What do you believe the government's role is?

[Curious George]

Is there an overarching role that government should play?

With what activities should the government be involved?

In what areas should the government be limited?

Are there any general rules by which we can balance government action in order to determine whether an activity is something in which the government should or shpuld not be involved? If so, what are those rules?

How do you imagine your preferred style of governance working?

 

[Woberts]

Ideally, there would be no government.
A class-less and state-less society is what I desire.

 

[sun rise]

I can't think of anything better than fully implementing the vision of the founders of the USA which means reversing the current backward and downward march.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the people not we the so-called corporate "people" that the Supreme Court created.

Secure the blessings of liberty by not using gerrymandering and vote denying laws to stop people from voting. And the blessings of liberty involve equal justice for all real people not justice for the rich and famous and corporations.

Promote the general welfare not the welfare of the plutocrats and corporate special interests.

And that's just the start.

 

[Nakosis]

Ideally, there would be no government.
A class-less and state-less society is what I desire.

Yet somehow humans always end up creating a class structure. It must be what a majority of folks want, right?

 

[Woberts]

Yet somehow humans always end up creating a class structure. It must be what a majority of folks want, right?

Not necessarily. A class structure is usually seen as easier to implement than a society without a class structure. There will always be folks who want to game the system, so to say. This is much easier in a society with a class structure.

 

[Curious George]

Ideally, there would be no government.
A class-less and state-less society is what I desire.

That is pretty extreme. How do you think that would play out?

 

[Curious George]

I can't think of anything better than fully implementing the vision of the founders of the USA which means reversing the current backward and downward march.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the people not we the so-called corporate "people" that the Supreme Court created.

Secure the blessings of liberty by not using gerrymandering and vote denying laws to stop people from voting. And the blessings of liberty involve equal justice for all real people not justice for the rich and famous and corporations.

Promote the general welfare not the welfare of the plutocrats and corporate special interests.

And that's just the start.

And what can the government do to achieve those ends? Are there any limitations?

 

[Woberts]

That is pretty extreme. How do you think that would play out?

It's not extreme in the slightest. It would play out the same way it usually does, I would assume. A tyrannical government that oppresses its workers, causing the workers to revolt. Then a powerful country like the US or England exerts its influence on that country, slowly strangling them. That's how it usually seems to happen, sadly.
It appears to me that a worldwide revolution that stops the meddlesome bourgeoise before they get the chance to fight back is the best way towards economic prosperity and freedom.

 

[Nakosis]

Not necessarily. A class structure is usually seen as easier to implement than a society without a class structure. There will always be folks who want to game the system, so to say. This is much easier in a society with a class structure.

I'd be interested in references otherwise. Bit of an anarchist myself, just don't seeing it being possible.

 

[Jumi]

Governments purpose is to provide a safety network and defend it's citizens. Education is the other utility of a government. Anything else is basically extra and harmful.

 

[Curious George]

It's not extreme in the slightest. It would play out the same way it usually does, I would assume. A tyrannical government that oppresses its workers, causing the workers to revolt. Then a powerful country like the US or England exerts its influence on that country, slowly strangling them. That's how it usually seems to happen, sadly.
It appears to me that a worldwide revolution that stops the meddlesome bourgeoise before they get the chance to fight back is the best way towards economic prosperity and freedom.

Hmm i do not think I am following. I am asking how such a society would look and function.

 

[Earthling]

It's not extreme in the slightest. It would play out the same way it usually does, I would assume. A tyrannical government that oppresses its workers, causing the workers to revolt. Then a powerful country like the US or England exerts its influence on that country, slowly strangling them. That's how it usually seems to happen, sadly.
It appears to me that a worldwide revolution that stops the meddlesome bourgeoise before they get the chance to fight back is the best way towards economic prosperity and freedom.

Unlike you, I would imagine, I think that the government serves as a temporary substitute for Jehovah God's kingdom, which will come when the current system is destroyed, but until then, your solution as mentioned above is what is needed for the best of that temporary system.

What it would take, more than anything, is the removal of the current debt based economy. Money is obsolete. Science and technology can't provide what our creator can, but they could do a great deal better than the current system if they were allowed by this removal of the debt based economy.

 

[Nous]

I can't think of anything better than fully implementing the vision of the founders of the USA which means reversing the current backward and downward march.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the people not we the so-called corporate "people" that the Supreme Court created.

Say what?

I was going to say exactly the same thing and was cursing you for saying it before I did, until I got to that last sentence there about the Supreme Court. The Court did what?

 

[sun rise]

Say what?

I was going to say exactly the same thing and was cursing you for saying it before I did, until I got to that last sentence there about the Supreme Court. The Court did what?

The controversy about that is described here: Corporate personhood - Wikipedia

And even though Citizen's United did not reference corporate personhood directly, to me it did indirectly.

And famously, Mitt Romney echoed that which I think is really the defacto Republican belief “Corporations are people, my friend”.

To me, Citizens United is a classic example of a conservative activist court legislating from the bench. Those who claim to go by the text had no problem with doing exactly what they complain about liberals doing: departing from the text when it suits their political beliefs.

 

[Sunstone]

Yet somehow humans always end up creating a class structure. It must be what a majority of folks want, right?

I think you might be perpetrating a myth about human nature. According to the most recent estimates following the Moroccan fossil findings, humans as a species are about 300,000 years old. The first successful class societies are about 5,500 years old. For about 294,500 years our species lived and evolved in classless hunting/gathering groups that have been described as "fiercely egalitarian".

In other words, humans have spent almost all their time on this planet living in classless societies. That fact does not seem to support the notion that humans are somehow eager to live in class-structured societies.

 

[Sunstone]

Ideally, there would be no government.
A class-less and state-less society is what I desire.

What you long for might be the lifestyle of our ancestors, who lived in classless social groups that have been described as "fiercely egalitarian". Those are the groups we evolved to live in. Not only did our own ancestors live in those groups, but so did their ancestors and their ancestors before them. Egalitarian social groups probably go back in our ancestry for six or more million years.

 

[Nakosis]

I think you might be perpetrating a myth about human nature. According to the most recent estimates following the Moroccan fossil findings, humans as a species are about 300,000 years old. The first successful class societies are about 5,500 years old. For about 294,500 years our species lived and evolved in classless hunting/gathering groups that have been described as "fiercely egalitarian".

In other words, humans have spent almost all their time on this planet living in classless societies. That fact does not seem to support the notion that humans are somehow eager to live in class-structured societies.

So, what happened?

Again any reference to a classless society I'd be interested in. Still trying to understand how that would work.

 

[Curious George]

Governments purpose is to provide a safety network and defend it's citizens. Education is the other utility of a government. Anything else is basically extra and harmful.

What do you mean by safety network? Can anything be done in the name of safety?

 

[Sunstone]

So, what happened?

About 5,500 years ago on the plains of what is now Southern Iraq, the Sumerian people invented the class society. We don't know why or how they did it other than the likelihood some people saw a chance to seize power and took it -- and that religion most likely played a role in the creation.

Here's what made a class society possible, though: Agriculture. Agriculture produces a surplus of food, unlike hunting/gathering. That means it becomes possible for a few people to live off the surplus without actually working in the fields themselves. Agriculture had been invented by the time the first class societies arose.

Once you have a food surplus, all you need is a few ambitious people to see the potential of it, then for them to figure out some way to get everyone else to go along with making them leisured kings, priests, and nobles. But how do you do that?

Near as anyone knows, it might have been done largely through an alliance of priests and leaders. The priests would have put out the word that the gods wanted the leaders to be kings and nobles. That is, wanted the leaders to be made permanent leaders with real power over others. Once the priests had convinced enough people of this new "truth", the leaders could rise up to become kings and nobles.

You see the same nonsense today when some preacher blesses the president or declares that God wants him to be president.

Again any reference to a classless society I'd be interested in. Still trying to understand how that would work.

There's a huge library of information about classless hunting/gathering groups. I think you can find a lot of it online.

As for how such groups work, the have leaders, but the leaders have no real power to compel people to obey them. They only have their own authority as wise or competent individuals.

So, for instance, if Smith is the leader of a classless hunting/gathering group, people follow him -- to whatever extent they do -- because they think he's smart, wise, and competent, but not because he has a police force and army to force them to follow him -- because he doesn't.

In practice, Smith would be most likely to leave major decisions up to a vote of the people. That is, rather than make a decision himself, then try to convince everyone to go along with it, Smith would be most likely to ask everyone what they wanted to do, then throw in his weight with the majority. That's how it tends to work in today's few remaining hunting/gathering groups.

 

[Sunstone]

Still trying to understand how that would work.

Twenty or so years ago, an anthropologist studying how decisions were made by a Southwestern US tribe of Native Americans, observed the following.

First, an issue arose about water rights.

Second, the elders (i.e. the leaders) called meetings in each village to explain what the issue was.

Next, the elders spent a few months going around to each household in the tribe to find out what people were thinking about the issue.

Then the elders called another series of village meetings. They started the meetings by describing all the different views they had discovered when they visited the households. As it turned out in this case, the various different views could be boiled down to about four to six views. So, the leaders presented those views to the people in their village meetings and asked the people to vote for which one they favored most.

In that way, the tribe arrived at a decision what to do about water rights.