Millennial generation
-
@Carnival-Boy said:
At the moment it seems that a lot of Africa's problems are being solved by Chinese investment, but I'm nervous about how that'll eventually turn out.Here's how Chinese "investment" in Africa is working, at least where I was: The government owns everything and keeps the people poor. The government sells the natural resources of their country to Chinese companies. The government wishes to placate their poor populace, so they pay Chinese construction companies to come in and build infrastructure (which will only last about a generation, as there is no upkeep done on anything, ever). In the end, it's great for China, and the African governments get to cash in on their natural resources, which they have no industry to process themselves. China gets the resources, and continued labor opportunity, as well as having a decent portion of what they spent handed back to them. Good deal for everyone, right? I mean, at least the citizens get a shiny new airport out of the deal.
-
@Dashrender said:
I'm actually totally for welfare programs to help someone survive for a short period of time, but we have over 100 million people are in households that received welfare in the US last year.
That's 35% of our country - 35 PERCENT!Can't be 35%. We are way over 350m people in this country. Still a huge number, I grant you.
But those are households, not people. So be super careful. Most of that number is probably kids, spouses, etc. If I was to get unemployment, all of the family who lives with me (which at the moment includes many working adults) would be counted in that head count. And if I did it for just one month, we'd show up for a year. So at an extreme case, one unemployed 22 year old might flag a household of eight when having only gotten assistance one time at the beginning or the end of the year.
The number of people getting assistance has to be much smaller and the number of man-years of welfare would be far lower still. So the actual percentage of "man-years of working adults" might be a quite reasonable number. Counting households and "in a year" are things that would only be done to artificially inflate the number. Because that is the number that they use, you can be sure that the meaningful number is not shocking enough to bother to print.
-
@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Example you ask? Morocco.
Strange example. They're a democracy and the King changed the constitution after protests during the Arab Spring uprisings. So they didn't have a revolution, but they were on their way to a revolution had the King not reduced his powers and increased the elected government's powers. I find it hard to believe people would prefer an autocracy to a democracy.
I agree with you - I don't think 'people' ever really will. A person might though if they trust the autocracy, and even in a discussion a person might accept that it's a better solution - maybe, but people never will.
That's a very Western mindset, which "most" of the world doesn't have. Because you are a Westerner, you actually need to first live in a non-Western culture in order to have your eyes opened and realize that some things we see as "basic human psychology" can actually be extremely deep-rooted cultural concepts. A whole lot of the world actually doesn't care for democracy, as odd as that seems to us who were born into it and just assume that all people basically want to be free. I still can't really fully grasp the notion, but I have seen that it is in fact true. Democracy is not the worldwide manifestation of a political utopia, as we simply assume it to be.
-
@art_of_shred said:
That's a very Western mindset, which "most" of the world doesn't have. Because you are a Westerner, you actually need to first live in a non-Western culture in order to have your eyes opened and realize that some things we see as "basic human psychology" can actually be extremely deep-rooted cultural concepts. A whole lot of the world actually doesn't care for democracy, as odd as that seems to us who were born into it and just assume that all people basically want to be free. I still can't really fully grasp the notion, but I have seen that it is in fact true. Democracy is not the worldwide manifestation of a political utopia, as we simply assume it to be.
And not everyone sees democracy as the same. American democracy is very different than European, for example.
But it is very true, democracy is propaganda, something shoved down American throats by the media and education systems. No one every comes up with "why it is good", in fact, it doesn't even make much sense when you think about it. Given that the actions of a government must be often secret and/or complex, how could the polis vote on that? They don't have the information necessary to vote. So voting, by nature, is reckless.
I really don't see why people would want a democracy. I can see why they might not want anything else, everything has its flaws, but why they lean to democracy as they thing they often passionately want is something that I just can't figure out. What's the "good" part of it?
-
@Dashrender said:
That's 35% of our country - 35 PERCENT!
Here is how the much the media spins that....
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/
Percentage of PEOPLE on unemployment.... 4.1% at any given time (or specifically, now.) That's a relative high in the grand scheme of things. Not a record, but on the high side.
4.1% is pretty darn good, I think. And nothing like 35%.
-
No matter what type of government you have, each has its own pitfalls, and they all come because of the reality that people corrupt easily. If you have 1 guy in charge, all you can do is hope he's got your best interests at heart. If you put everything up to the tally of a public vote, all you can do is hope that the majority is not made up of idiots (good luck!). Anything in between, no matter how many checks and balances it employs, is going to come down to a person or a group of people with a responsibility to choose and to do what is good (and we can't even all agree what "good" is). With that power, there will always be outside influences from people who will pay/cheat/steal/extort to swing the decision-makers in their favor. And there are always takers.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
That's 35% of our country - 35 PERCENT!
Here is how the much the media spins that....
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/
Percentage of PEOPLE on unemployment.... 4.1% at any given time (or specifically, now.) That's a relative high in the grand scheme of things. Not a record, but on the high side.
4.1% is pretty darn good, I think. And nothing like 35%.
Yeah, but those numbers are BS, too. When you read the fine print of what that's based on, it's in reality a small portion of what the average person would define as unemployed. There are lots of people not in the system for all sorts of technical reasons, re-applying, etc. that don't show up there. I think that's just as "spun" as the other view.
-
@art_of_shred said:
No matter what type of government you have, each has its own pitfalls, and they all come because of the reality that people corrupt easily. If you have 1 guy in charge, all you can do is hope he's got your best interests at heart. If you put everything up to the tally of a public vote, all you can do is hope that the majority is not made up of idiots (good luck!). Anything in between, no matter how many checks and balances it employs, is going to come down to a person or a group of people with a responsibility to choose and to do what is good (and we can't even all agree what "good" is). With that power, there will always be outside influences from people who will pay/cheat/steal/extort to swing the decision-makers in their favor. And there are always takers.
That's why I like the "one person in charge" with some degree of oversight (there is always the oversight of revolution even in the worst cases - French, for example.) Because it has the best chances of "keeping the good interests at heart." The closer you get to having the whole populace involved, the closer you get to impossible to have good intentions. Average people aren't educated enough, "in the know enough", interested enough or possibly even capable of being good decision makers on a national scale - so if you force that to be the base of the government you guarantee problems.
-
What the heck is "one person in charge, with some oversight"? Either the dude's in charge, or he's not. If he has oversight, he's not really in charge.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
That's 35% of our country - 35 PERCENT!
Here is how the much the media spins that....
http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/
Percentage of PEOPLE on unemployment.... 4.1% at any given time (or specifically, now.) That's a relative high in the grand scheme of things. Not a record, but on the high side.
4.1% is pretty darn good, I think. And nothing like 35%.
I knew there was spin on the 35% number. Thanks for digging into it while I'm working on my phone system
-
@art_of_shred said:
What the heck is "one person in charge, with some oversight"? Either the dude's in charge, or he's not. If he has oversight, he's not really in charge.
This has been my feeling since Scott started talking about a monarchy last week.
I would love to know what this is too.
-
Are you insinuating that Scott isn't "working"? LOL
-
@art_of_shred said:
What the heck is "one person in charge, with some oversight"? Either the dude's in charge, or he's not. If he has oversight, he's not really in charge.
Well in that sense, the populace is always in charge, because they always have the oversight of revolution.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
What the heck is "one person in charge, with some oversight"? Either the dude's in charge, or he's not. If he has oversight, he's not really in charge.
Well in that sense, the populace is always in charge, because they always have the oversight of revolution.
To some degree, at least. How would a revolution work in the US today? Who has what weapons? Does the military split, and where do the armaments go? Either the military does it's sworn duty, and the populace is squashed very quickly, or all hell breaks loose and it's a complete bloodbath. If so, it's not a "now under new management" scenario, it's a burn down the old one and start from scratch. That's scary. Unless things got way worse than they are even today, is it worth the cost? You can throw the "revolution" word around, but that has to be a very calculated risk, not an "oversight".
-
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is up to the patriots to decide when that time has come, and as @art_of_shred mentioned, it must be a calculated risk. Even if, as a true patriot, we shed our blood and die, yet the revolution is quickly and truly crushed, then those we left behind must not fear anything but a cage. A cage...staying behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.
I think that America is awful close to that point. God be with us all when it it becomes a breaking point.
-
@art_of_shred said:
Either the military does it's sworn duty, and the populace is squashed very quickly, or all hell breaks loose and it's a complete bloodbath.
That's a tough one. The military swears both to the government and to the nation. When the two are at odds, those oaths are moot.
Which is another discussion entirely - can there be an ethical military when they swear allegiance to many powers?
-
@dafyre said:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -- Thomas Jefferson
While I sometimes agree with him, that man was an idiot and that he's the one who said this makes me doubt my own logic that tells me to agree with him. He's possibly the worst political (or personal) role model of his era.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
Either the military does it's sworn duty, and the populace is squashed very quickly, or all hell breaks loose and it's a complete bloodbath.
That's a tough one. The military swears both to the government and to the nation. When the two are at odds, those oaths are moot.
Which is another discussion entirely - can there be an ethical military when they swear allegiance to many powers?
Just like anything else, there will be those that choose both sides.
-
@art_of_shred said:
You can throw the "revolution" word around, but that has to be a very calculated risk, not an "oversight".
All oversight is a risk to some degree. We are talking about a balance of power here.
-
Although I think that blood letting revolutions are mostly a thing of the past. But that's hard to say, really. Yes, we are at a time of record peace and the western world can't even comprehend going to war again. But it hasn't been even a hundred years since the revolutions that made modern Europe.
There have been far longer periods of peace in the past. Followed by horrific revolutions. But, mostly, revolutions in modern times have been far more peaceful. The media would make them out to be very different, and in tiny places bad things happen, but on the large scales of the Europes, Americas, Russias, Chinas, Indias, etc. the way that change happens might be sudden, but rarely violent, at least not in historic terms.
