Speaking of Politics ...

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Speaking of Politics ...

Post by fieldshowqueen » Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:45 pm

Politics Explained
So ... we just had an election. Which of these explains your situation? LOL. Enjoy and discuss if you feel a need ...

Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

Bureaucratic Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as as the regulations say you need.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes the milk.

Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

Libertarian/Anarcho-Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

:)
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by senza cervello » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:22 pm

:rotf: :bow:
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by Gonzofoto » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:28 pm

This might be a little heavy-handed, but I trust people will see the parallels. Or not.

American Free-Market Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbor has 6,000, and counting. You try your best to feed, milk and sell the products from your small herd. Your neighbor consistently undercuts your prices, steals your ideas (for example, by appropriating the organic label if not the methodology you took pains to develop), and contaminates your farm by dumping its waste products nearby. Your neighbor, in their infinite free-market wisdom and pursuit of maximum profitability while following the dictates of that abstraction known as the market, engages in severe overcrowding of their herd. In addition to substandard conditions of upkeep, and by evading regulation, including the proper inspection of imported livestock, they create the conditions for the total infection of their massive herd by mad-cow disease. Facing a public uproar, and in the face of mounting casualties, they try first to deflect blame on you, as the little guy with supposedly insufficient expertise and a contaminated yard (that they contaminated). Your business is tarnished as well as that of your neighbor. Your neighbor is forced to destroy its entire herd, while you come under intense scrutiny and, lacking the publicity budget of your much larger neighbor and the PR expertise it buys, are unable to successfully defend your mode of operation or prove your innocence. There is now a total lack of public confidence in these products (milk, cheese and beef). Your neighbor corrals the leading economic experts to plead for and obtain a large public loan to rebuild its business, in the interest of "preserving the national dairy industry", while not consenting to any regulatory oversight which a priori is anti-business. You, as the small guy, are unable to obtain a share of this “loan” because, once again, you are the small guy and you don’t have the necessary market share, connections or resources to make your case. The market takes a precipitous drop, and if by some miracle you managed to avoid having to destroy your two cows, you are forced to sell them for a pittance since you lost the barn, the ranch and all your savings trying to weather the storm. Oh, and half the town has succumbed to mad-cow disease. You are forced to go work for your neighbor. Repeat at several year intervals.

Maybe this was too caustic.

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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by surfinginjello » Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:11 pm

woah woah woah.
This was used in my AP government class. Haha
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by Ryan H. Turner » Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:10 am

Now Gonzo....THAT was funny! :rotf:

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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by Bandmaster » Mon Dec 01, 2008 3:42 am

Reality - The state of California sets the price for milk, which in turn sets the basic price of milk across the county. The price of feed comodities is set in the comodities market in Chicago. The Federal government has mandated the conversion of a certain percentage of the corn crop each year into ethanol (bio fuels), and this percentage (presently over 20%) is mandated to go up every year for next 5 years. The oil companies are using part of their excess profits buying up comodities futures to drive up the price of corn and soybeans in an effert to make bio fuels less competitive with their petroleum based fuels. This has caused the cost of feeding the dairy cows to almost double over the last two years. The state of California sets very stiff regulations for water quality, waste management and greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy cows that raise the cost of operation even further. Then California allows milk to be imported from neighboring states (AZ and NV) at a lower cost than their set price, since those states do not have the same regulations that would drive up the cost of their production, forcing California dairymen the sell their milk at a discounted price or pour it down the drain. At this moment in time, EVERY DAIRY IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IS LOSING MONEY. The 1800 cow dairy my family owns up in central California is losing $3500 every day right now. Chances are that California will lose a lot of dairies over the next year as they run out of money and go out of business! This pleases the fringe environmentalists in San Francisco who's goal is to force all agriculture out of the state of California. What they expect us to eat after they accomplish their goal they have not explained as of yet! :shock:

California is the largest producer of milk in the U.S. by a very large margin. California produces 70% of all the leafy vegetables consumed in the U.S. every day. California produces 99% of the world's supply of almonds.
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by The Aceman » Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:59 am

Bandmaster wrote:Reality - The state of California sets the price for milk, which in turn sets the basic price of milk across the county. The price of feed comodities is set in the comodities market in Chicago. The Federal government has mandated the conversion of a certain percentage of the corn crop each year into ethanol (bio fuels), and this percentage (presently over 20%) is mandated to go up every year for next 5 years. The oil companies are using part of their excess profits buying up comodities futures to drive up the price of corn and soybeans in an effert to make bio fuels less competitive with their petroleum based fuels. This has caused the cost of feeding the dairy cows to almost double over the last two years. The state of California sets very stiff regulations for water quality, waste management and greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy cows that raise the cost of operation even further. Then California allows milk to be imported from neighboring states (AZ and NV) at a lower cost than their set price, since those states do not have the same regulations that would drive up the cost of their production, forcing California dairymen the sell their milk at a discounted price or pour it down the drain. At this moment in time, EVERY DAIRY IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IS LOSING MONEY. The 1800 cow dairy my family owns up in central California is losing $3500 every day right now. Chances are that California will lose a lot of dairies over the next year as they run out of money and go out of business! This pleases the fringe environmentalists in San Francisco who's goal is to force all agriculture out of the state of California. What they expect us to eat after they accomplish their goal they have not explained as of yet! :shock:

California is the largest producer of milk in the U.S. by a very large margin. California produces 70% of all the leafy vegetables consumed in the U.S. every day. California produces 99% of the world's supply of almonds.

What would we eat? What would we eat? Goodness gracious what did the Human race eat for millions of years before our totalitarian style of agriculture wiped out nearly every other culture in humanity, and spread worldwide? You know most of us today will see our population double from 6.5 BILLION to around THIRTEEN BILLION in probably just another twenty years or so. We can't just keep covering the entire globe with farms and increasing our food production. Increasing our food production will only increase our population, which also means increases in starvation, crimes, wars, drug and alcohol abuse, political corruption, suicides, derangement, etc. etc. It doesn't matter what species you are, if you increase the amount of food available, the population increases, humans are no exception. This will come as a shock to a lot of people.
What?? Humans living like any other species?
We really need to stop living as though "The world was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it." You know there were thousands of hunter-gatherer cultures around for millions and millions of years before agriculture, who lived the same way for millions and millions of years without damaging the Earth, without overpopulating the world, without wiping out thousands of species. Of course many of us don't realize it, because this is part of something called "prehistory", whatever pre-history is. Apparently, it's the stuff that happened before history started. People in our culture (and I'm talking about our worldwide culture, btw) like to believe that history started at the same time as the so-called "Agricultural Revolution" or as I like to call it, by a much more accurate name, "The Great Forgetting." This is the time when people of our culture forgot there was another way to live, in fact it has become so entrenched in our cultural beliefs, that most people think our culture IS humanity. That if something is wrong in our culture, than something is inherently wrong with humanity itself. But guess what, WE are not Humanity, WE are just one culture, living ONE possible way, a way that isn't working and will lead to our inevitable destruction. Because just like any species if we don't follow the rules of nature, we will tend to be eliminated. And we our in the process of eliminating ourselves right now. We don't need programs to control the population, we don't need programs to tell us how to live. Programs clearly don't work, yet anytime there is a problem, what is our solution? More laws, more rules, more taxes, more, more, more..... The world won't be saved by people with programs, the world will be saved by people with changed minds. Thank you, that is all for now.

:soap:


P.S. - Just for referencing purposes, so you have an idea of the timetables here, the Agricultural revolution took place approx. 10,000 years ago. So in 10,000 years we have done all these things, overpopulating, killing species, etc. Whereas, hunter-gatherer cultures lived the same way for approx. TWO Million years, without causing any of the things that we have caused.
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by wjdrummer » Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:43 am

i actually like Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

it sounds bad, the word: COMMUNISM, but the idea isn't so bad people help you and you all get the milk
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by senza cervello » Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:07 pm

Communism's a loaded word drowned in years of propaganda, not unlike the aftermath of a nuclear contamination.
Of course, the ideas are nice. It's just the fact that people are involved that make it not work.

Not that Reality is that great, either.
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by IsnipeWithAknife » Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:40 pm

Ah Bureaucracy. I've witnessed how inefficient it is first hand by working for the school.

Inter-departmental inefficiencies, misinformation, lack of updates on critical information, change of policies and departmental duties...
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by Bandmaster » Tue Dec 02, 2008 2:14 am

The Aceman wrote: What would we eat? What would we eat? Goodness gracious what did the Human race eat for millions of years before our totalitarian style of agriculture wiped out nearly every other culture in humanity, and spread worldwide? You know most of us today will see our population double from 6.5 BILLION to around THIRTEEN BILLION in probably just another twenty years or so. We can't just keep covering the entire globe with farms and increasing our food production. Increasing our food production will only increase our population, which also means increases in starvation, crimes, wars, drug and alcohol abuse, political corruption, suicides, derangement, etc. etc. It doesn't matter what species you are, if you increase the amount of food available, the population increases, humans are no exception. This will come as a shock to a lot of people.
What?? Humans living like any other species?
We really need to stop living as though "The world was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it." You know there were thousands of hunter-gatherer cultures around for millions and millions of years before agriculture, who lived the same way for millions and millions of years without damaging the Earth, without overpopulating the world, without wiping out thousands of species. Of course many of us don't realize it, because this is part of something called "prehistory", whatever pre-history is. Apparently, it's the stuff that happened before history started. People in our culture (and I'm talking about our worldwide culture, btw) like to believe that history started at the same time as the so-called "Agricultural Revolution" or as I like to call it, by a much more accurate name, "The Great Forgetting." This is the time when people of our culture forgot there was another way to live, in fact it has become so entrenched in our cultural beliefs, that most people think our culture IS humanity. That if something is wrong in our culture, than something is inherently wrong with humanity itself. But guess what, WE are not Humanity, WE are just one culture, living ONE possible way, a way that isn't working and will lead to our inevitable destruction. Because just like any species if we don't follow the rules of nature, we will tend to be eliminated. And we our in the process of eliminating ourselves right now. We don't need programs to control the population, we don't need programs to tell us how to live. Programs clearly don't work, yet anytime there is a problem, what is our solution? More laws, more rules, more taxes, more, more, more..... The world won't be saved by people with programs, the world will be saved by people with changed minds. Thank you, that is all for now.
Ok, so what do you suggest as a solution? From what I can tell from your posting above you either favor the saving of the earth through the irradication of the human race or you want us to subcontract the production of our food commodities to a third world nation? Which is it? If the latter, that only moves the "polution" from one location to another, in fact it will probably make it worse. We have regulations, third world countries don't. And what exactly does either choice have to do with reality?
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by Chapagne » Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:28 am

or you want us to subcontract the production of our food commodities to a third world nation?
This worries the heck out of me, but it seems to be where we are headed. When water got tight in San Diego a few years ago, the solution they came up with in Washington was to force Imperial Valley farmers to sell their water to San Diego and let their fields go fallow. This in the name of building more housing.

We've seen how much trouble we can get in to in the world because we depend on unstable places for oil. Can you imagine what we would have to do if we depended on them for our food as well?
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by The Aceman » Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:36 am

Bandmaster wrote:Ok, so what do you suggest as a solution? From what I can tell from your posting above you either favor the saving of the earth through the irradication of the human race or you want us to subcontract the production of our food commodities to a third world nation? Which is it? If the latter, that only moves the "polution" from one location to another, in fact it will probably make it worse. We have regulations, third world countries don't. And what exactly does either choice have to do with reality?
Who said anything about eradicating the human race? We will be eradicated if we continue to live they way we are now. We, worldwide have to change our lifestyles completely and stop overproducing. This is a worldwide dilema and anything the state of California does or does not do, wont effect the final outcome. I'm trying to point out the much bigger underlying problem here. However, in order for this planet to continue to support human life, their will have to be a drastic reduction in the overall population, but it doesn't have to be done in an instant, just overtime as a result of people changing their lifestyle. I would advise however, that with the way things are going, everyone should plant their own vegetable gardens, because it very may well be your ONLY source of food if things get worse.
Go read "Ishmael" a novel by Daniel Quinn. It will literally change your life.
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by IsnipeWithAknife » Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:43 am

The Aceman wrote:
Bandmaster wrote:Ok, so what do you suggest as a solution? From what I can tell from your posting above you either favor the saving of the earth through the irradication of the human race or you want us to subcontract the production of our food commodities to a third world nation? Which is it? If the latter, that only moves the "polution" from one location to another, in fact it will probably make it worse. We have regulations, third world countries don't. And what exactly does either choice have to do with reality?
Who said anything about eradicating the human race? We will be eradicated if we continue to live they way we are now. We, worldwide have to change our lifestyles completely and stop overproducing. This is a worldwide dilema and anything the state of California does or does not do, wont effect the final outcome. I'm trying to point out the much bigger underlying problem here. However, in order for this planet to continue to support human life, their will have to be a drastic reduction in the overall population, but it doesn't have to be done in an instant, just overtime as a result of people changing their lifestyle. I would advise however, that with the way things are going, everyone should plant their own vegetable gardens, because it very may well be your ONLY source of food if things get worse.
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Re: Speaking of Politics ...

Post by The Aceman » Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:47 am

spoken like a true sci-fi fan....lol
Go read "Ishmael" a novel by Daniel Quinn. It will literally change your life.
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