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Discussion > Is there another kind of government out there?

I dont see an alternative to democratic government but at the moment it is not working in the UK and the USA, I can not comment on others.
The US democracy is relatively young and the US constitution is as good as it gets imo. The US constitution is short and deals with principles not details. However in a short period of time those whose main interests are in money and power have learned to work the system to their own benefit.
In the UK you have a populace which in general has no idea what the real issues are (thank you BBC and others) and so you ask if their votes are actually relevant. On the other hand you have all recent governments ignoring what they know is popular opinion even though this is supposed to be a democracy.
Is there some peaceful, reasonable way out of this mess we are in?

Nov 21, 2011 at 5:58 PM | Unregistered CommenterDung

If there was a reasonable way, do you think all those corporations and bureaucrats who benefit massively from the current system would just roll over and let the new system take over?

And if there really was such an option whcih was both reasonable and peaceful, you don't think it would have been tried by now?

In my view any such solution is going to involve really massive (some would say unreasonable) transfers of wealth, which will either take hundreds of years to achieve or will involve rioting and bloodshed.

Just contemplate for a moment that the US is 15 trillion in debt and there are no more than 150m taxpayers. That works out at 100,000 dollars each.

That is a huge democratic problem which needs to be solved. (Someone check my figures ...)

Nov 21, 2011 at 9:24 PM | Unregistered Commentermatthu

Well I was thinking of trying to make a start by discussing "how" it might be done in a sort of philosophically abstract sort of way.

Nov 22, 2011 at 4:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterDung

Capitalism today is not the capitalism of 60 - 70 years ago. When it began, the people who started companies were people who designed/invented their "product" and often went bust trying to make it work/succeed. Those people genuinely needed financial advice to help their company survive but somehow over the years the advice changed from "profit needed to keep the company afloat and maybe expand" to "the maximum amount of money we can screw out of people so that WE can get rich quick". My opinion of how to run "my own" business would be to maximise the amount of money I could make from giving people quality and service. I would not trade the quality and the service for extra money. I know people who run their business that way and they are well off and happy. However any consultant/accountant will tell you that is NOT the way to run your business, why is that?
Likewise the young democracies were started by people who genuinly wanted the best for the people , not personal gain. They either changed their opinions or were succeeded by people who "understood" how it should be done (get rich quick).
There is nothing really bad about communist ideals but that system is corrupted even faster than democracy.
What kind of system could guarrantee that the people who governed always did so "of the people, for the people, by the people"?

Nov 22, 2011 at 4:28 AM | Unregistered CommenterDung