Adam Jensen Does A Safety Dance! (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.

Practically every supposedly intelectual-led revolution has had this result. Perfect leaders go sour quickly.

Will it? Or might the ignorant heard instead frequently shit all over something that lies beyond their own foresight, self interest and/or ill considered sensibilities?

By way of example, the abolition of the death penalty was opposed by the majority population in the UK up until about 2015 (it was introduced in 1965)

Likewise with equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery, child labour and so on (though I don't have numbers/dates for those to hand).

I realise the question of democracy is more nuanced than that, but there are enough examples of progress despite popular opinion to seriously call it into question.

I just can't help but shake the notion that the most successful and free democratic societies tend to be those most limited by political elites within them. (this can of course work both ways)

I will agree however that the illusion of democracy certainly seems to do wonders for keeping the baying pitchforks at bay.

A cycle of violent revolution does not seem at all preferable I agree. Clearly we are going to need a bit of both, a meritocratically regulated Noo perhaps? (i.e. earned but readily accessible votes for the demos to influence an elite Noo)

Though of course the problems with establishing that are also legion. I suspect that ultimately unless/until we create a mind greater than our own (A.I. or somesuch), it's always going to be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I don't think the systems are usually the real problem. I think it's just that people as groups are bloody awful.

All hail the mighty Noosphere!

Edit: I'm using Noo here to refer to the higher functions of the hypothetical collective brain. Strictly speaking everyone is part of the theoretical Noo and the anticipated harmony which it would/could grow into.

Some good points... However... The Supreme Court. Yes, he'll replace a conservative with another conservative, so things might remain equal, however what if something happens to one or more of the liberal justices?

No, I don't expect Trump to get his wall. He probably won't do much to trade, and probably won't be able to withdraw from NATO the way he threatens. He however might be able to get Congress to go along with a temporary ban on Muslims... even if he doesn't the very fact he threatens it, and got voted in, makes lone wolf attacks far more likely. It's not Trump I'm scared of, it's more the attitude of the people of this nation that elected him that frightens me.

Also I think it will be easier to carry on the revolution inside a Clinton White House... she'll be stymied like Obama is by the Republicans blocking everything too, but the change in the Court alone is worth swallowing the bitter pill.

*promote for his thoughtfulness anyhow, and I generally enjoy his other videos too.

These methane clathrate (methane hydrate/hydromethane) deposits have been releasing both under the ocean and from permafrost melt for years now...with the rate of their melt release increasing exponentially.
Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is more than 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.
For those of you who are religious....this is the 'burning seas' you would expect from the apocalypse, because the pockets of gas coming from the ocean are highly flammable, even explosive.
This is why I have said for over a decade that there's absolutely no chance to avoid human extinction along with a world wide extinction of most of life. Once the methane started bubbling up from the sea floor, any chance of stopping the change was gone, and that was a while ago and we've done absolutely nothing but increase the amount of greenhouse gasses we produce. The ocean responds quite slowly to climate change, so there's nothing that can be done now that it's warm enough to release the methane, even if we stopped producing all greenhouse gasses today.

This is game over, people, game over. A massive methane release will have almost immediate effects and could double the entire temperature rise since the industrial revolution almost overnight. When (not if) that happens, say goodbye to nature both on land and in the seas.
The above number, 80% of life on earth vanished, is misleading. 80% of species were lost completely forever, 98% of all biomass died, so of the 20% of species that were left, only 10% of their population survived. Humanity won't.
*doublepromote
*quality

Thank you for the promote! Sanders has already pushed his agenda further than anyone could have imagined, and the fight is still not over. Will we win? (I'm a Bernie delegate in my county) No, but if we survive the Trump presidency for 4 years, the revolution, a mainly peaceful one at that, just may take place. Why we get Bush, Clinton, Bush, sprinkled with Obama, Trump on top is beyond me. Oh wait, Americans are lazy, God fearing idiots. Release the nukes.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Brutal, but so true. But ... didn't coffee contribute to the enlightenment and the industrial revolution?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsFxH2zdi_Y

The supreme court is in a position to take liberties because there is no court above it to which one can appeal.

Courts have a mandate to judge compliance with the law - not to redefine the law (that's the legislature's role).

If due process was followed, courts would find cases like 'yelling fire' as protected, and refer the law to the legislature to exempt-from-1st-amentment-protection any inappropriate behaviors via new written constitutional law.

As it stands, there are many judicial opinions that are enforcible via the legal system, that are never written down as law by the legislature.

Again, it's a matter of what people are willing to enforce. The courts are just people. The law is only as important to them as they will it to be. If everyone is on board with twisting the rules, then that's the norm.

(aside : Yelling fire is a stupid example. If you did it, everyone would look around, and then look at you, and would be like "wtf are you talking about?")



Words are written to convey meanings. They don't exist for their own sake. The 1791 meaning of "well regulated" is similar to today's meaning "well adjusted". It would be best summarized as "orderly" or "properly functioning". It has nothing to do with government regulation.

Similarly, "eminent domain" means "obvious domain" (obvious because republic, and every citizen (i.e. statesman) owns the country collectively, and you never actually owned your land, you only had a title to be the sole user).
Sounds weird by todays' standards, but back then the norm was that regular people had nothing and the crown (and its friends) owned everything. Republic sounded quite progressive at the time. Remember, the U.S. revolution was just prior to the French revolution. Kingdoms were the norm.

Sounds a bit different when translated from 1700's english to 2000's english.

-scheherazade

To understand the wording of the second amendment, you have to take into account the history behind it. I'm not sure how familiar you are with American history, but this scholarly article is a great read on the topic, and demonstrates that guns have been kept and regulated (the most important terms of the amendment that often get completely overlooked by guns rights advocates) by Americans for both personal and collective defense since the Colonial period.

It's important to note that the Revolutionary War was literally started at Lexington and Concord when the British government, "Came fer our gunz!" That event informs a great deal of the rhetoric, and it is not at all an exaggeration to say that had the British government successfully disarmed the populace earlier, the Revolution might never have had a chance for success.

Regardless, there are an overwhelming number of legal precedents now that support the notion that the Constitution allows guns to be owned by U.S. citizens for self-defense purposes. That horse has long been out of the barn, so arguing that the constitution does not specifically use the words "self-defense" is a complete waste of time. What is not a waste of time is arguing how far the government (state and federal) can go in "regulating" the sale, carrying, and use of firearms.

Good point. I admit I'm mostly quoting The Economist's recent article on it, since I haven't compared them myself:

"Meanwhile, fees as a percentage of assets under management have dropped from 0.68% in 1983 to 0.12% today (see chart). This compares with an industry average of 0.61% (or 0.77%, when excluding Vanguard itself). Fees on its passive products, at 0.08% a year, are less than half the average for the industry of 0.18%. Its actively managed products are even more keenly priced, at 0.17% compared with an average of 0.78%."

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21700401-vanguard-has-radically-changed-money-management-being-boring-and-cheap-index-we

Also: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21700390-rise-low-cost-managers-vanguard-should-be-celebrated-slow-motion-revolution

Totally agree with you on diversifying across index funds (as safe as fund managers are in theory compared to other financial institutions, I would never assume any financial company is 'safe') and of course staying under $250K FDIC insurance level.

I thought he missed the point that it's in the best interests of those at the top for the bottom to be higher. They don't want to be carjacked, robbed, kidnapped, etc by people who have no other option to survive, so it behooves them to pay workers enough that that is not the foreseeable outcome.

Also, he forgot to mention the late 1700's uprising/revolution in France where the working class DID rise up and attack the upper class violently, killing many. THAT is some history that needs to be mentioned time and time again, both as a warning if "fairness" isn't returned to the system at least enough to allow full time workers to survive without resorting to crime or working tirelessly over 100 hours per week, and as a reminder of what has worked to solve that inequality problem in the past.
It wouldn't take too many 1%ers being murdered in front of their families and force fed to them before things changed....hopefully for the better, but certainly change of some kind would happen. I hope it doesn't come to that....unless there's no other option, then a few 1%ers murdered is much better than thousands of poor starving or otherwise being indigent to death.

Also, this looks like a good mod for DE: Human Revolution, I guess.

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