Actually,
Ralph's voice never changed, but instead there was a secret episode in which it is explained that He decides to act special as a social experiment. It was never aired, here's a clip.

>> ^quantumushroom:

You gotta bunch of fatalist losers in the audience who believe life is a zero-sum game, that is, in order for one person to win, another must lose. Not one of them has the understanding that wealth is not finite slices of pie, the pie itself is getting larger all the time.
America's "poor" are the wealthiest poor in the world. Most own their own homes, have two cars, air-conditioning, 2 computers, 3 TVs, etc. And that's on top of "free" food and health care.
I'm not so cavalier as to believe losing 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR to fraud, waste and abuse means nothing, but it really highlights the liberal mindset. When you're taking someone else's money at gunpoint, you really don't care how hard they had to work to earn it.


The top one percent have been getting wealthier and wealthier for the last 25 years. You're seeing the results right now. You're seeing the tail end of a failed social experiment. You're just reading it backwards.

I'm very confused. Let me get this straight...

You're gonna blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall (a law that REGULATED financial markets) on Barney Frank who voted AGAINST the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which is the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall?! You do realize you're basically making effectively a socialist argument, right?! You're saying the repeal of Glass-Steagall was intended to help the poor, but it didn't. Glass-Steagall is fundamentally socialist, so you're saying repealing it hurt the economy?!

Other than the fact you got the critical detail of Frank voting against Gramm-Leach-Bliley wrong, I completely agree with you.

In respect that job reports have been disappointing, you didn't address what every objective report about the stimulus bill says it created jobs, and those jobs did go to lower and middle class people. There's a disappointment it didn't do more than it ended up doing, but it DID create/save jobs in the short run, that's undeniable. Extension of unemployment benefits helped the poor and middle class. I could go on and on. You're seriously gonna fight this point?! Ridiculous.

Every company Obama visited and showed as a good example folded, huh? Let's see some proof. I want to see everyone of these companies, and what happened to them. You don't get to throw idiotic statements like this out without proof and expect not get called out on it. You're full of crap on that.

Oh, so if the jobs went to people you blanket don't like, it didn't do any good? LOL! Nevermind they're poor and middle class jobs, those very people you said weren't helped. I don't blame you. Those fat cat teachers and other civil servants, robbing the country blind with their gross underpay and what not! BTW, state employees are not all union members. There are in many states laws against state employees unionizing. Minor detail really...

So you're talking about "real Socialist" countries, not the fake ones I described. Are they more left than us? YES! You then mentioned we've gone "too far to the left" and the pendulum swing of a correction is coming to smite us! Are you suggesting the UK, France, and Britain were smited by the wrath of the free market gods for being too socialist? How have they managed to avoid the smite?!

As to the US education system today. First off, I'm glad you agree with me that universal public education system did coincide with the rise of the US as an economic superpower. You do at least seem to understand attacking that point is pretty pointless. But that also means you lost the argument. We had undeniably the world's best education system during that time, and it was a socialistic program in nature. Do we have the best education system now without question? No. What changed? Not the public mandate. Not the fact it's still mostly gov't operated. That's the same. Therefore, it's undeniable that you can have a top notch gov't run public education system.

Need more proof?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

What do you notice about the countries with the best education systems? Oh wonder of wonders, virtually all of them have gov't operated public education systems! How do so many evil socialist programs work so well?! Hmmm, maybe it's because sometimes, socialist ideas work the best, and maybe you should open your mind a little, look at specific things, look at data objectively, and apply socialist or capitalist solutions, whichever work the best? I know that's apparently revolutionary for you, but it's called "effective problem solving".

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Amazing how all leftists are criminally corrupt, all of them, apparently. Just because you're a leftist, it automatically means you don't care about the people.
Of course not all of them are corrupt – just most of the ones in political office. However, that is more endemic of being a politician than a leftist as the GOP is corrupt to the core too. I’m sure on some level even the corrupt political leftists believe they ‘care’ and are ‘helping’. But their method of helping is a poison pill destined to kill the supposed beneficiary. For example… Barney Frank thought he was helping the poor by pushing to repeal Glass-Steagall. In Frank’s fuzz-filled brain, he helped the poor get “uffodubble howsing”. But the result of his policies speak for themselves. The poor were NOT ‘helped’, and the nation’s financial stability was ruined by leftist plans for making banks give out loans to people who could not afford them. The left’s method of ‘help’ almost universally manifests in the form of inefficient, expensive, wasteful, freedom-killing big government programs which inevitably crash, burn, and make things worse than any leftist ever DREAMED life was like without their ‘help’.
Obama's big gov't spending doesn't do anything for the poor and middle class. You mean, except saving jobs when the economy tanked, the vast majority went to the poor and middle classes. Other than that... LOL...
That’s why every month the US has “unexpectedly high” unemployment figures. It’s why every job report for the last 3 years has been ‘disappointing’. It’s why every company Obama visited on the stump as a ‘shining example’ for jobs has folded. There are multiple reports that prove Obama’s stimulus money has gone almost entirely to labor unions, or state governments (and thence, THEIR unions) who supported him. In short, like a typical Chicago thug, he used the stimulus as political payola “walkin’ round money”. Jobs for the middle class & poor? Maybe 1 for every million bucks.
Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution?! They just make it worse? I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but that's generally patently false.
I’m talking REAL left government – socialism. History has proven that leftist political philosophy’s ultimate end is wealth concentration at the top of government with the ‘people’ in utter poverty such as Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, et al. What you are talking about are not really socialist governments. They are capitalist with socialist programs IN it (sort of the mirror image of China’s “socialist with capitalist programs”). The US ever since FDR has not been so much a ‘capitalist’ society as much as it is just another European-style capitalist with social program left-leaning government. The New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other leftist programs have routinely and regularly siphoned wealth from the middle class and used it to conduct failed social experiments. For the last 20 years or so, the US has gone further and further left in terms of spending and economic policy.
For example….universal public education and a progressive income tax coincided with the rise of the US as a global economic superpower as those first generations of publicly educated people came of working age.
Like all socialist systems, it starts well but ends badly. Remember Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Look at the US education system today and tell me it is “working wonderfully”. It is one of the most expensive in the world, while at the same time one of the least effective. Universal education is great. PUBLIC universal education? Not so much – and mostly BECAUSE it is a ‘socialist’ program. Open up a voucher system and let people choose the school, which will increase competition and lower costs.
Now - I don’t disagree with the underlying premise of your position. A pure capitalist freedom isn’t good either. Freedom is the best choice, tempered with a distant set of standards. I don’t have a problem with government mandating universal education, or even with it establishing some basic, simple standards. However, the pendulum has swung too far in the ‘socialist’ direction, and we are due for a correction. However, the people who benefit from the social system (government & unions) are responding as predicted to pullback, and would rather blow up the system than give up their power and money. Such is the end result of socialism, alas.
The founding fathers had it right. It is best to leave such matters at the state level where the people have more control and there is more accountability. The federal government should serve as ONLY a place where people can go to redress grievances (abuses). Central systems are fine when they are distant, have little power, and serve as little more than a final authority to appeal to, or as a repository of advised (but not REQUIRED) standards. The ‘system’ should be about 5% centralized and 95% local. Right now the US is more like a ‘45% federal, 55% local’ government and it is coming apart at the seams.

Amazing how all leftists are criminally corrupt, all of them, apparently. Just because you're a leftist, it automatically means you don't care about the people.

Of course not all of them are corrupt – just most of the ones in political office. However, that is more endemic of being a politician than a leftist as the GOP is corrupt to the core too. I’m sure on some level even the corrupt political leftists believe they ‘care’ and are ‘helping’. But their method of helping is a poison pill destined to kill the supposed beneficiary. For example… Barney Frank thought he was helping the poor by pushing to repeal Glass-Steagall. In Frank’s fuzz-filled brain, he helped the poor get “uffodubble howsing”. But the result of his policies speak for themselves. The poor were NOT ‘helped’, and the nation’s financial stability was ruined by leftist plans for making banks give out loans to people who could not afford them. The left’s method of ‘help’ almost universally manifests in the form of inefficient, expensive, wasteful, freedom-killing big government programs which inevitably crash, burn, and make things worse than any leftist ever DREAMED life was like without their ‘help’.

Obama's big gov't spending doesn't do anything for the poor and middle class. You mean, except saving jobs when the economy tanked, the vast majority went to the poor and middle classes. Other than that... LOL...

That’s why every month the US has “unexpectedly high” unemployment figures. It’s why every job report for the last 3 years has been ‘disappointing’. It’s why every company Obama visited on the stump as a ‘shining example’ for jobs has folded. There are multiple reports that prove Obama’s stimulus money has gone almost entirely to labor unions, or state governments (and thence, THEIR unions) who supported him. In short, like a typical Chicago thug, he used the stimulus as political payola “walkin’ round money”. Jobs for the middle class & poor? Maybe 1 for every million bucks.

Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution?! They just make it worse? I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but that's generally patently false.

I’m talking REAL left government – socialism. History has proven that leftist political philosophy’s ultimate end is wealth concentration at the top of government with the ‘people’ in utter poverty such as Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, et al. What you are talking about are not really socialist governments. They are capitalist with socialist programs IN it (sort of the mirror image of China’s “socialist with capitalist programs”). The US ever since FDR has not been so much a ‘capitalist’ society as much as it is just another European-style capitalist with social program left-leaning government. The New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other leftist programs have routinely and regularly siphoned wealth from the middle class and used it to conduct failed social experiments. For the last 20 years or so, the US has gone further and further left in terms of spending and economic policy.

For example….universal public education and a progressive income tax coincided with the rise of the US as a global economic superpower as those first generations of publicly educated people came of working age.

Like all socialist systems, it starts well but ends badly. Remember Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Look at the US education system today and tell me it is “working wonderfully”. It is one of the most expensive in the world, while at the same time one of the least effective. Universal education is great. PUBLIC universal education? Not so much – and mostly BECAUSE it is a ‘socialist’ program. Open up a voucher system and let people choose the school, which will increase competition and lower costs.

Now - I don’t disagree with the underlying premise of your position. A pure capitalist freedom isn’t good either. Freedom is the best choice, tempered with a distant set of standards. I don’t have a problem with government mandating universal education, or even with it establishing some basic, simple standards. However, the pendulum has swung too far in the ‘socialist’ direction, and we are due for a correction. However, the people who benefit from the social system (government & unions) are responding as predicted to pullback, and would rather blow up the system than give up their power and money. Such is the end result of socialism, alas.

The founding fathers had it right. It is best to leave such matters at the state level where the people have more control and there is more accountability. The federal government should serve as ONLY a place where people can go to redress grievances (abuses). Central systems are fine when they are distant, have little power, and serve as little more than a final authority to appeal to, or as a repository of advised (but not REQUIRED) standards. The ‘system’ should be about 5% centralized and 95% local. Right now the US is more like a ‘45% federal, 55% local’ government and it is coming apart at the seams.

whoa, social experiment!!!!!!!

This just seems so sad to me. How is this kid going to have anything even approaching a normal life?

He may be able to spell every word in the dictionary, but he doesn't even understand basic concepts of human interaction - the question about what his mom said is a good example of that.

I was (and still am) a pretty big geek, but I can't see this kid recovering from this lack of social experience. These are things that are imparted to people while they are young and he just spent the last two years learning to spell every word in the dictionary...

So sad.

With a few friends and a little patience its easy to Social engineer this at local malls and in parks. Your Target should be someone who is almost completely engrossed in texting on a phone or tablet. As your target walks closer to where you wish them to go slowly have yourself or friends move slightly in to their path, Do not block the path just move enough and look like your paying attention to something else that they can catch you out of the corner of their eye and change direction slightly to avoid hitting you. A few more feet and another person/friend does the same thing. Slightly crowded areas work best but not too crowded. They must have enough room to judge that not really paying attention to local surroundings is ok. Anyplace close to a parking lot or road will not work. As the sound of a car generally will make people more aware of their surrounding.
We've had them walk in to walls, Benches, foodcourt seating areas.

Why yes, We where bored when we cam up with this. It turned in to a little social experiment for college courses we where taking. The results where scary.

As the loyal opposition, I don't see how any liberal (here defined as left-leaning, not Van Jones-communist) could be upset.

Sure, there's no official socialized medicine, but it's damned close.

Military effectiveness continues to be compromised with social experiments.

The federal leviathan continues to shovel money into a furnace while expanding.

The New Deal, with its massive debt and social programs that prolonged the Depression, is still regarded as a "model" of good government.

All of the media outside of one channel continues to be leftist water-carriers, despite losing viewership.

The leftstocracy still runs Hollywood.

Leftist unions still run government indoctrina---er--"schools".

You have nothing to worry about, unless you're part of the one-third of the populace paying for the other two-thirds who take more than they give.

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

There's a big difference between GDP and a government budget QM.>> ^quantumushroom:


Kymbos: The thing I never get about QM is that he never does any research but continually uses statistics that he just makes up. This it the internet - we all have access to the numbers, for chrissakes!
Dag: He follows the Fox doctrine- say something enough times and it must be true.
Ah, and yet we're all supposed to believe the numbers from 'The War Resisters League'.
US Military spending as a Share of GDP 1946-2009
If socialism "worked"--and it works for a short while until one runs out of other peoples' money--Greece wouldn't be bankrupt, there'd still be a soviet union and the scamulus would've "created" jobs.
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."
--FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. in 1939

I'm merely observing results, Dag & Friends. I don't expect different results from the same doomed social experiments.

Kymbos: The thing I never get about QM is that he never does any research but continually uses statistics that he just makes up. This it the internet - we all have access to the numbers, for chrissakes!

Dag: He follows the Fox doctrine- say something enough times and it must be true.

Ah, and yet we're all supposed to believe the numbers from 'The War Resisters League'.

US Military spending as a Share of GDP 1946-2009

If socialism "worked"--and it works for a short while until one runs out of other peoples' money--Greece wouldn't be bankrupt, there'd still be a soviet union and the scamulus would've "created" jobs.

"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."

--FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. in 1939


I'm merely observing results, Dag & Friends. I don't expect different results from the same doomed social experiments.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'social, experiment, blue eyes, brown eyes, racism, martin luther king' to 'social, experiment, blue eyes, brown eyes, racism, martin luther king, jane elliott' - edited by rasch187

narrator: Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D
more widely known for leading the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, viewed as another "gone too far" social experiment. Potent and relevant, yes, however also crossing the lines of ethics and valid scientific inquiry.

i feel the need to defend thinkers honor on this one.
1. he wasn't drunk
2. the comments in question were made to me after i explicitly told him what to say. it was an antisocial social experiment perpetrated by 2 insomniacs. and it was hilarious. even if we were the only ones laughing. it was our dark comedic satire at a time of high drama on the sift, calling out the absurdity of 3rd parties getting involved in personal spats. oooh... much like this post right here!!!!

"this person did this to this person! my first and most logical course of action is to create a sift talk post so we can all publicly chide the offender and speculate on his motives!!! and suggest the appropriate punishment and reprimand!! this is why i am on the internet!!!"

>> ^qualm:

It's a bit ironic to see thinker47 talk of immaturity. I'm sure everyone remembers when thinker247 left all of those drunken posts on VS that were full of such abusive anti-woman language that even Mel Gibson would shake his head.

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

Good points - but I'm saying there is a collective feeling of vindication and "rightness" to capitalism now - it is unfettered and unchecked - without any competing system on a world stage.

Before communism's fall - there was a pressure on Western governments to prove that they could do a better job at the issues that Communist countries boasted of - a safety net for the poor, social services and massive projects like the space program.

For the past 20 years though, those kinds of programs have been slashed, privatised or done away with- it's no mistake that the last redoubt of communism - the tiny, poor country of Cuba, has better health care for its citizens than the US - with all its HMOs and private hospitals.

Here's the claim that I'm going make: if the Soviet Union was still around - We would have a better healthcare system in the US.

>> ^jonny:
The problems of the "last 20 years" that you're talking about were in fact problems long before the 1990s, and thus not a consequence of the fall of the Soviet Republics. The recent excesses of capitalism are nothing new - they've been happening since it was first created and in fact long before that. The basic problem is much broader than capitalism or communism or any other "ism" you care to name. The basic problem is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. But that problem is not unique to any particular economic or political model. It's a fact of human nature. Communism was probably the best ideology to handle that, but every communist country that ever existed was stuck in the "revolutionary" mind set - The Revolution must continue until everyone is on board, and until then we'll keep complete control in, uh, the hand of a few, uh, party members that understand the, uh, revolution.
Good luck breeding human nature out of humans. Haven't you seen the same concentration of power and "wealth" here in your own social experiment? Same old story. You can build as many roads and access ramps as you want, but there will always be gate keepers and toll collectors.

The problems of the "last 20 years" that you're talking about were in fact problems long before the 1990s, and thus not a consequence of the fall of the Soviet Republics. The recent excesses of capitalism are nothing new - they've been happening since it was first created and in fact long before that. The basic problem is much broader than capitalism or communism or any other "ism" you care to name. The basic problem is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. But that problem is not unique to any particular economic or political model. It's a fact of human nature. Communism was probably the best ideology to handle that, but every communist country that ever existed was stuck in the "revolutionary" mind set - The Revolution must continue until everyone is on board, and until then we'll keep complete control in, uh, the hand of a few, uh, party members that understand the, uh, revolution.

Good luck breeding human nature out of humans. Haven't you seen the same concentration of power and "wealth" here in your own social experiment? Same old story. You can build as many roads and access ramps as you want, but there will always be gate keepers and toll collectors.