Or alternatively: 'The horse invented a harvesting machine which increases productivity meaning either you all get to do less hard labour, or you get to the same amount of hard work while I lay off the goose meaning I don't have to share as much of MY bread around.'
And since the horse was employed by the hen when he made the invention, the hen pays the horse his normal salary but takes all of the revenue from selling the new harvesting machine herself as if she created it. Because the hen is totally the actual innovator, not the horse.
Prison reform and single-payer healthcare are major issues for me.
Imagine that I decided to use my single-person veto to veto every bill that did not include an acceptable solution to one of those two problems? It sounds like a good idea to force my priorities to the top, right?
Now imagine someone else has a different opinion from mine. They oppose universal healthcare, and want to be "tough on crime." They veto any bill that does include either of those.
All it takes is two people, in a country of over 300 million, to completely shut down the government.
Education doesn't lead to identical opinions, jar. It doesn't lead to better consensus building, or better ability to compromise. People with similar educational backgrounds and intelligence still have differences in opinion, sometimes strongly so.
With a single-person veto, any statistically insignificant person can shut down the entire system regardless of what anyone else wants. You'd need truly 100% participation, there's no room at all for anyone at all to be stubborn.
It's just a pipe dream, jar. It's not even remotely a good idea.
Actually, education can lead to consensus building, in fact it is essential. Part is learning the results of NOT building a consensus.
Says you. For your little plan, you need more than "can," you need "100% always does."
I say this now, you will never get 100% of the population of the nation to agree on anything. All it takes is one idiot, one lunatic, or one person with a strongly held different opinion. One is an awfully small number. There is no amount of education (unless "education" is translated as "using one of my three wishes from that genie") that can guarantee universal buy-in for building consensus regardless of subject matter.
Yes, it may well be a pipe dream, but in the long run, I also believe it is the only hope.
The only hope? Your one solution is the only way to potentially save the political future of the nation?
I think you just proved my point yourself. All it takes is two people who believe they have the "only" solutions, and for those solutions to differ, to freeze the entire system.
Some men just want to watch the world burn, and jar is one of them.
I think jar's just a guy who's gotten really attached to his idea to the point where he's no longer rationally examining the real feasibility of the plan. Happens all the time, it's ironically part of the cause of the very problem his idea is intended to solve.
But impossible solutions aren't a "hope" for anything at all. They're just fantasies.
So? Everyone has beliefs, and some are more valid than others. This belief falls into the realm of impossibility. Are we not to criticize your belief because it's just "your opinion?"
I also said that it was a goal.
Which would be fine if simply working toward the goal would have an effect. Unfortunately, with a single-person veto, you need universal cooperation, not just majority or even super-majority. Partial success results in a deadlocked system, which means you'll never attain the goal, never receive the benefits of the system.
Finally I have not said that I wanted to impose anything on anyone.
Why would that be relevant? You don't have the ability to impose it on anyone, so your desire in that regard is rather moot either way.
You presented an idea. That idea is completely unrealistic as a system of human political government. We criticized that idea based on its very significant and obvious flaws. At what point does whether you support "imposition" of the idea come into play at all?
One thing I can be absolutely certain is that as long as we do not work towards that goal we will not achieve that goal.
The "you can't win if you don't play" defense?
Jar, we're not even talking about lottery odds here. The likelihood of gaining sufficient consensus to deal with a single-person veto in a nation of 300+ million on any subject, even with additional undefined "education" (hint: "education" is not a magic word that conveys additional meaning or a mechanism, you need to specify how your "education" is supposed to increase the likelihood of consensus to 100%), is practically zero.
We can't even get 300+ million people to agree that the holocaust was bad. Or that it even [i]happened.[i]
Your single-line responses don;t serve to add to your argument, jar.
Say we want to add a new restriction, or a new environmental regulation, or hell, even make child rape illegal.
One person can veto. So of course a couple people with incentive to avoid those new laws (say, corporations for whom a regulation may add costs, or a child rapist) just vetoes them.
How the fuck does education and "consensus building" address that?
Nobody's complaining about the workup to such a system; it's the end-state of a consensus system that we're telling you doesn't work. It's not a matter of "oh, there'll be some growing pains but then we'll get consensus and it'll all be fine", it's a matter of "the full expression of the system, as you've outlined it, leads to the collapse of democratic society."
Seriously.
If I want to commit a crime, any crime, all I need to do is veto every spending bill that funds the police! If I want to eliminate some environmental or banking regulations, I can veto the budget bills for the EPA or banking oversight organization!
No amount of "education" is going to fix that. You need a society so perfect that you wouldn't need laws or government in the first place!
That is just fucking depressing . You may be right I don’t know. It just seems to me that people are better than that as individuals. Ignorant perhaps but with good hearts.
The intelligence of a group tends to be inversely proportional to its size.
To quote Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black:
quote:A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
People are intelligent enough to make good decisions when they've been given sufficient information upon which to base a decision.
Unfortunately, estimation of confidence is also inversely proportional to actual topical knowledge - the less you know about a subject, the more confident you tend to be in your competence.
This means that people who are capable of making intelligent decisions based on ample information will be perfectly willing to make decisions when they have little or no actual knowledge...virtually guaranteeing that the opinion of the average Joe on a specific topic is worth less than the oxygen used to verbalize it
I see students with linked arms taking no action at all.
Then I see cops start assaulting the students with batons.
Apparently this was an attempt to "disperse" a crowd of students who had erected tents on school property in violation of school policy. The police were there to dismantle the tents. They should have simply instructed the crowd to disperse, and then arrested them one by one until the tents had been removed.
Instead, they whipped out the batons and started beating nonviolent protesters.
I don't know about you, but when I see a bunch of cops wailing on a bunch of kids because they were standing with their arms linked, I get upset.
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Not even that. It's actually an accepted tactic for forcing a crowd to dissipate: beat them with sticks and force the line back until everybody goes home. Or to a hospital, whatever.
They won't face disciplinary action at all.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
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