You lie!

You're not sorry at all!

The link you posted doesnt work xeno

Xeno:

Throughout this post I read your threads, stating that change HAS BEEN happening. Apparently, your only complaint is that it's happening too slow at the moment.

If change IS happening, what was the point of posting #1?
Telling us all that it could be better, and that any administration is not to be trusted?
You're promoting either Anarchy or Marxism, and I'm not sure which.

Fact is that administration is needed, since complete unity of the masses is impossible, as everyone has the right to free spech, religion etc. Any attempt to unite and direct the masses would, in a way, require the very same "brainwashing techniques" as you claim are happening in the elite societies of today.

You seem more like a conspiracy-buff than an actual theorist. Answer me this:

What change are you looking for?

Is it happening? (YES / NO - Not "yeah, somehow in a bit it might be beginning" or "it is, but at snail-speed". If change is happening, it's bloody happening.)

Do you endorse another way of governing democracy than is currently being utilized in the US and the most of Europe? If so, please enlighten me.

--

Regarding China's rural-communities:
These "technologies" have been around for ages. Regarding their wireless networking and television, you know as well as everyone in this forum that they're feeding off of mainstream cable-networks. This can be done with parabolic or cable equipment, if you know how to set it up.

The cooker is another great experiment of your ignorance. It's not an invention - It's been around since Ancient Greece. Fact is, however, that it IS reliant of the sun (which can be shrouded by clouds), which make it a highly unreliable piece of equipment.

Your observations are not new or revolutionizing, and I honestly cannot condone the tedious conspiracy-thinking.

/ Ithaca

An alternative political system I cannot provide you with, for there simply isn't a name for what I have in mind.  However, I can give you some alternative political ideas that I have been thinking about. I have been very interested in the following:

1.  A resource-based economy, rather than a monetary-based economy.

2.  Having more electoral political power allotted to cities or regions, and less or no electoral political power allotted to a national government or the UN.  In short, a more decentralized distribution of electoral political power.

3.  An apolitical, completely independent, international, non-profit NGO responsible by a detailed constitution for providing basic resources necessary for ensuring the opportunity for survival and self-actualization of all people:

a) security via an internationalized emergency response force
b) housing via the internationalized mass-production and distribution of OGLUs (Off-Grid Living Units)
c) education and access to information via an internationalized and yet decentralized internet service provider accessible and transmissible by any and all OGLUs, as well as an online media database, an internationalized college of teachers, an internationalized student union, and an internationalized independent journalists' association
d) health via an internationalized health-care system and internationalized physicians' association whose services are distributed by the emergency response force and / or transportation system(f))
e) food and water via an internationalized distribution system (see transportation (f) below)
f) mass transportation via an internationalized mass-transportation network

'Proper' debates are rather boring, anyway, skoe.

@Simon. 

Why not?

Basically, you write an e-mail to this guy named Bob you hear had a cow he wanted to trade for chickens.  Let's say you are willing to trade 10 chickens for 1 cow.  Bob replies okaying the transaction (must be pretty desperate to trade a whole cow for 10 chickens but anyway...), and you agree on a time and place to make the trade.  You submit the e-mails to your lawyer who annotates it and stores it in case this Bob guy turns out to be a crook, or the cow dies before you get it home.  The e-mails serve as a contract of sale that can be upheld in a court of law.   It doesn't have to be cows and chickens that is traded, of course.  It could be anything at all.  ANYTHING.  Think about that.

For most people of the world, this sort of trading (without the e-mail and lawyers, of course) goes on all the time in developing / under developed areas of the world.

Nobody really knows how big this resource-based economy is.  In fact, some estimates place it at over 1/3 of the total economy.  I bet this is probably accurate.  The majority of humans on the planet are already using a resource-based economy.  When societies start allowing poor people to use e-mail and have access to the legal system  in order to protect their resource-based transactions rather than outlawing and vilifying these transactions and basically with-holding internet access to the 'poor', the resource-based economy will blossom.

Instead of trying to convert the economic system of the world's 'poor' to the monetary economic system, the 'developed' world might want to just allow rural peoples access to e-mail, and adequate access to legitimate civil court systems (easily provided at our current level of technological capability), so as to facilitate growth in the real -err- resource-based economy.  If so, perhaps wealth will eventually trickle down to the citizens of the developed world.

Have fun paying 10 Euro for a chicken burger.

> sKoE )= wrote:

> Ok.

So how does a brick layer get payed? How does he charge for his work?

2,000 people work on a skyscraper. How do you determine how much each one gets?

people call dibs!

is currently, more costly then manpower

those resources (gold etc) would then be used to trade for food. What is the difference between using gold as money when right now we use paper as money? It sounds like returning to go the gold standard would be sufficient for you?

"is currently, more costly then manpower"

- not in a resource-based economy

How to set up such an economy so that humans have the above inalienable rights PROVIDED for all people based on the labor of  robots is what another thread should be about?  This one has been brought to its conclusion, I believe.

1: Elites can replace humans when possible, and can bribe humans when replacement isn't possible, which means oppression is inevitable because the elites don't have a dependence on masses.

Elites can replace humans when possible, and can bribe humans when replacement isn't possible, and, yes, this does mean oppression is inevitable.  But gauge the level of 'oppression' we face today as opposed to the oppression faced by humans in Ancient Egypt.  You must admit there is a trend towards a more equitable state of human dignity, human rights and liberty.

Your empirical evidence is conceded.  However, I would say that all advances up until today have been before a key technological advance: artificial intelligence, which I have brought up later.  If future technology is a unique challenge in the future, the past isn't a good determinant.

The cause of that was an increasing need for individuals as a result of technology.  World war 2 proved that we need special individuals (scientists, in that case) for the state to retain power.  Mass media and other tools become other "special individuals."  The transition between Ancient Egypt and today isn't just an increase in knowing.  It was an increase in specialization.  Remember, in ancient Egypt, a slave was a slave.  Farm, build pyramids, whatever.  Now, however, specialization makes each individual special.

But in the same sense, it also makes some individuals less valuable.  If I was the best crossbow-builder in 1700, and traveled to today to build crossbows, I would probably be a poor guy with lots of crossbows next to his cardboard box home.  (But you better not try to steal my tin cup or I'll mess ya up, biotch!)

Now we're headed toward a technological shift: when technology forces people out of many niches into others.  Low skilled labor is replaced with technology, which means the government isn't dependent on that low-skilled labor, so they're not representative of them.

  Hold on a second here.  You are suggesting that the only reason people became more 'specialized' in their activity is because the elite allowed them to.  Are you suggesting that every innovation, every specialization, every 'improvement' was and is allowed to occur by the elite.  Would you say the only way for technological innovation / increased specialization of labor to occur is for the elite to allow it?  What convinces you that the elite controls - to such a complete extent that you suggest - the development of technological innovation / labor specialization / societal development?

No, I'm not making that claim in the least.  Market forces allow technology to be developed (if people want a technology, that technology will eventually be produced because an incentive is created).  What creates this shift is that a demand (by pretty much everyone) for more streamlined, efficient production creates an incentive for said developments.

Now in regards to more skilled labor, that's slowly going out the window.  If there's any job that requires human intuition to fill, two words respond to that: artificial intelligence.  Bam, the elites no longer need the people, even the highly skilled people, and they can do whatever the hell they want.

It's interesting you use the word 'human intuition'.  What I think you mean by human intuition is the complex decision making process of which only humans are currently capable, a process based not only on rationality and observation, but also on moral and ethical notions, philosophical and political ideas, social and cultural ramifications, and a whole slew of other abstract, high-level thought processes, the very processes by which the elite justify their superiority.  Let's also suppose that A.I. will be constructed in the future so as to be able to conduct such higher, abstract thought processes as well.  Wouldn't the elite themselves be the ones rendered obsolete in such an event?  The elite would no longer be able to justify their place at the top of the pyramid structure with the development of A.I..  It would be the maintenance technician in charge of repairing and the research scientist in charge of creating further innovations for the A.I. machine that would replace the elite, and would, in fact, create the innovations in the machine so as to usurp the elite and install themselves as the new elite: those who control, maintain and innovate the A.I. machine would become the new elite, and, as we saw in the Matrix, could only be usurped by the A.I. machines themselves.

Now we end up branching off into one of two issues:

Either:
A: The elites would be able to control AI in the future, which means they would not be rendered obsolete.  On the contrary, they would solidify power by being the tamer of technology, or
B: The elites can't control AI, and you can go watch The Matrix now because I'm too lazy to tell you what happens.

Either way, an elite would still have power.

2: The elites won't make the transition because, despite what may be best for society, it's in their interests to retain power.

The elites will make the transition, albeit far too often it is done too late, which results in wars, which results in their being killed off anyway, albeit along with millions of humans, too.

Justification?

One fact remains: If elites already have an advantage over us in technology, they can live through the war, which means the rest of the losses are mere pawns at most.

Mere pawns in a game of chess, eh?  I do not agree.  I think you over-estimate the level of control the elites actually have over our society.

Based upon?  When humans increasingly become liabilities for government, then they become an expendable resource.

4: The elites have more weapons than simply brute force.  Economic, political, or cultural warfare can exact the same goals as military warfare, and give the same power.  Control of any important resource, spreading of a message, etc., can coopt your movement by fighting it tooth and nail.

But what good does this do them?  New technologies are always re-engineered by the humans to suit their purposes rather than the elites, when, of course, the LAW allows them to.

Answered in the below section.

But technology can serve good and evil at the same time, as long as there are markets for each.  Let's use an example I personally love: nanotechnology.  I can develop disease-curing microrobots if I like and give it to the public, or I can create an airborne disease that kills all non-white people.  Or... I could create the disease-curing microrobots, then someone else could reengineer that to create the airborne disease.

The demand for both good and bad technology exists at the same time, which means both can be constructed at the same time.

Let's remember what this post is all about.  This is about whether or not actual, beneficial social change can be expected as a direct result of Obama's presidency.   My premise is that such change shouldn't really be hoped for very much because it is the politician's mandate - EVERY politician's mandate - allotted to him by the very social system which allowed him to attain political power in the first place to retain the societal circumstances as they are, so as to be able to retain political control of that society in the future.   It is the essential quality of the politician to hinder rather than promote ANY kind of societal change.  What ends up happening is that the politician only allows those social changes to occur which will allow him to retain political power rather than lose it.  It is only at the last critical moment when he MUST allow change or lose his control over society that change occurs.  The political system - any political system - is like a dam on a river of innovation, technological development and social change.  The pressure for new technologies and their resulting changes on society builds up during so called 'wet seasons' when rapid technological development is possible and desired by the population, and the pressure diminishes during 'dry seasons' when innovation and new technology is either feared or unnecessary due to either complacent-in-fear and/or materialistically satisfied population.  The politician's job is to release the gates or close the gates of the dam during the appropriate times of wet and dry seasons, and only to open or close them to a certain, pre-calculated extent.  The politician would never allow the flood-gates to be opened completely, nor closed completely, for if either the former and the latter case were to occur the utter uselessness of the political system, the redundancy of the dam-system, would suddenly be apparent to all as it either overflows or dries up, for - and now we come to the heart of the matter - it is the purpose of the political system - any political system - to regulate technological development and the social changes that result.

What has been made clear to all thanks to the internet, is just how much water there is in the reservoir.  We can now, with a couple clicks of the mouse, and a couple keystrokes, see just how much potential there is for technological innovation and social change.  Yes, the water can flood us and destroy us all, and yes it can also bring water to countless of dry fields downstream.

But it is incorrect to assume that the elite make the water and are able to control it.  You see, in fact, it is the opposite.  They can't control it, for the damn is always over-flowing.  There is simply too much human potential in the reservoir for it to be regulated any longer.

They cannot, you see, stop the rain; they cannot control the river.  The river occasionally radically shifts its course, you see.  This is just natural.  This is just what rivers tend to do, you see.  They take the path of least resistance.  And although they might try to build more dams on the new courses of new tributaries, it is simply a futile effort.  For, whenever new solutions and innovations to problems are desired by populations, one of them always comes up with a solution and creates it, and even one simply innovation of this kind can cause the whole river to shift, and, yes, it could cause a flood; it could cause the extinction of the human race in fact, or, it could be an innovation capable of freeing us so that every individual could suddenly travel to any  star in the universe at will.

Um... non-responsive in any way, shape, or form?

Once greater numbers, including their own population, becomes the enemy of the state, restraint for the purpose of protecting populations is meaningless since everyone is guilty.  If the government wanted to, they could pick any number of ways of taking down populations, including:
A: Direct warfare.

This usually ends badly for Elites.

Answered above.  Empirically, yes, it does.  But when power can be consolidated due to technology reducing dependence on individuals, bam.

B: Control of food supplies or other key resources.  Can't endorse a post-modern, harmonious society when you're all starving!

Yes.  Which is why technology needs to be released by relaxing intellectual property and patent laws to allow humans to create an abundance of basic needs.

It will happen anyway, mind you, but it would be a nice gesture by the developed world.

Now we get to something interesting.
A prerequisite for stopping elite power is for the elites to surrender their power willingly.  Notice a problem with that?

No.  In fact, it is natural if you think about it.  Any ethical professional physician, as an example, will have it as their mandate to cure the ill person and send them on their way, not keep them in the hospital indefinitely.

That doesn't answer whether the GOVERNMENT would do it.  Your "elites?"  Obama?  Remember, the guy this topic was originally about?  That justifies my two threads below:

If not, I'm making two new threads today:
1: I know how to stop terrorism globally, and
2: Alot less people would have been killed during the Holocaust if the Holocaust didn't happen.

As for the "it will happen anyway," explain that further, please.  Maybe a justification as to how resources can be decentralized and can be prevented from being taken over by authorities if, as you say, those authorities actively work to stop that from happening.  Example: alternative energy.

  I think I have explained how it will happen anyway (read above).