Star Trek: The Search for Ron Paul

posted on May 10th, 2012, 2:34 pm

While I can't disagree with you on the bullshit point - politics these days seems to be nothing but bullshit - no, such discussions aren't banned, and, frankly, I don't see a reason why they should be. If one of the mods think it's gotten out of hand they'll take care of it. If you don't want to listen to it just walk away.

By that argument perhaps i should cover the forum in porn, well if you don't to listen to it walk away.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 3:10 pm

No, his point is that politics aren't against the rules.  The devs are German, why should they care about American Politics?    What you suggest is, however, against the rules. 

posted on May 10th, 2012, 4:46 pm

Yes, there's a big difference between political debate and porn.
One is raucous, noisy, and strips those involved of all dignity and the other one's porn.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 5:13 pm

Yes, there's a big difference between political debate and porn.
One is raucous, noisy, and strips those involved of all dignity and the other one's porn.

i give you all my internets, that was great.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 6:53 pm

ha no way i'm believing that.

lol oh I suppose I could always find an extra paragraph or two to write about something. 

And yes, what government is, and what it could be... are two very different things. Lot's of practising and pretending before you can do something right, understandably, there is complexity.

Imagine how we all learned to swim... you don't start swimming immediately like an olympian. You start, and at first you are just pretending to swim, and then you practise, and eventually you get it right.

It is a much simpler ordeal to behave responsibly in our private day to day lives. Or to hold ourselves to high standards. For a government to achieve such a thing is far more difficult. Being publicly responsible and always behaving in a way that works is vastly harder to achieve on a national scale.  What needs to be maintained despite an ever-changing global stage is quite the task to undertake.

While we might look at an athlete who has a few hiccups along the way before winning a medal, (yet still dont give him heck because in one competition he came in 7th overall) it seems a much more tedious task when it comes to good governance. The continuity of a government is nothing like what a athlete can focus on. I.e.  (a fictional athlete might say) I'm a long distance runner, and that's all I'm going to focus on for four years. And then I'll do it again, for a 12-16-20 year athletic career. A government goes from one party to another, facing different crises and contextual events that makes it infinitely more difficult.

And yet at the same time, it certainly seems like certain aspects of government could be better operated by almost anyone in certain cases when good decisions are just so obviously not being made.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 7:27 pm

"But Anakin/godsvoice, people don't always agree with each other."

"Then they should be made to"

...pretty much sums up my position.  If you seriously think that ANY human being should have authority over another without a system in place to check their power, you're way too naive to be a part of political debate.  Thus concludes my anti-big-government speech.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 8:11 pm

Yes, there's a big difference between political debate and porn.
One is raucous, noisy, and strips those involved of all dignity and the other one's porn.

Hey i want to be a porn star.

posted on May 10th, 2012, 8:18 pm

lol lol mmm Pretty sure I didn't say that. Do you see why I have such a problem with keeping comments to 140 characters or less... as if that makes a point. Giving me a quote from star wars as though I'm arguing what anakin was, is way off base.

Remember this part of my post:

Being publicly responsible and always behaving in a way that works is vastly harder to achieve on a national scale.

It's easy on a small scale for any one of us to do what is best for us, even for what is best for our community. What's best for a fishing community on the coastline is probably best for the whole community. But if you have a fishing community on the coastline, a forest industry like community in the mainland, mining, manufacturing, bla bla bla bla, balancing all those needs nationally gets quite involved. Where do you put the money?

If you have vastly different nationalities/minorities, or age groups that even further complicates things. Is your country largely made up of senior citizens, in which case the majority probably want good pensions, and healthcare for seniors, or do you have a growing youth, in which case other priorities come into play.

If you really want to get into the authority part of government well yes it requires a balanced system, but I don't think I ever wrote someone should have uncheck dominion. I simply wrote that a government needs to be given a proper size to accommodate the needs of the people it needs to provide. And that whole part about people not agreeing with each other... I think I already stated about how it might require practise to get things right, and how government is quite involved.

On the switch side, saying oh wait, look, governments so far have never really got that far ahead of the game. All we see are attempts at good government, but in practise we aren't that successful. So let's just abandon the whole enterprise, and say 'no government, or very small government'. When it comes down to the communities that don't agree, we don't need a responsible government to settle things, let's just have interior division in our culture. Religious vs secular, minorities, we'll take good care of everyone all on our own, without a government to ensure responsibility.

To be honest, my personal view of things is rather apolitical. I actually do believe that if we had a very responsible citizenship within a society, the needs of government would be very very few. However we don't have that responsible of a population when it comes to these sorts of things. If you can demonstrate that a country with no built in strong government can eliminate its poverty, starving and homeless rates all on its own with its own system of wealth redistribution. Which creates its own health system and infrastructure and doesn't operate on largely capitalist ideas that are rather insane ... profit for self, vs good of all. Then hey, I'd be glad to live in that sort of society where everyone is responsible and takes care of everyone.

I just don't think we've learnt how to behave that way just yet, but by and large history shows we are getting there. But there will always be setbacks for every generation. Until we demonstrate that kind of responsibility, government does have a role to play. I don't really care how big it is, so long as it does its job. And there is no defence for a society where some men are billionaires and others are utterly destitute. That demonstrates a complete lack of responsibility in the government that allows that to continue, and citizens who live ideally while it happens. All we have is a 'chance' to get rich... through a lottery system. And that seems to be good enough for many, but its a complete joke.

posted on May 17th, 2012, 7:33 pm

forgot to post this earlier when we were on a politics theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_qcQ4OElhM

clumsy embed:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=d_qcQ4OElhM[/youtube]