A long rant by Mark Winegardner from "The Godfather Returns" Remember "Remember the Maine"? All a big lie concocted so the United States could go to war under false pretenses and the men in charge could make their rich friends richer (including the newspaper moguls who self-servingly spread the lie in the first place). The government, on the other hand, wages nonstop war on the average Joe, and the suckers just eat their bread, go to their circuses, and keep on pretending they live in a democracy -- a lie so cherished they can't grasp the self-evident, that America is run entirely by backroom deals involving the rich. In almost every election, the richer candidate defeats the poorer candidate. When the poorer candidate wins, it's usually because he's agreed to be a stooge for people richer than the ones who backed his opponent. Go ahead, try voting the bastards out. See what happens. Hagen doubted that the world had ever seen a better racket than the American government. It's hard to sue the government. It's hard to sue the government, for example, and even if you win, so what? Here's a million bucks. Then they raise taxes two million. Plus, with businesses, someone somewhere has to buy their crummy product. What are people supposed to do about the government? It's yours, it's you, you're stuck with it, end of story.
there is corruption in EVERY human/man-made system. every single one. is it your contention that the US government is more corrupt than every other/most other/some other/none other goverments???
No, this is not overly corrupt like Nigeria, Bangladesh, etc. But, it is very hypocritical. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The election process is one gigantic scheme of bribes.
Pirc1 put it best: "In countries like China, India, Russia, etc... Taking bribes is often the only ways a government officials can become rich. In this country, the political system is setup so that politicans do not have to take any bribes to get rich. If you serve in government, you can in a few years transfer into the private sector and get some cush board of the director, advisor type jobs. On top of that the whole election process is just like one big bribe factory. In the end many government officials are just as heavily influenced in many casesby special interests as officials in the other countries."
All this is true, it is a bad system, but currenly there are no other system on earth that is better.
where there are living breathing human beings...there is corruption. why does this surprise people so much?
Because, humans are for the most part good in the core. It's somewhat surprising when people responsible for running a country have their own agendas ahead of the people as a whole.
1. i'd disagree with the assertion that humans are all good at the core. humans are all selfish at the core; 2. surprising??? it's all over history...it's all over current events. people have ALWAYS taken advantage of authority for their own gain. people ALWAYS will. people always prefer self over others. i'm not saying it's right. i'm not saying it's cool. i'm not saying you shouldn't fight it. but it should come as no surprise. and saying, "aha...you Americans are guilty of it" is silly. glass houses...thrown rocks...big time.
That is the main reason why communism would never work. The leaders would not be able to truely serve the mass and be selfless. Good points max. I wonder how the world would function if everyone is like Mother Terresa.
and the Soviet Union is the ultimate example of that. if you have a chance, pick up a book called Klass. it's about the social divisions in the Soviet Union and the perks for those involved in the government. in an attempt to eliminate classes, they stratified them in ways we haven't seen here for over 100 years.
I think the good old "rich get richer, poor get poorer" theory is fallacious. I used to live in South Central LA and the poor people there eat meat everyday, have plumbing, cars, color tv's, etc. While there may be short-term widening income-disparities at times, for the most part, even the "poor" get richer. If this weren't the case- we should be seeing a massive underclass of people living by 1800's standards. If you think US govt. corruption is bad, you should take a look at Cuba, North Korea, Middle East, Africa, or just about anywhere else. Some people with power will always abuse that power. By "waging war against the average Joe", does that mean taxes?
What I meant to say was that many people have a naive outlook that for the most part people are good.
It'd be one famine away from revolution. The common public will always demand more than what can be expected from governments and vice versa. Look what happened to California post-dot com bust. The public thought they had an infinite treasury that was generated by tax revenues from tech companies. When that stream dried up, all those social services programs voted in by propositions looked silly and short sighted... America has it's evils like any other country, so the question is, "would you rather stay here or permanently move to any other country you want"? Since it looks like I'll be paying most of this decade's debt/interest burden for the next 30+ years, a place like Sweden might be an option.
Very good point. Also - the basic selfish nature of human beings ensures that Communism would never work. Well documented examples of massive shirking of duties by the peasants in Mao's China shows that just about all of us are motivated by selfishness to a degree. Very few of us would work our hardest if we knew that we would be getting the same compensation as the lazy bum next to us. I can think of no other basis for the whole fashion industry other than our innate desire to be "better" than our fellow humans.
if you think you'll escape the evils of mankind by moving to Canada then: you think Canada is populated only by bears???
Ideally, Communism would be the state in which everyone received the same amount. However, the selfish ones will want more than the rest. In a capitalistic society, it's like a balanced scale. The rich gets more, thus the poor gets less. There are consequences for every action.
