What is the ideal relation between the individual and the state?

[DeMartini Sands]

What is the ideal relation between the individual and the state? Should the individual serve the state or the state serve the individual? What is the best form of government and what is the worst? When is a man justified in rebelling against the established order and creating a new state?
Given the state of affairs in our country, the impending election, and the problems of our economy it's a decent topic of discussion....

[Fornicator]

Like all institutions, the state was created to serve the individual, but immediately shifted to preserving itself.

[Fornicator]

What is the best form of government and what is the worst?

Best: Benevolent King

Worst: Despotic Dictator

Problem: Telling them apart

[Yelram]

The ideal state operates like an ideal business, giving you what you need, at a decent price, without any crap. We need to have a free market approach to government (like democracy, only with a more consumer based approach)

[Fornicator]

The ideal state operates like an ideal business, giving you what you need, at a decent price, without any crap.

As in - it's not how high our taxes are, but more what we get for the price.

[Fornicator]

We need to have a free market approach to government (like democracy, only with a more consumer based approach)

PS - the 'Free market' has been operating at peak efficiency this past few weeks. I'll put my future in those hands.

NOT.

[DeMartini Sands]

The ideal state operates like an ideal business, giving you what you need, at a decent price, without any crap. We need to have a free market approach to government (like democracy, only with a more consumer based approach)


Very interesting, what would be some points of interest/difference from our current system, and wouldn't new laws need to be established to revamp our checks n balances system?

[Phil Theehor]

PS - the 'Free market' has been operating at peak efficiency this past few weeks. I'll put my future in those hands.

NOT.

The meltdown you see is an example of what happens when you fuck with the free market. Yes, greed has taken us to the brink. But what people don't recall is that the subprime mess was hatched in the late 90's. Government made very cheap money available to lenders under the condition that they make mortgages available to shaky borrowers.

People (both lenders and borrowers), being greedy and stupid, gorged themselves on all of the cheap money. The reason that defaults have triggered this meltdown is that the well-intentioned market jiggering removed normal market controls on risk. Eight years later, we have a meltdown.

The funny thing about this is the catch-22 affect. By making all of this cheap money readily available, we drove up the price of real estate, thus pricing out many of the people we were tying to help. As a result, borrowers took on more debt to finance home purchases, thus exacerbating the problem.

So, don't blame free markets. Blame those who fucked with them.

[willydong]

there is no ideal relation between the individual and the state because the state always grows to powerful and replaces the individual with the collective.

[Fornicator]

So, don't blame free markets. Blame those who fucked with them.

"Free market" is an idiot term. There is no such thing. As soon as there was a market, there was someone controlling or manipulating it. Gov'ts attempt to control and direct markets. Corporations attempt to corner and manipulate markets to their advantage.

Free markets in the traditional sense, mean free information. Which is an ideal (a.k.a. idiot) term. It means everyone in the market knows everything about the market. Which is of course, Bullshit!

So the real issue is: who gets to make the markets not free and in what way?

Government let go of the wheel. They were essentially unable (and unwilling) to regulate mortgage back derivatives. And look what happened.

My Point: Government needs to play a role in balancing the influence of business in the market. It's one of the main reasons we have government these days. Unfettered capitalism doesn't give a fuck about anyone. When our government doesn't give fuck either, we're screwed.

[Phil Theehor]

The point, chief, is that government created this problem because they gave fuck about people.

[Fornicator]

The point, chief, is that government created this problem because they gave fuck about people.

Chief??? Thanks for the promotion.

Please - elaborate on your point. So far just repeating it hasn't added much to the dialogue.

[Phil Theehor]

It's what I said in the first post. Government cared (and I think the Clinton regime genuinely did care), tried to help by pumping cheap money into the system to help people who traditionally had trouble getting prime mortgages. Doing so enouraged risk taking on both sides. That eventually broke the system (after a hell of a ride).

[Fornicator]

Blame Clinton? That's a bit tired. Be a little creative. Blame Carter for the CRA, which forced banks to loan money to poor black people. If we had just let banks continue red-lining, things would be peachy. It wouldn't have exploded into this free-for-all of middle class white america going in to debt.

Give me a break. The explosion of the derivatives in question started in this century. The over-leveraging of Fannie and Freddie (by a factor of 60) - not Clinton's fault.

Back to our topic - the state is us. But what it has become is a tool for business to direct markets. The influence of lobbying money is so powerful, regulations drive their interests. So if you are attacking government regulations, you attacking the 'free market' and its influence on govt.

[Archetype]

Oi, this is the philosophy forum. Keep your damned politics out.

[Yelram]

The reltionship between the state and the individual cannot be addressed without examining two other entities, and that is the media, and business. Those three things need a system of checks and balance. Government, media, and business.

[Satan]

lolhaha

[hatepoppy]

The ideal state operates like an ideal business, giving you what you need, at a decent price, without any crap. We need to have a free market approach to government (like democracy, only with a more consumer based approach)
what the hell is a free market government? rule by the highest bidder? if so, that's what we've got right now. is the US govt ideal?

youll never have a true democracy in a capitalist society. fuck, i'd be surprised to ever see a true democracy.

the concept of ideality is inextricably tied to perspective. your ideal business describes what one consumer might feel. however, as it is tremendously concise and to the point of business, it is not ideal for a business owner. for the proprietor its all about the dough.

go into walmart and tell me you get what you need, at a decent price, without any crap.

you might get what you need, at a decent price. but itll be at reduced quality (i.e. cheap - again ideal for the owner and not consumer) and surrounded by so much shit that youre either going to spend way more money than you initially intended or be so aggravated by the fact that you have to wade through three circles of fat white nascar hell for a plastic garbage bin that youd've rather paid more for a more easily obtained similar (though more pricey) product.

so for consumers, walmart is fist-fucking you with a smile on its face. unless you are a fat white nascar fan that likes spending their weekend shooping for low priced, low quality goods (at which point, it might be ideal for you - perspective, right?).

i guess my point is, who is walmart ideal for? sam walton or frank mcnormalfucker?


by the same logic, from whose perspective are we considering the ideal relationship between man and state? and by what metric are we deciding ideality?

the US likes to fashion itself as as close to ideal as it gets in this shitfuck of a planet, based on it's alleged free will, market, and democracy. until i was old enough to realize forming your own opinions was better than accepting your parents' as truth (maybe 10), i felt like i was in the best country in the world, no fucking doubt. love it or leave it. total blind blue-collar patriotism.

any more, i feel as though that feeling about the US i had was a product of the ignorance of the impoverished quasi-working class fuckers i grew up around. like religion, patriotism is a means by which frank mcnormalfucker feels as though he's part of teh in-crowd. everyone needs some reason to feel self-righteous.

bottom line? the ideal relation between man and state is fictional. eliminating all corruption, social segregation and wealth gaps is a pipe dream, regardless of your form of government.

all practical (i.e. realistically implementable) forms of government are corrupt. we will all be slaves, always, albeit outside the knowledge of the masses. what was it wolfgang von goethe said? 'the most hopelessly enslaved are those who falsely believe they are free.'

by acknowledging any form of government as ideal, you are committing yourself to the wheel. not that you have a choice.

http://i33.tinypic.com/dqgplk.gif

[hatepoppy]

Interesting thoughts. What if elected positions were all a lottery, like a sort of jury duty and you'd be all like "aw shit, I've gotta be a senator next year!" Would we actually do our shit based on what we think is best rather than what would get someone re-elected? Or would we find out that, indeed, a majority of Americans are terrible people and screw ourselves worse? Sure, it wouldn't be corruption, per sey, but idiocy with
power.

are you familiar with the greek (typically meaning athenian) model of democracy? It was almost exactly as you describe.

as i understand, selection by lot was decided upon because elective democracies devolve quickly into oligarchies. Those popular and well known enough to garner majority votes are only those rich, visible, and charismatic few in the elite. The original criticism of elective democraxy came from its designers - it is a device by which the ruling elite can claim to defer to the populace while holding all the power behind closed doors. Sound familiar?

this election is a reminder of exactly this. By distinctly polarizing the populace between two diametrically opposed parties, they build a scapegoat into the system.

say, anyone want to make a shitload of money? lets go to war! who <i>gives</i> a shit what the sheeple say. 50% of them wont give a shit, 10% will buy the lies so thoroughly theyll rally 39% to our cause. sure 1% might be suspicious, might ask questions. but there are so few who actually think critically and deductively that we can paint them as crazy or terrorists, and since our word is truth (or just like, <i>whatever</>) everyone will believe us (or not give a shit). noone will follow the crazy antiamerican terrorists. and if in the end the people do get all riled up, theyll be too close to the next election to revolt, as 'he'll be out next year anyway.' at which point we pull out our next puppet for "volume 2: change!"

They can do whatever they want, and if the people are unhappy about it, they flip over to the cool side of the pillow.

this was the flaw inherent in elective democracy that led the greeks to select representatives by lot. but athenian democracy was far from perfect.

Socrates was tried and executed by the athenians in this system of government for corrupting the minds of children with his philosophy and theology. the story goes Plato (an opponent of athenian democracy) compared this trial to 'a doctor prosecuted by a pastry chef before a jury of children.'