The Gaming Den

He's probably rather the alternative where we don't get involved in other people's wars, except, of course, when it profits his friends he'll let them have their way but not vote against them when the time comes.

As it was with the Bush Administration: It only matters what they say, not what they do. What they intended matters, not the results. What should happen is more important than the facts.

This is, of course, just a guess.

-Crissa

Heath Robinson wrote:So you'd rather the alternative?

You mean there is an alternative? The UN or nothing? Total nonsese. There are an infinte possible sets of alternatives. The very structural nature of the UN has served its purpose; it is ill suited to the purpose it wants to become.

Historically, the UN was far better than the absolutely useless League of Nations. It was useful not because it did anything, but because it served as a sounding board during the ocasionally heated "cold" war. With veto power on either side it almost assured that both sides had a place to talk.

The basic problem of the UN is that it is not designed at all to be a world goverment. But that is what it wants to be. But the sole purpose of UN legislaton is to promote more UN bureaucracy. It is nothing but a growing inept beast whose only purpose is to grow larger and assume more power.

The basic problem of the UN are so many, they are legion. Most of the politics in the UN is designed for one nation (or group of nations) to either increase their own prestige or politically attack another nation. Since most powerful nations have relations with other nations that often get involved in the very things that the UN was supposed to prevent, the result is incompetent impotence. Genocide occurs in Darfur, North Korea and Iran proceed full steam towards nuclear weapons and perhaps nuclear war.

What power does the UN hold?

-Crissa

So do I get to say I called it yet? Or do I have to wait for him to not answer and bullshit some more?

tzor wrote:

Heath Robinson wrote:So you'd rather the alternative?

You mean there is an alternative? The UN or nothing? Total nonsese. There are an infinte possible sets of alternatives. The very structural nature of the UN has served its purpose; it is ill suited to the purpose it wants to become.

You said that rejecting the UN is not stupid ("How stupid do you have to be to want the UN?"). You have now claimed that it's not stupid to reject the UN in all its forms because the UN is "ill suited to the purpose it wants to become". So you'd rather have nothing, right now, than something because that something, you believe, won't be as good at the things that it might end up doing in the future.

Just to remind you of what your argument is, so that you can add or retract what you want.


For my argument; the UN offers real benefits in the current political environment that countries would be willing to pay for. It's not stupid to pay nothing to get those benefits, as the US has the oppurtunity to.

The basic problem of the UN is that it is not designed at all to be a world goverment. But that is what it wants to be. But the sole purpose of UN legislaton is to promote more UN bureaucracy. It is nothing but a growing inept beast whose only purpose is to grow larger and assume more power.

The problem with the UN is that it has no power. That's why it doesn't work. And no one wants to give it more power. Why? Because there are people like China and Russia (not to mention the US) who wield a disproportionate amount of power. If we made it by country or by population, we'd be handing the reins of power to the third world.

Fundamentally, democracy doesn't actually work, but no one wants to acknowledge that is the case.

This is in fact why no one wants to have the UN. This is why the EU works better. The smaller the disparities between participants, the better it works. In the UN, there are countries as diverse as Luxembourg and Sierra Leone. What do their populations have in common? Why should we cater to Sierra Leone at the cost of Luxembourg? Is that even worth doing?

Democracy only works if everyone is informed and rational, or at least that enough people are informed and rational that the uninformed and irrational don't matter. But that's not the case in the real world. Even in the US the uninformed and irrational outnumber the informed and rational. But we oppose doing things which would exclude the uninformed and irrational; indeed, doing so will never succeed in a democratic system because by its very nature it becomes an oligarchy and the excluded population (which will be well over half) will not be content to be "tended to".

Any sort of world government is far more likely to arise out of a system like the EU rather than something like the UN, a system starting from equality and expanding outwards. People who fear that the UN will become a world government are being silly; its incapable of doing so.

Titanium Dragon wrote:Fundamentally, democracy doesn't actually work

So yeah. Modern History. You missed that whole thing there then? Right?

Even in the US the uninformed and irrational outnumber the informed and rational.

Really?

Even in the USA? That well known center of enlightenment and the worship of knowledge? Really?

Wwwwwoooooowwwww...

I tell yah, reading your stuff (I just caught onto your stand up routine on the dark sun thread too) it's like some sort of comedy routine.

PL, I think you should know better than to say that. Posters at WotC outnumber us. Think about it. Extrapolate.

-Crissa

Democracy doesn't work. Or rather, I should say "Democracy doesn't work very well."

You disagree with me? Just in recent times in the United States, we have had Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush Jr. We have people banning gay marriage, denying people equal rights, via direct popular vote. We have California voting more services and fewer taxes, as well as the prison problem across the nation where people want to put criminals away forever but don't recognize that it means that they can't spend as much money on anything else.

Democracy doesn't really work. Indeed, the founding fathers of the United States had their doubts about it. The ideal was an informed electorate, but in reality, the electorate is never really very well informed and a democracy - rule by ALL the people - will fall to the lowest common denomonator or the people best able to manipulate the populace, neither of which are really in the best interest of the populace.

Oh well, I guess it's back to Feudalism then... hey WAIT A SECOND...

PhoneLobster wrote:Oh well, I guess it's back to Feudalism then... hey WAIT A SECOND...

I never said we have something better.

That's why we're a Republic, not a direct Democracy, PL. It slows down the process and makes shifts in views take several levels of checks and balances to happen.

It's not perfect, but it has managed to self-correct mostly non-violently.

-Crissa

That's why we're a Republic, not a direct Democracy, PL. It slows down the process and makes shifts in views take several levels of checks and balances to happen.

It's not perfect, but it has managed to self-correct mostly non-violently.

We've only fought one Civil War and had the 1960s, and we still have a constant level of low-level domestic terrorism which goes unrecognized, human-directed terrorism primarily directed from the right, but with a smaller number of leftist terrorist organizations; most leftist terrorist organizations in the US today, however, don't believe in killing people but rather cause large amounts of property damage.

Does the property damage cause terror or inconvenience? I imagine that there is a difference.

How about calling the vandals "inconvenientists" and calling the killers "terrorists". That way we won't confuse the two.

clikml wrote:Does the property damage cause terror or inconvenience? I imagine that there is a difference.

How about calling the vandals "inconvenientists" and calling the killers "terrorists". That way we won't confuse the two.

Well, I would say that they constitute terrorists because their goal is to intimidate people with threats of economic damage into not doing things that they are opposed to doing.

They are not dangerous, just stupid.

I wonder what large amounts of property damage these leftist groups do is. I've heard of some building fires, spiked trees, etc; but whenever history gets an accounting the majority of the damage has always been right-wing.

Bombs in colleges in the sixties? Half of them were planted by government plants. More people were killed by government action or inaction with right-wing violence (lynching, etc). Heck, more people were killed in a single action of placing untrained troops with armed weapons against unarmed student demonstrators. Churches burned, almost always black churches.

Bombs against environmental targets in the 70s? None were actually traced back to environmentalists. Several equipment bombings turned out to be done for the insurance. Several environmentalists were killed when bombs were attached to their cars. Since the FBI refused to investigate anyone but the people who blew up, we never had an answer.

During the 80s and 90s a huge amount of damage was cause by right-wing terrorists. Women's clinics and social workers were threatened, attacked, bombed, arson. More churches burned. A federal building was leveled.

We haven't even had a credible attempt on a President's life since the 80s. Ford was shot at twice.

Anyhow, yeah, we've had violence. But what we haven't had is need of armies marching on the capitol to get presidents and congresses to step down and decide.

We managed through the great depression without armed revolt. Prohibition done and undone. Racial civil rights realized in the sixties. And now, gender and sexuality rights in the 00s.

---

Anyhow, my point was more that while people are stupid, and we don't have direct democracy. We have a Republic. And though slow, I would say it's working. Maybe last year I had my doubts, but this year I feel vindicated.

-Crissa

While democracy may be a bad solution I am pretty sure every other government that has been tried by humanity is worse.

Crissa wrote:I wonder what large amounts of property damage these leftist groups do is. I've heard of some building fires, spiked trees, etc; but whenever history gets an accounting the majority of the damage has always been right-wing.

In this country, this is certainly the case.

However, the ecoterrorists do do millions of dollars worth of property damage. I'm not talking the tree spiking shit. I'm talking real arson, where they burn down buildings. A few years ago, an ecoterrorist group set a SUV lot on fire in Eugene, Oregon, for example. Virtually all terrorism in the northwest is done by liberal groups, mostly groups like ALF and ELF.

The right-wing terrorists, however, kill people. The abortion clinic murderers and bombers are good examples of this, and there are organizations behind them, along with their supporters, which are similar to the Taliban - they claim they have no control over them, but egg them on and finance them.

Actually, a few years ago a group of ecoterrorists was in my neighborhood. They were off freeing rabbits from a rabbit farm on the other side of the hill. One of them had brought their dog along and, ironically, kept them locked up in the car on a hot day (presumably to prevent them from eating the rabbits). One of my neighbors walked by twice (he didn't realize what they were doing, but he did notice the dog in the car) and came back a third time with something to break the window with but the car was gone by that time. The rabbits themselves mostly hid beneath their cages, making it easy to round them up, and only a small number actually escaped.

Needless to say, stories like this are why we aren't really scared of them.

So the massive economic damage... was a burnt down SUV "a few years ago in Oregon".

OK...

Much as you look at a world dominated by successful democratic governments and see failure you also look at one burnt out car and see "Massive Economic Damages!"

It must be total economic Armageddon in my region. The locals burn down a car at least once a week here, and a house about once a month. (No really, the greater Cessnock region has an arson rate high enough we tell jokes about it)

PhoneLobster wrote:So the massive economic damage... was a burnt down SUV "a few years ago in Oregon".

OK...

Much as you look at a world dominated by successful democratic governments and see failure you also look at one burnt out car and see "Massive Economic Damages!"

That was a singular example, and for the people who are the victims...

It really isn't that much damage, because they're insured. But it would be if they weren't and we're still talking about millions of dollars of property damage.

It must be total economic Armageddon in my region. The locals burn down a car at least once a week here, and a house about once a month. (No really, the greater Cessnock region has an arson rate high enough we tell jokes about it)

Well, I live in Corvallis, Oregon, a town with a higher percentage of PhDs than people who attend church on a weekly basis. At my high school, a higher percentage of people voted for Ralph Nader in our mock election than George W Bush in 2000. According to a 2007 article, we are the most secure place to live in in the United States.

According to a poster on another forum:

Most Oregonians won't encourage anyone to move here. It's really pretty crowded. The Federal Government owns 1/3 of the state, big timber companies own 1/3 of the state, which just leaves 1/3 of the state where people can live. Most of that is in the Willamette Valley, a strip of land 140 miles long and 40 miles wide. Much of the Willamette Valley is farm ground, and not suitable for immigration.

You might be happy to know that we have established reservation land for Californians in Central Oregon, in the town of Bend. You should check it out. Not many people from Oregon live there any more, but the population is booming. There is also some reservation land on the border, at Ashland, but it's pretty full.

An online survey said:

“Wonderland. Eden. Serenity. Clean. Natural. Unruined. Green. Peaceful.
Don't visit, we don't want you.”

Which is fairly accurate.

The murder rate in OREGON is about half the national murder rate (2.3 per 100,000, vs about 5.6 per 100,000), and in Benton County is a mere 1.27 per 100,000 - which is to say, 1 person per year. If a house burns down here, its front page news... for several days.

So really, you have to understand when I say "horrible economic damage", I really mean "We don't really understand things like terrorism here, which is probably why we're so bad at it."

Titanium Dragon wrote:Well, I live in Corvallis, Oregon, a town with a higher percentage of PhDs than people who attend church on a weekly basis. At my high school, a higher percentage of people voted for Ralph Nader in our mock election than George W Bush in 2000.

Look at those damned free serfs. Taking the PhDs and wealth and freedom feudalism gave them and wasting it by practicing mock elections for a failed democracy gah, those kids they know nothing about history NOTHING.

Actually, I had an excellent history teacher in high school, and entered college with over 45 units worth of college credit from AP courses, including 8 from US history, and in our world history course we visited a mosque and spoke with religious leaders from several traditions...

Really, we know a lot about the world, and we bitch and whine and moan, but we have it pretty good. It just frustrates us that things couldn't be -better-.

You kinda missed the point there didn't you.

PhoneLobster wrote:You kinda missed the point there didn't you.

No, I'm pretty sure I'm just being an ass.