lol, i think ill stay with the city part of everything.....i dont think u want to see me runnin around naked *shudders*
lol, i think ill stay with the city part of everything.....i dont think u want to see me runnin around naked *shudders*
Agent Vicious:
it occurs to me that a lot of my ideas on this are informed by things i've read that you may not have, about AIs good and bad. some can be found in a good-sized local library, some of it online (mininova, bittorrent, "Appleseed"), but a lot of it is almost impossible to get hold of:
Good AI:
Iain M Banks ("Consider Phlebas", "State of the Art", etc)
David Gerrold ("When Harlie was One")
Bad AI:
John Sladek ("Tik-Tok", "The Happy Breed", etc)
Frank Herbert ("Destination: Void", "The Jesus Incident", etc)
Harlan Ellison ("I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream")
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/clas.../ellison1.html
Masamune Shirow ("Appleseed" - the kick-ass anime made in 2004)
there's also Vernor Vinge, discussing what happens when machines can improve themselves until they become godlike:
http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html
in trying to build a setting i could write stories in, i spent a lot of time wondering not so much what the machine would do, but why. i took the shortcut of saying "it was programmed to keep the peace, no matter what" with the result that it had to take over, and wage war on everyone who wouldn't submit to its rule. discussing whether such a system of government benefits the most people or not just gets in the way of the action, which is what drives a story.
MOB RULES
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
The desire to be a politician should be considered a crime, punishable by ....well something nasty
Maybe we could modernize the good old feudal system and go with that
Originally Posted by Mr Karl
i doubt you'd be saying that if the mob were chanting "DEATH TO MR KARL" and waving burning torches.
Originally Posted by Mr Karl
this would, of course, be with you as the king, or at least a lord or a baron. right?
i'd be very surprised if you had any urgent desire to become a peasant, unless you have some kind of Tolkienesque delusion about what a peasant's life was like. here's some pointers:
you work from before sunrise to well after dark, seven days a week. forget that resting on the sabbath rubbish.
you give ALL of your proceeds to the local lord, and if you're lucky he'll give back enough for you to live on.
if you can find the time to get married, the local lord has the right to impregnate your wife before you can sleep with her.
got a problem with this? you want to negotiate a better wage deal? tough luck, pal. no courts, no justice system - whatever the local lord says, goes. if you don't like it, his heavies will kill you and think nothing of it. pow, dans la tete.
you start working just after you learn to walk. you finish working when you die, usually around the age of 28.
still want to be a peasant, Master Gamgee?
Why the fuck would I want to be the King?
a question, since we're talking about governments, how many people actualy vote?
I'm with you. that's more or less the basis for what I proposed... but a few things to consider:Originally Posted by Chaotika
you have to understand the situation in context with those argrarian civilized types to know why you don't get that option.
*civlizations require surplus food. more food allows more people. more people need more food. So the result is six billion mouths to feed with a population growth of another billion every half decade, and to get all those resrouces we had to wipe out about 99% of all those hunter gatherers.
*a tribe needs all of it's members working together to survive, especailly one that is based on hunting/gathering. such a tribe has no place for you, you would only be a burden on them. because you come from a society that knows a large protion of it's members would leave it if they could, they don't teach people how to be self reliant. they want you to have to depend entirely on thier system.
*because of the reasons I've listed above and the ones I outlined earlier, tribes keep small numbers of people. they generally pratice population control, unlike our society. they know that they can only feed enough people as is equal to the amount of resources they have. the less people they have, the less work they need to do, and the less chance that those people will starve to death. sometimes people do starve to death. by saving people that can't sustain themselves all we do is ensure that even more people will starve to death later on, instead of letting the population balance itself out.
*most tribes are based on family units. this seems kind of obvious since people within the tribe marry others, and everyone is related. there leader is the eldest grandperson. This obviously won't work for us and that's why I suggested an alternate form of politcal election for my ideal system.
so as much as some of us may want to, it's not really viable to join and aboriginal tribe. But I hope you can see how we can put the ideals of a tribal and/or hunter gatherer system to use in our own modern society and we don't have to revert to the primative to do it, because that option is too far gone for us.
You don't vote for Kings! The Lady of the Lake must hold aloft the Sword Excalibur, thus proving that You are the Rightful King! (Sorry, slight Monty Python moment!)Originally Posted by Mr Karl
how about george dubya? (daddy's gonna buy ya a new presidency)Originally Posted by Agent Vicious Vivaldi
I vote. I actually care.
Weird to hear from a punk.
bravo, jax. you have hope in change too.Originally Posted by Jax
We use postal voting, it's a lot easier.
"If voting changed anything, it would be illegal."
- Ancient Klingon proverb
voting changes lot's, just look at canada, we're fucked here, at least I can say I voted for the other guy
I'd rather say that I have control of my own life and I don't need to check a box every four years so someone else can tell me what to do, who won't get elected anyway cuz there's only one person whose vote actually counts from each state, and he's put there by the people that own churches and guns and oil.
I have to believe that at least the ballots are run ethically and that every vote does count other wise ....... might as well start promoting the worst the world has to offer if you actually care about the world as a whole , of course the way things are are kinda messed but works for me so it cant be too bad
i must say i can't agree that ballots are always run ethically (eg bush having all the black voters in the southern states taken off the electoral lists just before they were going to vote for gore), however: while i don't think the current democratic system is perfect, i do believe it's still the best one going.Originally Posted by Mr Karl
there's nothing wrong with criticising the system, as long as you don't throw out the baby with the bath water. democracy is the best system because it was an improvement on whatever there was before.
doesn't mean it couldn't be better, that's all.
you should check out platos theory of revolution.
the first form of government is a monarchy. one guy has all the power and he becomes a jerk, so eventually the people rise up and take him out.
the second form of government is an oligarchy. a bunch of people get together to make a new government where there's not one kerk ruling it, and this lasts awhile. but those people in power get more wealthy and influential, and it turns into a pryamid scheme, and the lower classes become disenfracnhised, and so they have overthrow that government and form a democracy.
...which last for about five minutes, because no one can agree on anything and everyone just starts beating each other over the head and lighting shit on fire and turning cars over on 4th avenue, and one guy gets all the guns and whips everyone into shape and then forms a new monarchy.
so basically he figured that the best form of a government is a republic, because people need to have other people make thier choices for them, becuase they are too stupid to do it themselves. but what he didn't think about was that the people that make the choices are just as stupid as everyone else.
that's why, in his republic, plato recommends that government should be run by those who least want to do it.Originally Posted by Morning Glory
yea i think congress ought to be a 3 month job and people get picked out fo the jury pool
here is a little secret the jury pool is made up of registered voters which is why actors seldom vote if you dont want to be called for jury duty dont register to vote
this is all strange....morning glory, if democracy only last for so long until people get disgruntled then why is our government lasting so long?
we're were a republic.Originally Posted by BloodredProject2402
until the phantom menace started the clone wars, and now our sith overlord, and master has risen to become the emperor.
(seriously, we were never a democracy. we are a republic, which is sadly in shambles.)
the phantom menace is terrorism, the clone wars is middle eastern conflicts, and the sith lord is dubya? hm.. maybe george lucas wasn't as full of shit as I thought.
lucas' social commentary seemed pretty obvious at the time. look at the timing of each movie, as they came out.
it's almost enough to make a fellow take off his foil beanie.
but then the satelites would suck out your brains. jeez, you almost sounded like a crazy person for a minute there.Originally Posted by Buster Friendly
all political theory is just that, THEORY, nothing will ever work because of human nature. we are just a bunch of well dressed monkeys.
lol, monkeys that fit the role of planet of the apes( while we are on the topic of scifi movies).
i think people should actively be enouraged to become politicians, but in order to balance this there should be some severe drawbacks to becoming one.
perhaps every six months a registered politician would be selected from the pool and riddled with bullets.
perhaps every month.
haha, kinda conflicts the the no killing thing a little...
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