alternatives to our current "democratic" systems of government

Off-topic
1

Well, Tim asked this question, and so I’m going to answer it based on my pespective.

In place of our current demmocratic system, I’d like to see a community based system of non-government.

Community based in the fact that people help each other out, and do things to improve their communities. It can be summed up as: People over Profit!

I’d also like culture to start returning to it’s roots. Getting rid of technology.

This one a lot of people even amongst anarchists are divided on. I believe that the biggest threat to our world is the destruction of the enviornment. Long term, this is a fact.

This is a whole nother conversation though I think.

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Nick I agree that getting back to community is a great thing for people to do, Here in pittsburgh there seem to be small groups pushing for just that.

I cant see how getting rid of technology will aid this however, could you explain more?

I’m going to tell you why I think its a bad idea to get rid of technology,

  1. Community Gardens can be greatly more benificial to more people with the aid of irregation technology as well as the use of seeding and other technology (modern farm equipment) that can help local farms produce more food for the people.

  2. Computers help alot of tasks, from communications that would enable you to orginise as communities as well as Thousands of other tasks that you take for granted in keeping society in order. Traffic lights for instance something that we can all agree is good for a community in keeping order.
    Communication between community groups is a good thing, trade is a good thing not everything can be produced in every enviroment so being able to effeciently orginise the exchange of stuff is good.

  3. Technology aids in helping with alternative eneregy. Be realistic if everyone went off of candels this day and age there would be a bee problem, I fucking hate bees so lets use light bulbs and not exploit our little flower loving friends for their wax.

There are more reasons but I would have to say the way to get people acting together more is not to abolish technology but to embrace it and use it for your advantage like you did with the meeting you were just at.

Also I think anarchy is a bad term for what you are thinking of, the closest terms I can think of what you are looking for (and many other anarchest) is a theoretical anarchy where There is an orginized society that runs independent from laws not concerning their community. Everyone seems to agree, even anarchists that killing someone is wrong and that it should be punnished in some way.

Mike

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In your thread title, don’t you think the ‘current’ should also be in " "s?

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This assumes that people would help each other. Perhaps some would, but what do you do with those that don’t? Wouldn’t you then a need a “government” of sorts to handle them?

I don’t buy the getting rid of technology thing, as if technology is itself responsible for the destruction of our environment. At some level, in order to survive, we must exploit the environment. We must eat and build shelters. This requires using natural resources. But I do agree that we are currently overextending the environment. We do need to find ways to scale back, even if it is not cost effective.

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I’d argue that our current democratic system of government here in the U.S. is community-based. Federal, state, local; they’re all levels of community.

That’s great, but people run the gamut between mostly good and mostly evil, with most of us taking up residence in the middle of the bell curve somewhere. There has to be some sort of law enforcement system in place to deal with the low end of the curve. As soon as you need law enforcement, you need administration, and democracy seems the best form of that to me.

That’s the Luddite position. It’s never worked in the past, the Luddites just get trampled under the steamroller of progress.

I’m pretty darn liberal, and I’ll tell you just the opposite: man will never destroy his environment. He’ll change it, but he won’t destroy it until he builds a “Star Wars”-esque “Death Star” and blows up the planet, and I think it’s much more likely that he’ll destroy his species before he ever makes it to that point.

Current estimates are that the sun and earth have been around for 4+ billion years, and that we’ve got another several billion years before the sun becomes a red giant and life on earth becomes impossible. During that time man will undoubtedly change his environment, possibly in ways that will make it inhospitable to his species’ survival. But he won’t destroy it.

Rich

6

Sounds like a nice idea, but also sounds like socialism. The idea of socialism is not necessarily a bad thing, but as with most forms of government, getting everyone on the same page about it is the hard part.

Why don’t libraries just let anyone take out any book? They’ll be responsible and bring them back in a reasonable amount of time, right? Unfortunately, no. A percentage of the people will be responsible, as well as attentive, as well as take good care of the book while they have it, as well as remembering the larger picture of a shared community resource.

But some people will lose the book. Some people will forget it’s borrowed, and it will lanquish on a bookshelf somewhere. Some will just forget how long they’ve had it, and keep assuming they’ll take it back for six months. Some will treat the book as many people treat anything that isn’t theirs; the same way too many people treat publich restrooms. Some people will just keep the book because they can.

So how do you get everyone to agree to abide by a non-required system of government? It’s like the whole anarchy thing. Anarchy, on an individual-to-individual basis, doesn’t work. It never works. It only works with limitations. And at some point, the limitations make it non-anarchy.

As long as people want to live in close proximity of each other (aka cities), much attention will need to be paid to how to interact without fouling up each others’ lives.

Is any system of government perfect? Not by a long shot. It’s run by imperfect people, and ofen voted by more imperfect people who often cast their votes without taking the effort of understanding what they’re voting on. I think most systems could be improved if there were a way to separate money from the process. But even if all politicians worked for free, powerful people with agenda would still work to influence them. This has always been one of the big problems.

I’d like to start by pointing out the irony of the way I learned of your idea. Try letting all us unicyclists know what you think without a computer and Internet. Technology isn’t the problem. It’s a tool, just as an axe or a hoe are tools. They are technology as well.

Eliminating technology would, however, greatly reduce the human population. Probably to the point where we’d be unable to damage the environment beyond its own easy ability to clean up after us.

If there were less people, problems with things like pollution and global warming would be greatly reduced if not eliminated. Who wants to talk about ways to limit population growth? Legal ways that is, not the usual war and famine methods.

Nope, in this country, there is still massive protest against the choice to not-have a baby that’s not even a baby yet, by medical definition. Or for terminally sick people to take their own lives. Or for known psychopaths to be sterilized so they won’t pass on recessive genes. Or even people with other debilitating diseases to make an effort to not pass them on.

We do give out Darwin Awards for a small number of people who non-involuntarily remove themselves from the gene pool, but this retroactive system doesn’t seem to be a very good motivator for the larger population… :smiley:

7

Raise your hand if you return shopping carts to the spaces provided.

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ZING!!!

Perfect example. Though I never took one home with me, I have to admit I am not very good at taking the cart to a designated “safe” area unless it’s real close to where I parked…

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This is why you put incentives for order into place, I know in europe most shopping carts have a deposit that is returned when you put the cart back (its a little chain thing that takes a euro or something to release a chain)

If you give to the community you will get back from the community, thoes who do not give (work, money, exe) should not recieve the benifits from living within that community. This is how tax should work but most people dont see how their taxes work for them. And in the US I largely agree that we do not see enough done with our taxes to help local communities develop.

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My parking spaces are never chosen on proximity to the doors, but proximity to the ‘cart corrales’

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[raises hand]but since being single, I normally don’t buy enough to warrant a trolley, and prior to being single, returning the trolley was at least partly motivated by wanting to irritate the gf[/raises hand]

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But surely you need some form of system (ie government) to see that those who don’t give to the community don’t recieve the benefits.

Cathy

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I’m of the opinion that we do need some sort of government, I think any orginized group should have some sort of management system to keep everything running.

Its where that group places its values is where everything gets fuzzy.

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i always sprint with the cart back to the designated spots, and i like drift while im doing it its so cool to burn rubber on shopping carts

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A few clarifications:

yes, I do realize the irony of the anti-technology sentiment being expressed via the internet.

All of the ideas expressed in my original post are not to be implemented imeadiatly or all at once, at least not on a mass scale. and there are alternatives, that would be equally acceptable.

I’ll start with technology. I think I explained this very poorly in my original post. I am somewhat of a primitivist, but let me clarify. For me, on a personal level, I have a hard time living in this society that is so wastefull, and is rapidly contributing to the destruction of the enviornment. I am all for what is called “radical sustainability”… using a combination of modern technology, a lot of reused materials, and many more traditional farming and living methods, to start getting away from the water and electricity grids, as long as getting away from capitalism and its system of rabid consumption.

I know this would not work if everyone wanted to do it. As the movement gains momentum, further solutions will have to come about. Same thing with bio-deisel, active solar power, and even the use ofmodern societies cast off materials (as these will become scarce after we get rid of modern society, hah hah).

If you want to learn more about radical sustainability, or permaculture, or anything I’m talking about ask, or Google it (other people are probably better at explaining it than I am).

The only possible unacceptable downside that I can see to my vision of a perfect world is the fact that medical use of technology is something I think is important. This, as all other uses, must be weighed carefully against all the negatives. I’m willing to give up a lot of convienence, but it’s a personal choice, and therefore it has a lot to do with my personality. Also, the fact that it isn’t really a full commitment, as most of the world will not be joining me (yet) and I can easily go back, probably eases my decision making.

The alternative to my approach is the opposite… Using technology to improve the planet. Humans are the only animals that don’t do this! We need to be up-cycling, or at least recycling, but right now, at best, we’re down-cycling! Untill this is a priority of big buissness and government, humans will never have a positive influence on the enviornment. (I also believe in the singularity, http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html, and as long as we reach that we’ll be OK too.).

Bringing me to my next point: people before profit.

People will form communities with others who share similar values. Maybe starting with communes centered around my above ideals. Yes, there will be the problems with “evil” people who choose to steal rather than contribute. I believe that this will be a better situation than our current one. Consider the world as a whole, and not just the USA, or where ever you happen to live right now. Aso I think that people would be much less likely to turn to theft (from those who don’t deserve it anyways), if society as a whole improved.

Once again, this is not something that can be jumped to imeadiatly. It takes A long damm time to get to it on a massive scale.

What can be done right now? Well I’m going to start ypracticing perma culture (what I described above) as soon as I can. Untill then I, and everyone eles, can stop buying new stuff. Re-use whatever you can. Recycle things that are good to recycle, like glass.

I think that military spending needs to come to a halt. I realize that most people will not support this, hopefully I’m wrong. I think we need a much smaller government. I am in favor of massive social programs for children and education. After that, I think people should be more on their own than theyf are now. I realize it wil get worse before it gets better under that system, but in the long run (50 years) it wil be a vast improvment. Since we will still have a government, we need to stop supporting rediculous funding for the super rich corperations.

I could talk about this for hours, but I’ll stop there for now.

Also, I return carts to their corrals, but when I was one of the kids who’s job it was to push carts, I loved it and would much rather be doing that than bagging groceries.

16

I hate to carry such a grim sounding tune, but I don’t believe that any form of goverment will ever prevail. I firmly believe that any system that is run by man, will lead to our destruction. Socialism may seem to work well for a while, but eventually, it will fail. Democracy seems like a good system, but as we can already see, it doesn’t work either. Man is greedy for power. Power corrupts, indefinately. At this point in time (as it has been for a while) our societies are based on unsustainable practices, and we certainly cannot govern ourselves. Anarchy would follow, and it would a lot less safe than it is now.

My honest opinion, is that we will continue to try our luck with different forms of government, and man’s quest for power will continue, until we destroy ourselves. Or atleast, until we destroy the world as we know it. Some humans may live on, but will be greatly humbled by the collapse of the systems. Frankly, the planet will be made better for it, as our survival is not the most important thing. Nature will prevail.

For most, the end of the world will be a terrible day, but for few, it will be the greatest.

17

you, my friend, are a genius

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Taxpayer $ are being funneled into the pockets of the CEO and shareholders.

Are you saying that since the very wealthy give so little compared to what they take, some benefits should not go to them?

John (or anyone): How would you know when a system is “working”? Does it depend on who the system working for?

There is a myth that Wal-Mart creates jobs. But actually, since we sell so much more so efficiently, we kill other businesses and take on only a portion of those left unemployed when we move in. In the end, there are fewer jobs. But politicians throw themselves at us, using taxpayer $$ to put in the infrastructure for our store, highway exit ramps etc.

So taxpayer $$ are going to create unemployment.

On the other hand, stockholders do well, and the CEO makes in 2 weeks what I will make in a lifetime of Wal-Mart employment.

The system works for the CEO and the shareholders.
Taxpayer $ are being funneled into the pockets of the CEO and shareholders.

Like our defense budget being funneled into Haliburton, which announced HUGE profits recently. Bush and Cheney said we’d get cheap oil, but gas prices aren’t that great.

Is it truly working? For whom?

Billy

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What’s a good gas price? When it’s cheaper than milk? Cheaper than bottled water? Cheaper than Orange Juice? Cheaper than Shampoo or soap?

Ah yes, prices aren’t that great, it really should be costing more.

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If it weren’t for technology, we wouldn’t exist. Humans rely on technology, from fire to basic food production methods like farming and harvesting.

The best government is one that has a set of goals defined and then the technology and resources are used to accomplish those goals. All this discussion of different types of government systems is meaningless if the purpose of government is not defined and looked at.