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[gutter_trash]

duh, when it take 100s of millions of dollars to run a campaign now boosted with Super Packs.. for sure

 

[dinazimmerman]

In a survey conducted September 19–22 by Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times, by a margin of 55 percent to 31 percent, Americans opposed the bailout when asked whether "the government should use taxpayers' dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is it not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayers' dollars?".

haha the wording of that question. science indeed.

 

[Yagharek]

I'd argue Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize for Economics was a Nobel Prize for social science.

There is no Nobel prize for economics. It's an award created by the bank that funds part of the Nobel Foundation.

Economics isn't a science. It's a step marginally above reading tea leaves and starsigns.

 

[Necromanti]

Glenn Beck knew it all along.

He's missing 'C for Communism'. (Alternatively, 'Cultural Marxism'.)

 

[gutter_trash]

Same for most of the western countries really.

other Western countries don't have year long campaigns that cost of gazillions of gazllions.

Canada's election campaigns are officially one month length (even though there is election fever before parliement is disolved) but nothing like the spectacle of the near year long US Presidential campaign

A 1st term President even stops governing completely when he runs for a 2nd term, it's a joke

 

[Deleted member 13876]

There is no Nobel prize for economics. It's an award created by the bank that funds part of the Nobel Foundation.

Yeah, I know but people generally still refer to it as a Noble prize, while technically it indeed isn't.

 

[Pyrokai]

I thought Bush was rock bottom but the recent Supreme Court rulings about elections and campaign finance clearly demonstrate we have a ways to go in our downward spiral ...

Just wait until the next few election cycles are over.

#realistnotpessimist

 

[FriedConsole]

Economics isn't a science. It's a step marginally above reading tea leaves and starsigns.

Microeconomics is relevant and useful.
Macroeconomics is total bullshit.

 

[speculawyer]

Speaking of the founders, my brother believes that we are still under the control of the British Empire.

I don't know but maybe some people here have heard this theory before and understand it.

No . . . but the Queen is part of the Pentaverate that rule us all.

 

[Elfforkusu]

How? The "experts" would be the oligarchy.

No? Anyone can become an expert, dude. You don't need to be born into it.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

FWIW, this attitude and sentiment is part of the problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerge...C_financiers.2C_economists.2C_and_journalists

In a survey conducted September 19–22 by Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times, by a margin of 55 percent to 31 percent, Americans opposed the bailout when asked whether "the government should use taxpayers' dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is it not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayers' dollars?".

Here is a good example of the rationalizations people do to discredit experts:

People are saying that about climate change all the time.

You're not wrong about people discrediting experts, but that survey question is leading as fuuuuuuuck. Hard to take it at face value.

Experts often get it wrong too, in part because they're that much more confident in making boisterous claims that someone who is generally well-informed wouldn't dare make.

Sure. Experts are humans just like the rest of us. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we nominate a king of economics to uniformly make all decisions. Just that people with knowledge on matters might in fact be better suited to make decisions on those matters. Our political system could reflect that. It currently doesn't.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Corporate Personhood ain't no joke bro

I like "Corporate Personhood's" other names better: "Oligarchy" and "Plutocracy" just have this nice ring to them that "Corporate Personhood" lacks.

 

[benjipwns]

No? Anyone can become an expert, dude. You don't need to be born into it.

Oligarchies aren't required to be hereditary. It just means rule by a "small" group and group membership can be based on almost any metric the group wants it to be based on.

 

[Tecl0n]

There is no Nobel prize for economics. It's an award created by the bank that funds part of the Nobel Foundation.

Economics isn't a science. It's a step marginally above reading tea leaves and starsigns.

Pressure by the swiss bank. Also, sorcery. Tea leaves actually exist, unlike our suppositions.

 

[Jason's Ultimatum]

We need direct democracy.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Oligarchies aren't required to be hereditary. It just means rule by a "small" group and group membership can be based on almost any metric the group wants it to be based on.

By that definition, any representative democracy is an oligarchy. Which is to say that your definition of oligarchy is lacking.

I'm not advocating a rule by the freemasons, just that not all opinions are of equal value.

 

[benjipwns]

By that definition, any representative democracy is an oligarchy.

It is, that's why the study "found" what it did.

 

[CharminUltra]

Whaaaaaat this is the first I hear of it.

 

[CrimsonCommie]

Well it's kind of obvious.

 

[Elfforkusu]

It is, that's why the "study" found what it did.

Dubious reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

It is the case that the US classifies as one today (plutocracy, if nothing else), but it's not so obvious it applies to all representative democracies. That's a difficult argument to make, good luck.

 

[sphagnum]

Speaking of the founders, my brother believes that we are still under the control of the British Empire.

I don't know but maybe some people here have heard this theory before and understand it.

Your brother is a Larouchite.

 

[FriedConsole]

Sure. Experts are humans just like the rest of us. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we nominate a king of economics to uniformly make all decisions. Just that people with knowledge on matters might in fact be better suited to make decisions on those matters. Our political system could reflect that. It currently doesn't.

Communism had committees of "experts". Didn't work out too well. Problem was that some "expert" was chosen to pick these "experts" and they were all chosen to believe whatever the chief "expert" believed.

No perfect system. I'll stick with what we got.

 

[Deleted member 13876]

I'm not saying we nominate a king of economics to uniformly make all decisions. Just that people with knowledge on matters might in fact be better suited to make decisions on those matters. Our political system could reflect that. It currently doesn't.

Neither am I and I don't want to give the impression that I'm downright dismissing them at all and I generally agree with your statement. It's just that in some areas in terms of making predictions, the wisdom of crowds, or algorithms tends to outperform them, A popular example would be wine experts being consistently outmatched by a famous algorithm and I suspect big data trends will eventually increase the occurrence of such scenarios.

To drag in Kahneman again, here's part of an article where he briefly touches upon the difficulty of assessing experts and some of the other stuff I mentioned:

http://www.spiegel.de/international...falls-of-intuition-and-memory-a-834407-2.html

He has much more to say on the subject in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow but this covers some ground.

 

[Maximus.]

People don't give a fuck. They just keep moving along with their lives and let shit get worse and worse.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Communism had committees of "experts". Didn't work out too well. Problem was that some "expert" was chosen to pick these "experts" and they were all chosen to believe whatever the chief "expert" believed.

No perfect system. I'll stick with what we got.

Our current system is every bit as broken as what you described. Surely we can come up with something better.

(taking money out of elections would be a good start)

 

[FriedConsole]

Our current system is every bit as broken as what you described. Surely we can come up with something better.

(taking money out of elections would be a good start)

I think history would disagree that our current system is not better than Communism. Sure there are things that can be fixed but I don't believe we need a radical tear down the government into "something better" that doesn't exist.

 

[ISOM]

other Western countries don't have year long campaigns that cost of gazillions of gazllions.

Canada's election campaigns are officially one month length (even though there is election fever before parliement is disolved) but nothing like the spectacle of the near year long US Presidential campaign

A 1st term President even stops governing completely when he runs for a 2nd term, it's a joke

Yeah but that's only a part of a reason why most western countries are oligarchies. How much influence does billion dollar companies have on the laws in canada and on how many laws? The presidency or the top leadership position is only a small part of what you would call an oligarchy.

 

[benjipwns]

It is the case that the US classifies as one today (plutocracy, if nothing else), but it's not so obvious it applies to all representative democracies. That's a difficult argument to make, good luck.

Of course it does. Who makes policy decisions in parliamentary republics? The Cabinet. Anyone not in the Cabinet or its supportive bureaucracy has essentially insignificant power towards policy making.

All representative democracy does is (claim to) provide a mechanism to decide who the Oligarchs are.

 

[Elfforkusu]

I think history would disagree that our current system is not better than Communism. Sure there are things that can be fixed but I don't believe we need a radical tear down the government into "something better" that doesn't exist.

I don't know, China's doing alright wih single-party rule. Relatively speaking.

 

[FriedConsole]

I don't know, China's doing alright wih single-party rule. Relatively speaking.

Uhh. I'll pick being an average American over an average Chinese any day. There is many, many reasons but here is one in two words:

Forced Abortion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_abortion

I am sure it was devised in a committee by experts somewhere.

 

[BigBoss]

I don't know, China's doing alright wih single-party rule. Relatively speaking.

China isn't communist.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Of course it does. Who makes policy decisions in parliamentary republics? The Cabinet. Anyone not in the Cabinet or its supportive bureaucracy has essentially insignificant power towards policy making.

All representative democracy does is (claim to) provide a mechanism to decide who the Oligarchs are.

Your literal definition of oligarchy is new to me. I do not think it is particularly valuable or meaningful as a definition. If we are an oligarchy, perhaps we are also a monarchy? A single person makes most decisions on behalf of our entire country, after all.

China isn't communist.

Neither was the USSR.

 

[Random Painted HIghway]

I consider economics a social science. Some lady won it too in 2009 (a political scientist). I think any competition between fields is funnier than it is something I would argue.
edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom (work on political economy so she wore both hats)

Some lady? Brilliant person she was. Interestingly, the editor of the journal publishing this piece is at her university, indiana.

 

[Frustrated_Grunt]

I was taught this in a freshmen history class. It felt pretty obvious.

 

[Chichikov]

Of course it does. Who makes policy decisions in parliamentary republics? The Cabinet. Anyone not in the Cabinet or its supportive bureaucracy has essentially insignificant power towards policy making.

All representative democracy does is (claim to) provide a mechanism to decide who the Oligarchs are.

That's a pretty unusual (and rather pedantic) definition of these terms.
Generally, in a democracy the government represents the will and interests of the people at large and in oligarchy the will and interests of a select few (and this is by the way exactly what that study tried to measure).

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Full Communism immediately tbh

 

[Ether_Snake]

Only solution is for accumulation of wealth to be capped. Money is power, and therefore nullifies democracy. So just cap wealth. The whole "people won't work hard enough!" is bullshit, most of the great discoveries made were not made by people who were looking to become super rich. Passion for the advancement of humanity will remain. But yeah, signing that latest boy band might take a back seat.

 

[Angry Fork]

Bingo. The US has never been a democracy. If it were, every eligible voter would have to vote on every single thing. That's why we have elected representatives to go and vote for us, hence a republic.

The internet means millions of people no longer have to be in 1 room to vote on things.

 

[inm8num2]

Let's vote out the incumbents and vote in fresh, independent/third-party politicians.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Surprise!!! America is ruled by rich corporations.

 

[FriedConsole]

China isn't communist.

I don't get into semantic arguments like when people say the Republican Party isn't conservative and the Democratic Party isn't liberal but I guess I will anyway.

China, USSR and all the others is what Communism/Marxist theory eventually morphs into because of human nature. I like how Communism on Wikipedia is defined as a "hypothetical socioeconomic system". It will never exist because it will eventually morph into what those nations always become due to "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

People will never tag those nations as "Communism" because they want to believe true "Communism" can exist despite it always morphing into the same corrupt bureaucratic poor nations time after time.

Keep believing "it can work this time."

 

[The Technomancer]

You don't need a direct democracy (which I maintain is a terrible idea) to combat this problem:

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

This problem doesn't arise from voters not having minutiae level control over legislation, it arises from the way that politicians prioritize their influences

 

[Elfforkusu]

Let's vote out the incumbents and vote in fresh, independent/third-party politicians.

If this were legimately possible, we would have a democracy.

Campaign finance reform (how?) -> ???

 

[CHEEZMO™]

I don't get into semantic arguments like when people say the Republican Party isn't conservative and the Democratic Party isn't liberal but I guess I will anyway.

China, USSR and all the others is what Communism/Marxist theory eventually morphs into because of human nature. I like how Communism on Wikipedia is defined as a "hypothetical socioeconomic system". It will never exist because it will eventually morph into what those nations always become due to "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

People will never tag those nations as "Communism" because they want to believe true "Communism" can exist despite it always morphing into the same corrupt bureaucratic poor nations time after time.

Keep believing "it can work this time."

 

[benjipwns]

Your literal definition of oligarchy is new to me. I do not think it is particularly valuable or meaningful as a definition. If we are an oligarchy, perhaps we are also a monarchy? A single person makes most decisions on behalf of our entire country, after all.

That's a pretty unusual (and rather pedantic) definition of these terms.
Generally, in a democracy the government represents the will and interests of the people at large and in oligarchy the will and interests of a select few (and this is by the way exactly what that study tried to measure).

Representative democracy does not inherently do anything for those who don't win, all power is entrusted into those who have. That's why this style of study will only find any "democratic" country as an oligarchy no matter what it does. Only those in power can decide policy, those who aren't in power can't.

In a representative democracy you aren't "electing" policies, you're electing parties or people, these form the oligarchy that decides policy. And after the election the say of "the people" is effectively non-existent.

One of the amusing things about the study is that it only looks at the federal level, whereas a state like California with its never ending series of referenda would be significantly more democratic (or rather less oligarchic) than almost any parliamentary republic it would study. (Except when the results of the election contradict the pre-election polling.)

 

[cdyhybrid]

The third parties would sell us out even harder.

 

[Chichikov]

I don't get into semantic arguments like when people say the Republican Party isn't conservative and the Democratic Party isn't liberal but I guess I will anyway.

China, USSR and all the others is what Communism/Marxist theory eventually morphs into because of human nature. I like how Communism on Wikipedia is defined as a "hypothetical socioeconomic system". It will never exist because it will eventually morph into what those nations always become due to "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

People will never tag those nations as "Communism" because they want to believe true "Communism" can exist despite it always morphing into the same corrupt bureaucratic poor nations time after time.

Keep believing "it can work this time."

This is all semantics, but if you go by Marx, communism is a post scarce stateless free associative utopian society that is closer to anarchism than anything.
Also, neither China nor the USSR (which by the way were quite different politically) morphed out of socialism, they were both born from the idea of a vanguard party, which is not what most communists/socialist/marxists support (at least not in the western world).

This is probably my favorite image in the history of the internet.

Representative democracy does not inherently do anything for those who don't win, all power is entrusted into those who have. That's why this style of study will only find any "democratic" country as an oligarchy no matter what it does. Only those in power can decide policy, those who aren't in power can't.

In a representative democracy you aren't "electing" policies, you're electing parties or people, these form the oligarchy that decides policy. And after the election the say of "the people" is effectively non-existent.

One of the amusing things about the study is that it only looks at the federal level, whereas a state like California with its never ending series of referenda would be significantly more democratic (or rather less oligarchic) than almost any parliamentary republic it would study. (Except when the results of the election contradict the pre-election polling.)

Representative democracy is not perfect by any means, but it possible to have such (or similar) system that represent the will of the people much better than what you have in the US.

 

[Piecake]

If this were legimately possible, we would have a democracy.

Campaign finance reform (how?) -> ???

Apparently thats unconstitutional

This is all semantics, but if you go by Marx, communism is a post scarce stateless free associative utopian society that is closer to anarchism than anything.
Also, neither China nor the USSR (which by the way were quite different politically) morphed out of socialism, they were both born from the idea of a vanguard party, which is not what most communists/socialist/marxists support (at least not in the western world).

Read a biography of Marx recently and no where did I read where he advocated for a stateless utopia. From that book, at least, it seemed pretty clear that communism would be a state as well.

Also, apparently by the end of his life he was actually rather pleased with the prospects of revolution in Russia and supported the terrorist attacks on the Czarist regime (because the citizens had no other recourse - was his reasoning).

I am curious if there is information that directly disuptues this, or if it is more of an Engels interpretation

 

[Elfforkusu]

Apparently thats unconstitutional

At this point the only way I think it will happen is with a constitutional amendment via the states. Which... damn, that's tough. Maybe we can get alcohol banned again and sneak it in the repeal

 

[benjipwns]

Representative democracy is not perfect by any means, but it possible to have such (or similar) system that represent the will of the people much better than what you have in the US.

Except that the "will of the people" is just a fiction. And if it wasn't, the government would be unnecessary to "enact" it.

 

[FriedConsole]

The third parties would sell us out even harder.

Yep. Third parties are filled with real nut bags. From Ralph Nadar to Ron Paul all of them are true ideological believers that would lead this country to destruction all the while saying it is the existence of the other ideology that is causing the problems and will only be solved by being some unattainable pure system that would destroy the country.