Building a Utopian Playland - Toy Soldiers Unite!

@Stormsinger hey, I should be the one accusing you of being the utopian, wishing to design a system where power wielding regulators would magically not succumb to their human nature.

No matter how cruel you may think a freer society can be, a more oppressive society can't be any better. America has matured to deal with the challenges of having freedom of speech, even though I'm sure it was a scary idea at the time it was proposed. We just need the courage to try economic freedom, without training wheels, without caving in before liberals crying foul for every little perceived abuse.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss ideas about liberty as lunacy, many liberties you enjoy today used to be considered lunacy too, specially by those in power and by dumb submissive majorities.

Yes, of course. I ever so much prefer to get revenge for being poisoned, rather than prevent the poisoning beforehand. Your solutions make the former the only possible approach. Not a world -I- care to live in... The oligarchs have repeatedly proven they are more than willing to inflict any amount of damage on us, if it'll make them a buck or two. Dead people can't sue, you see.

This is why I use the term lunacy to describe libertarianism. The loons ignore all of history and claim that replacing law with civil suits would make everything grand. I suppose I could be more generous and call it naivete, but the result is the same. You ignore history and human nature...just like all utopians, be they capitalist, libertarian, communist or whatever. Utopias only work if human nature changes.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

You think that Britain is socialist!?
>> ^quantumushroom:
I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!



He knows it in his heart and that's what counts!

>> ^Trancecoach:

Seems to me that the People need to vote with their dollars and stop, for example, buying Dominos Pizza, once they learn that it's profits support anti-gay campaigns, or Snapple once they learn that it's owned by Rush Limbaugh, and so on.>> ^Stormsinger:
Capitalism is virtually guaranteed to become state-sponsored, over the long run, especially in a democracy (or republic, there's little effective difference). When the government has no built-in opposition to the capitalist class, sooner or later, it gets bought.
The big question is how do you build in a negative feedback loop to limit the power of the oligarchs.


That's effectively the situation today...and we see how well that's been working. If it worked, this video wouldn't exist.


In order for that approach to be effective, it requires a change in normal human behavior...such that
many people would willingly inconvenience themselves for principles that don't immediately affect them.

If we can change human nature, we don't need any other answer. Let's just change it so capitalism (or communism, or objectivism) works well without regulation. They all work fine if those pesky humans would just do what the various Utopians think they should.

>> ^quantumushroom:

I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!


How can Britain be socialist? They invented the term "class system".

A socialist nation with an enfranchised church and a hereditary monarch as head of state? Pull the other one.
>> ^quantumushroom:

Yeah, it's socialist. Not quite Cuba, but still...
The English are denied the right to defend their lives with firearms. There's cameras everywhere keeping everyone "safe". Freedom of speech has been shackled a hundred times over. When a government owns your health, it owns YOU.
The welfare state continues unabated. Please take Obama as a parting gift, we'll throw in Biden for free.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
You think that Britain is socialist!?
>> ^quantumushroom:
I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!

Yeah, it's socialist. Not quite Cuba, but still...

The English are denied the right to defend their lives with firearms. There's cameras everywhere keeping everyone "safe". Freedom of speech has been shackled a hundred times over. When a government owns your health, it owns YOU.

The welfare state continues unabated. Please take Obama as a parting gift, we'll throw in Biden for free.


>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

You think that Britain is socialist!?
>> ^quantumushroom:
I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!

You think that Britain is socialist!?
>> ^quantumushroom:

I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!

I thought socialism would have turned England into a utopian paradise by now!

Chaos and Bone, you both make semi-valid points. However, if you buy cotton picked by slaves, and then say "but don't confuse the ends with the means. Our desire for cotton may not justify the immoral actions used to produce it, but that doesn't mean cotton or our desire to wear it, is wrong."

nope, cotton picked with slave labour is immoral to support through a consumer purchase.

I will however admit that you need a cell phone in today's society to get a job. I never said that no one should own electronics.

@BoneRemake, I hope I do belong to a different herd. I guess we'll see which group of monkeys treats the other monkeys with more kindness and love.

I never said we need to do away with cell phones, or computers, but Foxxcon type operations need to stop, and products need to be recyclable before I consider them ethical. None of this is pie in the sky utopianism, it just takes people who care, but nobody cares for the dead of Foxxcon, they just want to play angybirds. (Or for bone, monkeys who care, whatever you consider us.)

QM, Mossadegh's effort to nationalize his nation's oil was not a threat to the United States. For one, they were not doing it to make a political point against any government; so, the Iranians had no interest in withholding oil from any customers. What they wanted were the revenues and profits from the oil coming out of their own land; which would have hurt British interests, or more specifically, the precursor to BP. The US got involved because of cold war ideology. Also, our governments were not in conflict at the time; Mossadegh even visited the states at least once.

Your proposition that they would have eventually overthrown Mossadegh is faulty on a number of points. First of all, Mossadegh was an elderly man who could not have lasted a couple of decades. Secondly, he was a prime minister in a democracy with many thriving factions. Like in all democracies, his administration would have eventually been voted out. Also, the Islamic fundies in Iran developed as a direct result of the Shah's brutality. The Persians had one of the richest, intellectual and tolerant cultures in the region, beforehand, IMO. If their democracy had had a chance to mature and thrive, they could have been a major positive force in the region. Why would people in possession of wealth and democracy overthrow their own government?

It's a very interesting story, documented in the book All the Shah's Men, if you are interested in learning more.

>> ^quantumushroom:

@ChaosEngine Thank you for your more civil tone of late. Am I surprised that someone reached for the mouse to downvote MY comment while ignoring THIS?

Stukafox: There's only two kinds of Republicans: Corporate tools and complete psychopaths.

The Blame America First mindset is very real. It's taught in our public schools government indoctrination centers from K thru kollij. "Anarchist" Gnome Chompsky has made millions off this bizarre worldview, which glibly ignores the 100 million murdered by communist regimes and the defeat of fascism (and rebuilding of Europe) by the United States.
As for the charge of US meddling in Iran, the reality is we have interests around the world, things we want to buy and nations that want to sell. Glancing at wikipedia: when the elected government nationalized the Iranian oil industry, that was a threat to both Britain and the US.
Yeah, the Shah was an a-hole, but he was replaced with an even bigger a-hole, an islamic fundie. So instead of utopian perfection, we had an evil replaced with a greater evil. (And who's to say had Prime Minister Mosaddegh kept power through the 1970s, he wouldn't have been overthrown by Khomeini anyway)?
There is not any one era when international relations was superior and reasonable, just brief burps where there was an odd peace.
If you want to celebrate red china for "putting America in its place" like our idiot excuse of a president does, you better damned well understand what you're favoring: a ruthless communist regime that kills people as easily as you throw away coat hangers.

@ChaosEngine Thank you for your more civil tone of late. Am I surprised that someone reached for the mouse to downvote MY comment while ignoring THIS?

Stukafox: There's only two kinds of Republicans: Corporate tools and complete psychopaths.

The Blame America First mindset is very real. It's taught in our public schools government indoctrination centers from K thru kollij. "Anarchist" Gnome Chompsky has made millions off this bizarre worldview, which glibly ignores the 100 million murdered by communist regimes and the defeat of fascism (and rebuilding of Europe) by the United States.

As for the charge of US meddling in Iran, the reality is we have interests around the world, things we want to buy and nations that want to sell. Glancing at wikipedia: when the elected government nationalized the Iranian oil industry, that was a threat to both Britain and the US.

Yeah, the Shah was an a-hole, but he was replaced with an even bigger a-hole, an islamic fundie. So instead of utopian perfection, we had an evil replaced with a greater evil. (And who's to say had Prime Minister Mosaddegh kept power through the 1970s, he wouldn't have been overthrown by Khomeini anyway)?

There is not any one era when international relations was superior and reasonable, just brief burps where there was an odd peace.

If you want to celebrate red china for "putting America in its place" like our idiot excuse of a president does, you better damned well understand what you're favoring: a ruthless communist regime that kills people as easily as you throw away coat hangers.

Good luck on the revolution front. Not only do we need a new foundation on how we deal with corporations, police, military, science, religion/state, prisons, health-care, lawmaking, politics, policy foreign/domestic, executive functions state or country, emergency response systems, logistics roads/bridges/railroad, infrastructure, welfare and societal needs, energy, money/goods, trade, etc...

Like he said, we need a new foundation on our psychology. What we teach our children is bunk, it will make the majority of them happy for a few fleeting moments and unhappy the rest of their lives. We need to find a new foundation to help find happiness for everyone for the majority of their entire life--without resorting to competition and instead combining our strengths and creating a great community.

I'd wager the closest you'll get is to literally do education completely different than what we do now. Start at an early age and give the children a glimpse of ALL trades to be used and learned in the world. Over time find what they excel at and LIKE doing and help them achieve their goal in that field. Then continually narrow the field as they get older so they can truly become a master at something, like a chemical engineer. Education would, graphically, look more like a giant plinko board that students slowly make their way down and filter themselves into the field THEY want. If we supported students all the way PASS college to the point they were job ready (and in fact you could perhaps harmonize corporations into the mix, so that when you get your degree not only have you most likely interned/researched at the place you will work gaining practical knowledge you are ready day one out of school to start a job you LOVE and excel at.

I know you'll get clumps and pools of people in places you may not have uses for them, but if we truly put our minds to it I bet we could find a way to still get the method to work (I know corporations won't necessarily do what I said except in--most likely-- the science fields, but having just a few large companies do it would help). Then if we lived a slower paced life, with more time off to OURSELVES than in slavery to someone else you might see a change in the overall attitude of our community and maybe civilization. Help people pay for modest houses and maybe even some furniture. Cover healthcare needs for each other, maybe even other social services as well. Tone the military down to a defensive one, one that can defend us, but can only truly become a real war machine like what happened in WWII.

Granted, there would be a lot to work out, but I highly doubt it's impossible to create a GREAT life here on this planet if we all work together to make it happen. Hell, we walked on the fucking moon! I know most of this will require not only leaps in science and with those leaps, hopefully ,soon, some of those bring about leaps in the psychology fields helping us to genetically weed out sociopaths, psychopaths, unipolar, bipolar, borderline, Asperger's, sever depression/anxiety, OCDs, addictions, etc... Plus with expanded bio-engineering, especially in genetics, if we could make sure people atleast have an IQ of say 120 (hell if you truly find the master switch--just turn it up), get rid of all genetic diseases and birth imperfections, rid us of deafness, blindness, baldness, etc... Then add in the advancements in bio-engineering on the mechanical, nanotechnological, electronics, and computers and we'll have one hell of a ride (of course if we haven't solved the psychological issues by then, we will almost certainly kill ourselves off). But, that stuff is 50 years away with some probably 150-200 years away. If we can help stabilize our humanity, through engineering and perfecting our psychology, I really believe we'll have a chance one day to see some sort of Utopian society.

Everything he talked about most likely leads to something that MIGHT be better than what we had. But, it won't be here in the U.S. and I doubt it'll even be in Asia (China, South Korea, and Japan). Europe, excluding the U.K. has a chance, with northern Europe having a better chance. You never quite know who history will choose next to bring the next big leap in progress to the human civilization.

/I didn't think I'd write something so long about that. Oh well, I just felt like sharing a little more optimistic view on what could happen to we humans.