Briefly describe your ideal political world-mode/system...

Mine would be a form of semi-moralistic, utopian anarchy...But we'd be conditioned from birth 'not to do 'evil'.'

* We'd all live in flowers and mushrooms, and take 'rainbow pills' to expand our consciousness.

* No stigma or taboo would exist...unbouded revelry!

* The only law would be natural law...No human irrationalities in our lives.

So pretty much like a hippie commune...

Be as serious/non-serious as you want to be...

Some would have more, some would have less, no one would have too much, no one would not have anything at all.  Sick would get treatment.  a streetsweepers child could be President, a millionaires child could sweep streets,

So pretty much like a hippie commune...

I stayed at a commune for a few weeks in Oregon.
That would be fine with me.

:)

Order imposed with an Iron fist.
Harsh punishment for any crime.
Selective breeding.
Large scale mechanised warfare.
Free market economy promoting competition.
No social welfare net.

Order imposed with an Iron fist.
Harsh punishment for any crime.
Selective breeding.
Large scale mechanised warfare.
Free market economy promoting competition.
No social welfare net.


You will not have to worry about over-population or immigration issues.  ;)

Being a Cool Hippy Chick, I got for local control, personal responsibility, as much freedom as possible without allowing anarchy to rule.  Communal living is, of course, a cool hippy thing to do.  Music and the arts would never be removed from schools.

Order imposed with an Iron fist.
Harsh punishment for any crime.
Selective breeding.
Large scale mechanised warfare.
Free market economy promoting competition.
No social welfare net.



Sounds a lot like Nazi Germany.




Cat

Sounds a lot like Nazi Germany.


Cat


People who go for something like this always assume that they will be the ones in control.

Sounds a lot like Nazi Germany.




Cat


Exactly what I was thinking.

Buncha guys in 1776 had a pretty decent countr.  With a few tweaks, something signed in 1785 would do the trick for me. 

I'm realistic enough to admit that no country on the face of this earth matches that description, nor will it, ever.

Sounds a lot like Nazi Germany.


EXACTLY!

Except I would actually listen to my advisors as opposed to tarot readings and astrological nonsense.

I'd have taken over the Americas within 2 years. Swift violent action.

Obviously since I'm pretty liberal minded, my ideal political model is a socialist type system.

Health Care and prescription coverage for all
Complete separation of religion and government
Low taxes for poorer and middle class people, high taxes for the very rich
Restricted gun ownership rights
Well regulated big business

EXACTLY!

Except I would actually listen to my advisors as opposed to tarot readings and astrological nonsense.

I'd have taken over the Americas within 2 years. Swift violent action.

You know who gets sent to the extermination camps first? Guys like you. Surprise, surprise my little Hitlerite!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/grim.gif

My ideal:

Liberal social democracy. A few features--All major utilities owned by the people. Private enterprise promoted under managed competion to control monopolies. People have the right to incorporate, but the rights of corporations are not equal to that of indiviuals. Corporate charters shall be revoked if corporations are found to be acting outside the public interest.  No death penalty. A Kucinich-style Department of Peace. Marijuana legal. All "hard" drugs decriminalized. Addicts treated medically, not criminally. A civil structure based on walkable cities, cycling, and mass transit. A de-emphais of fossil fuels and development of renewable energy resources. Promotion of small-scale community agriculture. Universal socialized healthcare.

Closest existing examples: the Scaninavian countries and the Netherlands.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_sunny.gif

You know who gets sent to the extermination camps first? Guys like you. Surprise, surprise my little Hitlerite!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/grim.gif



Of course, one always gets rid of one's core support first  ::)

Of course, one always gets rid of one's core support first  ::)

The kind of ruthless and bloody dictatorship you propose has always resulted in extreme paranoia. I assure you thousands of German Nazis and Soviet Socialists who believed themselves the ideal citizen of the Reich or of Stalin's Russia had their doors kicked in in the middle of the night and were never heard from again. If you were among the inner party elite, your chances of getting it in the neck were even greater. Just a cursory look a Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, the Khmer Rouge, or any totalitarian regime promoting a coercive utopia should discourage you from your ideals.  Of course, you're either joking here, or you have as much sense as a red ant on a hot skillet!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/10/znaika.gif

The kind of ruthless and bloody dictatorship you propose has always resulted in extreme paranoia. I assure you thousands of German Nazis and Soviet Socialists who believed themselves the ideal citizen of the Reich or of Stalin's Russia had their doors kicked in in the middle of the night and were never heard from again. If you were among the inner party elite, your chances of getting it in the neck were even greater. Just a cursory look a Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, the Khmer Rouge, or any totalitarian regime promoting a coercive utopia should discourage you from your ideals.  Of course, you're either joking here, or you have as much sense as a red ant on a hot skillet!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/10/znaika.gif


I like to wind you lot up  ;)

In all honesty, I do agree with many of the ideals presented in Nazi Germany (for lack of a better example).
I believe in strength of law. i.e Harsh punishment, incarceration as opposed to rehabilitation etc.
I don't believe in hundreds of social welfare programs. I've said in seperate threads that I fall in the uber-liberal camp in that I believe everybody in the world should have adequate health care provided by their government, but that's about as far as I go. Unemployment for instance, in my ideal nation, if one were unemployed, one would be cleaing the streets of litter and graffiti for a basic living wage.
The same with selective breeding. If one were to have a specific genetic defect that would be passed down, no kids. Feel free to move somewhere else and have them, but not in my nation.

I know the absolute stranglehold dictatorships essentially result in rot from the inside, that's why it's important to guide your citizens instead of forcing them.
Give them the opportunity to do as you wish, or be gone.

In all honesty, I do agree with many of the ideals presented in Nazi Germany (for lack of a better example).

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_salut.gif

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_salut.gif


Heil!

Heil!

Boy, you been playin' me like two-dollar Stradivarius!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/nopity.gif

Boy, you been playin' me like two-dollar Stradivarius!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/nopity.gif


;D Bad notes eh

Hitler gave fascism a bad name. He was just an evil son-of-a-biatch...just like Stalin gave Communism such a bad rep.

Hitler gave fascism a bad name. He was just an evil son-of-a-biatch...just like Stalin gave Communism such a bad rep.

OK, you're being facetious.

I'm gonna go on record as saying that both communism and fascism are evil.  (Heh, if that lands me in the camps someday, so be it.  I've said worse.  They just haven't offered me enough money to shaddap :)

I _am_ gonna say with conviction, instead of irony, that he gave eugenics a bad name.  We're not at the stage where we  can guarantee "good" offspring, but we *are* at the stage where we can eliminate "bad" offspring.

Some genes we know about.  Would it be _such_ a bad thing if the genes for Alzheimers were (artificially - as in, by people who carry the gene choosing to voluntarily sterlize themselves) selected against, and disappeared in the general population?  Downs Syndrome? 

The $10T question - and the research is still open - on Autism (all-around-bad) or Asperger's (very useful in a knowledge-based economy, but do we _really_ know what happens when two Aspies mate and produce offspring?  We're about a decade away from knowing, but the reason we're asking the question is that self-selecting populations of Asperger's Syndrome types have mated in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years, with... inconclusive, but nonetheless somewhat frightening, results.)

The $100T question - consider a society that screams "Hitler liked eugenics!  Hitler bad, therefore eugenics also bad!" every time it speaks about human genetic engineering - is such a society condemning itself to the backwaters of history when contrasted with societies that _don't_ share their Hitler-inspired aversion to artificial selection?

I _am_ gonna say with conviction, instead of irony, that he gave eugenics a bad name.  We're not at the stage where we  can guarantee "good" offspring, but we *are* at the stage where we can eliminate "bad" offspring.

Some genes we know about.  Would it be _such_ a bad thing if the genes for Alzheimers were (artificially - as in, by people who carry the gene choosing to voluntarily sterlize themselves) selected against, and disappeared in the general population?  Downs Syndrome?  The $100T question - consider a society that screams "Hitler liked eugenics!  Hitler bad, therefore eugenics also bad!" every time it speaks about human genetic engineering - is such a society condemning itself to the backwaters of history when contrasted with societies that _don't_ share their Hitler-inspired aversion to artificial selection?


I condensed this just to save space.  I have to say that I very much disagree with you.  Sure, it seems like a good thing, from a short-term glance, if we could erase all genetic disabilities.    But I can't help but foresee a Parade of Horribles effect.  It's all about perspective.  It reminds me of the whole plastic surgery thing.  At first, plastic surgery was used to correct severe physical abnormailities.  But now, you've got 14 year old girls having breast implants and 45 year old women obsessesed with every wrinkle in their skin.  The self-esteem of young girls is lower and lower each year because they cannot possibly, in a natural way, meet the expectations of physical perfection advertised in our society without going under the knife.  It's crazy.  Society's view of "beautiful" "abnormal" "tolerable" is changing  in an unhealthy way in my opinion. 

It's not that I'm against developing ways to heal people.  But do not overestimate the ability of humanity to warp that into something Hitler would applaud.  Three generations down the road you likely could have people saying, "Oh my, how do they ever manage with that child's low i.q.?  Only 110?  They should have had 'the procedure'..."

I just read this whole thread.  It's really interesting.
Honestly my ideal political model would be me thousands of miles away with little to think about it and
it having little impact on me.

That's not the way it is, though.
But I will pretend it is.

Just one of those things I feel so much about and feel so strongly about that I can't put one thought into words.

It's not that I'm against developing ways to heal people.  But do not overestimate the ability of humanity to warp that into something Hitler would applaud.  Three generations down the road you likely could have people saying, "Oh my, how do they ever manage with that child's low i.q.?  Only 110?  They should have had 'the procedure'..."




Agree with all that you wrote. 

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/06/luxhello.gif

  But I can't help but foresee a Parade of Horribles effect.  It's all about perspective.  It reminds me of the whole plastic surgery thing.  At first, plastic surgery was used to correct severe physical abnormailities.  But now, you've got 14 year old girls having breast implants and 45 year old women obsessesed with every wrinkle in their skin.
*snip*
Three generations down the road you likely could have people saying, "Oh my, how do they ever manage with that child's low i.q.?  Only 110?  They should have had 'the procedure'..."

You raise a very good point.  I think the planet would be a nicer place without Down's.  But if I were writing this 100-200  years ago, I'd say the same about Autism - and I'd have inadvertently wiped the gene for Asperger's out of the gene pool.

Whups, I just wiped out 10-20% of my population's mathematicians, engineers, and cryptographers.  (And worse, at the top levels of their fields, I've probably wiped out more than half of the top 100.  Whups, I just lost WW2 because the best mathematicians were on the other side.)

Much as I like the idea of engineering a race of genehacked transhumans, I'm the first to admit that we don't know enough about the genome to take those sorts of gambles yet, at least, not without a very large gene bank (millions of samples) to work with in the event that we take a wrong turn.

You raise a very good point.  I think the planet would be a nicer place without Down's.  But if I were writing this 100-200  years ago, I'd say the same about Autism - and I'd have inadvertently wiped the gene for Asperger's out of the gene pool.

Whups, I just wiped out 10-20% of my population's mathematicians, engineers, and cryptographers.  (And worse, at the top levels of their fields, I've probably wiped out more than half of the top 100.  Whups, I just lost WW2 because the best mathematicians were on the other side.)

Much as I like the idea of engineering a race of genehacked transhumans, I'm the first to admit that we don't know enough about the genome to take those sorts of gambles yet, at least, not without a very large gene bank (millions of samples) to work with in the event that we take a wrong turn.


Yes, exactly, you get what I'm saying.  In short, we can't wipe out the difficulties of life without also wiping out some of its miracles.