Zeitgeist

[Firis]

Re: Zeitgeist

Will someone that is intelligent (John Doe, perhaps) please explain to my juvenile mind that is quite confused right now, what is happening in our society? And please, none of the 'corporations own our mind, man' crap. Please, I just want to know whether the government is good or bad, what corporations have to do with any of this, and how the corporations can be linked to 9/11. That last one really ****s me. I for the life of me cannot understand why anyone would think the coporations staged 9/11. WTF somebodyhelpmyfragilemindthatisscaredaboutthegovernmentrightnow. Thank you

The government bieng good question is up too you.
Corporations are involved because they want uber profit (SUpposedly) and creating an enemy (Nazis, then The Reds and now Al Queda.) generates revenue somehow?

 

[Firis]

Re: Zeitgeist

The government bieng good question is up too you.
Corporations are involved because they want uber profit (SUpposedly) and creating an enemy (Nazis, then The Reds and now Al Queda.) generates revenue somehow?

There is your answer John.

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

Why do I post right before going to sleep? I knew this would happen.

A controlled demolition? I assume you (the video) are/is referring to the floor-by-floor collapse, which isn't hard to believe. Imagine a tower of steel-reinforced playing cards. Now imagine that it was burning, the steel compromised at the top, and the top floors collapsing on the lower floors. The force of the falling floors would be enough to cause the lower floors to collapse, one by one. The escaping gases that some would say are explosions coming out from the sides of the towers below the collapsing floors is from compressed air, mixed with dust and office supplies and scorching hot metal diffusing with the outside of the towers.

The supposed floor by floor collapse (the "pancake" theory) would mean that most of the inner core (basically a mesh of inverweaved steel girders) would have been still standing at the end of it. It also would have been alot slower than what has been recorded, which is almost freefall speed.

Building 7 did not fall in the exact same fashion. Similar, perhaps. It didn't have the impact of a huge plane. And I hate it that so many people think that only the towers and 7 fell that day. Several other surrounding buildings went down too - Building 7 was special though. It didn't have the structural support that other buildings have because it was a venue for rallies. Don't you hate it when you go to a big sports event and there's a cement support beam right in front of your seat? That didn't happen there because there weren't any, which made it easy for the debris of the other buildings to come crashing down the building. It was also on fire for the whole day before collapsing. Metal gets hot, it falls down, so it collapsed.

Have you seen that show on the discovery channel where they go around demolishing old buildings? It is exactly the same as that. Not just suspiciously similar, exactly the same.

This isn't hard to believe, but it's easy to disbelieve if you're of the type to do so.While you and others might dismiss this as a convenient excuse, I will say that this is because they intended to discuss classified materials and these terms provided plausible deniability had there been an information leak. What these classified materials were, I couldn't say. To suggest that Bush and Cheney would discuss something incriminating to those conducting the investigation would be absurd. That would be the same as telling the police "yes, I shot the sheriff, but don't tell anyone, okay?"

Who said they were going to discuss any classified materials? It seems to me that they could easily have been trying to get their stories consistent by doing it together, and didn't want anything to get out if they did blunder, which definitely isn't surprising considering Bush and Cheney's track record on public oopses.

They're doing it wrong. Yes, you need to get to about 1500C to melt steel, but you don't need it to get anywhere near that hot to compromise the integrity of steel, especially steel that's supporting a lot of weight. Straighten out a paperclip, then take the flame of a lighter to it. The paperclip doesn't melt, but it bends, it is compromised.

What about all the anecdotal evidence of molten metal pouring out of the structure then? The official report explains it as being molten steel (yeah, right). It's possible that it could be elemental iron, though, which is a byproduct of burning thermite (and anyone who'se seen Mythbusters knows that thermite is powerful shiz).

Shanksville:
It isn't like it was about to land and then the landing gear failed and it split down the side as is shown in movies, the plane was flying practically straight down at the speed of sound landing in fertile soil. BOOM, it was obliterated. There was debris, there was a lot of it. People came out the day after and said that they had a piece of it. I remember that, I saw it on the news eight years ago. It didn't look like a plane because it was smashed to bits, which again isn't hard to believe.

I'll buy that for now. I'll watch it again today, and see if I see anything which explains that.

Pentagon:
I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt here, I believe you may be mistaken, or perhaps the video is just wrong. There were pieces of debris at the Pentagon, on the lawn. If you mean why there wasn't a plane-shaped wreckage, it's because it was flying fast through sets of reinforced pillars through multiple walls in the Pentagon, something like an apple through a fruit slicer.

1. The supposed hijacker of the plane which supposedly flew into the Pentagon was supposedly a notoriously bad pilot.
2. He would have had to pull some crazy, nose-diving **** to hit the Pentagon, and navigate an obstical course (roads, street lights, other buildings) to hit it from the side.
3. All of the CCTV footage which captured the impact was immediately siezed by the FBI, and still hasn't been released.

It is my understanding that there were a dozen military jets in the air over the states that day, more or less.

Then why weren't the planes intercepted, as was the procedure for hijackings? It's all very convenient if you ask me.

What did we want? Prosperity comes in peacetime. That's why China seeks stability, especially in their region. They don't like North Korea or Iran starting a fuss because war is bad for national economies.

The western nations have never been more cooperative than they were when they were fighting the big bad communists. Having a collective enemy, even if they are only a scapegoat (which they invariably turn out to be anyway) unifies communities. They rally together to fight the common evil, and are willing to compromise their own liberties to try and fight it, ie. The Patriot Act. In the words of Alan Shore (imitating a senator), "Al Qaeda's coming! Get me my pen!"

It wasn't ignored, it was dismissed. This was poor work on our side, it was believed that the only real threat was in the Atlantic, that the Japanese wouldn't steam a navy across the Pacific, that distance kept us safe. Obviously, we were wrong.

Wrong enough to have a convenient excuse to join a war.

Tonkin, that wasn't our corporations, and was more a blunder than anything else. A misunderstanding that got turned into a good cluster****.

Again, it was still a convenient (and contrived) excuse to enter the war.

And our rules of engagement still suck today, but that's not a fault of the government except perhaps that they are too weak to stand up to criticism.
If we could have done away with the rules of engagement (who the hell has rules of engagement anyway? It's war.), we could have won Vietnam with bombs. We can win our current wars with bombs. Yes, there's that bit on collateral damage, but it's war. We killed how many in WW2 with atomic weapons? There was reasoning for it, reason being that win or lose, a conventional war would be too costly. Not just in money, but in body count.

We could have won Vietnam with bombs. Why didn't we? Because war is profitable, and the rules of engagement weren't designed to help win the war. They were designed to sustain it. The North Vietnamese even got a hold of them (I wonder how?) and tailored their strategies towards it!

I didn't see the pizza industry turning a profit from 9/11.

Special interests, yes I know about that. But Peavey doesn't fund these things, which is why I still say "some".I absolutely agree with that. I just don't think it has anything to do with 9/11.

It's not just "special interests" in politics. We all agree than money runs the world, right? We all know that 1% of people in civilised countries holds something like 50% of the wealth. WTF?! We cannot call it a democracy when there is such a disproportionate percentage calling the shots. But we all just continue to believe that we're free, and that it's us calling the shots. Watch Zeitgeist: Addendum.

A global government must come with the collapse of government, which doesn't happen if the government is thriving off of wars. Truth is that if war was a profitable venture, we'd be having a lot more of them, and they'd look more like the world wars instead of what we have today where we have whole days with no one dying.

War is a profitable venture. It means that the government borrows SHHEEEEIIITloads of money from the reserve bank (which the bank just creates out of thin air), to fund it.

The fact is, all money has been borrowed from the reserve bank by the government. That is how money gets made. The government still owes the banks that money, though, with interest. That means that all the money in America is owed to the reserve bank, as well as more. So the reserve bank needs to keep loaning money at interest to the government to cover that interest, snowballing the whole damn thing! It's a stupid ****ing system made by the top 1% to keep them in that top 1%, and to make sure us bottom 99%ers can't ever get a leg up. The thing is, most people are too stupid to understand what's going on, and they cannot do anything about it! It makes me so ****ing mad!

Two things:

One, it is a historical fact that Jesus exist(s/ed). Whether he is the son of God or not is another question.

Where's your evidence then? Can I see it? Where are the records? Hmm? The Romans loved them, why don't we have any that say "Jesus of Nazareth"? You'd think such a famous figure at the time (I mean, the guy went around curing diseases by not doing anything particularly special, and then ascended to heaven for all too see) would be worthy of note by the Roman administration.

Two, this is a bunch of conspiracy bull**** and you should be ashamed for even considering any of it. lol

Joke or not, that is how people are discouraged from being skeptical.

"It is sinful (for which you will go to hell and burn for eternity) to even suggest that eh US government could do anything bad." It's ****ing retarded!

Corporations: They have ALWAYS been minipulative cluster****s that steal money and cause wars, but I doubt they are takign over the world any time soon.

They already have.

I think it was Penn from Penn & Teller who said something along the lines of: If a government is powerful enough to attack its own country like that, how hard would it be for them to silence people who make these types of movies?

The very fact that the movies exist sorta discredits them, in a way.

Then Zeitgeist must be false, right? Just as I said; the fact that it exist discredits it. Killing a couple of film-makers and removing any trace of them and their little film is a trivial task in comparison to staging the 9/11 attack.

I was thinking about that whilst I was watching the movie... Maybe the whole movement is just what the corporations want, and we're playing right into their hands? It's either believe it and compromise it's credibility, or reject it and solidify it. I think it's safest to believe it and hope for the best.

My guess is, since there are ****loads of people who believed it, even before Zeitgeist was release, that they can't kill all of them. They're not omnipotent, after all, they just have a majority share.

No legitimate historian would deny the existence of Christ. I will not further this - it's not on topic.

Only because such a vast majority of people are under the illusion that he did exist, either because they're Christians, or because they too don't want to offend them.

Note: Internet is media, and who owns the internet? No one. If a government agency owned or regulated the internet, we wouldn't be having this discussion, and we'd both be shot.

The internet is the last true bastion of free speech and freedom. That's the reason why you don't see the Zeitgeist movie on TV. It's only on the internet.

The idea is to have limited government with a good separation of powers with real representation of the states. The current problem with our government is that the separation of powers is lopsided and our representatives and senators don't care what people want, instead doing what the wants of special interests, and that's a dangerous combo, especially when considering the huge amount of apathy in the country. Politicians depend on our apathy, they need us to not care. But that's not the topic.

Exactly! Why then, do we still just blindly follow the system?

Corporations and government have nothing to do with 9/11. No one made a profit, in fact we all lost money that day. And our war effort siphons money from us still. Taxes go up, cost of oil goes up, so that motive is out.

What profit goddammit tell me who made a buck off of 9/11, tell me. You can't, no one did, no one.

What was made was an excuse to go to war. As we know, war is the most profitable thing that can happen.

Will someone that is intelligent (John Doe, perhaps) please explain to my juvenile mind that is quite confused right now, what is happening in our society? And please, none of the 'corporations own our mind, man' crap. Please, I just want to know whether the government is good or bad, what corporations have to do with any of this, and how the corporations can be linked to 9/11. That last one really ****s me. I for the life of me cannot understand why anyone would think the coporations staged 9/11. WTF somebodyhelpmyfragilemindthatisscaredaboutthegovernmentrightnow. Thank you

Zeitgeist purports (rather well, if I must say) that the government is working for the corporations, and the corporations only care about making themselves richer, at any cost. I encourage you to watch the movies, and make up your own mind on it.

 

[Wonderfoole WINO]

Re: Zeitgeist

Hmmm... Do I dare get involved in this one?

Nah.

kthxbye.

 

[Firis]

Re: Zeitgeist

Damn Arseface, that is pretty well done. Ima sit back and watch this for now, I likey again.

 

[FableFreak]

Re: Zeitgeist

I've so far seen Zeitgeist 3 times. The first time I was in the same state as you, Arseface. Thinking, "OH MY GOD THIS SEEMS TOTALLY POSSIBLE AND PROBABLY IS!!!!!!11!!!!!1!"

I then watched it a second time, and logic kicked in. The third time I found myself screaming "Shut the f*ck up!" at my own computer screen.

(I'm not talking about the religious elements of the film. They are entirely plausible. The political aspects, however, are not.)

 

[Aions]

Re: Zeitgeist

Hmmm... Do I dare get involved in this one?

Nah.

kthxbye.

ditto........

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

I've so far seen Zeitgeist 3 times. The first time I was in the same state as you, Arseface. Thinking, "OH MY GOD THIS SEEMS TOTALLY POSSIBLE AND PROBABLY IS!!!!!!11!!!!!1!"

I then watched it a second time, and logic kicked in. The third time I found myself screaming "Shut the f*ck up!" at my own computer screen.

(I'm not talking about the religious elements of the film. They are entirely plausible. The political aspects, however, are not.)

I just finished watching both of them again, and I'm starting to think that maaaaybe the whole microchipping thing is a bit extreme. But the rest of it still scares me (well, it just really ****es me off).

The second one is much better. Instead of just making claims and leaving you to wallow in panic, it goes about explaining the state of things, and how it's all completely unsustainable (using nought but readily available knowledge and logic), and then goes about explaining what you can do to help.

 

[FableFreak]

Re: Zeitgeist

I found Addendum to be better, but difficult to watch overall.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Re: Zeitgeist

Hmmm... Do I dare get involved in this one?

Nah.

kthxbye.

ditto........

If you have nothing to add then dont add anything. Keeps the thread on topic. Keep up the mature conversations guys, some good debates going on in here without flaming. Lets keep it that way. ^_^

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

I found Addendum to be better, but difficult to watch overall.

How so?

Ten characters

 

[Purple Nurple]

Re: Zeitgeist

Wait.... people really believe that corporations are trying to take over the world by spending money training terrorists to hijack planes so they can make money by allowing America to go to war with terror so they make revenue? WTF
Am I missing something here?? :S

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

Wait.... people really believe that corporations are trying to take over the world by spending money training terrorists to hijack planes so they can make money by allowing America to go to war with terror so they make revenue? WTF
Am I missing something here?? :S

It's really not that far fetched. Just watch the movies.

 

[Wonderfoole WINO]

Re: Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist at least provides some food for thought. But I don't believe everything it says. Like the 9/11 stuff. I would agree that those events are definitely being used in the way that the movie says, and I agree that the official investigation into those events was less than satisfactory. But the stuff about the US being behind it? No, I don't think so.

The religion part, spot on. The stuff about money I think is somewhat true. Rich elite being the ones really in charge of things, what else is new? Not surprising really. He who controls the money controls everything, or course. Micro-chipping and one-world government? Nah.

Addendum was a bit happier, but I think the utopia they are trying to build is nothing more than a pipe dream. A good idea, but it will never happen. Especially with the passive way they expect to accomplish it with. Such drastic changes would require a massive and violent overthrow of the current system. I agree with the fact that money is sort of crippling our society and that we would be better off without it, I cannot however, envision any possible way of changing things.

That said, I'm still curious to see Zeitgeist 3. The main message behind the Zeitgeist movies (at least for me) is that there is a lot of BS in the world. BS is everywhere, BS is rampant, and people need to be able to detect the BS and fend it off whenever they encounter it.

Yeah, I know I said I wasn't going to get involved, but I couldn't help myself. And since (by some miracle) the discussion seemed to be going along civilly (unlike similar past threads) I figured I would bother to put my 2 cents in.

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist at least provides some food for thought. But I don't believe everything it says. Like the 9/11 stuff. I would agree that those events are definitely being used in the way that the movie says, and I agree that the official investigation into those events was less than satisfactory. But the stuff about the US being behind it? No, I don't think so.

Because you can't bear the thought of your own country doing something so horrible to it's own people? Some things are quite hard to swallow, so people like to stay in their little fantasy lands. I'm sure it would be hard for me were I in your position, but you can't take authority for truth. You have to take truth for authority.

Not saying it's that clear cut either. I'm not entirely convinced myself.

The religion part, spot on. The stuff about money I think is somewhat true. Rich elite being the ones really in charge of things, what else is new? Not surprising really. He who controls the money controls everything, or course. Micro-chipping and one-world government? Nah.

The EU is definitely a step down that road though. All it takes is for a few groups of countries to do it, and it will snowball (or domino, for you cold war fans).

Addendum was a bit happier, but I think the utopia they are trying to build is nothing more than a pipe dream. A good idea, but it will never happen. Especially with the passive way they expect to accomplish it with. Such drastic changes would require a massive and violent overthrow of the current system. I agree with the fact that money is sort of crippling our society and that we would be better off without it, I cannot however, envision any possible way of changing things.

Because you're not looking? Like the epilogue says, all that needs to change are a few people's minds (much like how the banks manipulated the minds of so many), and mass change can be initiated. It's like I keep saying, you can't expect to change the world if you believe that it's inherently unchangeable.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Zeitgeist

Lol I JUST SAID THIS IS A DEMOCRACY. Therefore killing the filmakers and burning their tapes wewd be communist or facist or w/e and people wewd get mad. So they make a website like youtube-you tubed- to get get everyone together. So they keep the crazies from converting others and also help them think they can change things sitting on a computer. theres the red side and the blue side but they both just use eachother to support themselves. Its all a show for you to believe you hold any power. Obama has a myspace for christs sake.

Your argument doesn't hold water. If a government is able to stage the 9/11 attacks they are able to secretly eliminate a couple of punkass filmmakers and their movie without anyone being none the wiser.

I never said anything about publicly executing them.

EDIT: Also, sorry, but there is no way I can take you seriously with that sort of spelling...*shrugs*

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

Except the twin towers had burning jet fuel all over them and they were hit by planes, and 7 was burning for eight hours before finally falling.

*sigh* the official theory is that the jet fuel compromised the steel supports, and that due to that compromise the floors detatched from the support structure, and "pancaked". Presumably this would be much slower than what the videotapes show, and would also leave an intact steel support structure (because the floors detached from it).

Right, I realize that American presidents are known to be consistent with everyone else in their administration.

I'm just saying that with something as sensitive as this, consistency would be paramount. If they are as innocent as they claim, then why not be interviewed seperately, publicly and under oath, as was the original request?

If that is in the official report, it would not be the only factual error in it.

Better yet, hot spots were spooted in the rubble weeks after the collapse which were burning at over 400 degrees celcius (with many being over 600). The burning temperature of jet fuel is below 300. It is possible that it was elemental iron, which is a product of a thermite reaction (which can reach temperatures of over 2000 degrees celcuis)

And he was a notoriously bad pilot when it came to bringing the plane down, didn't go through the landing lessons I guess. Wasn't a nosedive, He hit everything on that obstacle course. You like physics, think about the kind of force that plane was moving with and how much it would have taken to stop it. I've seen small cars take out street lights, I can only imagine what a plane could do.

I'm under the impression that him (as well as the other pilots) executed immensely difficult maneuvers shortly before their impacts. Professional airline pilots have been quoted as saying that nine times out of 10 they would not have been able to perform those maneuvors (my spell checker isn't working today).

I imagine picking out four planes with their transponders disabled on all the blips on the radar would have been a little more than difficult.

How so? You don't need to have a plane's transponders active for it to show up on radar, that's the nature of radar. They knew where the planes were, they just didn't know whether it was a real world scenario or an excercise.

I hated the Patriot Act, many Americans did. It is a breach of our liberties and in the words of Benjamin Franklin, "those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." I will say that the west did get together because the west was the target. How many Islamic extremists have to blow themselves up in the UK in a single day to convince them to join the effort? How many would it take for Australia?

We're already apart of the effort. Our blind assistance of American interests is something that angers many Australians. The west has rallied to try to stop terror, then. The plan is working!

Discussion on our banking system ends, now. At least with me. I believe for any discussion to be beneficial, you will need to learn the core functions of the treasury and federal reserve, how it's supposed to work and how it actually works, or at least hand a general understanding.

Argue it with me then. Point out the flaws in my knowledge. The worst thing that will happen is that I'll have to do some of my own research.

Anyway, do we agree that the USA went into Iraq not because of anything other than protecting it's financial interests (oil, opium, whatever).

First, I didn't say what you have me quoted as saying.

I wasn't quoting you. I was merely paraphrasing the argument that hardline, conservative Americans use so effectively to keep the ignorant people ignorant.

I'd like to think that the reason is because not enough people will watch Zeitgeist on the air to make a network to profit from advertising.

Why not? It's got massive cut following, primarily on the internet. If they put it on the History channel, I'm sure it would get loads of views. They keep many shows with poor ratings in circulation, why not replace some of those?

Define 'we'. I don't blindly follow this system. I am aware of its flaws and I speak against them, but I do not accuse them of 9/11 because I see no gain.

I'm talking about "we" as a race. The majority of people in the world (probably) see democracy and capitalism as the be all and end all of human governance. This is because the ruling class benefit so much from that system, and they are protecting their interests by trying to preserve it.

The state of things is completely unsustainable. It's on the verge of collapse. Nothing to do with 9/11.

**** 9/11, we're in agreement. Seeing this, can you not as easily see that the whole Venus Project thing is something to work towards? It IS an easily attainable future if everyone just stops not caring!

I will merely agree that the investigation has not led to satisfactory answers.

Then why are we not doing anything about it?

Our government does horrible things to us all the time, breeding intolerance of opposing opinions and creating dependency on the government, creating a new generation of entitled. If that's not horrible, I don't know what is.

Then why are we not doing anything about it?

About 9/11, I hated Clinton and Bush for allowing it to happen, I hated Bush for not doing things the right way, I hate Obama for not only continuing to do things the wrong way but advancing policies that will make us more vulnerable and cut more freedoms.

THEN WHY ARE WE NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!

I must rep+1 this.

Thank you, kind sir.

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

And as I said before, they were probably there to talk about classified information. I don't know about your nation, but our nation takes an interest in keeping our national secrets secret, means things are done privately and off the record to allow for plausible deniability.

Well... Australia doesn't have any national secrets. We're boring like that. The fact is that that is why the system is so corrupt. Organisations (governments and corporations alike) are only interested in short term self preservation and not doing what is best for the species as a whole.

And the composition of thermite can't be naturally found in scorched, shattered, compromised and rusted metals. Got it.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. Could you rephrase or expand it?

I've got you covered, 'maneuvers'. I'd expect you'd do the same for me because I really hate it when I can't spell stuff. Anyway, these guys were poor pilots, what maneuvers would have been necessary to fly into the side of a building? Others have done it unintentionally, so I can't imagine it being difficult.

First of all, that's a Cirrus SR20 light plane, which is MUCH more maneuverable than a Boeing 757.

You can see the plane on radar, as well as every other plane out there. The transponder does more than transmit location, but also identification. Without identification, there's no telling if it's a plane having some malfunctions or if it's been hijacked or if the pilot just neglected to make sure it was on. And if they couldn't tell the difference between "hey is this the real deal" and "ten points for each plane guys!" there's a legitimate cause for hesitation. It's not everyday that we're expecting planes to be hijacked after all.

My solution would be this: filter all the planes which were transmitting their signals at you, and you're left with the ones that aren't. It would have been much easier to pick them out of that handful. Considering NORAD is designed specifically for this sort of thing, I can't imagine that no one would have thought of that.

It just takes a national disaster to change the popular opinion of things. If a bus explodes in Sydney and they find the charred remains of fingers belonging to a known Islamic terrorist and he killed forty people with no conceivable reason except that he wanted to spread fear and try to persuade the Australian government to not assist the states, what would happen?

Who's to say the State's wouldn't try the same thing? Who's to say some corporation wouldn't? The USA's security agencies have an outstanding track record of planting evidence, particularly with 9/11.

Opium - Afghanistan. And that wasn't our financial interest, it isn't our oil. While gas prices are cheaper here than most other places, the prices hit an all-time high during this conflict. We suffered because of that. When is it in the American interest to hurt our own economy?

And you don't think the oil companies aren't taking in those enormously inflated revenues and laughing all the way to the bank?

Now, if we did things the old-fashioned way and staked claim on that oil as a spoil of war, then yea, this would be a valid point. But this didn't happen so the motive of oil is moot.

You guys tried to get Saddam to sell you cheap as **** oil. He didn't. You tried to assassinate him. Didn't work. You tried to invade Iraq to get him to sell you cheap oil. Still didn't. You finally had enough of his uncooperative ways, manufactured a false flag stunt to get public support behind a war, and you went in and got the bastard.

Let's clear this up. Exhibit A1, exhibit A2. I never say lol. And while I agree with Tyloric, that's not the argument I would use, because as you well know it doesn't work on those I'd be trying to persuade.

Sorry, I must have put the wrong quote tag on that post. I still stand by what I said though.

Perhaps to avoid boycotts. It doesn't take much for people to say that they won't watch a network, and it doesn't take much for advertisers to stop sponsoring a network. Really, it doesn't.

People would boycott an entire network because of Zeitgeist? Maybe the ones who believe the various lies spun by the puppet masters, in the form of religion, patriotism, natinoalism, and various other aspects of modern human behavious which are considered normal? They believe in them so strongly that they reject anything which conflicts with their established world view? Reality is emergent, people, not fixed.

I get to define what an adequate lifestyle is and not the government.

What is an adequate lifestyle for you?

I take care of me and not anyone else.

You're selfish.

I like that I can decide what an adequate transport for me is

What is an adequate transport for you?

what an adequate residency for me is

What is an adequate residency for you?

what an adequate healthcare plan for me is

What is an adequate healthcare plan for you?

what an adequate diet for me is

What is an adequate diet for you?

I like that I can decide how much of my money I spend or save, and how I want to go about doing it. I like that I can go anywhere in my country and apply for any job I want, and I like that employers don't have to hire me if they don't want to, and I like that people more qualified and more able will get preference over me.

Imagine a place with no money, no jobs, no employers, no qualifications, no preferences, no nations, and no borders. People can do whatever they want, and their time isn't owed to anyone but themselves. John Lennon had the right idea, too bad someone assassinated him.

I like our system, I just don't like what's happening to it now. But I'll say it again, the problems we're having with this is not anyone's doing except the government's. Businesses will be devastated if we keep going in this direction, our way of life will be gone, and government will have all the power, no one else.

Then why aren't you trying to change things?

No. That is one-world government. I thought we were afraid of one-world government. It won't be politically implemented in that rosy form, it will be slowly implemented with regulations that take away liberties and replace them with rules.

The whole idea that a one world government is bad really only applies to a one world government under a monetary system. What we're talking about is communism taken to it's logical conclusion. We have the ability to come up with technology which will feed us, clothe us, do every day chores, etc. We don't have that technology yet because abundance is bad for the economy!

The investigation is as done as it will ever be. Fact is that it would be easier now to find out who killed JFK than to find out all the details of 9/11 in entirety, we missed the window for that. It's more than unfortunate, but unless you have a time machine, I'm at a loss.

So you're happy to just put your hands up and walk away, when you know that you're being lied to? What's wrong with you?

I vote. That's what I do about it. And I encourage others to do the same.

You vote for a leader who promises to make the world a better place, but he doesn't. He just follows along the same path as the others and keeps driving the world into the dirt. And when that happens, you're all left stupified about how it happened. It's happened every single time in history, and you think that this time is going to be different. The political system doesn't work, and all you do about it is live in your little fantasy land and hope that the next time, you'll get someone who can do the work properly. Politicians don't fix problems, they manage them. Technology fixes problems. It's time we advanced it enough so that we can achieve what the Venus Project is trying to do.

Should also say that I thank you. Usually this discussion comes up with idiots and I'd rather surgically remove my ears than talk about it, but you're making this more productive. Because even if I do disagree on most things here, we can find agreement here and there and not have to resort to exchanging rounds of "well you suck" posts.

Well, I try. I hope my last bit there didn't offend you, but I'm passionate about this shiz.

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

We're corrupt because we keep secrets? Our country 'marginalizes' specific key people of enemy factions in countries that we're not even allowed to know the name of, which is very exaggerated but in sincerity, it shouldn't be thought silly for a nation such as ours to keep secrets. I suppose we could tell everyone in the world exactly how to build a high-yield nuclear weapon and a missile delivery system instead of keeping it a secret, but I'm not sure that would be prudent.

Keeping secrets is an excercise in selfishness and greed, and that, in turn, is driven by fear. I agree that telling everyone how to build ICBMs probably would be a bad idea. The point is that it shouldn't matter. Every human is the same. We shouldn't fear each other. We shouldn't try to hurt each other.

NORAD couldn't find a plane on top of their HQ let alone anywhere else. There was a major failure on the parts of them and especially FAA ATCs who you would think would notice a plane flying without an active transponder for two hours. And let's not forget that repeatedly, airport security was found to be grossly insufficient before 9/11 and instead of fixing it, they moved investigators to other airports. It is not that everyone dropped the ball on 9/11 but had dropped the ball over a long period of time and decided not to pick it back up because it's cheaper that way. I blame everyone for that. That was their fault, the fault of our government, but it was not an elaborate plot conceived a decade in advance with the intention of having our country hit where we thought we were safest.

You think it's just a coincidence that NORAD catastrophically failed on the one day out of their entire existence that they were needed most?

Let's take away motive first - if we want a war, we go to war. Simple as that. But if America needed to make ourselves look like we were doing some righteous retaliation in which we would have divine support, we could have had a large number of non-existent Americans get beheaded in Afghanistan, because it's cheaper and you'd probably find that more plausible, all while not destroying our financial center or killing thousands of Americans or making airport security exponentially more of a pain in the arse yet equally unsafe.

I honestly do not think that the scenario you depicted there would have been enough to initiate a war. It needed to look like someone had committed an act of war, not terrorism.

Not when those revenues are worth half of what they would have been worth. Those same oil companies would be making a killing in profits if we were to use our own oil. But leftists think that drilling is bad.

I thought you were saying that you didn't get a majority of your oil from the various Middle Eastern warzones? What, then, is raising the production costs? The oil companies are scapegoating the wars in order to raise the prices of a commodity that they know is necessary. It's necessary because the energy companies keep burning inefficient fossil fuels in order to maintain scarcity in the market.

Dude, people boycotted Beck because he called Obama a racist. I can only imagine what people would do if a network were to air Zeitgeist, but it would most certainly be worse than a boycott.

Because most people have been indoctrinated to be closed minded, to preserve the current system.

"Adequate" is relative, and as such it is whatever I want it to be. If I want more, I need to make more money, so I work more. If I can do with less, I can work less. And that's my choice, my right, my decision, a decision I wouldn't have in many other places. With freedom comes personal responsibility, it isn't selfish to say that I'd sooner take care of myself than a stranger. If I had to choose between feeding myself or feeding you, you can bet that I'm going to have a full stomach and I'm sure it'd be the same if it was a choice you had to make.

Why not share the food? Humans are not seperate, we are one. I would sooner try to feed everyone equally than myself wholly. The world I'm talking about doesn't have any work. There is total abundance. If you want more food, it is provided to you. There is no quid pro quo necessary.

But okay, let's do this, if everyone was taken care of, who takes care of them? Government. Did I mention that government employees in the states make $30K more than those in the private sector, on average? That's government taking care of government. If it was the government's choice to decide how much we were going eat, we'd both have less and they'd have more. As it is with all government control, and it is worth saying again, we'd both have less and they'd have more.

When everyone has everything they need and more (that is, not just a minimum determined by an arbitrary entity, but literally as much as they could want) there is no need for the government (and we do agree that someone has to be making the decisions) to "take care" of anyone. The government simply organises and distributes the resources. No one would be selfish, because being selfish requires you to deprive someone of something. There would be such a level of availability (of resources) that taking as much as you want would not deprive anyone.

Yea, it's also too bad that he did not believe in this idea in the same way you and so many others do. Also, who killed him and why? I suppose I would be upset too if I lived by his music to find out that he had a very comfortable life with all the things he said to give up. Imagine is just a song about peace and love, something that Lennon strongly advocated. I can dig peace and love, I don't much like the idea of a single government owning everything and dictating how much of what is adequate for us to receive, beyond which we cannot have.

Whether Mr. Lennon believed it or not is irrelevant. He had the right idea. It's the only way humanity can survive in the long term.

Imagine a place with only one employer, the government.
Imagine a place with no jobs, except government jobs.
Imagine a place with no personal responsibility, only government control.
Imagine the kind of hell hole that would be - they would do that to the whole world, the entire planet, that is the red end game, complete control. Government loves to nanomanage people, and on a global setting that means they'll be telling you how much of what type of toilet tissue to use, if not just handing you the maximum allotted amount of four sheets of. Control.

That's a horrible place. Far from the one I'm talking about.

I'm voting. The vote is the most powerful tool of a democratic state, and I'll explain later.

The feeling of power you get from voting is a contrived illusion.

Oh, so if we have money, then it's bad. The rest of it can be completely the same, but if we don't have money it will be just peachy. If there's no money, what's left? Control, and who would have it? Government. That is what there is to be feared. That is what there is to be avoided. And if it's global, there is no alternative. I've forgotten how many Americans left the states to live throughout the world in communist states, but it's not as many people as those who fled communist states to come here.

Money is control. Money enslaves us and divides us. The monetary system rewards corruption and punishes ethics. Without money there is freedom.

Communism, when worked out to it's logical conclusion, leads to collapse. It doesn't work because of the very nature of man.

Let me stop you there. Man's nature is as it is because of one fundamental characteristic of an inhibited system: scarcity. In the wild, food is scarce, so animals must compete. We are not wild any longer, and resources are not as scarce as we are led to believe. We have the technology to provide all the resources we need in such an incredible abundance, that man's nature will become cooperative, rather than competetive.

The government decides is 'adequate'. There has to be a government definition for 'adequate' because we as individuals will all have our own individual definition to 'adequate'. This global definition for how much we need will be much less than what I consider to be adequate. So I'm going to want more. In that climate, I can't have more.

In the climate which I am advocating, that will be far from the case. Abundance.

In a capitalist state, all I have to do is work more to earn more, and then I can have more, and no one decides for me how much is adequate. I like that system.

Wrong. What decides how much you can have is determined by a number of variables. Your employer has to pay you a certain amount. Your willingness to work (which is a myth anyway. Work is not optional, therefore it is a form of slavery). Your ability to work. All these decide how much is adequate, and ineed, how much has to be adequate.

If you haven't noticed, people are still questioning who killed JFK. It's a sad truth, but if you don't get it then and there, you're not going to get it. It's not like in twenty years, someone will find something and say "hey guys, it was Nixon!"

You're never going to find anything if you stop looking.

Well, someone here is living in a fantasy land, but it isn't me. This political system is the strongest system in the world, and the reason that it is strong is because it is a limited and balanced government (or was, anyway) with liberties given to the people and control not given to the government. We have the shortest constitution ever written that is still used today, lasting longer than any other used today. And it's a work-in-progress as it should always be. In this way, we can adapt and hold on to liberties at the same time. The vote gives individuals the power to change their government as they see fit, and when politicians aren't doing their jobs, they lose their jobs.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Name one change that has been proactive and initiated by politicians.

Because of our political apathy and countless circumstances that allowed Obama to take the presidency (including his opposition being exactly the same as him and an alarming number of people who found novelty in a Black president worthy of a vote), we have taken these hits. It's our fault, but this political climate of politicians going in the exact opposite direction of the public majority has shaken and awakened enough people that these politicians should be seriously considering their futures - thank God they don't listen to us, they'll be soooo surprised.

It's not your fault. You've been manipulated. It is not a democracy when only the people who can afford the enormous costs of advertising their candidacy can become successful politicians.

In the years that I've lived in this city of mine, we have had six different mayors, and my understanding is that we've had several more in the years before me. They were ousted for not doing their job, some were involved in scandals, others were just expecting a paycheck for doing nothing, and still others were simply giving themselves the city's money through city contracts given to relatives that were never fulfilled. That's why they're out, and that's why our current mayor works his arse off, does his best to keep a clean image, and is transparent enough that I can see what he ate for lunch. It's like that with all of our officials, most have had their positions for less than a year, having replaced their shamed predecessors who will never find work in this city again. This is the power of the vote.

Local politics is slightly different, and ultimately of little consequence. I'm talking about the peopl at the top. The presidents, the prime ministers, the CEOs, etc. They have much more resources at their disposal, and are better able to maintain their cover and hide their true agendas.

 

[Arseface]

Re: Zeitgeist

And yet there are bad people in the world who would love to try and hurt as many people as possible. I mean, dude, Firis. Could you imagine what he'd do if he had the ability to do it? And I have to say that the act of keeping secrets isn't selfish in itself. If you were to confide in me that you were of a different persuasion and I turned around and told your mum that her son likes dudes, surprise! Secrets aren't always bad.

Only because of manufactured scarcity. Lets examine the reason why people keep secrets. People hide informations because:

1. They think that they will have that information used against them
2. They think that they can use that information against someone

In scenario 1, the desire to hide knowledge is brought on by fear. A fear that they will lose resources. Since no one will have a reason to take anyone else's resources then this is an obsolete mechanism in a resourse based economy (where resources are totally abundant)

In scenario 2, the desire to hide knowledge is brought on by greed. Again, since greed (or being greedy) involves depriving people of their resources, this is also an obsolete mechanism.

No. Anything a decade in the making is no coincidence. Them, and FAA and it's important I mention that, have both failed to maintain a high enough standard of basic function. It's like... okay so I drive a Noradi and it is powered with a FAAg engine, I haven't maintained it in years, not even so much as changed the oil, and it is likely to fail at any time. And it does fail, breaks down all the time, and the mechanic patches it up just enough and warns me to have it fixed immediately and I ignore him because fixing it would be expensive. Then it fails again when I need it most when it's raining planedrops. That's my fault. Yes, they failed, but it's my fault. Or in the grander case, the fault of the government neglecting to fix the problem. The government is not responsible for the planedrops, but it is most definitely responsible for neglecting to fix the Noradi.

No coincidence, you say? And they were kept from fuctioning properly by the government, you say? That would sure make it easy for the government to sneak through it's own defences.

And the beheading of several Americans would not be considered provocation enough to go to war? Think about it, what if it were Australians? What would your country do? Again, maybe things are different in other countries, but I happen to know that we get seriously butthurt when heads start coming off. Daniel Pearl x50. Again, it would have been much less devastating than, you know, flying planes into our grandest financial centers.

The silent beheding of 100 Americans, who supposedly chose to go to the Middle East out of their own conviction, on Middle Eastern soil, is not an act of war. It is a crime, and a horrible one at that, but not an act of war. It needed to look like there was an attack, not merely a provocation, (a punch as opposed to a verbal taunt), on American soil. Daniel Pearl x 500 has nothing on 9/11 x 1.

Several factors. One of them is that we also get oil from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, nations that do not approve of our actions. That and our politics are swaying speculation that we will be drilling for less oil here at home, which means we have to buy more from others. Then there's the detail of cap'n'tax that would kill the refineries. Our current president acknowledges and anticipates on oil costs, and other 'dirty' energy (natural gas, coal, nuclear, stuff like that) costs skyrocketing, the resulting prices of which he will cite when promoting clean energy legislation that will give buttloads of energy contracts to General Electric, owner of NBC media. This is the power of regulation. The solution to it is to get rid of regulation and take power away from the government. If it's not their job to do these things, they won't be able to screw it up.

Ok, so investing in clean energy will create contracts for General Electric. This will generate money for them, will it not? It's all part of the plan.

You mentioned sharing. I like sharing. I do my fair share of sharing. Sharing is taking something you own and giving it voluntarily to others. You could not share in your preferred climate because it would not be something you yourself would own, it belongs to the government.

No, it belongs to everyone. The government merely organises and distributes it.

And that's the problem with all this - total abundance, on a global level, where everyone and their mother is taken care of, cannot exist under government management. In the Venus project, individuals would have to surrender ownership of natural resources for the greater whole but who manages it? Government.

There woudn't be any surrenderring of ownership, which is what we're actually doing now. We would be claiming (rightfully so) that all of Earth's natural resources are common heritage, and should be used to make this environment a better place for everyone (humans, animals, plants, everyone).

They would decide who gets what, 'adequate' amounts of everything we need, and anyone who would want more than that would be 'selfish'. So if I want a two-pound steak twice a week, I would be hogging resources and wouldn't be allowed to do this.

You said yourself that adequate is subjective. Since everyone get's all they want, they will have what is adequate for themselves. The government doesn't decide that, people do. The government merely does what they are supposed to be doing now: working for us, and not controlling us.

You also have to consider the crime factor that comes into play when government makes such decisions. It wouldn't be prohibition in it's purest form, but it would be prohibition of everything to a limited extent - rationing. Rationing would be the result because government wouldn't be able to allocate the supply needed, because as I've stated several times before in one way or another, government couldn't find it's way out of a box without a compass and someone from the private sector to read the compass... to bad there wouldn't be any private sector... If I can't legally have cartons of cigarettes, bottles of booze, freezer full of meat and fridge full of fresh food, I'm going to get these things illegally. If someone tells me to stop drinking, I'll likely shoot them.

Maybe you're democratic, capitalist government is incompetent. This government (the one envisioned by the Venus Project) is not. It is much smaller, and since there is total abundance, there is no reason to deprive anyone of anything. Especially since it would be mostly automated anyway.

But if government distributes needed resources, that arbitrary entity must then define what quantities of what resources are needed. Take a look at any government that has ever done this and you'll see that their definition is now often thought of as 'inadequate'.

It'll be like this:

I'll decide I want some tasty beef, so I'll call the government and tell them I want some tasty beef. They'll send me some tasty beef. If I decide that I want more tasty beef the next week, then I'll tell the government, and they'll send me more than last time. Everyone will be able to do this. Do you not understand that?

What's the long term? My understanding is that we've been surviving for millennia, which is significantly longer than any standing government has been around. Even in the longest lasting civilizations, there was trade. And what is trade but an exchange of one thing for another, and on a larger scale that's a market. People traded because individuals had things that other individuals wanted. They didn't want to put it all in a pot and dictate how much of what everyone gets, because no one would have wanted this back then. Why anyone would want it now is beyond me.

No one wants this. What we want is a society that has as much as it could ever want, and is free from performing tasks that they do not want to do. It is easily achievable now that we have the technology. All that is required is a shift in the prevailling zeitgeist.

While that's not what you may have in mind, it is what government has in mind. They like that kind of stuff. Big government loves the idea, because it means complete control. It's a matter of bait and switch, and instead of a utopia you get a Soviet Union on a global scale that is more difficult to break free from and will take much longer to repair. How are those soviet states doing now... surely the ones that are still practicing some form or another of socialism have been living prosperously now that they've addressed and corrected the flaws, I'm sure technology innovation is flourishing and no one is hungry and everyone's just peachy, which would explain why so many of their citizens now live in the states. That makes perfect sense. I will elaborate on the matter of 'bait and switch' in a minute.

Those socialist states are like that because of two reasons:

1. They don't have the technology to provide them that level of abundance; and most importantly,
2. Their leaders have become corrupt as **** because there was no way to achieve the utopia they sought.

Now we are knowledgable enough, and wise enough, to achieve it.

And the power you get when surrendering the vote is none. I have a mayor and city administration that I like, a commissioner and county administration that I like, a governor and state administration that I like, and a representative and two senators that I like. In Texas, the state majority also likes these people (at least the governor and senators, don't think other districts care about my representative when they have their own) and votes are what put that together.

You have an administration that you think you like. I'm sure that if you saw how corrupt these people really are then you'd change your mind.

No, regulation is control. Regulation encourages corruption. If there is a nation-wide law that prohibits insurance services across state lines*, that means Oxford Health Plans can gouge prices in New York** because there's more money there, and New Yorkers can't buy into equivalent health plans from Kansas insurance companies that cost a fraction of the price. Regulation did that, not money.

*Fun fact, there is.
**Fun fact, they do.

And tell me what are you regulating? The flow of money. And without money there is nothing to regulate, and you become free. Free market economics merely gives the illusion of freedom, because it allows those who become wealthy the means to remain wealthy. It rewards corruption and punishes ethics. It rewards scarcity and punishes efficiency and abundance.

Scarcity? Oh right, abundance. Look, if I have everything that I can possibly imagine ever needing and wanting in abundance, and I see that you have a nice steak, I'm going to want your steak despite having an abundance of my own.

What warped logic lead you to that conclusion?

Two cavemen live in adjoining caves, both have wives, both have stockpiles of food and bearskins, both have sizable territories. Their needs are satisfied. One caveman notices that the other has a prettier wife, and so kills him, takes the woman, takes the cave, takes the land, takes the food, takes the bearskins, then notices that his new land adjoins with that of a neighbor with a pretty wife.

That is a flawed analogy. The caveman with the plain wife should have a closet of prettier wives to choose from, thus negating his need to kill his neighbour's wife.

In real life, I have several semi-domestic cats on my land and I put out buckets of food for them, and there are rats and squirrels and bugs and snakes and scorpions and everything else they eat out there. I put out buckets of water when it hasn't rained in a while. And it's a pretty big place. So - they have food, water and territory to an abundance. They still fight each other, for no apparent reason, maybe one cat's crapping spot is better than the others, I don't know. But you don't get rid of desire by getting rid of scarcity, because desire does not come from scarcity.

Desire for scarce resources fuels competition. Desire for abundant resources fuels nothing, because the supply satisfies the demand.

I sincerely believe that such abundance is not manageable by a government, let alone even achievable by the government.

Not by your corrupt, inefficient government, no, but by a cooperative, honest government.

I was using the shortened version of the system. Work is optional, I don't have to work. Why work when you can everything handed to you? If I wanted, I could knock up my roommate (granted I had her consent, of course) and we wouldn't have to work again. Our lives would be less than what I consider adequate but we wouldn't have to work. I prefer to work because I like deciding my housing and transportation instead of getting whatever the government is willing to pay for to feed entitlement. The entitled are the slaves, Clinton made a few efforts to reform our Medicaid system to encourage people to find work instead of coming back for more benefits - unsuccessfully. Politicians love the idea of dependents.

In a monetary based economy, you have to do something in order to be given money. It doesn't just appear in your bank account like mana from heaven. Not to mention that if it did, that would inflate the money supply, decreasing it's value, but that's beside the point. In a resource based economy, there is no absolute requirement to work. People pursue whatever interest's them, because everything is provided for them.

What I earn is dependent on many variables, but the core variable is how much I'm willing to put in. What I have is dependent on how much I spend after earning. Of course, without a monetary system and with government owning anything, I guess I could never save up any money despite working my arse off. That sounds like slavery.

"Imagine no possessions." The government doesn't own anything. Everyone owns everything. In a resource based economy, you don't have to work your arse off to provide yourself with an "adequate" standard of living.

True. Hmm... hey have they found Atlantis yet? Have conspiracy theorists found significant enough evidence that we went to the moon yet? I don't know if it works on a first-come; first-serve basis but either way seems pretty futile.

Atlantis is a myth, and whether there are city ruins in the Mediterrainian sea is a moot point. Discovering such a location doesn't serve any use. The moon landing conspiracy is like playing Stairway to Heaven backwards. You only discover something suspicious if you know exactly what you're looking for.

Finding out who killed JFK (if indeed there was a greater agenda behind it), and what really happened leading up to and on 11/9/2001 would serve to help dispel the illusion of freedom and control we have in our own lives.

It's not that I don't care - I do, I simply see no significant gain. Yes, we could know as much as possible after thoroughly investigating it all and everyone even remotely involved in any way for a whole twenty years, but it's not going to fix our economy or our political climate, something that I believe takes priority, else history will be a lot less important than having to stand in a bread line for a government issue bowl of soup.

The economy has always needed fixing. That is a constant. Do you wonder why? Because politicians enjoy the status quo, and maintaining it is in their interests.

Back to bait and switch. Instead of 'enslaving' a nation under the face of Communism, governments have come to 'liberating' their people under the face of freedom, and instead of fighting the enslavement, we would be content with our 'freedom'. I think you would need to be an American to be able to fully understand that social programs like Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and welfare, and the income tax that was supposed to fund it all were 'given' to us while promoting the idea of freedom in the guise of salvation. We were free, regulations took that away. Again, the solution is to take away the regulations, not allow the government to have more power and dictate how we're to live our lives.

The whole bait and switch thing is a reality only under an inhibited system. If we had abundance, no one would want to try and control anyone, therefore, there would be no corruption. All that needs to happen for the transition to be 100% successful if for our minds to change.

I'll name two. Ann Richards, Texas governor, gave control of schools to individual districts, as opposed to the state telling everyone how the schools should be run.

In this way, cities could manage their schools as they saw fit instead of the state. And Jimmy Carter, that assbag who I hate so much... or was it Reagan... reformed the VA in a time when veterans were treated like crap by people in the Veterans Affairs.

Both of those examples are reactionary attempts to garner public support.

Now, name one innovation that will improve standards of living and ways of life under the Venus project.

Energy production. We have the ability to produce clean, efficient, cheap, almost infinite energy for everyone on the planet. We don't though, because the monetary system rewards scarcity.

But it's our fault for allowing this to happen. If we don't take responsibility for what we've done, we won't acknowledge the problem and fix it. When the people voluntarily give the power to someone who would take it away, it's their own doing. If you gave me the power to slap you and surrender your power to retaliate, and I slap you repeatedly and relentlessly, that's you're doing - you did that. Anyone who gives power to government deserves whatever government has in store for them.

You can't solve that problem and maintain a monetary system. The monetary system is designed so that whoever has more money is at an advantage. Even if everyone has the ability to advertise their candidacy (which would undermind the monetary system anyway), then the more wealthy people would still be able to win.

What you say is of little consequence is of big consequence here, just limited to our own people, which is important because I'm sure we do things here in a way that people in other places wouldn't like, which is why they do things their way. In the tiers of government, the one that has done most for us is that lowest tier. As it should be in limited government, where the smallest government is the most powerful, that was the idea. Cities take care of themselves with every right not reserved by the higher governments, as do counties, districts, states, up to the top where government should be weakest at the federal level. The limitations put on the government by our Constitution was to make sure that we always have the highest protection of liberties, that no one could do anything to directly affect us in a way that we didn't want. If California wants crazy state laws that drive their wealthy out of the state and into places like Texas, cool, that's their thing and it doesn't affect me in a negative manner. If the federal government instates some crazy federal laws that apply to everyone in the country, then that affects me in a way I do not want. With limited government, the people can take care of themselves as they see fit instead of how the federal government.

That's only to avoid micro management. Do you think for one second that if the government could efficiently administrate every level of government, that it wouldn'?