I wish I shared your optimism. You clearly know more about econ than me, but you haven't shaken my belief in RP. I'm ideologically too close to his views.
Anyways, I'ma go smoke a J and see "No Country for Old Men." To be continued.
. . .
Yes, yours is a mind so ideological it is immune to reason or facts.
First, it's not like counterfeiting is a modern invention. Even in the "magic" days of gold coin, counterfeiting was a popular pasttime. Why do you think you always see movie pirates biting doubloons?
I know this. My point was, counterfeiting goes both ways. It's a circular argument.
Secondly, my problem with the current system is that it cedes monetary control to a secretive central authority. I'd have no problem with fiat currency if it were printed by the government, bond and debt free, in an open plenum that any person could view.
Like the founders, I have an ideological paranoia of concentrated power, and I dislike blindly entrusting such a vital factor in my life - that is, control of the money supply - to authority.
If we're to do such a thing, I believe in money backing as a means of checking authority's ability to manipulate the people, which history has show will always occur if a government is given enough power and free reign. The growth of the American government since the Fed's inception and especially since Sep 11 alarms me.
This is why I advocate either commodity based currency or open fiat which the government controls and is directly accountable to the people. This would also, in my view, imbue a greater sense of fiscal and monetary responsibility as politicians would be held directly accountable for the money supply.
I wish I shared your optimism. You clearly know more about econ than me, but you haven't shaken my belief in RP. I'm ideologically too close to his views.
Anyways, I'ma go smoke a J and see "No Country for Old Men." To be continued.
. . .
Yes, yours is a mind so ideological it is immune to reason or facts.
The current system just leaves us dangerously dependent on foreign countries
This is what you don't understand. We're dependent on foreign countries- the economy is globalized. It's a single world economy. Only a handful of semi-autarkic states exist.
There is no way to change this. Not only would we not want to- a postindustrial economy thrives on international commerce- but it'd be impossible.
There is no "American economy." There is no "French economy." There are peculiar sub-categories of the global economy, but that's it.
Secondly, my problem with the current system is that it cedes monetary control to a secretive central authority. I'd have no problem with fiat currency if it were printed by the government, bond and debt free, in an open plenum that any person could view.
This is an insane idea for so many reasons. You let politicians be in charge of the money supply, you end up with Argentina.
Professional technicians are precisely who should be in charge of the money supply; they're far more likely to make technically sound decisions based on empirical data.
So he clearly knows more about the subject than you, but you refuse to accept reality for ideological reasons?
I hadn't realized that Ron Paul was running for a religious position instead of a secular one.
Since when do Republican candidates hide their favoring of laws and action based solely on religious belief and dogma? Ron Paul is not the exception to that.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
So he clearly knows more about the subject than you, but you refuse to accept reality for ideological reasons?
I hadn't realized that Ron Paul was running for a religious position instead of a secular one.
Since when do Republican candidates hide their favoring of laws and action based solely on religious belief and dogma? Ron Paul is not the exception to that.
The Republicans favoring laws based on religious belief and dogma is stupid. It shouldn't be imitated.
Geez, we got another pair of Rondroids in here (they always come in pairs, don't they)? I ignore this thread for half a day and look what happens!
I feel like I can't really contribute much more to this economics talk, but if any of them start spouting stuff like "The U.N./I.C.J./International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea is useless/harmful to American interests" and/or "International law is just an illusion and another vehicle for Western hegemony" and/or "We would be much better off withdrawing from world affairs unless we are 'directly' involved," feel free to send up the Dave Signal and I shall return and demonstrate to them the many ways in which they are being idiots.
Geez, we got another pair of Rondroids in here (they always come in pairs, don't they)? I ignore this thread for half a day and look what happens!
I feel like I can't really contribute much more to this economics talk, but if any of them start spouting stuff like "The U.N./I.C.J./International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea is useless/harmful to American interests" and/or "International law is just an illusion and another vehicle for Western hegemony" and/or "We would be much better off withdrawing from world affairs unless we are 'directly' involved," feel free to send up the Dave Signal and I shall return and demonstrate to them the many ways in which they are being idiots.
...again. :roll:
Feel free to chip in on the doremant debate between why we should or shouldn't impose more limits and start reducing government spending in a slow, sane manner, and why we can't just use constitutional ammendments to add powers like we're supposed to.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
True, we might have to actually use judgment instead of running through our official "Should We Launch Troops?" questionnaire. How is this different than any other issue? We always need to weigh a fuckton of pros and cons before deciding upon the proper answer.
And you expect people to do that with any level of accuracy weighing both long and short term goals? You sure have a lot of trust in government there.
That argument can basically be used to bludgeon away any argument for having government at all. At some point, you're going to need to stop running your nation via checklist and start having people make decisions. Whether your government operates on 2 billion dollars a year or 2 trillion, there are countless important decisions that impact millions of people. Are you suggesting that the government ran smooth as silk in the 1920s, when government was smaller? No, it was a clusterfuck back then just as much as it's a clusterfuck now. The government of any non-trivially size nation is, to some extent, going to be a roiling vat of stupid.
But here's the thing - society itself is a roiling vat of stupid. People, in large numbers, are fucking idiots. They fuck shit up. All the time. When you strip away more government, that doesn't make things necessarily run more smoothly. It just means the stupid has less official oversight. It's possible to under-govern just as it's possible to over-govern, and the more complex modern society gets, the more difficult that whole governance thing is.
Personally, I'm a big fan of limited government. I think the government should be as small as it can reasonably be, and I think crap like "When someone's a-hurtin', the gubmint's gotta move" is retarded, feel-good swill. I also get a hard-on for federalism, and the notion that local governments are more efficient than non-local governments on many, many fronts. But, assuming you're swallowing the Ron line in toto, you're pushing for at least a 50% reduction in the size of the government. All that's going to do is release a lot of the stupid into the wild, rather than keeping it caged up in Washington where we can monitor it.
Is your only goal then to have things run smoothly? You know that's the same argument some fascists used to use in times past to advocate their platforms. They said that the trains would always run on time and all of that hubub. Now I'm not calling you a fascist just saying that the lone idea of allowing things to function smoothly isn't a good basis for sound policy since it can be used to advocate any number of things that may or may not have any actual benefits or downsides to the people on a whole.
I'm not even going to respond to this on account of it being brain-wrenchingly dumb.
Since when do Republican candidates hide their favoring of laws and action based solely on religious belief and dogma? Ron Paul is not the exception to that.
Ron Paul: The same old shit except with crazy economic beliefs.
Feel free to chip in on the doremant debate between why we should or shouldn't impose more limits and start reducing government spending in a slow, sane manner, and why we can't just use constitutional ammendments to add powers like we're supposed to.
At least some of the founding fathers thought that the elastic clause could be used to add powers.
Geez, we got another pair of Rondroids in here (they always come in pairs, don't they)? I ignore this thread for half a day and look what happens!
Both of them have a join date for today, so there's a chance that it could be a board invasion. I was a bit surprised to see a banning this early on, but it was probably the best call. Expect to see more in the near future.
One thing I find amusing is whenever the mainstream media reports a story about how Ron Paul supporters are spamming the internet, and the Rondroids are convinced that their membership couldn't possibly be guilty of spamming, and how it must be a conspiracy by Rudy Guliani and the other neocons to make an irrelevant candidate look bad through the use of positive puublicity. Only, they don't just just feel compelled to keep their conspiracy theories to themselves. Instead, they feel compelled to unleash the Ron Paul internet Gestapo on the article, bombarding the comments threads with their conspiracy theories.
Because obviously, the best way to convince people that your group isn't responsible for the spamming is by having your group spam them into submission. Oh, and by trying to slander the original author by using her name as your board handle on a Ron Paul board, posting things to support the conspiracy under her name, and then posting what the "author" said on youtube as definitive proof of your conspiracy.
At least some of the founding fathers thought that the elastic clause could be used to add powers.
And therin lies the political divide. I personally consider myself conservative and believe we need to stick to a strict and as close to literal as sanely possible reading of the constitution. I'd read the elastic clause to say that congress having the power to enforce laws specifically on only the powers enabled to them by the constitution as the tenth amendment even specifically states powers not given to the federal government nor prohibited by the states are reserved for the states or the people.
I also find it a tad offensive that I'm associated as being insane because I happen to agree with some of what Ron Paul has to say. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'm talking about things here in some cases, like with the economics, to learn more about the issues because I feel a need to be informed on the issue, granted there are some issues I feel more strongly about but I'm trying to learn as much as talk and honestly I didn't feel like reading some 90 pages of thread (I read the first couple and got interested.)
So I'd appreciate not being banhammered if at all possible plz? :shock:
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Nothing in that diagram is just there for show. There's a reason why the triangle proving natural rights is on it's base and that base consists of life and liberty that come together to form the pursit of happiness; rather than life and the pursiut of happiness coming together first and forming a base which leads to liberty. If you look at the other triangle it's end-up on equality; it's taking a conclusion with no natural foundation as its base so everything used to support it has to be top-down - controlled by elites and fighting against the other system of rights because it's inpossible to compromise between any of them. You can either have liberty or equality but you can't have both; and to have equality you need to break up that first system of 3 things enshrined in the Constitution that someone like Dr. Paul beluieves in and fights to protect. To fight against those natural rights you have to use the state and force; use it's power to enforce equality against biology, to make the unequal equal, to make broken math add up by printing worthless money and gag anyone to opens their mouths about it with political correctness or hate speech laws.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
What about just changing the way our money is regulated? I mean can we all agree that the fed system has a lot of problems at this point.
Oh yeah?
What are those?
Inflation has been extremely low for a long time. If oil prices weren't rising I doubt very much it would be cracking 2%.
I know this was a while ago but I went to eat. Anyway I was more thinking along the lines of changing the way we make/get our money so we don't have to pay taxes. I mean the income tax we currently was supposed to be a short term thing. Why has it become law to fork over about a quarter of your yearly income to the federal government.
Feel free to chip in on the doremant debate between why we should or shouldn't impose more limits and start reducing government spending in a slow, sane manner, and why we can't just use constitutional ammendments to add powers like we're supposed to.
OK, I'll try.
The beautiful thing about the Constitution - and any good constitution, really - is how adaptable it is to changing social norms. Law is never something that is set in stone, but is constantly evolving, and not in ways that are readily perceivable if you are looking simply at the laws themselves.
For example, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws. Theoretically, following the Civil Rights Movements 1960s, one would imagine that we would have, perhaps even should have, hard coded equal rights protections into the Constitution. But for many reasons - some political, some cultural, some arguably plain ol' backwards (thanks Southern voting bloc!) - the Equal Right Amendment wasn't ratified or passed.
But it didn't need to be. Even when the ERA was being debated, attitudes were shifting and a new "soft law" was coming into place. Many people believed in the idea behind the IRA and followed those "laws," even if those laws hadn't technically been passed. As a result, the U.S. government didn't need an amendment - with the support of most Americans, the U.S. government was able to ensure civil rights protections through federal legislation, use of the 14th Amendment, etc. In a way, it's a good thing that "soft law" is the basis here and not the "hard law" of the Constitution, because the Constitution doesn't protect these liberties when strictly interpreted. Without your "liberal" court decisions (which, really, simply interpreted the Constitution to adapt it to contemporary ideas and values), a simple conservative shift (hell, Nixon by himself!) could have completely halted the progression of Civil Rights legislation.
If we went with a strict constitutional approach, it would take decades for our lawbooks to catch up with our "customary" law (i.e., the rules we follow simply by our social norms). For another example, look at abortion. Historically, there was a clear dichotomy between the law and cultural practice, and it was an extraordinary dangerous one for womens' health. For better or for worse, the Supreme Court rendered the law to be more in tune with our cultural practices through a loose interpretation of the Constitution - something that perhaps would have never happened any other way, due to the sheer impossibility of passing an abortion amendment. You can argue that, now, cultural opinions on abortion have shifted back and such law is no longer necessary, but those are matters for an abortion thread.
The point of all this is that law isn't just about what's in the Constitution, or even about what's just in the lawbooks. It's also about sociological trends, common practice, cultural opinion, etc. The bad news is that the Constitution's amendment system is not terribly well built for social progress, and tends to stymie the application of new soft laws. The good news is that over the last 200 years or so we've developed a pretty stable way around that, and it continues to work to this day.
That is also, by the way, why the government is, and will necessarily continue, to expand. We live in a globalizing world where communication is bringing more people together than ever before, making soft law and comity quite a bit more important than it ever has been. Quite frankly, we need a comprehensive federal government in order to deal with the nature of our modern times, and attempting to turn back the clock won't do us a damn thing.
Do I think that we need to avoid unnecessary expansion and keep the government cost-effective? Of course. Do I think that President Bush has done too much to consolidate the Executive (and in a sense, flout the Consitution) at the expense of the other two branches? Hell yes.
But as someone else said earlier, the solution is simple: don't elect idiots to government. And from what I can tell, Ron Paul is a myopic, reactionary, provincial, IDIOT. So he's not part of the solution.
What about just changing the way our money is regulated? I mean can we all agree that the fed system has a lot of problems at this point.
Oh yeah?
What are those?
Inflation has been extremely low for a long time. If oil prices weren't rising I doubt very much it would be cracking 2%.
I know this was a while ago but I went to eat. Anyway I was more thinking along the lines of changing the way we make/get our money so we don't have to pay taxes. I mean the income tax we currently was supposed to be a short term thing. Why has it become law to fork over about a quarter of your yearly income to the federal government.
Because it's usually considered appropriate to pay for services you use daily? And if you've got a better model, we're all ears. But a word of advice - there's blood in the water, and several of us have vicious Pavalovian reactions to "national sales tax" or "FairTax". I wouldn't go there if I were you.
What about just changing the way our money is regulated? I mean can we all agree that the fed system has a lot of problems at this point.
Oh yeah?
What are those?
Inflation has been extremely low for a long time. If oil prices weren't rising I doubt very much it would be cracking 2%.
I know this was a while ago but I went to eat. Anyway I was more thinking along the lines of changing the way we make/get our money so we don't have to pay taxes. I mean the income tax we currently was supposed to be a short term thing. Why has it become law to fork over about a quarter of your yearly income to the federal government.
Because it's usually considered appropriate to pay for services you use daily? And if you've got a better model, we're all ears. But a word of advice - there's blood in the water, and several of us have vicious Pavalovian reactions to "national sales tax" or "FairTax". I wouldn't go there if I were you.
I'm honestly probably not knowledgeable to be discussing this so I'm not going to recommend anything. I know that our country historically has only imposed income tax during war time and then decided it should be there all the time. Now this has worked out ok but shouldn't the legislature and the people be trying to keep the government from over spending instead of fueling it with a war tax regardless of wether there is a war? I just think that most if not all the candidates are ignoring that america is pretty much an empire and that maybe the american people don't want to be one. That last part might be too much of a generalization and get me yelled at but fuck it I'm young and impressionable so change my opinion.
Edit* Also I'm not for or against Ron Paul (I don't know enough about all the candidates) but this is the closest we have to a political discussion thread and he does seem like one of the more interesting candidates.
I'm honestly probably not knowledgeable to be discussing this so I'm not going to recommend anything. I know that our country historically has only imposed income tax during war time and then decided it should be there all the time. Now this has worked out ok but shouldn't the legislature and the people be trying to keep the government from over spending instead of fueling it with a war tax regardless of wether there is a war? I just think that most if not all the candidates are ignoring that america is pretty much an empire and that maybe the american people don't want to be one. That last part might be too much of a generalization and get me yelled at but fuck it I'm young and impressionable so change my opinion.
Well, I'd advise reading this post. The big question is where are you going to cut the money from?
Edit* Also I'm not for or against Ron Paul (I don't know enough about all the candidates) but this is the closest we have to a political discussion thread and he does seem like one of the more interesting candidates.
I don't have a somethingawful account, but someone pointed me to this the other day, and I found it amusing:
It's funny but sad, because inside all of that crazy there is a decent point that gets lost.
"Free men are not equal and equal men are not free."
Fair enough. Then, since all men are created equal, no man is created free, right? So, what you're saying is that Ron Paul is fighting against God's plan.
Obviously not English majors, these flier designers. "Flaunt" =/ "flout."
That changes the whole meaning.
# the act of displaying something ostentatiously; "his behavior was an outrageous flaunt"
# display proudly; act ostentatiously or pretentiously; "he showed off his new sports car"
Darn those illegal immigrants for proudly displaying our laws.
The beautiful thing about the Constitution - and any good constitution, really - is how adaptable it is to changing social norms. Law is never something that is set in stone, but is constantly evolving, and not in ways that are readily perceivable if you are looking simply at the laws themselves.
I agree, but I also believe it's very important to follow the principles set in the constitution for how to change law and add/expand certain things. I've repeated before that there are unconstitutional things we do right now I do believe are absolutely necessary functions for the federal government, but I also believe that we need to go about pursuing them in the proper way. See, my big caveat with this is the constitution, ideally is supposed to be the supreme law of the land. It's the social contract we agreed to however many hundreds of years ago that says how the government we've chosen will run and how it can make laws and all of that good stuff. If we start to significantly stray from the constitution, then the question is, what are we now using to base our rule of law on? Are we just going to eventually say, like many have, that it's old and outdated and needs to just be thrown out? We need a firm, but changeable base of power.
Not to say I don't believe it couldn't use some updating, but it needs to be done the right way. If people have problems with the amendment process, why not pass an amendment to make amendment passing easier?
For example, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws. Theoretically, following the Civil Rights Movements 1960s, one would imagine that we would have, perhaps even should have, hard coded equal rights protections into the Constitution. But for many reasons - some political, some cultural, some arguably plain ol' backwards (thanks Southern voting bloc!) - the Equal Right Amendment wasn't ratified or passed.
But it didn't need to be. Even when the ERA was being debated, attitudes were shifting and a new "soft law" was coming into place. Many people believed in the idea behind the IRA and followed those "laws," even if those laws hadn't technically been passed. As a result, the U.S. government didn't need an amendment - with the support of most Americans, the U.S. government was able to ensure civil rights protections through federal legislation, use of the 14th Amendment, etc. In a way, it's a good thing that "soft law" is the basis here and not the "hard law" of the Constitution, because the Constitution doesn't protect these liberties when strictly interpreted. Without your "liberal" court decisions (which, really, simply interpreted the Constitution to adapt it to contemporary ideas and values), a simple conservative shift (hell, Nixon by himself!) could have completely halted the progression of Civil Rights legislation.
Hard law needs to be the basis for powers given by soft law though. Social issues like equal rights are indeed a nefarious issue to deal with, and I can say we are better off for having had our society transformed by the civil rights movement. That said, I still believe there has to have been a better way than laws which are against a strict reading of the constitution. People talk about how hard it is to change or why we shouldn't have to if something just makes sense, so why not pass an ammendment to make that possible?
The point, as I've said earlier, I'd hope, is to make it so the vast majority of the states and the federal government need to agree in unison it's necessary to expand government power. This was a check to keep government from eventually growing to monstrous proportions, like we're starting to get right now. This is because, and I do believe this: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Well, that and people can often be, as put earlier, a vat of stupid. The best way to fight that is to limit, check and constrict power however possible. It limits responsiveness but again, if responsiveness is so direly necessary, why not pass an amendment to enable the government to be more responsive? If it's that important shouldn't enough people agree?
If we went with a strict constitutional approach, it would take decades for our lawbooks to catch up with our "customary" law (i.e., the rules we follow simply by our social norms). For another example, look at abortion. Historically, there was a clear dichotomy between the law and cultural practice, and it was an extraordinary dangerous one for womens' health. For better or for worse, the Supreme Court rendered the law to be more in tune with our cultural practices through a loose interpretation of the Constitution - something that perhaps would have never happened any other way, due to the sheer impossibility of passing an abortion amendment. You can argue that, now, cultural opinions on abortion have shifted back and such law is no longer necessary, but those are matters for an abortion thread.
Well that's an interesting point, personally I'd say the issue could be solved by simply legally defining when life begins from a scientific point. Though we currently can't agree on what makes us human or what makes a living being so that's a bit moot but I think if we really tried it might be necessary.
Do I personally think women need a right to choose? I'd say yes, at least up until a functioning brain develops, but that's just me. Government wise I still feel an exhaustive evaluation needs to be made for solving problems practically with existing law and existing government power before we go about trying to add or change things. Like the discussion about PCP laced beer and ramming an SUV into someone's house. We don't need any special laws against driving cars while under the influence of PCP laced beer, we have existing laws to punish and award damages to fix things that already cover it.
The point of all this is that law isn't just about what's in the Constitution, or even about what's just in the lawbooks. It's also about sociological trends, common practice, cultural opinion, etc. The bad news is that the Constitution's amendment system is not terribly well built for social progress, and tends to stymie the application of new soft laws. The good news is that over the last 200 years or so we've developed a pretty stable way around that, and it continues to work to this day.
I still can't believe it's somehow impossible, if we need so many new agencies or laws and such so fast that we can't somehow pass an amendment to make this sort of thing easier. Maybe I have no common sense but I honestly can't understand that.
That is also, by the way, why the government is, and will necessarily continue, to expand. We live in a globalizing world where communication is bringing more people together than ever before, making soft law and comity quite a bit more important than it ever has been. Quite frankly, we need a comprehensive federal government in order to deal with the nature of our modern times, and attempting to turn back the clock won't do us a damn thing.
I can agree to an extent, but again, why can't we do this the right way? I mean, if you really are adamant about changing everything why don't we just get everyone to sign some sort of new social contract (I know, never happening, just throwing it out there) of government? Because as it stands right now, we're losing our basis more and more as time passes, and some of the things we do are very necessary, but we can't keep saying we can just do what we want because "society needs it." We have to do things in a planned, rational manner, and I sincerely feel we can up response time and make government more flexible without having to just ignore or reinterpret the constitution.
Do I think that we need to avoid unnecessary expansion and keep the government cost-effective? Of course. Do I think that President Bush has done too much to consolidate the Executive (and in a sense, flaut the Consitution) and the expense of the other two branches? Hell yes.
But as someone else said earlier, the solution is simple: don't elect idiots to government. And from what I can tell, Ron Paul is a myopic, reactionary, provincial, IDIOT. So he's not part of the solution.
Again, as I said earlier. I agree mostly with him on what he believes are problems facing government right now. What I disagree with are totally radical solutions that would throw us into chaos. I'm not some fanatical Ron Paul junkie, but I do believe that he is saying some of what we need to hear right now and that we should listen to the good things that get garbled up in all the crazy. Again, as I said earlier, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Fair enough. Then, since all men are created equal, no man is created free, right? So, what you're saying is that Ron Paul is fighting against God's plan.
I always understood it to mean that Free men have the ability to work and earn what they want in life. They have the freedom to go out and do what they need to do (without causing harm) to get what they want and achieve their goals. They can earn money, posessions, status, and that makes a free man not directly comparable or equal with another free man. One might start out dirt poor make good choices and make himself rich, own a mansion and all that. Another might start with that but make poor choices and squander it all down the road, and every position in between those two.
Equal men on the other hand, are given no choice. They all are given the exact same thing from birth to death in life and have no ability to earn anything for themselves despite their actions. All men have the same situation so they are equal, but they are not free to pursue or achieve their goals no matter what they are.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
What about just changing the way our money is regulated? I mean can we all agree that the fed system has a lot of problems at this point.
Oh yeah?
What are those?
Inflation has been extremely low for a long time. If oil prices weren't rising I doubt very much it would be cracking 2%.
I know this was a while ago but I went to eat. Anyway I was more thinking along the lines of changing the way we make/get our money so we don't have to pay taxes. I mean the income tax we currently was supposed to be a short term thing. Why has it become law to fork over about a quarter of your yearly income to the federal government.
Because it's usually considered appropriate to pay for services you use daily? And if you've got a better model, we're all ears. But a word of advice - there's blood in the water, and several of us have vicious Pavalovian reactions to "national sales tax" or "FairTax". I wouldn't go there if I were you.
I'm honestly probably not knowledgeable to be discussing this so I'm not going to recommend anything. I know that our country historically has only imposed income tax during war time and then decided it should be there all the time. Now this has worked out ok but shouldn't the legislature and the people be trying to keep the government from over spending instead of fueling it with a war tax regardless of wether there is a war? I just think that most if not all the candidates are ignoring that america is pretty much an empire and that maybe the american people don't want to be one. That last part might be too much of a generalization and get me yelled at but fuck it I'm young and impressionable so change my opinion.
Edit* Also I'm not for or against Ron Paul (I don't know enough about all the candidates) but this is the closest we have to a political discussion thread and he does seem like one of the more interesting candidates.
Because after the 1920's people realized that there were societal problems which were too large to be combatted as individuals and they turned to government in order to help reel in some of these collective action problems. The government obliged and now we no longer have 12 year old coal miners, soylent sausages, and a (decaying) infrastructure allowing for highspeed interaction and growth economically, civically, and socially. The extent to which things should be limited and expanded is up to debate, but the notion that we should abandon taxation because the constitution doesn't say anything about repaving highways is absurd. There's certainly room for improvement, and guess what? We're improving. Governance has never been so transparent and open as it is now. Yellow journalism is largely kept at bay, and politicians are more responsive and honest than before. Kind of sad when you look at things, i'nt it.
Also, most of the debtor states are a decisive voting bloc.
The basic problem with your line of thinking is that making a constitutional amendment is hard. Despite what the majority, or even the supermajority, or people think about what our general laws should be, there are many, many ways for minorities to torpedo them.
Think about it: you need a supermajority in the House and Senate, so if you have a clear 50-50 to 40-60ish split there (which we tend to), that's going to take some serious compromising already. Then it needs to be ratified by the states, who ALSO need a supermajority. So if, say, the South bands together against the amendment, that amendment is dead in the water.
Amendments are hard, if not impossible to pass. They can take decades (and in the case of the 27th amendment, centuries) before making it through the system. Discounting the 27th amendment, we haven't passed one in 40 years. And the thing is, they're designed to be this way: the Founding Fathers meant for the Constitution to be a rather immutable document, which is good in some ways because of how it protects the rights of the minority. But it can also be bad, because it is rather maladaptive, which makes it harder when, say, we need laws protecting equal rights.
"Signing a new social contract" is unnecessary; you sign one simply by living in this country and voting in an election. Trying to tie everything back to the Constitution is also unnecessary, because history has evolved and the law along with it. If you try to turn back the clock on the law when you can't turn back the clock on history, you'll be in for some ugly surprises.
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Yes, yours is a mind so ideological it is immune to reason or facts.
Why would anyone keep talking to you?
I hadn't realized that Ron Paul was running for a religious position instead of a secular one.
Secondly, my problem with the current system is that it cedes monetary control to a secretive central authority. I'd have no problem with fiat currency if it were printed by the government, bond and debt free, in an open plenum that any person could view.
Like the founders, I have an ideological paranoia of concentrated power, and I dislike blindly entrusting such a vital factor in my life - that is, control of the money supply - to authority.
If we're to do such a thing, I believe in money backing as a means of checking authority's ability to manipulate the people, which history has show will always occur if a government is given enough power and free reign. The growth of the American government since the Fed's inception and especially since Sep 11 alarms me.
This is why I advocate either commodity based currency or open fiat which the government controls and is directly accountable to the people. This would also, in my view, imbue a greater sense of fiscal and monetary responsibility as politicians would be held directly accountable for the money supply.
Ok, I'm really leaving now.
Fuck douchebag I was simply giving you a compliment and saying that my faith in my argument had been shaken but not destroyed.
Condescending elitist pricks like you are exactly why I don't want my fucking money in the hands of the Establishment.
See above for where I'm coming from, which is perfectly reasonable. Then kindly go blow a donkey and revel in the smell of your own beautiful shit.
Masochism.
This is what you don't understand. We're dependent on foreign countries- the economy is globalized. It's a single world economy. Only a handful of semi-autarkic states exist.
There is no way to change this. Not only would we not want to- a postindustrial economy thrives on international commerce- but it'd be impossible.
There is no "American economy." There is no "French economy." There are peculiar sub-categories of the global economy, but that's it.
This is an insane idea for so many reasons. You let politicians be in charge of the money supply, you end up with Argentina.
Professional technicians are precisely who should be in charge of the money supply; they're far more likely to make technically sound decisions based on empirical data.
Since when do Republican candidates hide their favoring of laws and action based solely on religious belief and dogma? Ron Paul is not the exception to that.
I feel like I can't really contribute much more to this economics talk, but if any of them start spouting stuff like "The U.N./I.C.J./International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea is useless/harmful to American interests" and/or "International law is just an illusion and another vehicle for Western hegemony" and/or "We would be much better off withdrawing from world affairs unless we are 'directly' involved," feel free to send up the Dave Signal and I shall return and demonstrate to them the many ways in which they are being idiots.
...again. :roll:
Feel free to chip in on the doremant debate between why we should or shouldn't impose more limits and start reducing government spending in a slow, sane manner, and why we can't just use constitutional ammendments to add powers like we're supposed to.
Well done, sir.
Both of them have a join date for today, so there's a chance that it could be a board invasion. I was a bit surprised to see a banning this early on, but it was probably the best call. Expect to see more in the near future.
One thing I find amusing is whenever the mainstream media reports a story about how Ron Paul supporters are spamming the internet, and the Rondroids are convinced that their membership couldn't possibly be guilty of spamming, and how it must be a conspiracy by Rudy Guliani and the other neocons to make an irrelevant candidate look bad through the use of positive puublicity. Only, they don't just just feel compelled to keep their conspiracy theories to themselves. Instead, they feel compelled to unleash the Ron Paul internet Gestapo on the article, bombarding the comments threads with their conspiracy theories.
Because obviously, the best way to convince people that your group isn't responsible for the spamming is by having your group spam them into submission. Oh, and by trying to slander the original author by using her name as your board handle on a Ron Paul board, posting things to support the conspiracy under her name, and then posting what the "author" said on youtube as definitive proof of your conspiracy.
And therin lies the political divide. I personally consider myself conservative and believe we need to stick to a strict and as close to literal as sanely possible reading of the constitution. I'd read the elastic clause to say that congress having the power to enforce laws specifically on only the powers enabled to them by the constitution as the tenth amendment even specifically states powers not given to the federal government nor prohibited by the states are reserved for the states or the people.
I also find it a tad offensive that I'm associated as being insane because I happen to agree with some of what Ron Paul has to say. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'm talking about things here in some cases, like with the economics, to learn more about the issues because I feel a need to be informed on the issue, granted there are some issues I feel more strongly about but I'm trying to learn as much as talk and honestly I didn't feel like reading some 90 pages of thread (I read the first couple and got interested.)
So I'd appreciate not being banhammered if at all possible plz? :shock:
Oh, I forgot - I didn't sleep through history class.
It's funny but sad, because inside all of that crazy there is a decent point that gets lost.
"Free men are not equal and equal men are not free."
Most people I've been exposed to have no idea who John Locke is, let alone Locke's social contract theory, which states that.
I know this was a while ago but I went to eat. Anyway I was more thinking along the lines of changing the way we make/get our money so we don't have to pay taxes. I mean the income tax we currently was supposed to be a short term thing. Why has it become law to fork over about a quarter of your yearly income to the federal government.
Well, the point was that the guy was completely batshit delusional and had no grasp of english.
Not, "his grasp of historical context isn't quite as astute as my own."
OK, I'll try.
The beautiful thing about the Constitution - and any good constitution, really - is how adaptable it is to changing social norms. Law is never something that is set in stone, but is constantly evolving, and not in ways that are readily perceivable if you are looking simply at the laws themselves.
For example, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws. Theoretically, following the Civil Rights Movements 1960s, one would imagine that we would have, perhaps even should have, hard coded equal rights protections into the Constitution. But for many reasons - some political, some cultural, some arguably plain ol' backwards (thanks Southern voting bloc!) - the Equal Right Amendment wasn't ratified or passed.
But it didn't need to be. Even when the ERA was being debated, attitudes were shifting and a new "soft law" was coming into place. Many people believed in the idea behind the IRA and followed those "laws," even if those laws hadn't technically been passed. As a result, the U.S. government didn't need an amendment - with the support of most Americans, the U.S. government was able to ensure civil rights protections through federal legislation, use of the 14th Amendment, etc. In a way, it's a good thing that "soft law" is the basis here and not the "hard law" of the Constitution, because the Constitution doesn't protect these liberties when strictly interpreted. Without your "liberal" court decisions (which, really, simply interpreted the Constitution to adapt it to contemporary ideas and values), a simple conservative shift (hell, Nixon by himself!) could have completely halted the progression of Civil Rights legislation.
If we went with a strict constitutional approach, it would take decades for our lawbooks to catch up with our "customary" law (i.e., the rules we follow simply by our social norms). For another example, look at abortion. Historically, there was a clear dichotomy between the law and cultural practice, and it was an extraordinary dangerous one for womens' health. For better or for worse, the Supreme Court rendered the law to be more in tune with our cultural practices through a loose interpretation of the Constitution - something that perhaps would have never happened any other way, due to the sheer impossibility of passing an abortion amendment. You can argue that, now, cultural opinions on abortion have shifted back and such law is no longer necessary, but those are matters for an abortion thread.
The point of all this is that law isn't just about what's in the Constitution, or even about what's just in the lawbooks. It's also about sociological trends, common practice, cultural opinion, etc. The bad news is that the Constitution's amendment system is not terribly well built for social progress, and tends to stymie the application of new soft laws. The good news is that over the last 200 years or so we've developed a pretty stable way around that, and it continues to work to this day.
That is also, by the way, why the government is, and will necessarily continue, to expand. We live in a globalizing world where communication is bringing more people together than ever before, making soft law and comity quite a bit more important than it ever has been. Quite frankly, we need a comprehensive federal government in order to deal with the nature of our modern times, and attempting to turn back the clock won't do us a damn thing.
Do I think that we need to avoid unnecessary expansion and keep the government cost-effective? Of course. Do I think that President Bush has done too much to consolidate the Executive (and in a sense, flout the Consitution) at the expense of the other two branches? Hell yes.
But as someone else said earlier, the solution is simple: don't elect idiots to government. And from what I can tell, Ron Paul is a myopic, reactionary, provincial, IDIOT. So he's not part of the solution.
Because it's usually considered appropriate to pay for services you use daily? And if you've got a better model, we're all ears. But a word of advice - there's blood in the water, and several of us have vicious Pavalovian reactions to "national sales tax" or "FairTax". I wouldn't go there if I were you.
I'm honestly probably not knowledgeable to be discussing this so I'm not going to recommend anything. I know that our country historically has only imposed income tax during war time and then decided it should be there all the time. Now this has worked out ok but shouldn't the legislature and the people be trying to keep the government from over spending instead of fueling it with a war tax regardless of wether there is a war? I just think that most if not all the candidates are ignoring that america is pretty much an empire and that maybe the american people don't want to be one. That last part might be too much of a generalization and get me yelled at but fuck it I'm young and impressionable so change my opinion.
Edit* Also I'm not for or against Ron Paul (I don't know enough about all the candidates) but this is the closest we have to a political discussion thread and he does seem like one of the more interesting candidates.
Obviously not English majors, these flier designers. "Flaunt" =/ "flout."
Well, I'd advise reading this post. The big question is where are you going to cut the money from?
Actually, we do have a political discussion thread. And you're more than welcome to join in.
O_o
It actually took me a minute to realize that's supposed to be pro RP.
That changes the whole meaning.
Darn those illegal immigrants for proudly displaying our laws.
Anyone have a link?
I agree, but I also believe it's very important to follow the principles set in the constitution for how to change law and add/expand certain things. I've repeated before that there are unconstitutional things we do right now I do believe are absolutely necessary functions for the federal government, but I also believe that we need to go about pursuing them in the proper way. See, my big caveat with this is the constitution, ideally is supposed to be the supreme law of the land. It's the social contract we agreed to however many hundreds of years ago that says how the government we've chosen will run and how it can make laws and all of that good stuff. If we start to significantly stray from the constitution, then the question is, what are we now using to base our rule of law on? Are we just going to eventually say, like many have, that it's old and outdated and needs to just be thrown out? We need a firm, but changeable base of power.
Not to say I don't believe it couldn't use some updating, but it needs to be done the right way. If people have problems with the amendment process, why not pass an amendment to make amendment passing easier?
Hard law needs to be the basis for powers given by soft law though. Social issues like equal rights are indeed a nefarious issue to deal with, and I can say we are better off for having had our society transformed by the civil rights movement. That said, I still believe there has to have been a better way than laws which are against a strict reading of the constitution. People talk about how hard it is to change or why we shouldn't have to if something just makes sense, so why not pass an ammendment to make that possible?
The point, as I've said earlier, I'd hope, is to make it so the vast majority of the states and the federal government need to agree in unison it's necessary to expand government power. This was a check to keep government from eventually growing to monstrous proportions, like we're starting to get right now. This is because, and I do believe this: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Well, that and people can often be, as put earlier, a vat of stupid. The best way to fight that is to limit, check and constrict power however possible. It limits responsiveness but again, if responsiveness is so direly necessary, why not pass an amendment to enable the government to be more responsive? If it's that important shouldn't enough people agree?
Well that's an interesting point, personally I'd say the issue could be solved by simply legally defining when life begins from a scientific point. Though we currently can't agree on what makes us human or what makes a living being so that's a bit moot but I think if we really tried it might be necessary.
Do I personally think women need a right to choose? I'd say yes, at least up until a functioning brain develops, but that's just me. Government wise I still feel an exhaustive evaluation needs to be made for solving problems practically with existing law and existing government power before we go about trying to add or change things. Like the discussion about PCP laced beer and ramming an SUV into someone's house. We don't need any special laws against driving cars while under the influence of PCP laced beer, we have existing laws to punish and award damages to fix things that already cover it.
I still can't believe it's somehow impossible, if we need so many new agencies or laws and such so fast that we can't somehow pass an amendment to make this sort of thing easier. Maybe I have no common sense but I honestly can't understand that.
I can agree to an extent, but again, why can't we do this the right way? I mean, if you really are adamant about changing everything why don't we just get everyone to sign some sort of new social contract (I know, never happening, just throwing it out there) of government? Because as it stands right now, we're losing our basis more and more as time passes, and some of the things we do are very necessary, but we can't keep saying we can just do what we want because "society needs it." We have to do things in a planned, rational manner, and I sincerely feel we can up response time and make government more flexible without having to just ignore or reinterpret the constitution.
Again, as I said earlier. I agree mostly with him on what he believes are problems facing government right now. What I disagree with are totally radical solutions that would throw us into chaos. I'm not some fanatical Ron Paul junkie, but I do believe that he is saying some of what we need to hear right now and that we should listen to the good things that get garbled up in all the crazy. Again, as I said earlier, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
TPM has the flyer in its insane entirety.
Edit: The flyer is being mailed out in South Carolina. Surprise, that.
I always understood it to mean that Free men have the ability to work and earn what they want in life. They have the freedom to go out and do what they need to do (without causing harm) to get what they want and achieve their goals. They can earn money, posessions, status, and that makes a free man not directly comparable or equal with another free man. One might start out dirt poor make good choices and make himself rich, own a mansion and all that. Another might start with that but make poor choices and squander it all down the road, and every position in between those two.
Equal men on the other hand, are given no choice. They all are given the exact same thing from birth to death in life and have no ability to earn anything for themselves despite their actions. All men have the same situation so they are equal, but they are not free to pursue or achieve their goals no matter what they are.
Because after the 1920's people realized that there were societal problems which were too large to be combatted as individuals and they turned to government in order to help reel in some of these collective action problems. The government obliged and now we no longer have 12 year old coal miners, soylent sausages, and a (decaying) infrastructure allowing for highspeed interaction and growth economically, civically, and socially. The extent to which things should be limited and expanded is up to debate, but the notion that we should abandon taxation because the constitution doesn't say anything about repaving highways is absurd. There's certainly room for improvement, and guess what? We're improving. Governance has never been so transparent and open as it is now. Yellow journalism is largely kept at bay, and politicians are more responsive and honest than before. Kind of sad when you look at things, i'nt it.
Also, most of the debtor states are a decisive voting bloc.
Think about it: you need a supermajority in the House and Senate, so if you have a clear 50-50 to 40-60ish split there (which we tend to), that's going to take some serious compromising already. Then it needs to be ratified by the states, who ALSO need a supermajority. So if, say, the South bands together against the amendment, that amendment is dead in the water.
Amendments are hard, if not impossible to pass. They can take decades (and in the case of the 27th amendment, centuries) before making it through the system. Discounting the 27th amendment, we haven't passed one in 40 years. And the thing is, they're designed to be this way: the Founding Fathers meant for the Constitution to be a rather immutable document, which is good in some ways because of how it protects the rights of the minority. But it can also be bad, because it is rather maladaptive, which makes it harder when, say, we need laws protecting equal rights.
"Signing a new social contract" is unnecessary; you sign one simply by living in this country and voting in an election. Trying to tie everything back to the Constitution is also unnecessary, because history has evolved and the law along with it. If you try to turn back the clock on the law when you can't turn back the clock on history, you'll be in for some ugly surprises.