revots you might want to look into how people spend money.

It is a habit thing. When someone gets into debt, it's much more likely because he/she has terrible spending habits, than that he/she doesn't have enough money to survive.

So when you stop paying taxes and have 25% more money, you know what you'd spend it on? MORE SHOES! Or more other useless ****! More booze!

You say you'd save money up and have enough for a wheelchair but that's simply not how humans work. That's why I ask how much people know about human psychology. It's these basic misunderstandings due to lack of knowledge that get people thinking we don't need a government.

revots, if that is your argument for successful implementation, you might want to find another course to tack. It has not been a wholly successful system. It has primarily benefited the corporations (pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance, etc.) that top feed and have resorted to unethical practices in an effort to turn 10 cents into 11. It certainly has not been the boon to the public that it was thought it might become.

If people are SHORT SIGHTED, how is a government, which is made up of these SHORT SIGHTED people, going to help?

Is this a serious question?

Long term thinkers are leaders. They lead the pack. That's what the government should be comprised of. Long term thinkers who are figuring out what's best for society both in the short and long term.


Basically people who are more open minded and aware. These are the minority.

Romans. The Greeks didn't have a representative democracy. Arguably the Romans didn't either, it gets semantic. But that doesn't answer my question. Were they stupid to try it?

And no, I don't think AC could possibly have been tried yet. Capitalism itself is a recent invention, and most of the world still lacks the resources to make AC viable. However, I'm speaking in general terms here, you seem opposed to any social system that doesn't include government (not just AC).

fyp

LOL I am guessing you are not not from America if you think politicians are long term thinkers. Unless your definition of long term is, "until I get reelected".

No, that's not a choice at all. For a number of reasons. But I'm not arguing consent with you.

The point is that even if it is a "choice," it is still forced. If all basketball players in the world get to vote on a set of referees, and for the next four years those referees are in charge of every basketball game on the planet, and if anyone who even try to set up a personal game of pick-up are shot by those referees.

The fact that basketball players got to vote on which people are in charge of all basketball games everywhere doesn't change the fact that these referees are in charge of all basketball games everywhere (including the ones in which all players voted against the refs).

Furthermore, there is no way to vote for not having referees. You either get to have referee team A or referee team B. Those are your choices. You can also write in ref team C, but unless you convince a majority of other players through the world to write in the same, you won't get anywhere - only team A and team B are on the ballot. Team A and team B also take money from all basketball players and use it to advertise their refs. And again, there is no option for "let us choose our own refs for our own game" - there will be a single team of refs with control over all the basketball games.

Nope. Pretty sure vhawk's game of pickup doesn't need a referee.

Um, if there is one group of referees with power over all basketball games everywhere, then that is way too much power for them to have. Especially if they get to kill the players when they like, and take as much money from the players as they like (the players have no say in this; they can vote on which team of referees is in charge, but the referees choose how much money to take from the players).

Yet you think a tiny group of people with lots of money should be in charge of this entire nation. That's the smart solution? How about a tiny group of people isn't in charge of this whole nation? How about each community chooses its own leaders, and if a community is egalitarian and has no leaders, let them choose to do that?

How about the players of each basketball game can choose a ref for their individual game, and if they can manage without refs, then they don't need to have any? How is that not a better solution than having one tiny group of refs in charge of all basketball players?

I think that's a naive view of power.

Regardless - hey, why not just put the richest person in the world in charge? That way, he'll have more money than anyone else and he won't have any incentive to take bribes! So he won't be corrupt! It's perfect!

The government controls rich people far more than rich people control the government. The government, in general, can imprison rich people and seize their assets at will. The reasons it doesn't do so are simple at times and convoluted at other times. But the people in government and the people with money are the same people, by and large. But "the government" is no more a real entity than "the corporation" - the government is composed of people, and the bigger the government, the smaller the number of people have the greater amount of power. These people are then able to use that power to serve their own interests (which includes all manner of corruption). If the people in the government are corrupt, then the government is corrupt, rich people on the outside are irrelevant.

When governments do have complete free reigns, they are almost always tyrannical. Go ahead and find me a single counterexample.

Funny, capitalism has been around for about 400 years, government for the last 6,000. Which have been better, the last 400 years or the preceding 5600? Again, look at situations where governments have had unlimited control, and where capitalism was outlawed - peachy-keen utopias all, right? And let's look at countries with a history of capitalism - like Europe, Australia, the US, South Africa - and compare them with countries that don't have a history of capitalism (hint, try a search for "third world").

I'll agree with that - government is a monopoly. You're really helping the case for government, right? A government is an organization that has complete control over the means of production over a variety of products and services. So it's a monopoly and then some.

I believe referees are inevitable. I don't think they need to carry guns. Call me an idealist.

I think it's important to draw a distinction between:

HOW the taxes are spent and,

The very notion of paying taxes.

Paying taxes breaks down into how taxes are COLLECTED and from whom,

and then how taxes are SPENT.

These are very separate areas and I just wanted to point out that just because your taxes are being wasted on stupid things, does not mean you shouldn't pay taxes or that paying taxes is stupid. It means the people who SPEND taxes need a huge kick in the ass. How to go about that - is perhaps a valid concern since I have NO IDEA.


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You're crying over how taxes are spent. If you think the solution is to get rid of taxes, you are an ignoramus. I am sorry.

Why an ignoramus - because we all agree taxes are needed and inevitable.

Yup, this is accurate. When I lived in Zimbabwe, I came as close to anarchy and a non-existant government as I ever will again. There is no rule of law....there is really no law unless whatever is arbitrarily decided that will benefit the ruling party. This sort of "men-with-guns-rule" government taught me that the only value and applicability that anarchy ever has, in any context, is purely theoretical.

This reasoning is only valid if the politician you want to give our money to are less short-sighted than these people.

And it's the opposite. Take a look at environmental issues, for a clear example. The government wants to spend as little as possible on these issues, instead supporting wars and subsidizing nasty businesses. The people want the environment taken care of. The government is even more short-sighted than the people.

When you find me a group of people who are reliably not short-sighted, and a way to reliably keep them in power, you might have a form of government better than AC. Until then, you don't. Remember, in representative democracy the politicians are put in power (in theory) by the short-sighted people! And the successful politicians will tend to be the most short-sighted: Those who are good at manipulating public sentiment toward their own short-term interests. This becomes more and more true over the future, as the political process becomes more and more of a popularity contest.

Actually, that's the farthest from anarchy one could get. There you had a situation in which most people were powerless, and a tiny, tiny number of people wielded absolute political power. In anarchism, everyone has a roughly equal proportion of power. Tell me what the similarity is, again?

And oh yeah, "rule of law" is at its most iron-fisted in places like Zimbabwe. The warlord makes the law, and everyone obeys it (or else). That's exactly the ideal of government.

These are not two separate issues. The people who choose how the taxes are spent are the same people who choose how the taxes are collected, and from whom. (In a government, the taxes are collected by force, and from everyone.)

The question at hand is, who are those people and how are they appointed? In government, it's a small group of elites appointed by some political process involving force.

You don't know what you're talking about.

How exactly would you make it so that everyone would have an equal proportion of power? By necessity, you would have to have someone outside the system enforcing it so that there WAS equality. And at that point, there is no such thing as equality. Zimbabwe is as close to anarchy as it is possible to be. Point blank. Go there for youself and see.

The dictator president does make the law...whether everyone follows it or not is debatable. Whether he actually has control over the rampaging war veterans that are terrorizing the countryside is another debatable point. That's why there is a HUGE black market for foreign currency that directly undercuts and competes against the official rate proposed by the government. Same with petrol. Same with cooking oil. Etc.

madnak...

You first say pick-up game doesn't need referees. Then at the end of your own post, you agree referees are inevitable. Ok... I am confused...


But besides that:

Your point of "look best countries are capitalist, so capitalism must be the way to go" is a fallacy. It is like saying because people drink coffee - they go to work. Look... In the morning coffee.. Yes? Yes. Then they go to work... Yes? Yes. So it must be... that Coffee makes them go to work...

This is such an easy fallacy to fall into. Suffice to say - I don't think capitalism is any good because it places selfishness above community. It places money above people.

Which is what we have in government BIGTIME and why people are constantly complaining. People spend huge sums of money to get elected, then they spend the next 4 years doing favors to people who helped them get elected, and then another campaign. It's all money exchanging hands...

The focus should be on the PEOPLE, not the money. Agreed?


Now why do people focus on money? Because they've forgotten what life is about. They forgot that a basketball game is about love for the game, not for a shiny object to put on a wall.

Capitalism has made mockery of sports by forcing everyone into steroids. It's just not healthy way of looking at things.


Now come people who look at the world and say hey - we have selfish bastards as our government. Let's get rid of the government, those *******s, and have random people fight out between them, who gets power! How is this not going to result in a total trainwreck?


What needs to happen is a change of heart - people need to remember that happiness is loving your neighbour, feeling like you're part of one tightly knit community. Instead, we're growing big cities where people feel alienated and lost. Where pollution and corruption is rampart. It's just crazy...


What we need is a unified government that has so much power that it doesn't need to fight over spilled milk. That it doesn't need to corrupt it's citizens because he/she had to borrow money to get elected. Elections are nonsense - why are millions being spent on elections where 1/3 of the people don't have any health care?

Because people have forgotten... Because money is the new religion, the new faith, the new American dream. AC is an outgrowth of that. Belief that with money, we can make things right. We can't and we won't.