uo-iDdK-qFA

Turchin has found what he believes to be historical
cycleshttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528781.800-calculated-violence-numbers-that-predict-revolutions.html,
two to three centuries long, of political instability and breakdown
affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia. In a book he is
finishing, he argues that similar cycles are evident in US history, and
that they are playing out to this day. He admits that his theory, built on
a model that combines social and economic data, must be tested against real
events – but unlike most historical theories, it can be. Meanwhile, he
says, it predicts the long-term conditions that led to this shutdown.

Workers or employees make up the bulk of any society, with a minority of
employers constituting the top few per cent of earners. By mathematically
modelling historical data, Turchin finds that as population
growshttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825192.100-war--peace--war-by-peter-turchin.html,
workers start to outnumber available jobs, driving down wages. The wealthy
elite then end up with an even greater share of the economic pie, and
inequality soars. This is borne out in the US, for example, where average
wages have stagnated since the 1970s although gross domestic product has
steadily climbed.

This process also creates new avenues – such as increased access to higher
education – that allow a few workers to join the elite, swelling their
ranks. Eventually this results in what Turchin calls elite overproduction
– there being more people in the elite than there are top jobs. Then
competition starts to get ugly, he says.

The richest continue to become richer: as in many complex systems, whether
in nature or in society, existing advantage feeds back positively to create
yet more. The rest of the elite fight it out, with rival patronage networks
battling ever more fiercely. There are always ideological differences, but
elite overproduction explains why competition becomes so bitter, with no
one willing to compromise, Turchin says.

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 22:53, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
burden for over 100 years.

Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
usually followed by war.
That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
followed by the Civil War within a decade.

Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,
and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
1929-WWII.

In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they caused
investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real estate crash of
1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and caused the 1929 crash. We
have already experienced a real estate crash in 2008. and today we see
the stock exchange reaching never before heights.
So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s are
repeated,
the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.

The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced
to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan, the
top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich tended
to turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were rather
mild. But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive to
accumulate wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment bubbles.
Recall the internet bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation
resulted in the invention of derivatives.

So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we are
headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just because the
very rich are making so much money, especially in derivatives which
continue to exist despite being the cause of the real estate crash. It is
said that the value of the derivative debt is orders of magnitude bigger
than the value of the entire world.

That sounds like a form of comp (;)

I am not entirely convinced. I think other factors have to be taken into
account, and that the correlation you describe can be the symptom of some
other problems. I really don't know, I need more data, and clever
algorithms to manage them :)

I agree on deregulation and the foolishness of many pseudo-economical
ideas, which here also can only help to influxes black and grey money, this
little by little amounts in the financial circuits, slowly but
persistently, which makes the bandits taking the banks into hostages.
Something like that.

I distinguish black money (100% of the value is based on a lie), and fake

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread John Mikes

Thanks, Richard, excellent reverberation. I just frown when I read rich -
who are they? lately the word millionaire lost it's taste: with a
middle-class family home of - say - 700K value and some cash set aside:  an
average  retiree is a millionaire.
Billionaire is not so easy: there is a gap in between (at ~some hundred
millions?), to be fixed if it refers to net worth of a person (or of a
family) or includes ALL (also what is hidden from the IRS).
It came up when some irate writer mentioned the 'millionaires' in the
legislation.
I try: super-rich, or ultra-rich. (I frequented a group of retired
professors of good witts when I said something about 'rich' and one jumped
me: Whom do you call 'rich'? and another quipped: whoever has more money
than himself..


On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

 Bruno,

 The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
 burden for over 100 years.


 Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
 usually followed by war.

 That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
 followed by the Civil War within a decade.


 Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

 and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
 1929-WWII.


 In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they caused
 investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real estate crash of
 1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and caused the 1929 crash.  We
 have already experienced a real estate crash in 2008. and today we see
 the stock exchange reaching never before heights.

 So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s are
 repeated,

 the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.


 The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced
 to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan, the
 top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich tended
 to turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were rather
 mild. But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive to
 accumulate wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment bubbles.
 Recall the internet bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation
 resulted in the invention of derivatives.


 So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we are
 headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just because the
 very rich are making so much money, especially in derivatives which
 continue to exist despite being the cause of the real estate crash. It is
 said that the value of the derivative debt is orders of magnitude bigger
 than the value of the entire world.


 That sounds like a form of comp (;)


 Richard


 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
 wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 snip
 If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
 should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their local
 powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.


 I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
 that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
 danger with ideologies.


 I agree.



 My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
 not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
 possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
 and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
 made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
 societies.


 OK.


  My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
 decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
 that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
 sociopathic manipulations.


 About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of the
 little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
 With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are
 right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity exists,
 nor even that it is on a near horizon.




  The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling
 to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
 times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.



 I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
 in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.



 The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the short
 run,
 so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead, of
 logical
 validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which explains the
 logician's sense of humor).
 The short

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread Richard Ruquist

I vary from filthy rich to excessively rich.
But for this group, I toned it down.
I think history speaks for itself.
Richard


On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 5:39 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks, Richard, excellent reverberation. I just frown when I read rich
 - who are they? lately the word millionaire lost it's taste: with a
 middle-class family home of - say - 700K value and some cash set aside:  an
 average  retiree is a millionaire.
 Billionaire is not so easy: there is a gap in between (at ~some hundred
 millions?), to be fixed if it refers to net worth of a person (or of a
 family) or includes ALL (also what is hidden from the IRS).
 It came up when some irate writer mentioned the 'millionaires' in the
 legislation.
 I try: super-rich, or ultra-rich. (I frequented a group of retired
 professors of good witts when I said something about 'rich' and one jumped
 me: Whom do you call 'rich'? and another quipped: whoever has more money
 than himself..


 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.comwrote:

 Bruno,

 The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
 burden for over 100 years.


 Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
 usually followed by war.

 That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
 followed by the Civil War within a decade.


 Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

 and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
 1929-WWII.


 In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they caused
 investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real estate crash of
 1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and caused the 1929 crash.  We
 have already experienced a real estate crash in 2008. and today we see
 the stock exchange reaching never before heights.

 So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s
 are repeated,

 the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.


 The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced
 to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan, the
 top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich tended
 to turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were rather
 mild. But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive to
 accumulate wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment bubbles.
 Recall the internet bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation
 resulted in the invention of derivatives.


 So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we are
 headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just because the
 very rich are making so much money, especially in derivatives which
 continue to exist despite being the cause of the real estate crash. It is
 said that the value of the derivative debt is orders of magnitude bigger
 than the value of the entire world.


 That sounds like a form of comp (;)


 Richard


 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.bewrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
 wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 snip
 If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
 should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their
 local
 powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.


 I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
 that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
 danger with ideologies.


 I agree.



 My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
 not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
 possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
 and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
 made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
 societies.


 OK.


  My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
 decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
 that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
 sociopathic manipulations.


 About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of the
 little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
 With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are
 right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity exists,
 nor even that it is on a near horizon.




  The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling
 to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
 times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.



 I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
 in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.



 The problem is that p - q is far better than

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On 22 Nov 2013, at 19:36, Richard Ruquist wrote:

The New Scientist article that Liz linked says essentially that
crises happen when workers outnumber the available jobs

especially elite jobs:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html#.Uo-iDdK-qFA

Turchin has found what he believes to be historical cycles, two to
three centuries long, of political instability and breakdown
affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia. In a book he is
finishing, he argues that similar cycles are evident in US history,
and that they are playing out to this day. He admits that his
theory, built on a model that combines social and economic data,
must be tested against real events – but unlike most historical
theories, it can be. Meanwhile, he says, it predicts the long-term
conditions that led to this shutdown.

Workers or employees make up the bulk of any society, with a
minority of employers constituting the top few per cent of earners.
By mathematically modelling historical data, Turchin finds that as
population grows, workers start to outnumber available jobs, driving
down wages. The wealthy elite then end up with an even greater share
of the economic pie, and inequality soars. This is borne out in the
US, for example, where average wages have stagnated since the 1970s
although gross domestic product has steadily climbed.

This process also creates new avenues – such as increased access to
higher education – that allow a few workers to join the elite,
swelling their ranks. Eventually this results in what Turchin calls
elite overproduction – there being more people in the elite than
there are top jobs. Then competition starts to get ugly, he says.

The richest continue to become richer: as in many complex systems,
whether in nature or in society, existing advantage feeds back
positively to create yet more. The rest of the elite fight it out,
with rival patronage networks battling ever more fiercely. There
are always ideological differences, but elite overproduction
explains why competition becomes so bitter, with no one willing to
compromise, Turchin says.

Thanks Richard. Interesting. May be true!

Bruno

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 22:53, Richard Ruquist wrote:

Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their
tax burden for over 100 years.

Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic
crash usually followed by war.
That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the
crash was followed by the Civil War within a decade.

Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,
and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street
crash of 1929-WWII.

In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they
caused investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real
estate crash of 1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and
caused the 1929 crash. We have already experienced a real estate
crash in 2008. and today we see the stock exchange reaching never
before heights.
So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the
1920s are repeated,

the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.

The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was
reduced to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up
to Reagan, the top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those
rates the rich tended to turn profits back into their companies and
the recessions were rather mild. But after Reagan reduced the top
rates to 28%, the incentive to accumulate wealth was strong
resulting in a series of investment bubbles. Recall the internet
bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation resulted in the
invention of derivatives.

So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we
are headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just
because the very rich are making so much money, especially in
derivatives which continue to exist despite being the cause of the
real estate crash. It is said that the value of the derivative debt
is orders of magnitude bigger than the value of the entire world.

That sounds like a form of comp (;)

I am not entirely convinced. I think other factors have to be taken
into account, and that the correlation you describe can be the
symptom of some other problems. I really don't know, I need more
data, and clever algorithms to manage them :)

I agree on deregulation and the foolishness of many pseudo-
economical ideas, which here also can only help to influxes black
and grey money, this little by little amounts in the financial
circuits, slowly but persistently, which makes the bandits taking
the banks into hostages. Something like that.

I distinguish black money (100% of the value is based on a lie), and
fake

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread meekerdb

On 11/22/2013 5:38 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:

There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,

The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But
apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on this. Some
sites on this have just disappeared.

Brent,

?? Left out some words?

I argue that this claim is extraordinary for the following reasons:

The controversial clause of the NDAA only applies to citizens who have taken up arms or
aided organizations that have taken up arms against the U.S. and only for the duration of
the war against Al Quida and the Taliban. So you are confused on several counts. This is
what the 6th amendment actually says:

/In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public
trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses
against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have
the assistance of counsel for his defense.///

Note that it refers to a criminal trial. An enemy soldier captured in wartime is not a
criminal. Second, it clearly refers to crimes committed in a state or district of the
U.S. - not Afghanistan or Iraq. So it is not at all unconstitutional to deny a trial to
those captives in Guantanomo. I agree that they should be tried, but the use of a
military tribunal is certainly not unconstitutional.

He was not forced to sign the NDAA by bureaucracy (he
might have been forced in other ways, but here we get into pure
speculation). It was fully within his powers not to sign it or to
demand changes;

Demanding things of Congress doesn't necessarily get them (particularly when the House is
controlled by the Republicans).

- Harm is a very subjective word. If the Supreme Court was interested
in upholding fundamental rights, it could easily interpret loss of
fundamental human rights as harm;

The point is that the people who were plaintiffs in the case weren't harmed.

- The bureaucratic impediments seem to work mostly in a direction of
loss of freedom. Empirically, it does not look plausible that they are
just neutral attrition -- they prevent Guantanamo from being closed,
they allow for total surveillance, they allow the Federal Government
to go after marijuana businesses that were authorised by their states,
they allow for free speech zones, they allow for random road check
points and so on;

- The constitution is the highest law. If people were serious about
following it, they couldn't possible let some lower level law get in
the way.

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread Jason Resch

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 4:09 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 18:55, Jason Resch wrote:




 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 15:50, Jason Resch wrote:




 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

 Telmo wrote:



 *I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for 
 **peaceful
 world with further increases in freedom)*.

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling
 slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions, thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,
 *governing* a so called government into committing crimes
 (international and domestic) originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

  How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



 Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused to
 sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
 not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
 Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something like
 a Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it could!



 There was a letter describing the event which was long thought to be
 lost, but was recently found as described here:

 http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

 See the bottom of page 7 in this 2006 letter by the IAS:
 http://www.ias.edu/files/pdfs/publications/letter-2006-spring.pdf


 Interesting links. Thanks.






 I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
 corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


 Yes, I think where things stand today is the result of something
 different from the flaw Godel found.


 Are you sure?



 I just mean that while the effect is more or less the same (subverted
 democracy), I think the means is probably different than an exploitation of
 the same flaw (whatever it was) that Godel found.

 What we have today isn't so much a corruption of the laws by which
 government operates, but a corruption of people in the government.

 My guess is that the inconsistency Godel found in the constitution
 involved a means of using the laws against themselves, rather than what we
 see today which is a selective enforcement of laws.  Applying laws in full
 force against some, while not applying the laws at all against others.
 This, coupled with bought and paid for lawmakers and a broken forth estate
 make it easy for those with power and wealth to use the government as a
 tool to further their power and wealth.


 The constitution should not make this possible, but I have not read all
 the amendments.



Perhaps if everyone was equally permitted to enforce the laws things would
have gotten to where they are today, but currently only a privileged few
(district attorneys) have the power to bring charges against someone.  The
right to a trial by jury is also subverted in 90% of cases, by threatening
vast and unjust charges unless the person agrees to plead guilty to a
smaller set of charges.  It's not clear to me how the constitution could
prevent such malfunctions.

It reminds me of a quote attributed to Franklin:

The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at
the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18,
1787, a woman asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a
monarchy?”  Franklin replied, “A republic, madam – if you can keep it.”

Franklin's reply suggested that vigilance on the part of the people is
required to maintain the government as envisioned in the constitution.






 For me both prohibition and 9/11 are ... unsolved.

 I would be happy to know Gödel's argument that the US constitution
 permits dictatorship.


 I am also very curious about it.  I've sometimes thought about whether a
 constitution can be designed with game-theoretical principals such that it
 would be impossible (or highly improbable) for groups to obtain
 disproportionate levels of power.  Another interesting idea is that of an
 AI which, like an automated theorem prover, can decide on the
 constitutionality of a given

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread Jason Resch

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:00 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/22/2013 5:38 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:

There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,

The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But
apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on this. Some
sites on this have just disappeared.

Brent,

?? Left out some words?

I argue that this claim is extraordinary for the following reasons:

Note that it refers to a criminal trial. An enemy soldier captured in
wartime is not a criminal.

It becomes problematic when the war on terror has no defined end, no
defined enemy, and is global in scope, making the whole world into a
battlefield. It is the same stretching of laws that enabled the US to
implement concentration camps of Japanese Americans by creating exclusion
zones around military bases that were hundreds of miles in range of the
military base, or the idea od fourth ammendment free zones which extend
hundreds of miles from national borders, and impact 2 out of 3 Americans:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/privacy/21805/2-out-every-3-americans-lost-fourth-amendment-protections-dhs

It may be legal under some stretched interpretation of the letter of a law,
but certainly not under the spirit of the law.

Second, it clearly refers to crimes committed in a state or district of
the U.S. - not Afghanistan or Iraq. So it is not at all unconstitutional
to deny a trial to those captives in Guantanomo.

It is against the declaration of independence, which holds that

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-22 Thread meekerdb

On 11/22/2013 11:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:00 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/22/2013 5:38 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 7:51 PM, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net
mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:

There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,

The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But
apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on this. Some
sites on this have just disappeared.

Brent,

?? Left out some words?

I argue that this claim is extraordinary for the following reasons:

The controversial clause of the NDAA only applies to citizens who have
taken up arms
or aided organizations that have taken up arms against the U.S. and only
for the
duration of the war against Al Quida and the Taliban. So you are confused
on
several counts. This is what the 6th amendment actually says:

/In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and
public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the
crime shall
have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained
by law,
and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be
confronted with
the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his
favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.///

Note that it refers to a criminal trial. An enemy soldier captured in
wartime is
not a criminal.

It becomes problematic when the war on terror has no defined end, no defined enemy,
and is global in scope, making the whole world into a battlefield.

Indeed, it's not like wars contemplated in laws, including international law. But it's
not like a criminal enterprise either.

It is the same stretching of laws that enabled the US to implement concentration camps
of Japanese Americans by creating exclusion zones around military bases that were
hundreds of miles in range of the military base, or the idea od fourth ammendment free
zones which extend hundreds of miles from national borders, and impact 2 out of 3
Americans:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/privacy/21805/2-out-every-3-americans-lost-fourth-amendment-protections-dhs

It may be legal under some stretched interpretation of the letter of a law, but
certainly not under the spirit of the law.

I recently learned that the /In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial,/ is not actually upheld. The Supreme Court has
ruled this right does not exist

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On 21 November 2013 20:55, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

  My point is that you used a bad comparison. There is no reasonable
  comparison between the King of England at the time and wizards and
 drgaons,

 It was a joke...

 Right, gotcha. I won't ask you to explain why it was funny, because
that tends to spoil a joke, nor will I ask why you didn't say that to start
with and spare me the embarrassment of explaining why I thought it was an
invalid comparison, but instead gave what looked like a plausible
explanation about how ridiculous it was to pay taxes to someone on the
other side of the world.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:22 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 21 November 2013 20:55, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

  My point is that you used a bad comparison. There is no reasonable
  comparison between the King of England at the time and wizards and
  drgaons,

 It was a joke...

 Right, gotcha. I won't ask you to explain why it was funny, because that
 tends to spoil a joke, nor will I ask why you didn't say that to start with
 and spare me the embarrassment of explaining why I thought it was an invalid
 comparison, but instead gave what looked like a plausible explanation about
 how ridiculous it was to pay taxes to someone on the other side of the
 world.

Liz, sorry! There's no reason to feel embarrassed. It's hard to convey
tone over email and it was my fault indeed.
I just ripped off a joke from Doug Stanhope rambling about the royal wedding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOHo4RzZEc

Telmo.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it was a
joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an explanation, I
assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant comparison
but I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't think
came across very well...

Oh well :(

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:


Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on  
modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling  
slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the  
later amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it  
into a gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with  
SOME exceptions, thank you).


 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation  
historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.

My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,  
governing a so called government into committing crimes  
(international and domestic) originally excluded

from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:  
econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing  
own interest on other countries? (Not to

mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused  
to sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind  
(about not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something  
like a Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that  
it could!


I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and  
corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling  
to think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the  
times. The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the  
appeal to authority. We have never been modern.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:


Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

 There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,



The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But  
apparently this has changed nothing. I don't find information on this.  
Some sites on this  have just disappeared.


Bruno





Ie.:

ARTICLE III

Text
Learn More
SECTION 1.

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one  
Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from  
time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme  
and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour,  
and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a  
compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance  
in office.


SECTION 2.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity,  
arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and  
treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to  
all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and  
consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to  
controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to  
controversies between two or more states;--between a state and  
citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;-- 
between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of  
different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and  
foreign states, citizens or subjects.




On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:35 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:
Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on  
modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling  
slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the  
later amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it  
into a gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with  
SOME exceptions, thank you).


 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation  
historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.

My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,  
governing a so called government into committing crimes  
(international and domestic) originally excluded

from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:  
econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing  
own interest on other countries? (Not to

mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).

JM

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it was a
 joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an explanation, I
 assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant comparison but
 I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't think came
 across very well...

 Oh well :(

You're right, I should have said it in my first reply. My bad.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

 Telmo wrote:

 I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
 peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on modernized
 medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling slave-owner male
 chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME exceptions,
 thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, governing a
 so called government into committing crimes (international and domestic)
 originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



 Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused to
 sign it.

You mean pretended in the French sense right? As in Gödel claimed that...

 Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
 not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
 Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something like a
 Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it could!

Provided it is followed, of course. I don't think the Weimar
constitution was ever repealed during the third reich. It was simply
ignored...

 I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
 corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.

I completely agree. We might only differ in that you are more
optimistic on the possibility of preventing financial lobbying using
rules, while I suspect that the only solution is to decentralise power
so completely that there is not target to lobby.

 The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.

I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.

Telmo.

 Bruno


 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities  
for

peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on  
modernized
medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling slave-owner  
male

chauvinist Forefathers,
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the  
later

amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME  
exceptions,

thank you).

I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,  
governing a
so called government into committing crimes (international and  
domestic)

originally excluded
from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and  
forcing own

interest on other countries? (Not to
mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and  
refused to

sign it.


You mean pretended in the French sense right? As in Gödel claimed  
that...


Oops! Yes. Thanks for noticing. To pretend is a false friend. I knew  
it, but forget it all the time!






Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something  
like a
Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it  
could!


Provided it is followed, of course. I don't think the Weimar
constitution was ever repealed during the third reich. It was simply
ignored...


OK.





I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


I completely agree. We might only differ in that you are more
optimistic on the possibility of preventing financial lobbying using
rules, while I suspect that the only solution is to decentralise power
so completely that there is not target to lobby.


I am not sure decentralizing would work better. It would augment the  
number of local powers, and such local powers might even been worse,  
as being more local and less public or less transparent.
I think we might need some reasonable mix of centralized and  
decentralized power.
If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central  
power should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about  
their local powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.






The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are  
unwilling to
think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the  
times.

The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
authority. We have never been modern.


I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.


The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the short  
run, so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead,  
of logical validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which  
explains the logician's sense of humor).
The short term/long term conflict is unavoidable. Humans face it all  
the time, like when hesitating to stop smoking, or to stop producing  
CO2, etc.
It is even more complex today due to globalization. With the 20th  
century, earth has become a finite space, and this has to be taken  
into account, and it is not a simple task, as we have to change habits  
that we have since a very long time. In the long run, we will have to  
escape the planet and continue to run forward. But meanwhile, we have  
to accommodate with the finite resourcing, with or without global  
warming. That's a reason more to fight against corporatism, special  
private interests, international white collar criminality, etc.


Bruno





Telmo.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

Hi Richard,

There was an article in New Scientist recently about a mathematician who
claims to have a theory which says roughly what you are saying - do you
know anything about that? It sounds a bit like the railways would run on
time if it wasn't for the passengers! -- or in this case,  the capitalist
system would work fine if it wasn't for the rich :)


On 22 November 2013 10:53, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

 Bruno,

 The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
 burden for over 100 years.


 Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
 usually followed by war.

 That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
 followed by the Civil War within a decade.


 Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

 and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
 1929-WWII.


 In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they caused
 investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real estate crash of
 1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and caused the 1929 crash.  We
 have already experienced a real estate crash in 2008. and today we see
 the stock exchange reaching never before heights.

 So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s are
 repeated,

 the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.


 The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced
 to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan, the
 top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich tended
 to turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were rather
 mild. But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive to
 accumulate wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment bubbles.
 Recall the internet bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation
 resulted in the invention of derivatives.


 So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we are
 headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just because the
 very rich are making so much money, especially in derivatives which
 continue to exist despite being the cause of the real estate crash. It is
 said that the value of the derivative debt is orders of magnitude bigger
 than the value of the entire world.


 That sounds like a form of comp (;)


 Richard


 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
 wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 snip
 If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
 should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their local
 powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.


 I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
 that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
 danger with ideologies.


 I agree.



 My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
 not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
 possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
 and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
 made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
 societies.


 OK.


  My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
 decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
 that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
 sociopathic manipulations.


 About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of the
 little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
 With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are
 right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity exists,
 nor even that it is on a near horizon.




  The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling
 to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
 times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.



 I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
 in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.



 The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the short
 run,
 so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead, of
 logical
 validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which explains the
 logician's sense of humor).
 The short term/long term conflict is unavoidable. Humans face it all the
 time, like when hesitating to stop smoking, or to stop producing CO2,
 etc.
 It is even more complex today due to globalization. With the 20th
 century,
 earth has become a finite space, and this has to be taken into account,
 and
 it is not a simple task, as we have to change habits that we have since
 a
 very long time. In the long run, we will

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

 Telmo wrote:

 I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
 peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized
 medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling slave-owner male
 chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions,
 thank you).

 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, governing
 a
 so called government into committing crimes (international and domestic)
 originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



 Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused to
 sign it.


 You mean pretended in the French sense right? As in Gödel claimed
 that...


 Oops! Yes. Thanks for noticing. To pretend is a false friend. I knew it,
 but forget it all the time!




 Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
 not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
 Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something like
 a
 Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it could!


 Provided it is followed, of course. I don't think the Weimar
 constitution was ever repealed during the third reich. It was simply
 ignored...


 OK.




 I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
 corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


 I completely agree. We might only differ in that you are more
 optimistic on the possibility of preventing financial lobbying using
 rules, while I suspect that the only solution is to decentralise power
 so completely that there is not target to lobby.


 I am not sure decentralizing would work better. It would augment the number
 of local powers, and such local powers might even been worse, as being more
 local and less public or less transparent.
 I think we might need some reasonable mix of centralized and decentralized
 power.
 If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
 should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their local
 powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.

I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
danger with ideologies.

My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
societies. My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
sociopathic manipulations.


 The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
 times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.


 I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
 in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.


 The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the short run,
 so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead, of logical
 validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which explains the
 logician's sense of humor).
 The short term/long term conflict is unavoidable. Humans face it all the
 time, like when hesitating to stop smoking, or to stop producing CO2, etc.
 It is even more complex today due to globalization. With the 20th century,
 earth has become a finite space, and this has to be taken into account, and
 it is not a simple task, as we have to change habits that we have since a
 very long time. In the long run, we will have to escape the planet and
 continue to run forward. But meanwhile, we have to accommodate with the
 finite

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it was a
 joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an explanation, I
 assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant comparison
 but I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't think
 came across very well...

 Oh well :(


Liz,

I didn't understand his comment until I saw the video he linked.  See the
video and it will all make sense. :-)

Jason

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 15:50, Jason Resch wrote:




 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

 Telmo wrote:



 *I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for 
 **peaceful
 world with further increases in freedom)*.

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling
 slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions, thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,
 *governing* a so called government into committing crimes (international
 and domestic) originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

  How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



 Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused to
 sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
 not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
 Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something like
 a Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it could!



 There was a letter describing the event which was long thought to be lost,
 but was recently found as described here:

 http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

 See the bottom of page 7 in this 2006 letter by the IAS:
 http://www.ias.edu/files/pdfs/publications/letter-2006-spring.pdf


 Interesting links. Thanks.






 I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
 corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


 Yes, I think where things stand today is the result of something different
 from the flaw Godel found.


 Are you sure?



I just mean that while the effect is more or less the same (subverted
democracy), I think the means is probably different than an exploitation of
the same flaw (whatever it was) that Godel found.

What we have today isn't so much a corruption of the laws by which
government operates, but a corruption of people in the government.

My guess is that the inconsistency Godel found in the constitution involved
a means of using the laws against themselves, rather than what we see today
which is a selective enforcement of laws.  Applying laws in full force
against some, while not applying the laws at all against others.  This,
coupled with bought and paid for lawmakers and a broken forth estate make
it easy for those with power and wealth to use the government as a tool to
further their power and wealth.




 For me both prohibition and 9/11 are ... unsolved.

 I would be happy to know Gödel's argument that the US constitution permits
 dictatorship.


I am also very curious about it.  I've sometimes thought about whether a
constitution can be designed with game-theoretical principals such that it
would be impossible (or highly improbable) for groups to obtain
disproportionate levels of power.  Another interesting idea is that of an
AI which, like an automated theorem prover, can decide on the
constitutionality of a given law.  The source code for this could be open
source so all can verify it.  This might be called an AItocracy.




 The existence of prohibition of Foods and Drugs in the Land of the Free is
 for me still a mystery.

 To forbid or discourage research on a plant is ... applied obscurantism.

 Where does that come from?


Likely from a lot of places, the prison lobby, law enforcement unions,
money launderers, synthetic drug companies, paper companies, and so on.
Things which are good for the majority of the population (cheap
alternatives, copyrighted works entering the public domain, patents
expiring to become generic drugs, universal healthcare, direct democracy,
etc.) are often bad for the small few that hold an advantaged position from
the unavailability of that good thing.  See how the copyright length gets
extended everytime Disney's cartoons enter danger of entering the public
domain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act ).

Jason







 Jason


 The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread Richard Ruquist

I stopped my NS subscription last year.
Do you recall anything I can Google?
I'll try 'the mathematics of crashes'
Yes. That works:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#.Uo6HTNK-qFA

But this may be better:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/12/black-scholes-equation-credit-crunch
or
http://fivebooks.com/interviews/james-owen-weatherall-on-physics-and-financial-markets

But none seem to support or be concerned with the gist of my post that in
your words
(I suspect that there may be some truth to your statement)
the capitalist system would work fine if it wasn't for the rich.
They are just too greedy for their own good.
Richard

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 5:10 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Richard,

There was an article in New Scientist recently about a mathematician who
claims to have a theory which says roughly what you are saying - do you
know anything about that? It sounds a bit like the railways would run on
time if it wasn't for the passengers! -- or in this case, the capitalist
system would work fine if it wasn't for the rich :)

On 22 November 2013 10:53, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
burden for over 100 years.

Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
usually followed by war.

That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
followed by the Civil War within a decade.

Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
1929-WWII.

So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s
are repeated,

the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.

That sounds like a form of comp (;)

Richard

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.bewrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
snip
If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their
local
powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.

I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
danger with ideologies.

I agree.

My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
societies.

OK.

My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
sociopathic manipulations.

About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of the
little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are
right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity exists,
nor even that it is on a near horizon.

The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling
to
think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
times.
The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
authority. We have never been modern.

I'm happy to read

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

It was this one:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html#.Uo6MecSVPB4

On 22 November 2013 11:39, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

I stopped my NS subscription last year.
Do you recall anything I can Google?
I'll try 'the mathematics of crashes'
Yes. That works:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#.Uo6HTNK-qFA

But this may be better:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/12/black-scholes-equation-credit-crunch
or
http://fivebooks.com/interviews/james-owen-weatherall-on-physics-and-financial-markets

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 5:10 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Richard,

On 22 November 2013 10:53, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
burden for over 100 years.

Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
usually followed by war.

That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash
was followed by the Civil War within a decade.

Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
1929-WWII.

So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s
are repeated,

the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.

The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced
to 25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan,
the top tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich
tended to turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were
rather mild. But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive
to accumulate wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment
bubbles. Recall the internet bubble at the turn of the century. And
deregulation resulted in the invention of derivatives.

That sounds like a form of comp (;)

Richard

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.bewrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
wrote:

On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
snip
If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central
power
should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their
local
powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.

I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
danger with ideologies.

I agree.

OK.

The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread Jason Resch

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:

 Telmo wrote:



 *I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for 
 **peaceful
 world with further increases in freedom)*.

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling
 slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions, thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, *governing*a 
 so called government into committing crimes (international and domestic)
 originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



 Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and refused to
 sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing Gödel's mind (about
 not signing it to get the green card or the nationality).
 Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something like a
 Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said that it could!



There was a letter describing the event which was long thought to be lost,
but was recently found as described here:

http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

See the bottom of page 7 in this 2006 letter by the IAS:
http://www.ias.edu/files/pdfs/publications/letter-2006-spring.pdf



 I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and
 corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


Yes, I think where things stand today is the result of something different
from the flaw Godel found.

Jason


 The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.

 Bruno



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:09 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 Sorry, you did so!!!

 I can only apologise. I must try not to do so much housework and stuff, I
 need to spend longer checking what I'm replying to! :) I just saw what you
 said and thought - that's odd - and then a whole conversation kicked off as
 a result. My problem is I hardly ever have time to actually watch or read
 what's at the other end of  links, so I tend not to even see them.

 Sorry again.

No worries really! It's very hard to keep up with the volume of messages.




 On 22 November 2013 10:00, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:31 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 22 November 2013 03:38, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it
  was
  a joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an
  explanation, I
  assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant
  comparison but
  I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't
  think came
  across very well...
 
  Oh well :(
 
 
  Liz,
 
  I didn't understand his comment until I saw the video he linked.  See
  the
  video and it will all make sense. :-)
 
  OK, but in that case it was a bad idea to put it in a politically
  charged
  debate without including the link.

 But I did in include the link...

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

Sorry, you did so!!!

I can only apologise. I must try not to do so much housework and stuff, I
need to spend longer checking what I'm replying to! :) I just saw what you
said and thought - that's odd - and then a whole conversation kicked off as
a result. My problem is I hardly ever have time to actually watch or read
what's at the other end of  links, so I tend not to even see them.

Sorry again.




On 22 November 2013 10:00, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:31 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 22 November 2013 03:38, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it
 was
  a joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an
 explanation, I
  assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant
 comparison but
  I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't
 think came
  across very well...
 
  Oh well :(
 
 
  Liz,
 
  I didn't understand his comment until I saw the video he linked.  See
 the
  video and it will all make sense. :-)
 
  OK, but in that case it was a bad idea to put it in a politically charged
  debate without including the link.

 But I did in include the link...

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread Richard Ruquist

Bruno,

The rich have been trying to take over the US govt to reduce their tax
burden for over 100 years.


Every time they have succeeded the result has been an economic crash
usually followed by war.

That happened in 1857 after a decade of prosperity and then the crash was
followed by the Civil War within a decade.


Crash and Clash was repeated in 1893-WWI,

and again in the real estate crash of 1926 and the Wall Street crash of
1929-WWII.


In each case the very rich accumulated so much wealth that they caused
investment/debt bubbles resulting a crash. After the real estate crash of
1926, rich investors then switched to stocks and caused the 1929 crash.  We
have already experienced a real estate crash in 2008. and today we see the
stock exchange reaching never before heights.

So we again are ripe for a crash which and if the lessons of the 1920s are
repeated,

the crash will be much more severe than the 2008 Great Recession.


The roaring 20s prosperity came about when the top tax rate was reduced to
25% along with finance deregulation. Since WWII and up to Reagan, the top
tax rates were between 90% and 70%, and at those rates the rich tended to
turn profits back into their companies and the recessions were rather mild.
But after Reagan reduced the top rates to 28%, the incentive to accumulate
wealth was strong resulting in a series of investment bubbles. Recall the
internet bubble at the turn of the century. And deregulation resulted in
the invention of derivatives.


So I think, and many bankers do as they are hoarding cash, that we are
headed for a serious stock market crash, and apparently just because the
very rich are making so much money, especially in derivatives which
continue to exist despite being the cause of the real estate crash. It is
said that the value of the derivative debt is orders of magnitude bigger
than the value of the entire world.


That sounds like a form of comp (;)


Richard


On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

  On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be
 wrote:


 On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 snip
 If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central power
 should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their local
 powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.


 I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
 that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
 danger with ideologies.


 I agree.



 My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
 not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
 possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
 and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
 made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
 societies.


 OK.


  My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
 decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
 that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
 sociopathic manipulations.


 About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of the
 little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
 With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are
 right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity exists,
 nor even that it is on a near horizon.




  The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling to
 think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
 times.
 The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal to
 authority. We have never been modern.



 I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central problem
 in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.



 The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the short
 run,
 so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead, of
 logical
 validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which explains the
 logician's sense of humor).
 The short term/long term conflict is unavoidable. Humans face it all the
 time, like when hesitating to stop smoking, or to stop producing CO2,
 etc.
 It is even more complex today due to globalization. With the 20th
 century,
 earth has become a finite space, and this has to be taken into account,
 and
 it is not a simple task, as we have to change habits that we have since a
 very long time. In the long run, we will have to escape the planet and
 continue to run forward. But meanwhile, we have to accommodate with the
 finite resourcing, with or without global warming. That's a reason more
 to
 fight against corporatism, special private interests, international white
 collar criminality, etc.


 Right, but the hope of some people who propose a radically free market
 is that it would work more like the immune system, and that it would
 allocate resources in a more efficient way

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 21 Nov 2013, at 15:50, Jason Resch wrote:





On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 20 Nov 2013, at 21:35, John Mikes wrote:


Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities  
for

peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on  
modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling  
slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the  
later amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it  
into a gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with  
SOME exceptions, thank you).


 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an  
innovation historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the  
21st.

My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,  
governing a so called government into committing crimes  
(international and domestic) originally excluded

from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call  
it: econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and  
forcing own interest on other countries? (Not to

mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).



Gödel pretended that the US constitution was inconsistent and  
refused to sign it. Einstein intervened and succeeded in changing  
Gödel's mind (about not signing it to get the green card or the  
nationality).
Einstein asked Gödel if the US constitution could prevent something  
like a Nazy party to take power, like in Germany, and Gödel said  
that it could!



There was a letter describing the event which was long thought to be  
lost, but was recently found as described here:


http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

See the bottom of page 7 in this 2006 letter by the IAS: 
http://www.ias.edu/files/pdfs/publications/letter-2006-spring.pdf


Interesting links. Thanks.






I don't think capitalism is the problem, but financial lobbying and  
corporatism; + lies, can pervert completely a democracy.


Yes, I think where things stand today is the result of something  
different from the flaw Godel found.


Are you sure?

For me both prohibition and 9/11 are ... unsolved.

I would be happy to know Gödel's argument that the US constitution  
permits dictatorship.


The existence of prohibition of Foods and Drugs in the Land of the  
Free is for me still a mystery.


To forbid or discourage research on a plant is ... applied obscurantism.

Where does that come from?

Bruno






Jason


The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are unwilling  
to think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all  
the times. The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by  
the appeal to authority. We have never been modern.


Bruno





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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On 22 November 2013 03:38, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it was
 a joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an explanation, I
 assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant comparison
 but I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't think
 came across very well...

 Oh well :(


 Liz,

 I didn't understand his comment until I saw the video he linked.  See the
 video and it will all make sense. :-)

 OK, but in that case it was a bad idea to put it in a politically charged
debate without including the link.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

By the way we cancelled our sub to NS some years ago, but I am now
reconsidering...

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-21 Thread meekerdb


On 11/21/2013 1:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 20 Nov 2013, at 22:20, Richard Ruquist wrote:


Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

 There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,



The supreme court has judged the NDAA 2012 anti-constitutional. But apparently this has 
changed nothing. I don't find information on this. Some sites on this  have just 
disappeared.


It changed nothing because it didn't happen.  First, the NDAA authorizes the defense 
budget and other things.  The Supremes would not have found it anti-constitutional.  The 
controversial provision you may be thinking of was clause that affirmed the Presidents 
power to detain people without trial as set out in the 2001 resolution following the 9/11 
attack.  The ACLU has challenged this provision and a case was brought in 2012, Hedge v 
Obama.  A district court ruled that the indefinite detention provision was 
unconstitutional and gave an injunction against its use.  This went up through the layers 
of appeals courts.  The Supreme Court threw out the injunction on the grounds that the 
plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring the case - and so in effect upheld the law 
without actually ruling on whether or not it is constitutional.


This is an aspect of U.S. law inherited from English law, that only persons who are 
actually harmed by a law can challenge it in court. More modern democracies, seeing the 
importance of the U.S. Supreme Court in being able to nullify unconstitutional laws, have 
explicitly provided for court review of laws without there having to be a plaintiff and a 
case.


Brent


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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 21 Nov 2013, at 13:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 21 Nov 2013, at 11:05, Telmo Menezes wrote:
snip
If nobody complains on his local decentralized power, the central  
power
should have nothing to say, but if the locals complain about their  
local

powers, the central power can be used as an arbiter.


I agree that this is a risk. I don't claim that there is any system
that could be implemented and would solve all the problems, that's the
danger with ideologies.


I agree.




My belief is that human evolution - better forms of governance,
not the other way around. So democracy, with all its flaws, was made
possible by a new level of human development. Here I mean evolution
and development in the broad sense, not the biological sense. This is
made clear by the attempts to force democracy on less developed
societies.


OK.



My point is that, as we evolve further, maybe the
decentralized system can exist without incurring so much on the risks
that you mention, and at the same time being much more resilient to
sociopathic manipulations.


About this I am not sure. With local powers you augment the risk of  
the little bureaucratic sort of bosses.
With some level of spiritual maturity, I can conceive that you are  
right, but since sometimes I am not sure such spiritual maturity  
exists, nor even that it is on a near horizon.







The deeper problem relies in the fact that most humans are  
unwilling to

think by themselves, and they confuse p - q and q - p all the
times.
The (human, but not only) sciences are still driven by the appeal  
to

authority. We have never been modern.



I'm happy to read this. I thought this confusion was a central  
problem

in society for a long time, without being an expert in logic.



The problem is that p - q is far better than nothing, in the  
short run,
so our brains are hardwired to reason by association, instead, of  
logical

validity. Logic is by essence counter-intuitive (which explains the
logician's sense of humor).
The short term/long term conflict is unavoidable. Humans face it  
all the
time, like when hesitating to stop smoking, or to stop producing  
CO2, etc.
It is even more complex today due to globalization. With the 20th  
century,
earth has become a finite space, and this has to be taken into  
account, and
it is not a simple task, as we have to change habits that we have  
since a
very long time. In the long run, we will have to escape the planet  
and
continue to run forward. But meanwhile, we have to accommodate with  
the
finite resourcing, with or without global warming. That's a reason  
more to
fight against corporatism, special private interests, international  
white

collar criminality, etc.


Right, but the hope of some people who propose a radically free market
is that it would work more like the immune system, and that it would
allocate resources in a more efficient way than central control.


I am for a free market. The market should be independent of the  
(central) power, except for the modalities of the contracts, the  
selling technic, etc.






The
long term view is not foreign to markets. This is precisely what
investments are. Warren Buffet became extremely rich by taking a long
view on investments, not by doing high-frequency trading. But again, I
say this with the human evolution caveat in mind.


Local powers can easily design laws against foreigners, and develop  
selfish local profits method. In the UD this could enlarge the gap  
between black and white, or between middle class and lower classes.
I would favor a stable central power, which would enforce few but  
basic important laws and rules, on which everyone agrees. Then the  
local powers can implement special politics and experiences.
Somehow I do believe that the Americans were close to this, but they  
failed to prevent prohibition, and that remains a bit of a mystery for  
me. I am open to the idea that there has been a real well prepared  
conspiracy, not by illuminati but by by a collusion of special  
interests (paper, oil, pharma, military, jails, and the black market,  
etc.).





I'm also strongly in favour of experiments. For example, and this
would certainly annoy most libertarians, I am very excited by the
Swiss plan to provide a base level of income to all citizens.


I have always defended that idea.





I like
it because it's so simple and non-intrusive. You just give everyone
the same base income, no matter how poor or rich they are.


Yes. That is what the communist never grasped. It makes no sense to  
distribute the money from the rich to the poor, this makes the richer  
less rich, and very quickly the poor even much less rich. As long as  
people don't use lies and dishonest methods, people should be able to  
enrich themselves as much as they want. But we must find a way to  
prevent the bad use of money to enrich oneself. And this asks for very  
special laws

Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:31 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 22 November 2013 03:38, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:54 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 OK, fair enough. I wouldn't have said anything more if you'd said it was
 a joke after I made my first comment, but since you gave an explanation, I
 assumed you were serious. I mean, obviously it was a flippant comparison but
 I thought there was a serious intention behind it, which I didn't think came
 across very well...

 Oh well :(


 Liz,

 I didn't understand his comment until I saw the video he linked.  See the
 video and it will all make sense. :-)

 OK, but in that case it was a bad idea to put it in a politically charged
 debate without including the link.

But I did in include the link...

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread Richard Ruquist

Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

 There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,

Ie.:

ARTICLE III

   - 
Texthttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii?quicktabs_10=0#quicktabs-10
   - Learn 
Morehttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii?quicktabs_10=1#quicktabs-10

SECTION 1.

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme
Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time
ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts,
shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times,
receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished
during their continuance in office.
SECTION 2.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising
under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made,
or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting
ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty
and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States
shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a
state and citizens of another
statehttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxi;--between
citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming
lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the
citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.


On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:35 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:

 Telmo wrote:



 *I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for 
 **peaceful
 world with further increases in freedom)*.

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling
 slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions, thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, *governing*a 
 so called government into committing crimes (international and domestic)
 originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).

 JM

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread John Mikes

Thanks, Richard, - very educative!
John M


On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

 Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
 when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
 laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
 As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court

  There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
 Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,

 Ie.:

 ARTICLE III

- 
 Texthttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii?quicktabs_10=0#quicktabs-10
- Learn 
 Morehttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii?quicktabs_10=1#quicktabs-10

   SECTION 1.

 The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme
 Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time
 ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts,
 shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times,
 receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished
 during their continuance in office.
 SECTION 2.

 The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising
 under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made,
 or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting
 ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty
 and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States
 shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between
 a state and citizens of another 
 statehttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxi;--between
 citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming
 lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the
 citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.


 On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:35 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:

 Telmo wrote:



 *I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for 
 **peaceful
 world with further increases in freedom)*.

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on
 modernized medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling
 slave-owner male chauvinist Forefathers,
 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME
 exceptions, thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.
 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate,
 *governing* a so called government into committing crimes (international
 and domestic) originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).

 JM

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread spudboy100


Yes not the date on the calendar that matters but the behavior of human beings. 
Is anyone implying that human nature is entirely different then 300 years ago? 
Or is human nature basically the same. Thus, the economic difference, though 
vast, appear have purchase in human behavior, still. In fact, if technology 
advances the US Constitution will have even more validity. If manufacturing in 
the next 20 - 40 years becomes the action of3D printers or nanotech, then the 
structure of producing things for yourself comes back into play. Though rather 
then being a serf, a subsistence level farmer, a mill worker, 300 years later, 
these individuals will be producing goods and services not only for themselves, 
but for neighbors, fellow villagers, extended family, a few across the pond. 

The hunger for statism now seen in the Democrat Party in the US, and Marxist 
Parties, everywhere else, might only be a phase in human development. A feature 
of the Industrial Age, where governments saw benefit in having more and more 
control over the country class. Perhaps in a generation, every day will be 
Bastile Day? 


Four years he fought and he fought unafraid
Sniffing down traitors by traitors betrayed
Marat in the courtroom
Marat underground
Sometimes the otter and sometimes the hound

Fighting all the gentry and fighting every priest 
The business man the bourgeois the military beast
Marat always ready to stifle every scheme 

Of the sons of the ass licking dying regime


-Original Message-
From: Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Nov 20, 2013 4:20 pm
Subject: Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution


Chief Supreme Court Justice Marshall usurped the Constitution
when he maintained that the Supreme Court had the right to rule
laws made by Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional.
As a result the USA is essentially ruled by the Supreme Court


 There is no provision in the US Constitution for this right.
Congress instead has the right to regulate the Supreme Court,


Ie.:



ARTICLE III






Text
Learn More





SECTION 1.
The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, 
and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and 
establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold 
their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for 
their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their 
continuance in office.
SECTION 2.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under 
this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which 
shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, 
other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime 
jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a 
party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and 
citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between 
citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and 
between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or 
subjects.










On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:35 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:

Telmo wrote:

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
peaceful world with further increases in freedom).




Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on modernized 
medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling slave-owner male 
chauvinist Forefathers, 
who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England, or the later 
amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a gun-toting 
killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME exceptions, thank you). 


 I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation historical 
masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st. 
My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome: 
a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, governing a so 
called government into committing crimes (international and domestic) 
originally excluded 
from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'. 


How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it: 
econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own 
interest on other countries? (Not to 
mention the availability of all level governance for enough money). 


JM

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

And then there was Noah Webster's attempt to massacre the English
language...

:-)

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread Telmo Menezes

Hi John,

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:35 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:
 Telmo wrote:

 I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
 essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
 peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

 Which Constitution? the one epoch-opening chef-d'oeuvre based on modernized
 medieval ideas of those well educated smoking-duelling slave-owner male
 chauvinist Forefathers,

Yeah, they weren't exactly role models. Do you figure politicians are
now better?

 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England,

Good on them. What next? Pay taxes to wizards and dragons?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOHo4RzZEc

 or the later
 amended versions of the same obsolete construct making it into a
 gun-toting killer - corrupt, faith-ruled money-monger (with SOME exceptions,
 thank you).

  I join you in admiring the original one - as a relic, an innovation
 historical masterpiece FOR THE 18th CENTURY. Not for the 21st.

What do you feel should be changed for the 21st century?

 My admiration stopped short when I realized the outcome:
 a 'special-interest money'-ruled anti-democratic conglomerate, governing a
 so called government into committing crimes (international and domestic)
 originally excluded
 from it's 'modus (regulatio) vivendi'.

But are you sure this outcome would happen if the constitution had
been uphold? I don't thing the current level of federal power was what
they had in mind, for example.

 How can you imagine a 'peaceful' world with capitalistic (I call it:
 econo-feudalistic) principles, imperialistic (oil?) wars and forcing own
 interest on other countries? (Not to
 mention the availability of all level governance for enough money).

None of the things you say after the words capitalistic is what I
mean by capitalism. I see that as corporatism, which is in fact very
similar to European fascism of the early to middle 20th century.
Including all the flag waving and so on. War seems to be an exclusive
pursuit of governments. I think that a decentralised and well
connected economy would make wars very unlikely.

Telmo.

 JM

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On 21 November 2013 11:37, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

  who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England,

 Good on them. What next? Pay taxes to wizards and dragons?

 Weird comment. The King of England was only, in their view, an
inappropriate subject to pay taxes to because they were no longer his
subjects, at least in a *de facto* sense. They weren't against taxes per
se, and set up a system in which people were expected to pay taxes. (And if
wizards and dragons existed, people would indeed pay them taxes, or as we'd
call it, protection money!)

No matter how good your case, a reasoned argument is better than an invalid
comparison.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread spudboy100


No taxes sans representation. That's a different point. If we were prevented 
selling woolens because the Kings junta back home felt threatened, then 
Americans had no way to petition parliament. Keeping down the Scots and the 
Welsh and Irish are one thing, but its harder putting down a continent wide 
revolt. Secondly, the British decided that there were more goodies in India to 
loot. The 1812 War proved my first point.  Also, America having a formal 
constitution caused the British under classes to demand the same. The Great 
Reform Act of 1832 for example. By this time the UK was surpassing the US in 
personal freedoms, and didn't have that pesky little problem of slavery, as an 
actual menace by then.


-Original Message-
From: LizR lizj...@gmail.com
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Nov 20, 2013 6:07 pm
Subject: Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution



On 21 November 2013 11:37, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England,


Good on them. What next? Pay taxes to wizards and dragons?


Weird comment. The King of England was only, in their view, an inappropriate 
subject to pay taxes to because they were no longer his subjects, at least in a 
de facto sense. They weren't against taxes per se, and set up a system in which 
people were expected to pay taxes. (And if wizards and dragons existed, people 
would indeed pay them taxes, or as we'd call it, protection money!)


No matter how good your case, a reasoned argument is better than an invalid 
comparison.



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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

2013-11-20 Thread spudboy100

Freedom via 3D manufacture. Liberation through material wealth!

-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Nov 20, 2013 6:29 pm
Subject: Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 12:07 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 21 November 2013 11:37, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

  who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England,

 Good on them. What next? Pay taxes to wizards and dragons?

 Weird comment. The King of England was only, in their view, an inappropriate
 subject to pay taxes to because they were no longer his subjects, at least
 in a de facto sense. They weren't against taxes per se, and set up a system
 in which people were expected to pay taxes. (And if wizards and dragons
 existed, people would indeed pay them taxes, or as we'd call it, protection
 money!)

 No matter how good your case, a reasoned argument is better than an invalid
 comparison.

Hi Liz,

I'm sorry but I don't understand your point. I am aware that the
founding fathers were in favour of taxes. As I said to Bruno, I admire
the constitution but I think that even more freedom can be achieved. I
just meant that paying taxes to kings on the other side of the world
is ridiculous, and that the king or queen themselves are ridiculous
entities in the modern world.

Telmo.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution

On 21 November 2013 12:29, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 12:07 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  On 21 November 2013 11:37, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:
 
   who just did not want to pay taxes to the King of England,
 
  Good on them. What next? Pay taxes to wizards and dragons?
 
  Weird comment. The King of England was only, in their view, an
 inappropriate
  subject to pay taxes to because they were no longer his subjects, at
 least
  in a de facto sense. They weren't against taxes per se, and set up a
 system
  in which people were expected to pay taxes. (And if wizards and dragons
  existed, people would indeed pay them taxes, or as we'd call it,
 protection
  money!)
 
  No matter how good your case, a reasoned argument is better than an
 invalid
  comparison.

 Hi Liz,

 I'm sorry but I don't understand your point. I am aware that the
 founding fathers were in favour of taxes. As I said to Bruno, I admire
 the constitution but I think that even more freedom can be achieved. I
 just meant that paying taxes to kings on the other side of the world
 is ridiculous, and that the king or queen themselves are ridiculous
 entities in the modern world.


My point is that you used a bad comparison. There is no reasonable
comparison between the King of England at the time and wizards and drgaons,
and you are obscuring your point by using an inappropriate metaphor.

Paying taxes to someone on the far side of the world seems ridiculous
because that person isn't providing any of the services that they are, at
least in theory, providing for their citizens back home. That's a fair
point, but it doesn't make them mythical or imaginary, it just means that
they are no longer in a position to treat colonists as subjects.

Similarly, the King or Queen of England may be a ridiculous entity now, but
they certainly weren't at the time, so (again) it doesn't make sense to
suggest that.

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Re: Telmo On the US COnstitution