Portions of the discussion Ziggie and I had last night
Ziggie: Lets say that your benevolent dictator does everything right, rules fairly, treats the people well. well whats going to happen to the people when the dictator becomes corrupted by desire of money and more power? Yes of course he has advisors that can advise him,but an advisor does not have power, an advisor can only give advice, and an advisor can easily be gotten rid of.
Me: Likewise, what's to happen when some trigger happy asshole decidees to kill everyone in an anarchist state and there is no police force it's inherantly flawed as is any government or lack thereof. I can't answer that because the point is to trust that that wouldn't happen just like in an anarchy you have to trust that your neighbors will not fucking kill you. I'd rather entrust my life to one person who is deemed fair by his predecessor than to trust my life to an entire nation of people.
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Me: As far as technology goes, though, how would an anarchist society make advances? What is the point? Where in the modern world the point was profit,always has been really, people try new things and get better to get people's business would someone really devote their lives to a project for free?
Ziggie: The point is not to make advances in technology. the point is to use the technology that is needed for survival and to throw out all the useless consumer crap technology.
Me: But are people willing to do that? How many suburbanites wouldn't get pissed if you broke their tv?
Ziggie: That in itself would be an advance.
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I honestly believe, that in spite of all the bullshit rhetoric in the whitehouse about good and evil, the NeoCons arent any different from the Italian Fascists of WW2 as far as im concerned. there IS an american empire. its growing and growing, and eventually its going to just grow too much, and collapse. just like Nazi Germany, just like Rome.
Me: Closer to german fascism, really because thre's the added bit of racism. The "devilization" (new word, o.o) of the middle eastern countries by the current administration calling them evil, using broad terms on "terror" you can not attack an entire country because there are terrorists in it you might as well destroy america because the consumerist society we live in is killing way more people than some fucking 747. Pollution, cigarettes, that's terrorism, on a global scale, and it's LEGAL.
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Here's an interesting question that just popped into my head: do you think that public schools are terrible... on purpose? It makes all too much sense, especially with the no child left behind bullshit
pushing kids through the system faster. I think it is definately possible that it could be on purpose. I don't know how directly they can control it, but you have to look at the results between private schools(even some publically funded, private schools) and regular public schools and wonder.
Ziggie: Well first of all look at it this way the average household in Bangor paid 3614 dollars in federal income taxes in 2004. Now, lets take one dollar of that out of one income tax dollar, 30 cents (or 30 percent) goes to the military. How much goes to education? 4 cents. 4 percent. Now I admit that that im not taking into account other taxes; this IS just a statistic specific to income tax, however, even when you factor in all the other taxes, the picture is pretty much the same. Except that when you factor in the other taxes, its something like 50 percent of govt spending going into the military now take into account the fact that the govt is DEMANDING that schools meet certain standards and yet they dont have the resources/money that they need to meet those standards, so a lot of schools are failing because they're just trapped between these demands and the lack of funds.
Me: and it just gets worse, I don't see the logic (because there isn't any).
Ziggie: So its entirely possible that the gov't IS trying to mess up public schools. It's not a bad theory at all. The Bush administration has reduced federal funding of colleges and thus, for many kids our age, the military is becoming a more appealing option.
Me: Likewise, what's to happen when some trigger happy asshole decidees to kill everyone in an anarchist state and there is no police force it's inherantly flawed as is any government or lack thereof. I can't answer that because the point is to trust that that wouldn't happen just like in an anarchy you have to trust that your neighbors will not fucking kill you. I'd rather entrust my life to one person who is deemed fair by his predecessor than to trust my life to an entire nation of people.
--
Me: As far as technology goes, though, how would an anarchist society make advances? What is the point? Where in the modern world the point was profit,always has been really, people try new things and get better to get people's business would someone really devote their lives to a project for free?
Ziggie: The point is not to make advances in technology. the point is to use the technology that is needed for survival and to throw out all the useless consumer crap technology.
Me: But are people willing to do that? How many suburbanites wouldn't get pissed if you broke their tv?
Ziggie: That in itself would be an advance.
--
I honestly believe, that in spite of all the bullshit rhetoric in the whitehouse about good and evil, the NeoCons arent any different from the Italian Fascists of WW2 as far as im concerned. there IS an american empire. its growing and growing, and eventually its going to just grow too much, and collapse. just like Nazi Germany, just like Rome.
Me: Closer to german fascism, really because thre's the added bit of racism. The "devilization" (new word, o.o) of the middle eastern countries by the current administration calling them evil, using broad terms on "terror" you can not attack an entire country because there are terrorists in it you might as well destroy america because the consumerist society we live in is killing way more people than some fucking 747. Pollution, cigarettes, that's terrorism, on a global scale, and it's LEGAL.
--
Here's an interesting question that just popped into my head: do you think that public schools are terrible... on purpose? It makes all too much sense, especially with the no child left behind bullshit
pushing kids through the system faster. I think it is definately possible that it could be on purpose. I don't know how directly they can control it, but you have to look at the results between private schools(even some publically funded, private schools) and regular public schools and wonder.
Ziggie: Well first of all look at it this way the average household in Bangor paid 3614 dollars in federal income taxes in 2004. Now, lets take one dollar of that out of one income tax dollar, 30 cents (or 30 percent) goes to the military. How much goes to education? 4 cents. 4 percent. Now I admit that that im not taking into account other taxes; this IS just a statistic specific to income tax, however, even when you factor in all the other taxes, the picture is pretty much the same. Except that when you factor in the other taxes, its something like 50 percent of govt spending going into the military now take into account the fact that the govt is DEMANDING that schools meet certain standards and yet they dont have the resources/money that they need to meet those standards, so a lot of schools are failing because they're just trapped between these demands and the lack of funds.
Me: and it just gets worse, I don't see the logic (because there isn't any).
Ziggie: So its entirely possible that the gov't IS trying to mess up public schools. It's not a bad theory at all. The Bush administration has reduced federal funding of colleges and thus, for many kids our age, the military is becoming a more appealing option.