yeah, Jackson had it cumming, at children I heared.

@tavius:
as yell pointed out, it really turned bad after the troops left. I'm not saying the war on itself did any good to the Vietnamese, but what they faced after wards was even worse. More people died after war but the gov kept it quit.

"Autocracy is the least likely to be taken over by elites, in which case it is no longer an autocracy."
Then define elites first before we continue debating.

"The only way to maintain an autocracy, and thus a government of stewardship, is for autocrats to be capable. Thus you need them to be selected by merit. Merit, of course, implies intelligence and hard work."
There is no selection system other then the one the person in power proposes. History learns us you will always end up with a problem leader after a while.

"You may think that meritocratic selection will not work because it is unnatural, however it worked incredibly well in Rome under the period of the 5 good emperors."
How did it end? Don't forget its not the emperors who made Rome great but the circumstances. The emperors only managed not to [botch] it up. If Marcus was a good leader, how come he put Commodus to the throne (even if it was his child)?

Maybe everything should be rationed. Consumer goods should be numbered randomly to create some jobs in the bureaucracy. People should manually count everything else it could be done by a computer. But let's save some companies first. Even if it has good papers. Better overreacting then having the risk of forgetting one. We couldn't bare.

In any case you will be able to warm your house with dollars soon.

Oh, and we should burn unnecessary consumer goods and use it as fuel.

lol

lol@yell

@tavius:
depends on what you mean by competing. But in any case I don't see the system surviving like it is. Its about to explode. That doesn't mean they will adopt a western style democracy tough. We have to wait and see I gues.

Maybe in 2 months or so Justinian should jump this one up and continue the debate for the first time in the history of IC politics.

"ok, theoretically, lets say the US government did not bail out any companies,"
ok.

"multiple banks went bankrupt,"
We are not talking about the financial institutions. Thats a complete different story.

"GM and chrysler at least went bankrupt"
Yep. As they should.

"millions more people lose their jobs" "then they did, car part manufacuers go bankrupt with GM and Chrysler gone,"
That is two times a giant jump to conclusion I disagree with. What would have happened? someone would have bought those companies or pieces of it. If nobody was able to pay much, it would have gone cheap but what is the problem with that? The debts of those companies would have been gone. So the only difference would be that there would be another management then one that has proven its incapability. Some people might have lost there jobs. But the gov could give a very small bonus to the new owner if he wouldn't fire them all at once. That bonus is very little compared to buying up the entire company.

What happened now? The same people who are responsible for the crash - partially because they give themselves to much cash from their own company, partially because they are incompetent - are allowed to continue with tax payers money. That's insane.

"I never see him in the news."
else you wouldn't have watched.