Scarcity - A New Theory of Everything, page 2

Now I'm going to reply to the things which are political in nature in the OP. I have some disagreements with you there.

As a programmer, I design systems for a living. Part of designing a system is to not only envision that system in the best of conditions, when the users are acting 100% according to how they should be, but to also try to take into account every possible thing a user will do, no matter how stupid and dumb it may see. Oh the hours I spend doing nothing more than making sure the user doesn't do stupid things.

As well, just because a system may appear to work, doesn't mean it's doing the best job and so forth.

And when you are talking about politics, you are talking about systems. And a big disagreement I have with your assessment is that all systems have a place and time - no, they do not. In most cases the systems #1 priority is to maintain the system, which means to maintain the status quo.

What separates what I would say are acceptable systems and unacceptable systems is decentralization or centralization of power. Centralization of power is what creates an elite class. Because the system by default gives these people the power. However, under decentralization of power, the power is not consolidated and therefore is in the hands of the people. Power to the people. Any system which does not respect this is not acceptable. Because history has proven in each and every system that when you give that much power to an elite, bad things happen. The only possible way to not have this happen is to have decentralization.

But, under decentralization you can still have each of these systems. However, the system the people choose should be of choice, and of different options.

Meaning, if a community wants to live in a more socialist manner - they should be free to do so. If a community wants to live in a more libertarian type community, they should be free to do so. The problems arise when 1 person, or 1 community thinks they know best what to decide for the other community.

The base of all society is found in the individuals. And each and every government and system which has failed has failed because that system forgot about the individual. It became what you said is "Sacrifice" for the system. And the individual became slave to the system, and thus slave to the elites who ran the system. Because they eroded the base of their society, the individual. Take out the bottom floor of any building, and every floor above it will come tumbling down.

Thus the only way to get a strong base in society is to give the individuals the power. Otherwise known as freedom. America proved this as it became a world power under it, only to have slowly eaten away at it with centralization over the past century.

Furthermore, there is the problem of money and banking. #1 Fractional banking, and loans at interest must be outlawed PERIOD. It is theft, it has been called theft for over 2000 years and yet we still have it. There will be no real advancement in society with a debt based economic system. It enslaves the people, and that will never change. You can kiss any prosperous future goodbye.

The Constitution had it right. Failure to uphold it has been the demise of the US. Let me break that down, and show how it allows for all of the above - these are what I consider to be requirements for any bright future.

1. A limited federal government. When the constitution was being written, there were 2 arguments. 1 side didn't want to list rights at all, because they feared that if they listed rights, then some day we would be reduced to only those rights. The other side wanted to list the most basic rights, as insurance that they were never trampled on. The solution to this problem was the 9th and 10th amendments. The 9th amendment said you can't add anything which takes away a previously given right, and the 10th amendment says that anything not specifically listed in the constitution is by default handed down to the state and individuals. The 10th amendment = decentralization.

This is important, because it means that the job of the federal and biggest government is very limited and specific in it's role. As such, when we vote on these people, it is supposed to be for very few issues. It's alot easier to find and hold a guy up for things when the amount of issues is limited. Versus the centralization of today, where if you want economic freedom, you gotta vote for the pro war guy, but if you want to end the war(supposedly), you have to vote for the more socialist guy. It should be, voting on the president because of foreign policy, not because of domestic policy, which is largely reserved for the local governments.

So the amendments are not limited rights like we have today, but they are actually the list of things the federal government is supposed to make sure the states and local governments don't infringe on. A good example of this working properly is the civil rights movement in the 60's. The federal government had every right and it was their job to go in and make sure those people were allowed to vote. That is what they are supposed to do all the time. Not the people trying to take it away.

We have now shifted the bulk of the power to the states. Decentralizing the power a good bit. Each state also has it's own constitution, and it works again in the same way. They take up limited and listed things, and make sure they aren't infringed on. What they don't take up is then again passed down to local community, and then to the individual, for personal choice.

So, the bulk of the power is on the local community and the individual. It is on the community and individual level that the above kind of systems can live. Because then if an individual doesn't like it, then they have plenty of other communities in the country to move too. And they do so and still maintain their basic rights as citizens, not having to worry about that.

As well, the individual has much more say in what happens on a local level. Lets take a look at voting.

You vote on a local level quite often, and even vote on issues directly and such. Your 1 vote makes up a smaller number people, thus you have a higher % of say in the issues. You can even run for office in a community and win etc.

On the state level, your 1 vote makes up a less % of the total votes, meaning you have less say. On the federal level, hardly anything - which is exploited into getting people to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

But there is more. When issues are decided on the federal level, that means 1 program for the entire country. If you want to change things, then you have 1 vote in so many, and vote once every few years. So if a program does something bad, like in GWB then everyone suffers. There are no alternatives, and it takes a long time to try new ideas.

Take that down 1 level to the state level. Instead of 1 program, there are now 50 programs. Each program would be working for the best, because that is what we all want. If 1 program does something bad, then only that 1 state suffers. But they have 49 other programs to look at to improve with. And if 1 program does well, then every other state is free to adopt those practices. This allows for the ability to try new things more often, and leads to faster progress on any issue or program that may be needed.

But you can then take it down to the community level, and rather than 50, you have thousands of programs. And the people will have more say in them, they can get change in them quick, they can try new things and adapt quicker.

And under this system, the US was at one time #1 in math and science in the world. Didn't drop until they started centralizing all the programs, and the more they centralize, the more it drops. Meanwhile, smaller countries which by default have some of the benefits of the above system due to size are kicking the crap out of the US. And then people say oh well lets do that, but then they want to do it on the large scale and it breaks.

The more you pay attention to the base individual, the better society will grow. The more things are centralized and framed as being for the "good of society and the system", the more you will get corruption and the more you will enslave the people.

If an individual community wants to put their resources together and live in a more socialist manner, that is fine and dandy, might move their myself since I will have a good say in things. And if I don't like it, I'll move. But when people want to start putting those things on the large scale, it is always bad news.

This was the draw of small towns back in the day. The smaller the community, the more say you had in things, and thus the more freedom you had.

So I think the system does matter a great deal. Most modern day systems are a way of treating humans as resources for the system, and those who control the system and that can't be acceptable.