Andy 4 Missouri Governor!!

Aen

Cadet
One of the Sr Programmers over at Simutronics that has coded a lot of the Hero Engine is running for Governor of Missouri!

http://www.andy4governor.com/information/

i agree with a lot of what he says. Get the government out and let private organizations help people instead of people holding out hands waiting for our government to give handouts.

GO ANDY!
 
It's been pretty quiet around these forums. Mmm, political views. Lets see if I can't stir up a bit of debate ;)
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He has a pretty standard Libertarian view of things. Unfortunately, reality tends to conspire against acting out such views. It's all well and good to want to just solve a problem instead of passing laws and creating panels, but there is simply no method to do so that wouldn't lead to abuse of power or systemic failure (assuming it got anywhere at all).

The world is too complicated to 'just do things' anymore. That works with a few hundred or thousand people, but not hundreds of thousands to millions. Everyone has a view and everyone wants representation and every bureaucrat and politician wants to hold on to their own piece of power. Trying to just go on and do something would be like banging your head against a concrete bunker.

That said, anyone who could actually make the platform work would have my vote. Just like anyone who could create a fair, honest, and sustainable socialist system would. It just isn't going to happen.
 
Gate said:
The world is too complicated to 'just do things' anymore. That works with a few hundred or thousand people, but not hundreds of thousands to millions.
I don't believe that. The chinese have just proven that you can very well "just do something" - if you have a Pinch of Recklessness and the Power to back up your Actions. You could well do without the one or the other, depending on what it is that you do (and if you don't have to do it against the Will of a Lobby)...

Gate said:
Everyone has a view and everyone wants representation....
...but barely anyone gets represented in a Way he likes. Especially not for four Years straight.

Gate said:
...and every bureaucrat and politician wants to hold on to their own piece of power.
That's human Nature. That Problem is that Democracy forces Politicians to do Things, that aren't in the Peoples Interest, so they can keep their Power.

Gate said:
Just like anyone who could create a fair, honest, and sustainable socialist system would.
Well, that depends on what you consider "social". To say it bluntly, if it's about helping Loosers, then i guess there's no Chance. A System that i would consider social is rather easy to set up on the other Hand...
 
I don't believe that. The chinese have just proven that you can very well "just do something" - if you have a Pinch of Recklessness and the Power to back up your Actions. You could well do without the one or the other, depending on what it is that you do (and if you don't have to do it against the Will of a Lobby)...

I was talking about within a democratic system which the Chinese definitely do not have. They 'just do things' but speaking to my comment that everyone wants representation and that such systems lead to abuses of power: the Chinese are facing large peasant uprisings on a near weekly basis. They put these down using techniques from medieval times (literally getting thugs to go out with sticks and beat them up) and bureaucracy (protest zones that no one can get permission to participate in, long lines to aid offices that literally go nowhere). Also as I mentioned earlier, such a system will destabilize itself. Either they will get bogged down more and more in bureaucracy as people want more representation and get it, or they will go more authoritarian thus leading to higher tensions with the rest of the world and greater unhappiness within their people.


...but barely anyone gets represented in a Way he likes. Especially not for four Years straight.

Agreed.

That's human Nature. That Problem is that Democracy forces Politicians to do Things, that aren't in the Peoples Interest, so they can keep their Power.

I agree with you that it's human nature. But I would also say that many politicians and bureaucrats do the things they do quite happily. "Forcing" is in the eye of the beholder. Politicians know how to play the game and it's a game millenia old.

Anyone who gets into the system now-a-days knows what he or she is getting into (many claims to the contrary put aside). As my international politics professor used to say, power games and greed have existed ever since the first caveman looked at another and said "ugg ugg I want your shoes" (direct quote). Today we have more than shoes, we have all manner of things to crave, but the most conisistent over the millenia being power and money. Money is another issue entirely so we will stick to power to remain on topic. Kings wanted to remain in power, so do bureaurcats. Many bureaurcrats blatently resist change because it will diminish their 'kingdoms.' This sort of behavior has been proven over and over in hearings and such, sometimes to extreme levels.

The problem comes when you say "I just want to get things done" and you suddenly find a ravening pack of bureaucrats between you and your goal. They are part of a system stretching back more than 200 years, a system that has been growing larger with every year and a system that has been getting more and more complicated for reasons that are both logical and illogical. The logical reason is that what was once a government set up to govern 3 million people is now a government that is set up to govern 300 million people.

The only way to regulate all those people and systems is with many people in government. The illogical ones are bad policies, power grabs, feuds, world history, etc that people failed to compensate for or didn't care to fix after the fact. Regardless, the system today is so muddled that no one can envision it as a map much less navigate it to the heart of the problem and slay the dragon. Indeed there are probably hundreds of dragons that would need slaying in the same instant.

Well, that depends on what you consider "social". To say it bluntly, if it's about helping Loosers, then i guess there's no Chance. A System that i would consider social is rather easy to set up on the other Hand...

By social I meant true socialism, aka Marxism, but not communism (aka Stalin/Mao's interpretations of Marx's manifesto). Marx had many wonderful ideas and many very accurate criticisms of capitalism (amusingly enough some of them came true just this very month). However, Marx failed to take into account human nature. People aren't satisfied being equal with one another and public custodians are never pure and untainted by greed. Thus a Marxist system will always spiral to tyranny under the guise of altruism. Even if one great man or woman is pure, his or her successor surely will not be.

Socialism isn't just about helping losers or the poor. It has the notion that there are no losers. Everyone has a place in society and it is society's job to make sure they get to have that place... it's just not a very happy fun place as it turns out in socialist systems. People just aren't satisfied with it and the color grey describes more than just the color of Soviet architecture, it describes the mood of most people living under such a system.
 
Gate about Systems acting like the Chinese said:
Also as I mentioned earlier, such a system will destabilize itself. Either they will get bogged down more and more in bureaucracy as people want more representation and get it, or they will go more authoritarian thus leading to higher tensions with the rest of the world and greater unhappiness within their people.
This doesn't seem to be limited right now, but rather true for all Countries... it may be going faster in China though, i don't know.

Gate said:
I agree with you that it's human nature. But I would also say that many politicians and bureaucrats do the things they do quite happily. "Forcing" is in the eye of the beholder. Politicians know how to play the game and it's a game millenia old.
They sure as Hell do those Things happily. I didn't mean they're forced to do it against their Will, but rather against their Jobdescription. And that's Democracies inherent Fault: It rewards gathering Votes, not acting in the Interest of the Country or the People.

Gate said:
The problem comes when you say "I just want to get things done" and you suddenly find a ravening pack of bureaucrats between you and your goal.
Absolutely, and not just Bureaucrats, but also Lobbies, Corruption and foreign Influence. And of that, Bureaucrats are the easiest Thing to get rid of... not that i'd believe that would ever happen. And that's precisely why i mentioned "Power to back it up".

Gate said:
The only way to regulate all those people and systems is with many people in government.
Sure, more Citizens need more Officials, but nowhere near as many as we (Germany) have. It's Politicians that say "We've got to control that, we have to pass a new Law." - and then a new Office pops up. Even though acting that Way obviously leads to Inefficiency, Injustice and Circuitousness.

Gate said:
Socialism isn't just about helping losers or the poor. It has the notion that there are no losers. Everyone has a place in society and it is society's job to make sure they get to have that place... it's just not a very happy fun place as it turns out in socialist systems.
Well, in Reality not everyone has a Place in Society...
 
Socialism is un natural and will never ever work (and a good thing it won't). Who wants a system where everyone is treated equal when they are not equal? All that causes is lazy or incompetent people benefiting of the more intelligent and hard working people. For whatever problems capitalism has socialism is far worse, it's not even good in theory.
 
I personally don't think socialism is any more unnatural than monarchy or democracy. All of them are human created systems of government in which humans limit the actions of other humans. There have been societies where socialism has worked just like there have been societies that have been entirely without war... usually they are made up of several hundred individuals... or at most a few thousand in island nations, but they do exist.

Almost any form of government humanity can create will work for some group of people on a small scale. Everything tends to get muddled and troubled on a large scale, even democracy. That's why the US isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Democracy wouldn't work with a group as large as we are (though high levels of technology allowing instant mass communication, debate, and voting could theoretically break that rule... but I doubt it- too many issues, too complicated for the layman to understand).

As far as who would want a system where everyone was treated equally: just ask someone who went on Mao Zedong's march and died for the cause. He was a brutal man, a pedophile, and an incompatant leader, but damn if his socialist views didn't inspire millions. Anyone who is used to a Confucian way of thinking (as much of China has been for thousands of years) is potentially much more open to the idea of Communism because both advocate the good of society (or at least the family) over the individual.
By contrast, Western society has been used to a self-centered way of thought for quite some time and is thus entirely opposed to the notion. South and Central America have always been an interesting experiment politically as they don't tend to follow western rules but came from western ideology.
 
Socialism is un natural and will never ever work (and a good thing it won't). Who wants a system where everyone is treated equal when they are not equal? All that causes is lazy or incompetent people benefiting of the more intelligent and hard working people. For whatever problems capitalism has socialism is far worse, it's not even good in theory.

Eeeeehhhr, are you saying that hard-working and intelligent people in the USA get ahead? Because I don't see much evidence of that. On a day to day basis I see the lucky, charismatic, and well-connected people getting ahead.

Do people in this conversation not consider Northern Europe socialist...? Because those countries are some of the best places to live (if you can handle the cold). Safe, educated, high standard of living, etc etc. In the ranks of the "not screwed-up countries" I'd definitely include them.
 
I always thought a communist system redone might work quite well.

For example, if each job type has 3 grades of pay (depending on the job, of course).. every year you are graded on performance, and if you do better you move to the higher grade (but that's the best you can get in your job), or if you are doing worse, you move down. This way people are still encouraged to work hard, but there are no extremely overpaid CEOs.
 
Eeeeehhhr, are you saying that hard-working and intelligent people in the USA get ahead? Because I don't see much evidence of that. On a day to day basis I see the lucky, charismatic, and well-connected people getting ahead.
They are still more likely to get ahead with capitalism then with a socialist economy.

Do people in this conversation not consider Northern Europe socialist...? Because those countries are some of the best places to live (if you can handle the cold). Safe, educated, high standard of living, etc etc. In the ranks of the "not screwed-up countries" I'd definitely include them.
Northern Europe is socialist-like but not actually socialist, they are about half and half.
 
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