A new Revolution in America, how could it happen?

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Henriksson
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30 Mar 2009, 8:16 am

I think first a revolution somewhere else in the world is more likely than in America. I mean, the plutocracy has really shrouded the Americans in a shroud of ignorance and apathy.


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Dussel
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30 Mar 2009, 9:18 am

ruveyn wrote:
Dussel wrote:

This more the central point: A revolution is for anyone a risky game. No one knows how it will end. Neither the Terreur of the "Comité de salut public" of Robespierre had been planned 1789, nor Napoleon's rule. Ones a revolution starts the outcome is uncertain.



The fact that the American Revolution did not produce its own terror is an abiding miracle although it came perilously close with the Alien and Sedition Acts which partially nullified the First Amendment. The election of 1800 was a hot affair and we are fortunate to have emerged from that time with our liberties intact. The defects of our (the American) Revolution manifested themselves in the very, very bloody Civil War. Killed in action and by camp disease 620,000 Americans (both sides counted) and maimed were 1.5 million Americans (both sides counted) and this in a nation with a total population of a little over 30 million! Canada which never had a Revolution also never had a Civil War. The Canadians are a calmer bunch than us Americans.

Most of the other radical revolutions of the modern era have had dreadful consequences. As you point out, the French Revolution was a mother who ate her children. The extremists culminating with that wonderous work of nature, Robespierre kept La Machine (the head slicer offer) busy throughout France. The Russian Revolution speaks for itself. It produced a degree of monstrosity rivaling what happened in Nazi Germany. Stalin was a Hitler-class Monster, perhaps even more so. The post colonial Revolutions in Africa further prove the point. And to this day, the excremental Robert Mugabe still inflicts death and destruction.


There is an other difference: France has Paris. How controls Paris controls France. This is the case at least since Henri IV. The lower classes in Paris radicalised during the revolution because the political changes did not change their living conditions. The political leader radicalised with the masses: Maximilian Robespierre started as a moderate, in favour of a constitutional monarchy and became the leader of the most radical wing. I do not Robespierre that negative like the most do: His theories of the "militant democracy" active fighting with the means of the state against its enemies is in amore moderate form part of the ideology of all West European countries.

The American Revolution went more among the lines of the Dutch Rebellion - so there is afterwards no big surprise that the Declaration of Independence of 1776 reminds very much in its wording on the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of 1581: Could it be that Jefferson had anywhere a copy of the Dutch original in his library?

---

After all: The Tudor kings and queens in England were at least as radical as the Jacobian in France, just in slow motion. They reduced the high nobility in England more radical than in the French Revolution and reduced the power of the church even more radical than Robespierre or Danton ever thought of.



Sand
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30 Mar 2009, 9:56 am

Although the current despair over the economy seems directly involved with the failure of the financial system to act rationally there is an underlying subversion of the entire capitalist system in the inexorable progress of technology. There is much talk of greed as a human disability undermining normal and civil capitalist activity but greed is the driving engine behind all businesses and is only counteracted by a market which limits the sale of the products of any individual participant by competition between producers in which the market fluctuates in favor of innovative and useful novelty. But the patent system has been so distorted that the temporary advantage granted innovative producers has been so distorted by extension that the purpose of the patent system has been used to create unending monopolies which defeats competition and becomes a disservice to the public. Nevertheless, any business that does not use all its capabilities to outcompete all others will fail in the long run. A prime factor in competition is to reduce production costs to a minimum and labor is one of the prime considerations here. Wages have, to a great extent in the USA, remained static while technology has granted business huge efficiencies whose benefits have accrued only to management which, in corporate businesses, must maximize profits for their investors. Along with resident technologies transportation technologies have made it possible to farm out production for maximum efficiencies. When that technology has permitted the bulk of actual production to take place outside of market areas the loss of local wages gradually destroys the viability of the market which is sustained by the ability of the workers to purchase what is produced. So now a huge percentage of the wages go outside the market area and, temporarily, the market is sustained by indebtedness which, in the end, is not sustainable for any length of time without wages.
But, in the long run, an even greater destruction of the system is in the making. As automation and artificial intelligence becomes more adept and economical even foreign labor will prove less and less necessary so the whole market-capitalist system will totally break down and that's where a revolution might generate.



oli234
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30 Mar 2009, 12:23 pm

Quote:
I think first a revolution somewhere else in the world is more likely than in America. I mean, the plutocracy has really shrouded the Americans in a shroud of ignorance and apathy.


Greece? They seem to be leading the way in terms of reaction to the ressesion



ruveyn
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30 Mar 2009, 12:29 pm

Sand wrote:
Although the current despair over the economy seems directly involved with the failure of the financial system to act rationally there is an underlying subversion of the entire capitalist system in the inexorable progress of technology. There is much talk of greed as a human disability undermining normal and civil capitalist activity but greed is the driving engine behind all businesses and is only counteracted by a market which limits the sale of the products of any individual participant by competition between producers in which the market fluctuates in favor of innovative and useful novelty. But the patent system has been so distorted that the temporary advantage granted innovative producers has been so distorted by extension that the purpose of the patent system has been used to create unending monopolies which defeats competition and becomes a disservice to the public. Nevertheless, any business that does not use all its capabilities to outcompete all others will fail in the long run. A prime factor in competition is to reduce production costs to a minimum and labor is one of the prime considerations here. Wages have, to a great extent in the USA, remained static while technology has granted business huge efficiencies whose benefits have accrued only to management which, in corporate businesses, must maximize profits for their investors. Along with resident technologies transportation technologies have made it possible to farm out production for maximum efficiencies. When that technology has permitted the bulk of actual production to take place outside of market areas the loss of local wages gradually destroys the viability of the market which is sustained by the ability of the workers to purchase what is produced. So now a huge percentage of the wages go outside the market area and, temporarily, the market is sustained by indebtedness which, in the end, is not sustainable for any length of time without wages.
But, in the long run, an even greater destruction of the system is in the making. As automation and artificial intelligence becomes more adept and economical even foreign labor will prove less and less necessary so the whole market-capitalist system will totally break down and that's where a revolution might generate.


Greed is Good.

If people were not selfish and acquisitive they would not build houses for themselves and their families.

ruveyn



Henriksson
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30 Mar 2009, 12:33 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Sand wrote:
Although the current despair over the economy seems directly involved with the failure of the financial system to act rationally there is an underlying subversion of the entire capitalist system in the inexorable progress of technology. There is much talk of greed as a human disability undermining normal and civil capitalist activity but greed is the driving engine behind all businesses and is only counteracted by a market which limits the sale of the products of any individual participant by competition between producers in which the market fluctuates in favor of innovative and useful novelty. But the patent system has been so distorted that the temporary advantage granted innovative producers has been so distorted by extension that the purpose of the patent system has been used to create unending monopolies which defeats competition and becomes a disservice to the public. Nevertheless, any business that does not use all its capabilities to outcompete all others will fail in the long run. A prime factor in competition is to reduce production costs to a minimum and labor is one of the prime considerations here. Wages have, to a great extent in the USA, remained static while technology has granted business huge efficiencies whose benefits have accrued only to management which, in corporate businesses, must maximize profits for their investors. Along with resident technologies transportation technologies have made it possible to farm out production for maximum efficiencies. When that technology has permitted the bulk of actual production to take place outside of market areas the loss of local wages gradually destroys the viability of the market which is sustained by the ability of the workers to purchase what is produced. So now a huge percentage of the wages go outside the market area and, temporarily, the market is sustained by indebtedness which, in the end, is not sustainable for any length of time without wages.
But, in the long run, an even greater destruction of the system is in the making. As automation and artificial intelligence becomes more adept and economical even foreign labor will prove less and less necessary so the whole market-capitalist system will totally break down and that's where a revolution might generate.


Greed is Good.

If people were not selfish and acquisitive they would not build houses for themselves and their families.

ruveyn

They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


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ruveyn
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30 Mar 2009, 12:37 pm

Henriksson wrote:
They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


Selfishness is a genetically wired trait of our species (hominid 5.0). It is wired in by natural selection. Non-selfish hominids do not get the females as much, so they do not propagate their inherent altruism. Thank God (or whatever Being you thank). That is how we survive.

ruveyn



Sand
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30 Mar 2009, 1:14 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Henriksson wrote:
They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


Selfishness is a genetically wired trait of our species (hominid 5.0). It is wired in by natural selection. Non-selfish hominids do not get the females as much, so they do not propagate their inherent altruism. Thank God (or whatever Being you thank). That is how we survive.

ruveyn


Individual desire and capability to survive and get as much as is possible is not bad until the most capable and greedy nail down almost everything and thereby destroy society. There seems to be a long range blindness to very selfish people who cannot see that their well being is tightly tied to the well being of the total culture.



ruveyn
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30 Mar 2009, 1:56 pm

Dussel wrote:

The American Revolution went more among the lines of the Dutch Rebellion - so there is afterwards no big surprise that the Declaration of Independence of 1776 reminds very much in its wording on the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of 1581: Could it be that Jefferson had anywhere a copy of the Dutch original in his library?

---


Of the Founders the most likely to have access to that document were Jefferson and Franklin, both very well read men.

ruveyn



Dussel
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30 Mar 2009, 3:39 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Henriksson wrote:
They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


Selfishness is a genetically wired trait of our species (hominid 5.0). It is wired in by natural selection. Non-selfish hominids do not get the females as much, so they do not propagate their inherent altruism. Thank God (or whatever Being you thank). That is how we survive.


Too selfish humans got a kick-in-the-arse in the group and no woman at all.



ruveyn
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30 Mar 2009, 4:07 pm

Dussel wrote:
x

Too selfish humans got a kick-in-the-arse in the group and no woman at all.


The intelligently selfish have the reproductive advantage on average which is why there are so many intelligently selfish folk. Natural selection 101A.

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30 Mar 2009, 5:33 pm

I reckon the Founders were slightly inspired by the French revolution, which came somewhere at that time. (I'll also remind you that we sent an officer to support you guys since it was annoying the brits ^^; )



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30 Mar 2009, 6:46 pm

phil777 wrote:
I reckon the Founders were slightly inspired by the French revolution, which came somewhere at that time.


Not really: The US-Declaration of Independence was 13 years before the start of the French Revolution. If they were influenced than by trying to avoid the unrest of French Revolution.

They were more influenced by the Dutch Revolution in the 1580s, when the Netherlands declared Independence from Spain. The wording of the US-Declaration of Independence goes quite along the lines of the Dutch Declaration of 1581. Even the argumentation is quite similar. The similarities go even further: The Staten-Generaal from 1581 till 1790 were a federal republic composed of two chambers as the legislative.



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30 Mar 2009, 6:51 pm

Musings on gender and language, brought to you by twoshots

ruveyn wrote:
Henriksson wrote:
They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


Selfishness is a genetically wired trait of our species (hominid 5.0). It is wired in by natural selection. Non-selfish hominids do not get the females as much, so they do not propagate their inherent altruism. Thank God (or whatever Being you thank). That is how we survive.

ruveyn

Note the dichotomy between hominids and females.


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ruveyn
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30 Mar 2009, 6:58 pm

twoshots wrote:
Musings on gender and language, brought to you by twoshots
ruveyn wrote:
Henriksson wrote:
They would, if they had a genuine wish to build a better future for themselves. And no greed is needed for that.


Selfishness is a genetically wired trait of our species (hominid 5.0). It is wired in by natural selection. Non-selfish hominids do not get the females as much, so they do not propagate their inherent altruism. Thank God (or whatever Being you thank). That is how we survive.

ruveyn

Note the dichotomy between hominids and females.


Hominid is the biological phylum in which are species is located. It has nothing to do a particular gender. We are all hominids male and female human alike. "Man" is sometimes used as the general term for human and is not a particular gender.

The most successful human characteristic is being a prudent predator. That way one can have the best of both worlds, a. being a predatory opportunist and b. being smart enough to appear co-operative so as not to excite hostility. Prudent Predators are more likely to mate and pass their talent along to the next generation. Successful reproduction is all the nature "cares" about. Judgments associated with our moral quality is a purely social artifact and has nothing to do with our evolutionary fitness.

ruveyhn



Last edited by ruveyn on 30 Mar 2009, 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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