If You're Poor, You Didn't Get There On Your Own. Government Helped You Get There...

Originally posted by CalebRight14


I'm not trying to say the Goverment doesn't do anything right or well. The building of our interstate roads was a great advancement for our country. Everynow and then we get it right. I am saying it's gone too far.

I don't need the FDA to make it a crime for me to take anything, or make it legal to take a product that a company makes because said company paid off the right people.

I don't need the EPA to throw me in jail or tell me I cannot collect rain water that falls on my property, because water belongs to the state, county whatever.

I don't need Child protective services have SWAT show up at my door and throw me in jail, and take my 12 year old daughter away because I refuse to give her medication that I believe is hurting her.

It's too much and it needs to stop.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate System is slowly and methodically being sold off to other countries. You pay toll on these roads to those companies that bought them and little is paid to the state for maintaining them.

Originally posted by RobinB022
reply to post by The Old American

 

It disgusts me how some people get rewarded with flags and stars for nothing, but well thought out replies go unresponded to.
There are so many varibles that you haven't mentioned here, and probably haven't even come to mind for you. But I won't bother trying to help feed your imagination because it would be a waste of my time.

I would never change your mind, and not that I want to, but a wider vision would be wise.

edit on 1-8-2012 by RobinB022 because: (no reason given)

You can't even comprehend the meaning of the post, and you say I don't have vision? Yet another that can only read the words and not their meaning. Grow your mind and come back when you can think.

/TOA

reply to post by The Old American


seems like some people that just cant come up with a logical rebuttal to the original point try to act like the original point was supposed to be an end-all be-all of describing and solving the problem at hand. How ridiculous is it that they expect that to be layed out in a single forum post? Its so assinine for them to say things like "its not just the government, its also this, that, and this"

That is off the topic and completely irrelevant. You make a post about one specific cause to the problem and other people try to prove you wrong by pointing out that there are other factors/causes? Well, no #, sherlock. I swear I think some people on here are contrarians that just love to nitpick and disagree no matter what the post is about. Its so annoying.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by CalebRight14

 

Sure, but those are cases that, mostly, involve one or two cases.

The problem is it's not. I could fill a 900 page book with examples, I just used those because they were hot topics on ATS at the moment.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by CalebRight14

 

Similar situations have existed in the past and they all end up the same. Self destructive.

So as long as the actual core laws are not undone, these new laws, for all intensive purposes, are all bark and no bite. Much like the Dotcom case and many others, they collapse into utter ruin and failure once actually tried in court. That is why your swat team for drugs case was won by the mother, for example.

So it's ok to have a goverment that over reaches their own authority, because in the end, the court will rule in favor of the Law? Or a Judge will see a Law is not constitutional and throw it out? I don't really follow your logic. The harm is still done with no restitution to the people affected.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying it's fine because it's temporary. My question is why should it be at all?

I read your self-suffering post, and how that drives you to action, and to an extent that's true for everyone and everything. So are you saying that over reaching Goverment is good, cause it will get to a point that it drives action, resulting in Revolution? We did that already.

reply to post by WarminIndy


You have a right to peruse happiness. You do not have a right TO happiness. Two very different things. one is entitlement, the other is self determination.

reply to post by CalebRight14


I'm saying that the older I get the less I care about the government, because the more I know, and indeed the more people I know and meet, the more secure I am in my ability to fight the government's expansion without guns. To, in essence, forge my own group that the government must listen to.

The government is a bunch of whining retarded children. They will never play by the rules, they will never stop trying to get what they want, and the fact is they will never get things the way they want, because they cannot decide what they want in the first place.

Do not trouble yourself with fools whom in their own action pave the road to their own annihilation. If you do good work and meet skilled individuals, the power of the government over your life becomes less and less. They can claim all the power in the world. Without the resources and means to do it, they are just claiming, They cannot actually do anything.

Think back to Rome. They were claiming the power of even the gods. A lot of good that did them when the mercenaries marched in demanding their payment.

The constitution will never be followed. It is your responsibility to follow it. It's an idea. It has no power anymore, nor ever did in theory. And only your following of that idea will inevitably force the government to bow to your group's patriotism to that idea.

Most of not all of these cases you are talking about involve lone individuals whom, despite all their following of the constitutions, had few or no friends to back them up in times of need. They had no support. Just the law. The law is useless without a loyal lot to it.

You must look at the government the way it is. Satan. It seeks out the weak and divided. You will not win by firearms, and you will not win by knowing the law. You will win by unity with your countrymen to the constitution and each other. The termination of the suburban folly and return, frankly, to that thing that birthed the nation: Christian Socialist Ideals in my opinion.

If you sooner unite with your fellows, you sooner make irrelevant all the powers of the world.

Hypothetical:

There is an old theory that states a person who struggles in early life can rise to higher mental states later on. So, a large percentage of the population is kept suffering so that a few will be super motivated into high consciousness. Without these super geniuses, society would fall apart and progress would halt.

Let's say one in ten million people reach the level of mentality required to see the big picture and properly organize society. That would give us about 700 high geniuses who make the majority of significant decisions, develop technology and possibly communicate with non human entities of intelligence. All of these 700 were born into poverty/abuse/struggle. Many in the elite are aware of their existence and attempt to rise to grand consciousness but inevitably fail and accept their role as a wealthy leader on the public stage of human society.

Hypothetical...

What I'm asking is, what if there were a good reason for having a vast population of poor/struggling? To pull back the slingshot of the mind a little farther and provide a greater window of truth.

I'm sure this theory will be shot down by the lack of correlation between socio economic status and genius, BUT do we really want to rid the world of the one who overcomes impossible odds and achieves ultimate success?

Who's happier on the day of graduation- a first generation college student from a poor ghetto at a community college, or the Harvard legacy?

The world provides a variety of experiences for humans and a person born into a bad situation may find it helpful to think of life in terms of having more opportunity to climb the ladder.

NOW, I do believe one of society's top priorities should be working on the many communities that are poor, miserable, uneducated, cynical, and full of crime.

I guess I'm just intent on explaining the miseries of the world in the context of believing in a benevolent omnipotent God.

reply to post by MassOccurs

There is an old theory that states a person who struggles in early life can rise to higher mental states later on.

Theories must be testable. Who do you hypothetically suggest is running these experimental tests, I wonder/

So, a large percentage of the population is kept suffering so that a few will be super motivated into high consciousness. Without these super geniuses, society would fall apart and progress would halt.

Okay, in your hypothetical, let me add another hypothetical created by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. Hypothetically speaking John Galt is a genius of the highest order who "stopped the motor of the world" by refusing to contribute to it. He did this because he was sick and tired of government telling him that his success was gained by governments efforts and not his.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


She also had a rape victim fall in love with her abuser and considered that rapist a successful character, so forgive me if I have some serious reservations of Ayn Rand's mental capacity to understand societal workings and definitions of success.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


If I could name my hypothetical manipulators I would name them very loudly in public...

Generally, they are a group who have gained knowledge that gives them an upper hand against those without this knowledge, and have kept this knowledge highly classified. The knowledge has developed and increased in quantities throughout the length of history that the group has been in power, which in the scenario I described would be a very long time.

I've been meaning to read Atlas Shrugged for a while now, eventually I'll get around to it.

reply to post by MassOccurs


That sounds highly full of it, forgive me.

When I look at mankind, I see a long patchwork of people splitting, uniting, dividing, and conquering. I see no reason nor have any reason to doubt small organizations operate any differently.

Known organizations do not keep everything secure. They split up, they have leaks, etc etc. Why on Earth would anyone believe you when you claim a group is doing what you say?

If they exist, they have no secrets. It's simply a fact of life.

Knowledge stored rots away like foul meat. If your group does exist, I'd be willing to bet they are guarding "secrets" that are as well known today as the fact the moon orbits the Earth.

It's pretty pathetic when you guard worthless treasures.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by CalebRight14

 

I'm saying that the older I get the less I care about the government, because the more I know, and indeed the more people I know and meet, the more secure I am in my ability to fight the government's expansion without guns. To, in essence, forge my own group that the government must listen to.

Think back to Rome. They were claiming the power of even the gods. A lot of good that did them when the mercenaries marched in demanding their payment.

The constitution will never be followed. It is your responsibility to follow it. It's an idea. It has no power anymore, nor ever did in theory. And only your following of that idea will inevitably force the government to bow to your group's patriotism to that idea.

Most of not all of these cases you are talking about involve lone individuals whom, despite all their following of the constitutions, had few or no friends to back them up in times of need. They had no support. Just the law. The law is useless without a loyal lot to it.

If you sooner unite with your fellows, you sooner make irrelevant all the powers of the world.

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

This makes a lot more sense to me, and see little to argue with in it. The uniting you speak of has been going on for several years now, the explosion of the Tea Party is a prime example. And even the Occupy movement, though misguided and directionless is a uniting of like minded people seeking change. But I'm sure you knew that already.

reply to post by Gorman91


What I'm suggesting is that the science of the public domain may not be the same as the science in the highest levels of government. The ideas available to the public are jumping off points that allow people to discover how to use their mind in it's greatest capacity on their own.

We all know about the potential of the emerging sciences of quantum physics, nanotech, genetics, biotech, and so on. Based on this potential many foresee a future where it's possible that all current struggles could be eliminated. Food shortage, water, climate change, poverty, disease, violence. Gone.

In my scenario the scientific advancements made public in the 1900's were developed well before then by a continuous group that has kept itself on the forefront of human thought for centuries. In turn, the advancements that are being made now were actually made a while ago and the technology of the future exists today. This group chooses not to make the world "perfect" because of the belief that struggle is the root of greatness.

Knowledge stored may rot like foul meat, but here I am suggesting the meat is cooked, consumed, digested and continuously replaced by a well run slaughterhouse and served with improving recipes.

Once again, I never claimed fact to this although I feel there is some level of truth to the ideas I'm putting forward. The main point being that elements of the government are very intelligent and calculating with regard to the best interests of humanity as a whole. Of course there are other elements that abuse and threaten, but I like to think at the highest level of government, policy usually comes with good reason and intelligence beyond the typical citizen.

Over the years, it seems, society has continued to advance in the aggregate. Life expectancy, information access. A world ending war has not happened. Compared to the prospect of nuclear war, what we see in the world is small scale tragedy. Poverty included. These small scale tragedies may be completely preventable one day, the may be completely preventable today. And once again, maybe it has been determined that small scale tragedy is a major factor when it comes to individuals making mental progress.

reply to post by MassOccurs


This is incredibly ignorant to state, I'm sorry. Because just a little effort in research proves you wrong. Literally every invention in the 1800s, excluding electricity, was known in the days of Rome. The steam engine, the paddle boat, hell even primitive railways. All existed in ancient Rome, in however limited variety they were. The Aeolipile, The Diolkos Trackway, the ships described in De Rebus Bellicis. You can even read about Roman knowledge of bacteria, despite the fact there is no evidence they had microscopes.

Let's not even get into the Renaissance tanks, machine guns, torpedoes, flying attack craft, napalm bombers, and countless other devices.

These were not secrets. They were known entities that scholars talked about. It was not hidden, it was simply the fact people were not literate enough to make practical use of these ancient scientific breakthroughs.


So forgive me. But your scenarios are only realistic if you preclude pretty much all of human history before the 1800s.

What you are saying is that it is stored. And people who store knowledge and never use it inevitably fall behind. Only way to keep up is to keep researching, and if you think a couple thousand researchers can manage to keep their mouths shut all the time, you are sorrowfully under thinking the situation.


I think, forgive me, but it is not that they are so far ahead. It is that you are so far behind in knowledge of technology. And don't take that as an insult. Periodically I take breaks of keeping up on the cutting edge of technology, and I get overwhelmed by how far behind I fall. 2 years of not paying attention and next thing you know you feel like you're time traveling once you go back into research.

The fields of quantum, and engineering, and everything you mentioned are not that advanced once you take some time to study them. They actually do make some sense, and it is quite clear that there are no secrets. People spend years researching, they discover, and then they move on.

Or do you really think that they would just "happen" to release the technology of 3d printing and in doing so ensure they are surrounded by a few hundred million "peasants" who can now mass produce an entire military armament with a few hundred tons of scrap metal?

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by MassOccurs

 

This is incredibly ignorant to state, I'm sorry. Because just a little effort in research proves you wrong. Literally every invention in the 1800s, excluding electricity, was known in the days of Rome. The steam engine, the paddle boat, hell even primitive railways. All existed in ancient Rome, in however limited variety they were. The Aeolipile, The Diolkos Trackway, the ships described in De Rebus Bellicis. You can even read about Roman knowledge of bacteria, despite the fact there is no evidence they had microscopes.

Let's not even get into the Renaissance tanks, machine guns, torpedoes, flying attack craft, napalm bombers, and countless other devices.

These were not secrets. They were known entities that scholars talked about. It was not hidden, it was simply the fact people were not literate enough to make practical use of these ancient scientific breakthroughs.

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

I didn't see this coming Gorman, But I am actually starting to like the spin of your yarn.

It's very elitist of us to assume we are so much smarter than we were 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 years ago. Yes technology does build on itself. But if I had zero technology available to me today, I would like to think I could figure out a few things still.

Originally posted by CalebRight14

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by MassOccurs

 

This is incredibly ignorant to state, I'm sorry. Because just a little effort in research proves you wrong. Literally every invention in the 1800s, excluding electricity, was known in the days of Rome. The steam engine, the paddle boat, hell even primitive railways. All existed in ancient Rome, in however limited variety they were. The Aeolipile, The Diolkos Trackway, the ships described in De Rebus Bellicis. You can even read about Roman knowledge of bacteria, despite the fact there is no evidence they had microscopes.

Let's not even get into the Renaissance tanks, machine guns, torpedoes, flying attack craft, napalm bombers, and countless other devices.

These were not secrets. They were known entities that scholars talked about. It was not hidden, it was simply the fact people were not literate enough to make practical use of these ancient scientific breakthroughs.

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

I didn't see this coming Gorman, But I am actually starting to like the spin of your yarn.

It's very elitist of us to assume we are so much smarter than we were 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 years ago. Yes technology does build on itself. But if I had zero technology available to me today, I would like to think I could figure out a few things still.

No time like the present to learn to be self-sufficient. It is possible to learn to grow food even in the smallest of spaces. Back yard chickens are becoming popular. Learn to care for yourself and you will do a great service for humanity. Some food for thought provided below.

en.wikipedia.org...
helenaricketts.hubpages.com...

reply to post by Gorman91


My argument here is not whether there is an organization that hoards advanced technology. I am asking if there may be some benefits to poverty and wealth inequality? The example I gave was the prospect that maybe a person born at the lower rungs has more potential due to momentum and experience in overcoming challenges. Everything else was hypothetical.

So lets say it's the year 2050 and the problems of pollution, sickness, food and water shortage- and all the other things that keep a large segment on the population poor and struggling- let's say these can all be overcome by technology.

Would it be a good thing for every child to grow up without the sever challenges faced in the world today?

reply to post by MassOccurs


I really don't think this argument is even relevant.

Everyone from Christians to abortionists have made retarded arguments involving rights to life and where you are born from.


I can safely say that everybody in every situation has an equal potential to end up as n a**hole or a saint. It's all based off what you decide to do with your own self, and it will be readily visible which one you are soon enough.

I am compelled to offer another view of being poor. In our country,risk takers were rewarded. We were taught that if you wanted to suceed, anything was possible with hard work and devotion. It did not matter if you were an administrator, a tradesman, or a manufacturer- everybody had a chance to better themselves.
Nearly five years ago, I became a risk taker. I earned a state license in my trade, and opened a company with two hundred dollars. A year and a half later, I opened a line of credit, and was doing around 150k a year.

To be competitive with unlicensed people (who should be jailed), the profit margins were small. I always stayed busy nonetheless.

Fast forward to the present, I am fighting to keep food on the table, and to keep my doors open. My combined state and federal taxes,workman's comp, and liabilty average 54%. Materials have risen 38% this year alone.
Bi-anual renewals went from $900.00 to $3,000.00.

My point? The average person soon will not be able to afford my services! Nobody's wages are rising to keep up with this madness. I can raise my prices to a point that no one can afford. In the mean time, every power to be is taking a bigger piece of the pie.

Through no fault of my own, I am more than likely going to have to close my doors. Did I ask to be poor? No. Period. The government,insurance companies, and corporate suppliers are putting me there.

To those in the medical, legal, or corporate sector who are doing well, I welcome you to come and walk a mile in my shoes. I say this because your professions seem to be recession proof where blue collar workers are not.

No bank or lending institution will take a chance on a hard working person with a proven track record, but yet they can get bailed out after they fail- I am still trying to figure that one out.

My hat goes off to anyone trying to fight their way off the system-and yes, there are a lot of good people who are there for reasons beyond their control.

reply to post by Gorman91


I can safely say that the environment one grows up in plays a huge role in the person they eventually become.

The way society is set up, those with significant capital have a huge advantage when it comes to making a profit in the world marketplace. Therefore, people without capital are forced to be more innovative in order to prosper.

How many people in the world right now are seriously trying to become a billionaire and are confident they will succeed? How many of them were born into wealth? Most.

To me the most impressive people are the ones who don't have much, and still aspire to have everything. Determination in the face of long odds represents a stronger spirit, and strengthening spirit is the ultimate pursuit in life.

To those who see the odds stacked against them, you're going to have to work harder to get where you want to go. If you do so, and eventually achieve your goals, you'll find yourself superior to those who got to an equivalent place in society with an easier path.

Blessed are the poor...