Alternative Governments, From earlier 4chan thread

Economy-wise, I suggest going for a scadinavian model. The scandivanian model of economic system (socio-capatilist) makes it really hard for people to get too rich and the poor from geting too poor, so stops the rich-poor divide which creates a lot of social/economic problems and causes corruption in goverment. By doing this, buisnesses will have less influence on goverment while the remaining monney gets used on social services.

Basically, equality leads to less corruption, social-problems, crime-rate and gives the population a higher rate of genral happiness.

See: The Spirt Level: why equality is better for everyone for more information.

However, doing this alone won't make this system of goverment work. You'll need to make people follow the same beliefs as you (without forcing them). otherwise, if for example we were in a libral democracy, if anouther party gets in they may change these policies. But I think you wanted to avoid a party system.

P.S. If I don't make sense, tired. Sorry.

Having also a goverment based on atheist and scientific princibles will lead to a bias on their part. Atheism is the reverse of religion, and can be just as bad (You can see this on 4chan for example, where militant atheists are always quarilling with christians instead of tolerating them, claiming they're write and christians are dumb). All beliefs in genral have extremests within them, not just religions. By discoaraging religion and encoaraging science and atheisms, you might get the same problems. Mao (and possibley stalin) were athiest, he suppressed religions just as badely as christianiety suppressed the beliefs of natives who saw the world in a diffrent way.

So promoting atheism and science over religion may have these same extremes. What you need to do is make sure that no one belief, whenether political, philisopical or religious, dominates your society and represses other beliefs. You have to find a way to stop extremists who believe they're right, and everyone else is wrong so force their beliefs onto others.

FionaK,

I have said it before but perhaps I didn't explain it well enough. The manifesto as it is posted here is a very basic version, a summary if you will, and somewhat of a draft at that. The language is not as polished as I would like it to be, and will be re-written when I set up the dedicated website.
The points in it however remain, the core values in it will not change.

The reason for its deliberate summary is to encourage unity across people holding the stated core values but perhaps differing in methodology. It also helps to encourage debate on the alternatives to the current system, something this manifesto champions.
I fear that if I were to be too prescriptive or too detailed in its form at this stage, it would be more divisive than unifying. I want to step away from the typical left-wing theoretical bickering, as Vincent said in his email, "Gaining consensus among the left wing is like herding cats". But all cats like milk and chase mice. It would be all too easy to pick at a more detailed manifesto and find something they disagree with. This, I feel, would be detrimental to the overall aim.

Despite this, you seem to be quite curious as to my individual opinions and perhaps I should indulge you without going off topic.

Firstly, the Portuguese method of drug policy. I used the example of Portugal to highlight how different things could be with an alternative to the war on drugs. I do not fully prescribe to the Portuguese way, but feel it is a brilliant example to highlight for the purpose of raising awareness.
My personal views are quite similar to their implementation, however I feel that Cannabis and a handful of other soft drugs should be fully legalised and available for purchase, similar to alcohol or tobacco. I also feel I am not being inconsistent by having attitudes towards drugs on my list, as I feel it mirrors perhaps the attitude towards religion or to politics in that the current system is not acceptable and it strikes a chord with many that agree with the other policies.

1. Political Funding. I would enforce this by law. The money should be distributed among parties more fairly, perhaps a base amount of funding for parties with a number of members over a certain threshold, this could come from taxation. It must be acknowledged that money can, in some way, buy votes, why else would there be such fighting for political funding in America and the rest of the world. This is why parties should be put on as fair a footing as possible, so that the parties' policies are the sole reason that people decide to place their vote.

2. I understand the position of the free market libertarians and like you agree that in practice, market forces cannot guarantee public interest, as we have seen time and time again. The problem here is not deciding who should decide what the public interest is, but negating motives that are often contrary to public interest, i.e the profit motive. While the profit motive can be a force for innovation, industrialism and progress, it is more often than acceptable at odds with the greater good, promotes greed, self interest and a selfish 'dog eat dog' mentality, in fact can stifle creativity and innovation (think overbearing copyright and corporations sitting on patents) and be downright manipulative, destructive and oppressive. This is why the whole society should be moved away from profit motive towards a more progress/community/common good motivated society. This could be done by encouraging worker co-operatives and democracy within business. If every worker in a company gained proportionally from company profit, i.e. the company ownership was shared between the workers, perhaps with a maximum ratio for top earners to bottom earners (perhaps 3:1?)
As for the disabled/unemployed, I had not made a specific comment on them because I feel, again, that this is too much detail and would cloud the water. I would argue that there needs to be a healthy safety net for these people and that this should be above the poverty line. For those that medically cannot work, there needs to be sufficient government provision for them so that they have a good standard of living, for those that are unemployed, work must be made more attractive to them. This could be done not by making unemployment a miserable existence, but by making work more rewarding, perhaps by greatly reducing tax for very low threshold earners and other benefits to the more lower paid work.

3. Religion. Now I feel this is a big one. Yes, we are fortunate in the UK that we do not have much influence from large religious groups. This is not to say it is not a problem. You say "because religion does no harm at all", I have to strongly, strongly disagree with that. Firstly, any serious set of beliefs founded upon bronze age myth, scientific fallacies and the rejection of evidence based thinking that is 'faith' is profoundly harmful in a society that prides itself on logic, rationality and empiricism. Secondly the question of extremism. Without mosquitoes, you would have no malaria. Without the moderates, you would have no extremists. The holy books of all monotheistic religions are awash with sanctions of murder, stoning to death of homosexuals, war on unbelievers, take your pick. Extremists will always find direct instruction and sanction for terrible acts in these books as long as these books are taken seriously. Extremism will never die until the root cause itself is removed.
I do happen to agree that religion wanes as the poor become better looked after, although this must not be relied upon. Religion must actively be debated, science must be championed over religious dogma and these bizarre beliefs must be removed from society using logic, discussion debate and education. Faith schools should not in any way be funded by government, in fact they should be made taboo in society, just as a school for Marxist children or a school for Nazi children or aschool for Scientology children would be taboo.

4. I have already briefly mentioned disability/ unemployment. Immigration I feel is an issue. Immigration in my opinion should be limited. This is not due to racism but due to culture. Immigrants should show a deep understanding and willingness to participate in our culture while being free to practice their own. Unchecked immigration can create pockets of religiosity (see the recent declaration of Sharia law in some suburbs of British cities), poverty, crime and social angst as immigrants do not have chance for sufficient exposure and integration into the society they have moved into and adoption of the cultural influences and processes that uphold the way of life in the host country. If not integrated to a good extent, immigrants very often revert to the way of life in their own country, which may be less developed, less liberal, more religious, and to be frank, more basic than that of the host country.
Child care - Yes there should be provision for that, in addition maternity benefits should be extremely important as the upbringing of children well is key to a well functioning society.

You say:
But of course, why would I make anything else? I also happen to think these generalist points strike a chord with many people today, especially the young.

As I said at the top, these are my opinions on the minutiae, if you will, the details of how the general points could be implemented. I am not campaigning the movement on these details, but the more general principles outlined in the OP.
I hope this clears some points up. Of course it is great and important that people discuss the details of a possible new system, and I will be active in that discussion but, for now, I want to focus on how to get the movement moving, gaining support and polishing those general points in the OP. Once that is in motion, I will have more time to indulge in more detailed discussion of the general points.

Although I agree with your previous post about Nordic economies, I will have to disagree with you on this one.
Atheism is not the opposite of religion, it is the lack of religion.
You seem to suggest that a government biased towards science or, if you prefer towards evidence based thinking (which is what science essentially is [see scientific method]), is a bad thing.
Look at the alternative, a government that gives equal weight to both evidence based thinking and thinking based on 'faith' (a word used for ideas that have no evidence for them). This would give equal weight to the idea of creationism and that of the Theory of Evolution, or to witch doctors and modern medicine in deciding policy. That is not the government I would like to live under and neither, I suspect, would you.

As for Stalin and Mao, whether they were atheists or not is beside the point. I would argue that they promoted a quasi-religious cult of personality around them, which is at odds with atheistic thinking but nevertheless, the crimes they committed were borne out of political extremism and not due to any sort of atheistic extremism. I would much rather live next to a so called 'Militant atheist' than a militant Muslim or Jew. After all when was the last time you heard of an atheist carrying out a suicide bombing, blowing up a church or committing a murder because of the conviction of their atheism?
I do not think atheist extremism is really a phenomenon in the way that religious apologists would have you believe. I am no more likely to martyr myself for for my lack of belief in a god than for my lack of belief in the tooth fairy or unicorns. Atheism is no more than the lack of belief in a god and is little different from the lack of belief in any other fictional entity.
As for arguments on 4chan, what did you expect, it's 4chan! Trolls trolling trolls.

Maternity benefits? And what about paternity benefits?

Similarly, they are very important too.

A lack of belief in god is not a lack of belief, where belief lies there is extremism. In my view, atheism is nothing but a reverse of religion. Religion and atheism are two sides of the spectrum, always pulling away from each other. Religion has claws, and so does atheism if you let it ripen. Do not have a goverment based on atheism alone, but rather agnosticsm, religion or none of these at all.

Do not misinterprt my argumant, I am meerly saying that Atheism can be just as bad as religion if you allow it. Extremism exists in all things. This is why we need to try to balence and dialate beliefs to make sure they do not go into some sort of pure unwanted form.

Perhaps with Mao and Stalin atheism was less on their agenda, but perhaps the religious extremeists in other countries hold Power closer to their heart far more then religion.

Also, a society run purely on scientific belief and speculation is not enough (and especially don't pair atheism and science together. They should remain seprate as they are seprate entitys). Science is just "one" process made to find out truth, it has no set ethics. These ethics were only givin to it over time.

I am quite skeptical of science as well in terms of what it can deliver, this is because you can't guareentee in science what is truely true, only what appears to be (but this is a diffrent tale).

Also, do not confuse Logic with Morality. Having a goverment based on logic is not always what is morally right or good. Logic is nothing more than a system which decides the best choise in a situation. You can not run a society on logic alone, logic is a tool rather than an actual structure which you can base society on. This is where morality and ideoligy come in, these are the foundations that society (or at least I think) are founded on, for without these governing princibles which allow us to cooporate on a large scale, society would not be formed.



My sinsirest respects to your cause sir,





ex nihilo

(I argue a lot on a Philosophical basis, for I take the subject. Please forgive myself if I appear skeptical. It is a part of my job to be to discover truth, that is why I doubt everything).

Do you think we should scout more members for the discussion. We could always try the 420chan Philosophy and Social science forms. They'le be pretty good at this sort of thing.

Hello ex nihilo. I wanted to respond to this post, but have not found time until now.


I do not agree that religion and atheism are two sides of the same coin: for me atheism truly is a lack of belief in any and all gods. There are, of course, strong and weak atheists: and they have somewhat different views. That is also true for strong and weak agnostics. I think sometimes those distinctions are not made very clear so it is perhaps important to make sure the words are used in a common way.

The reason I do not think that they are comparable is because atheists have nothing in common with each other: that is nothing follows from their lack of belief in terms of approach to other moral , social or political issues. The same is much less true of religion (though of course, depending on widely you spread the net there are significant differences on those other issues amongst the religion as well).

What I do agree with is that any system can be used to promote and justify barbarity: and indeed all large scale barbarisms do use some narrative to justify what they do. This makes it difficult: if a person says they are acting because of a belief or a lack of belief it is normally as well to take them at their word. But it cannot be denied that some people are interested in power or wealth and they will say whatever narrative will secure those things for them. So it is often difficult to tease out what is actually in play. For groups and governmentsthat is even harder, since there are always many things at work and they do not sit easily together. But it is certainly true that no system of thought has a monopoly on truth. For me the important thing is not what is professed per se: but what that profession is used to justify. If one wishes to impose one's will on others then I don't much care what the rationale may be: religion, atheism, marxism, nazism: don't care. Watch what they do, not what they say, as the cliche goes


I absolutely agree that a society cannot be run on science alone: nor should it be. Science has nothing to say about nearly everything that is important in life. It is marvellously successful in many areas of our lives: and it has produced good outcomes in far moe fields than could have been predicted even a hundred years ago. But there has been a tendency to over extend it to fields where it has no place, precisely because of that success. There are other threads here discussing that: for example the place of science in economics has been talked about. Added to that there is the problem that science cannot tell us anything about what we "should" do: that is in the field of politics or ethics or some other relevant field: but it is not possible to find a scientific answer to "how should we live". It can perhaps contribute in answering the question "how can we live: but that is not the same thing.

<snip>


I broadly agree with this too. I will part company from you when you say that "logic is a system which decides the best choice": logic cannot do that. What it can do is to ensure that the reasoning we adopt is free of fallacy: but that does not arrive at the best choice because the logic founds on the premises we choose to base on: and they are not, in themselves, logical. The word "best" is also tricky:" best for what" is always there as a question. And logic cannot answer that either. But that is a quibble because your conclusion is sound, IMO. We choose the premises we are prepared to accept as a foundation; we choose the goal we hope to achieve: and that is done on many different bases, including ideology and morality, as you say: but also including emotion and ethics, for example. Logic has very little place in those choices though it can help us to decide how to get to our goals once they are decided.

<snip>



I am not sure that this particular discussion is going to continue on this forum, though the wider question of a political direction and analysis certainly will: but if you think people would be interested in the kinds of issues we discuss here they would be more than welcome