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Stand up and be counted. The secret ballot is called the Australian ballot. Criminals do not trust each other. Hence, the Prisoner's Dilemma is not called the Yankee Farmer's Dilemma.

DMG:"Voting on government policy & representatives shouldn't be anonymous. Voters are the primary decision makers of government. Government deals with the use of force. If government initiates force, then the members of government should know who was responsible. Hence records of which members of the government voted what should be available to members."

It is a bit of a problem, though, to stand up against all of your neighbors. However, granted a basic respect for individual rights and an understanding of loyal opposition, that is possible.

I believe, also, that juries should be held accountable for their decisions. Right now, about 80,000 factually innocent people are in prison. We can only guess how many were executed for murders they did not commit. The states all successfully have fought full reviews of past cases.

Post 41

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 9:02am

When the ballot is secret, you still have the choice of announcing to the world how you voted. The purpose of a secret ballot isn't so that you can keep your neighbors in the dark; it is secret so that government can't target those that oppose it at the ballot box. It is yet another form of protection against government abuse of power. Look at the way the IRS has been used, both recently and in the past, and you'll see what I mean.

Transparency is normally good, and accountability is normally a good thing, but what is needed to prevent the election of idiots to office isn't the elimination of the secret ballot, but a better educated citizenry.

With our current high levels of political factionalism, both sides would just try to use intimidation and ridicule of those who voted the 'wrong' way, and then the government would try to find ways to intimidate those who voted GOP. Far better to not let government know who voted for who.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 10/25, 9:08am)

Post 42

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 11:26am

Nice ideas on post 37 but the question "What would this new group do differently so politicians in their system did not eventually destroy them by the same means?" wasn't an actual question. It was a comment about on people who try to 'band together' as a strategy of change. They never can answer the question, hence the strategy of 'banning together' is useless unless that question is answered prior to trying.
I bring up the idea of early adopters strictly because what is needed is a new idea, or method, of government. All ideas, by definition, are thought of by a single person, or maybe a few. But a single person, or a few, is not and cannot be, by definition, a 'government.' Therefore, those who learn by sight will not and cannot have anything to look at. People who think too much about this without acting can look like 2 college professors with nothing else better to do but discuss how smart they are.
About Chile (Sovereign Man), and Singapore (Jim Rogers). Not to beat a dead horse here, but unless a governing method is planned that prevents politicians in their system from eventually destroying themselves by the same means, it is a waste of time.
These are no valid ideas in these 2 projects. What in either of these ideas prevent a politician from saying, "All those in favor of confiscating the money from this person involved in 'Soverign Man' or Jim Roger's money say, 'I'? I submit to you the answer is nothing.
Wealthy people do have means not available to the rest of us for privacy and influence but these 2 ideas don't solve the real problem. The real problem is 'representative government.'
I don't have a problem with America as a location to trying what I have in mind. Again the issue is what to do not where to do it. I agree about the location near a big city.
A few things about the frontier and economics. If someone wanted to build a wooden shack as a bar they just did so. (Even then there were probably some laws.) I don't think people 'adapted' to capitalism; people were free and just did what they did. I like a bit of what anarcho-capitalists say.
One thing about the theoretical side of objectivism. Rand held there were 5 branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics. If I remember right she said economics is part of politics but she should have said economics as a 6th branch. In metaphysics,(the study of what is) there are manmade objects, objects that are natural, and natural objects in agriculture grown for economic gain. In politics there are taxation issues and the ethics of that construction of objects like courthouses. So ideas in the branches of metaphysics and epistemology lead into the ideas of ethics, politics, and esthetics, economics and production has lots of cross branch issues that in academic settings should be clarified as a separate branch of philosophy. One thing for sure it is not a branch of politics.

Post 43

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 1:33pm

Steve,

With voting records known, its not just the government who is enabled to attack minorities. Oppressed minorities are also enabled to identify and attack the oppressive individuals within the population. Such as if producers (minority) were being taxed by parasites (majority).

I don't think educating the masses of parasites would work. Why would the parasites be motivated to learn anything? They can just vote for wealth redistribution, and sit back and watch reality TV & eat microwave pasta & sugar water, all paid for by the slave producers. Go ahead, offer to read Atlas Shrugged to a welfare queen and see how the education goes.

Voting for government policy is a use of force. That it be anonymous just seems like nonsense to me. Why don't we have the police, judges, law makes, military personnel, we'll just have all government members wear masks? We'll elect 3 presidents, and while at work, we'll let them wear masks. Do you more justice or less justice will result when people are able to attack others without anyway of the crime being traced back to them?

Do you disagree that voting is an initiation of force when the policy enacted is an initiation of force?

=======

I'm guessing we disagree on something else here. I think you would like a powerful central government that is perfect in execution in bringing justice. Verses I deny that that is even a possibility.

This is due to the simple matter of different people having different information. Furthermore, I don't think such a large encompassing government could ever act so justly. Locals in one area may consider something OK, but in another area, consider the same thing detestable/criminal. With the ultimate decision of local matters being made at the top by the majority, minorities will be oppressed.

For example take a rape case. There's no evidence. Its just the woman claims the man raped her, and the man denies it.

With your central government, the woman is only able to whine, and get raped again, and whine... passive powerless individuals.

With my hierarchical concept of justice, first the woman makes a complaint to her local government. If they don't do anything about it, then she asks her brothers to beat the guy down and rape the man back. Anyways, here individuals defend themselves.

Maybe you'd say this would get out of hand... violence escalation. Well, if the violence does escalate, and there is evidence collected that the local government can use... then that's when the local government gets involved.

More encompassing governments such as state and federal should not get involved unless there is a dispute between two sub-governments. This is unlike how it is un the US, where in court cases if a local government doesn't bring a satisfying judgement that people try to take the case to a more overarching government. The federal government is more supreme than the state and local governments, and their decisions override more local government decisions, even when the matter was local.

Local governments should maintain their local militias. No standing central military. If one local is attacked by another, or by a foreign entity, it sucks to be them, they should have prepared and made stronger defenses. Or maybe they made friends with other locals, and the other locals will voluntarily come to their aid. Or maybe not that good of friends, but they will come to their aid in exchange as part of some trade.

With this kind of system, people can move to the local which has other people who are most similar to them in order to live under a government which most matches their views. In our system, it doesn't matter where you go, the Federal Government is everywhere to take 30% of your income, regulate your private matters, and conscript you into its military service & wars.

Post 44

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 3:09pm

Dean,

If your world view is that we are divided into producers and parasites and that is a fixed and unchangeable state of things, then making voting records known wouldn't be helpful. What good would it do for a producer to know the names of everyone that voted for a Senator that ended up supporting Obamacare? And what good would come of giving the parasites a list of those who voted against them getting this or that welfare goody?

When I talk about voter education, I'm not talking about reading Atlas Shrugged to welfare queens; I'm talking about cultural change to where our universities and colleges don't turn turn out little Progressives to fill the jobs as the next generation of professors, journalists, politicians, talking heads, etc. My view is that the vast majority of humans are capable of being responsible, self-supporting and accountable. We might not have any way to change the minds of the many who have chosen to be parasites, but if we change the culture, we can change the structures, and their choice to be parasites will of no use to them because wishing won't make it so.

How would you get your suggestions adopted without first making changes to the ideas of many of the people in the culture? Brute force? How will you raise the army needed to fight for your system without changing the ideas of many of the people in the culture. Ideas are the key to change and education is just a word that describe the process of acquiring ideas.
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You asked, "Do you disagree that voting is an initiation of force when the policy enacted is an initiation of force?" Yes, of course I do. Voting for a senator that then votes for a giveaway program that is funded by borrowing that is repaid with fiat dollars, that are pushed out under the umbrella of the legal tender act is a giant mess, but that vote wasn't the initiation of force. Of all the phrases, and all the concepts we must be clear on, "initiation of force" is one of the most important.

Think about it - if a vote was the initiation of force, then I'd have the right to shoot someone in self-defense if I could tell he was going to vote in favor of, say a school bond to be paid with a tax hike. What about the person or persons who proposed the new law? What about the printer who prints the ballots? What about the person who lets a supporter of the bond initiative speak about it at their auditorium? The only way to avoid all that foolishness is to simply say that force is force... not requests, suggestions, votes, or speeches.
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Where you say, "With voting records known, its not just the government who is enabled to attack minorities. Oppressed minorities are also enabled to identify and attack the oppressive individuals within the population. Such as if producers (minority) were being taxed by parasites (majority)." That would be a horrendous mess where anyone could declare themselves oppressed by the vote of someone else and consider that to be moral justification for launching a violent attack - that is what it sounds like you are advocating and I don't see a state of justice coming from that.
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I am not a supporter of a powerful central government - unless you mean the size of a minarchy type of government that is just large enough to field a military defense force that is just large enough to provide defense at a national level. I've always been a strong advocate of strict constitutionalism which leaves much of the government in state and local hands, and it massively reduces what any government can do - thus coming much closer to 'perfect' justice becomes easier.
Stating that I want 'perfect justice' (who wouldn't, if all we are doing is 'wishing') and then declaring that it is impossible is creating a strawman. That would have been obvious if you had said that I want more justice than we see now (which is my approach), but then you claimed that would be impossible. It isn't impossible to have much more justice than we have now.
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You said, "With your central government, the woman is only able to whine, and get raped again, and whine... passive powerless individuals." That isn't a valid observation since rape is not a federal crime; each state has its own laws for this crime, and it is the local police she would approach.
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We may disagree with aspects of your proposed structure, but we do NOT disagree that the federal government is far, far to large, takes too much of our money, controls too much of our lives, and is very inefficient in everything it does.
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If the only thing that any law enforcement agency did was enforce laws that arose directly from individual rights, then we could have far, far greater success with getting justice. And if that's true, then we don't need every idiot in the country being a vigilante.
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You said, "No standing central military. If one local [government] is attacked by another, or by a foreign entity, it sucks to be them, they should have prepared and made stronger defenses. Fortunately for us, your system wasn't in place in the thirties or we'd be speaking either German or Japanese, or be dead. And if your system had been in place through the 50's we would now be a territory of the Soviet Union, or whatever it would have become without our central military force.

I agree that we have been in many wars we shouldn't have, have faced military conscription in the past, and have the federal government grow to where it is hard to find areas it doesn't regulate, but you are throwing out the baby with the bath water for a system that wouldn't work. What we want is the system we had, but with some added improvements, before the Progressives started to tinker with it in the late 1800's till today.

Post 45

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 5:53pm

Steve,

So when a military police unit is ordered to swat a man who is suspected of selling drugs, who is at fault? The single police man who kicked open the door? The squad leader who ordered him to do that? The head of police who when shown evidence authorized/approved the attack? The police investigator who showed the evidence to the head, in request for the attack? The lawmaker who wrote the law to fund the police to perform this task? The lawmaker who made selling drugs illegal? The man who voted for the lawmaker, when the lawmaker said his priority was to force people to stop doing drugs?

I would say they are all complicit, they all share some of the responsibility.

When Obama was running for election, it was extremely clear that his primary policy that differentiated him from other candidates was that he wanted to redistribute wealth the most. Verses, Ron Paul for example made clear that he wanted to redistribute wealth the least. Its not like people didn't have the chance to hear what the politician were saying. McCain... he was clearly just a representative of the monopoly banks and pandered changing what he said to appease his current audience. And yet McCain beat Ron Paul, and Obama beat McCain.

I was given the same opportunity to be educated as so many others. Yet I came to different conclusions than the majority on to what extent producers should be taxed and whether there should be competition in money/banking. One chooses his own path in life. I don't deny that some people won't become more capitalist from education campaigns. I deny that such campaigns are worth their effort, since so few would change their path in life due to it.

How complicated do you think it is for a person to understand the difference between capitalism and socialism? The effects are flat out obvious. Elementary game theory. You would have to be an idiot not to figure it out yourself, let alone all of the political debate which has capitalists explaining it. Education is futile. Since education is futile, so is voting vs the majority of parasites.

Men aren't destined by the laws of our reality to be free. Capitalism work betters for the capable, efficient, and ambitious. It doesn't work better for the lame, overspending, and lazy, they prefer wealth redistribution. And reality doesn't care. Its not that one is more natural than the other, that's nonsense. Men don't have rights bestowed upon them by God, Rand's definition of Man, nor anything else. Might makes. "Right" is meaningless between two people with conflicting goals, and yes, the capable, efficient, and ambitions have different strategies in life than the lame, overspending, and lazy. "Right" is a moral judgement, which depends on a premise goal.

Education? Voting? I think those solutions are a joke. Leeches and wolves would rule the world, and they do. Instead, producers need to defend themselves: bring restitution, retaliation, and incapacitation. Hide wealth and trades from enemies: out of sight, out of mind. Identify who one's enemies are, and don't trade with them, or offer them higher prices. That's how capitalism will become a reality, not by trying to educate a bunch of idiots, and not by trying to vote against a majority of leeches.

The use of your property and your body is protected by you and you alone through self defense. Asking others to do the defense for you, especially when they are a bunch of thieves... is nothing but foolish.

But I guess we disagree on most everything that I've written in this post. So... I donno. I guess I am happy that we want similar things (more capitalism)... You are suggesting we be pacifists and I am suggesting we defend ourselves.

I do thank you for helping me clarify my ideas.

How do you think you are going to accomplish educating the masses? America has been becoming more socialist since 1900. Yet we have significantly increased the number of valid ideas (educational opportunity) that every person has available to them. Atlas Shrugged came out years ago. If all it took was for people to read it to realize oh my how they should change their strategy on whether they vote for the government to redistribute wealth from the productive to themselves... then every person would be so amazed on how it changed their life strategy and the book would take off like wildfire and oh my we would change to capitalism soo fast! But no, its not like that. The lame, overspending, and lazy say its crap, or that "Its not fair." or "Its not decent, everyone deserves to live with decency." The manipulators laugh at it or toss it aside with rejection like any trivial bad idea. Its more like who had sex with who on some reality TV show that takes off like wildfire.

So... tell me... whats your plan on education again? Hows that going to work when Rand failed? I don't think things work at this large scale by education. It either works through starvation or defeating competition.

Cheers,
Dean

Post 46

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 8:09pm

Dean,

In your drug bust example, I agree that there is shared responsibility, but the initiation of force can only apply to those directly involved. Otherwise it isn't an initiation of force. Those others, like people who support drug laws, are responsible for their ignorance, but they didn't initiate force.
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You are suggesting we be pacifists and I am suggesting we defend ourselves.

That's bullshit! Show me the respect during these discussions of not accusing me of being something I'm not.
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You argued against the simple competition of ideas, against pursuasion, and against education. Then, you wanted to know what my plan is. Well, I have no magic in my pocket, no miracle cure for the cultural diseases we are afflicted with. When a disease sweeps through a population, you use your best abilities to protect yourself from it, and maybe you will be part of the team that is fighting it, and the success will depend upon the disease factors and the available medical technology. If someone doesn't like that, and they want some other answer, what do you tell them? Go invent new technology?

Because a massive cultural change isn't something that can be had like a fast food hamburger doesn't mean that you throw your arms up and abandon the very concept of a just government, a constitutionally limited government. Now if you can find a better way to provide steady, dependable liberty on a lasting basis, let's hear how.

What you haven't said is what your suggestion is. What is your suggestion in this nation where there appears to be a majority of people who are either idiots or parasites (or both)? If it will take a number of people to see things your way, how are you going to pursuade them? Do you think you are an army of one who can defend yourself against even big government? Are you planning to tell the IRS to fuck themselves?
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I believe you are making a massive All-Or-Nothing type of fallacy when you say "The use of your property and your body is protected by you and you alone through self defense. Asking others to do the defense for you, especially when they are a bunch of thieves... is nothing but foolish. If we didn't have criminal laws and police and courts and prisons, you would have to barricade yourself in a fortress and fight for your life on a regular basis because the thugs would be roaming free and preying on anyone who showed a moment's inattention or weakness. (If you disagree with that, I can point you to a number of third world countries you can go experience.) In other words, you are already relying on others to have created the degree of liberty we have in our day to day life. So, it isn't ONLY yourself that does the protecting. We don't "ask others" we simply live in a society that has a certain amount of structure that protects us to a certain degree. That's very different. The percentage of people who are thieves is low. Government is only part thief and part protector. When you make wild, exaggerated statements it just clouds the issue

Post 47

Friday, October 25, 2013 - 9:11pm

Steve,

OK, so you are not a pacifist in relation to "Islamic Terrorists", but you are a pacifist in relation to American parasites.

My suggestion is for producers to defend themselves. I don't need to persuade anyone. This policy doesn't require laws or voting... it just requires for individuals to administer restitution, relation, and incapacitation in defense of themselves.

I think a person would be a fool to head on attack the IRS. Never the less, I think a person can alter their behavior in such a way that the IRS (& its beneficiaries) does not gain from their theft.

Re: Our government helps... No, actually I don't think the court systems nor the Federal Government actually have a net positive effect on my security. The laws are waaaaay too corrupt. I think they primarily bring injustice. Its only in the private where people generally actually bring justice.

Your example of third world countries doesn't help your argument. I think third world countries are full of humans who like to rape and pillage. That's way different than the US, where men are generally against raping and pillaging, they are just mainly for redistribution of wealth through taxation and inflation and like to harass drug users and like the military industrial complex. And I think this is more due to design of the humans than education or government. The government's will and actions are always within some tolerable range of its citizen's will & actions.

But then you think human's will is significantly independent of their design, so we disagree on that too due to contradicting premises.

=======

Interesting side note: Its been suggested to me that the elite who control the Federal Reserve etc actually agree with Rand, but they are really smart, like on a different level beyond most humans. So they consider the average human more or less cattle. Rand claims men gain from trade and new inventions... but to these elite, they can already so easily have so much that new inventions don't really improve their lives. And since the cattle vote for wealth redistribution from the elite, the elite decide, well screw you, we'll turn the whole system on its head and you cattle can steal from each other, while we'll trick them into wanting to enforce the use of the money we print...

I don't know. I always wonder how smart the elite are. There's that news article I just posted about the Fed's new policy. I mean... clearly in that article there is blatant 1984 speak... and I don't think anybody could come up with saying what they said without it being intentional. Its like in the news article the Fed spokesman was saying "War is Peace, Fixed Rate Bonds is Stable Secure Investment when Interest Rates are Rising". But that 1984 speak wasn't necessary, so to me its kind of like a message saying "Hello out there to anybody who thinks for themselves, we own the world, and we are talking 1984 speak so that you will know the Fed isn't controlled by the dumb mob, instead by some brilliant manipulators."

Do you guys ever think "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."? I think I could do a pretty good job coming up with bullshit to influence the cattle to complacently move from pasture to pasture, to work the fields, the factories, yea whatever. I just don't know whether I could live with myself. I guess it depends on whether I think I really could make a difference in the world, in making things more capitalist for others. If things can't be improved, then maybe it would be better if I just joined them?

Post 48

Saturday, October 26, 2013 - 12:16am

Dean, you said that I'm a pacifict in relation to American parasites, and then you said:

My suggestion is for producers to defend themselves. I don't need to persuade anyone. This policy doesn't require laws or voting... it just requires for individuals to administer restitution, relation, and incapacitation in defense of themselves.

Okay, then tell me what you have done that makes you NOT a pacifist in relation to American parasites.

Post 49

Saturday, October 26, 2013 - 5:53am

Communication is important. We learn from each other. But the door to learning opens from the inside.

Generally speaking, the works of Ayn Rand appeal to people who agree with the basic premises. For adults, "I always felt that way" is common explanation. For teens (high school to college), "always" is a short time, but the resonance exists nonetheless. For some kids, existential angst defines themselves to themselves and they wallow in that forever. For others, the achievement and success promised by The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism become a life plan.

Some people choose to think. Apparently, most others do not. Julian Jaynes cogently explained how most of the people in the world always have and still do get along without conscious thought. He asks, have you ever driven home from work and not remembered how you got there? You performed a learned task without conscious SELF-awareness. Most people have been and still are un-SELF-aware. Literacy brought self-awareness. Even in an industrialized society, most people today are not literate in the basic meaning of the word. They can recognize symbols and perform work, but they have no self-reflection. Dancing with the Kardashians is all they know.

I have been reading books by Christopher Hitchens. (See my blog. I have three more here now.) He called himself a Trotskyist. He said that his assignment from the Socialist Workers Party was to infiltrate Labour to provide it with his intellect in the fight against reaction and also to keep pulling Labour to the Left. Asked directly at a Q&A he denigrated Ayn Rand and the Virtue of Selfishness. I still find objectivism (lower-case o) in his work: he is a realist, rational and empirical; a cogent individualist; he admired not only Thomas Jefferson, but even John Adams and James Madison, and of course the ever-admirable Benjamin Franklin, all as thinkers and doers of the Enlightenment.

Reading Hitchens I found someone whose primary virtue was their choice to use their mind, even from an early age. (He said that the first light came on at nine, when he realized that by evolution our eyes were adapted to the world.) So, I agree with DMG that at some level, persuasion and argument are pointless.

You make your case, state your thesis, show your evidence; and those who agree with you will; and those who do not, will not. It ends there.

Ayn Rand offered several powerful ideas. So did Sir Isaac Newton. Millions of people who cannot understand physics nonetheless drive automobiles. They also participate in a market economy. They understand neither - and never will.

Living defensively is just a wider application of driving defensively.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 10/26, 5:56am)

Post 50

Saturday, October 26, 2013 - 9:35am

Christopher Hitchens abandoned socialism a long time back - he was very unhappy with the way the left reacted to Islamic terrorism. He came to resemble a Neo-Con in many ways. He seemed to stay to the left on domestic issues, but they didn't seem to energize him much, except for his fairly libertarian positions on personal privacy, opposition to warrantless searches, and opposition to the war on drugs. His passion was more about an aggressive foreign policy (he wanted a more aggressive military policy than Bush). His other passion was his opposition to theism. He was bright, and a fine writer, but his principles didn't run as deep as they should have for someone of his intelligence and, mentally, he floated about a bit and appeared to let his mind be driven more than it should by emotional reactions which he dressed up in words as if it were all reasoning.
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Reading Hitchens I found someone whose primary virtue was their choice to use their mind, even from an early age. (He said that the first light came on at nine, when he realized that by evolution our eyes were adapted to the world.) So, I agree with DMG that at some level, persuasion and argument are pointless.

His CHOICE was to use his mind... that's volition. Persuasion and argument are pointless? As if evolution made us deterministic and without choice (which I believe is DMG's position). It can't be both ways.

Post 51

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - 11:50am

Since 'persuasion and argument' are words being used here let me ask the question a different way.
We know there were people who said it was impossible to fly (just as there are those who say citizens within political system cannot be 'completely free.' What if the Wright brothers limited their proof man can fly to 'persuasion and argument.' In other words, they demonstrate with a fan how air flows over what would be the plains' wings and that propellors can pull a wheeled cart.
Every system component necessary to put a plane together was shown to work separately but they never actually put all the puzzle pieces together into one plane and actually fly! But they 'persuade and argue' that man can fly.
So would that have been proof man can fly or not? (This is not an actual question.)
Some would say, "Yes," others, "No,"
The people who say, "Yes," would grasp mentally the only thing missing is to put everything together into one machine and fly.
The people who say, "No," would need a demonstration because they do not accept new ideas at a theoretical level (the vast majority of people).
(Not grasping an idea mentally doesn't make someone an idiot. They might be the best commercial airline presidents, pilots, engineers, etc., but in their mind it is just not fact until it is demonstrated. Persuasion and argument or not.)
Today it is elementary knowledge that people can fly (not the science of aviation but the simple fact that people can fly).
The knowledge within the minds of the people who originally said, "No, man cannot fly," was changed not through 'persuasion and arguments' but through demonstration.
Persuasion and arguments can only work with people who grasp ideas abstractly. On the bell shaped curve graph how new ideas are accepted 97.5+% of people fall past the stage of the innovators (the stage of mental abstraction). (If you need a cite for this you'll have to search this on the Internet for yourself.)
On a different note. I don't believe we need to 'go-back-to-the-way-the-system-was'. The system is today what the system always was.
Are there opposition party members who don't stand up to statists? Yes, I agree (but that's not 'out of the system;' it is the system).
Are citizens so dumbed down today they put up with these infringements of rights? Yes, I agree (caused by various sources like socialized education, welfare, etc., none of which is done 'outside the system').
Are there programs in place today that Washington would never agree to? Yes, I agree, he wouldn't have. In judging the system, however, one has to ask could he have gotten away with it if he tried.
But with very few exceptions all senators, governors, representatives, presidents, etc, campaigned according to the law (the system), were properly sworn in (according to the system), all legislative votes were counted correctly (according to the system), they made sure they dotted all the "j's" and crossed all the "x's." the system is the system. What is exactly is this thing that modern presidents can do that Washington could not? Yes, there are things they get away with but not because 'the system' changed.
In other words if Washington had wanted to get a law passed saying you will buy health insurance he would have asked congress to write something up, they would have decided to comply or not and if they wanted to they would have wrote something up and said something to the effect, "All those in favor say, 'I,' those opposed say, 'Nay.' If the I's won there is nothing in 'the system' as it was to prevent it.
Things like this didn't happen but it was not 'the system' that prevented it and no one can cite some legal thing different today. What has changed is the prevailing philosophy guiding people's lives today but the system itself works the same; there is no protection in it and there never was. If a system is vulnerable to such changes then how is it a valid system? A valid system (one that protects peoples rights) would not be vulnerable to such changes. This should be obvious.
Our system needs to strip all politicians from their governing powers in favor of a system not having forced representation; so we do not all agree we need to go back to the way it was with some improvements.

Post 52

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - 1:28pm

Paul:

See what you are saying, but the flight example is not the best; it brings to mind the actual story of the first V/STOL test for what became the Harrier.

Similar arguments were made; 'we got all the pieces, just need to bolt them together.'

So, a jet was manufactured with vectorable thrust underneath the wings that could be directed downward.

When tested, the engine nozzles were vectored down, and thrust was increased. The jet didn't lift. They added more thrust, and the more thrust they added, the harder the jet sunk down on its landing gear, collapsing the struts, as if something was driving the plane into the ground.

Counter intuitive? All that thrust directed down? The jet just had to rise, but instead, the more thrust, the more the jet got pushed downward.

The jet exhaust bled out on the underside of the wings...dropping the pressure on the underside of the wings. The pressure on the top of the wings remained constant. The action of the jets as implemented was to literally suck the plane to the earth.

The negative lift on the wings exceeded the vertical thrust.

Sometimes the folks who want to see the thing fly have a reason, because common sense and intuition isn't always right. And in this example, the folks who designed that first Harrier knew about Bernouilli's principle and how planes actually fly.

A jet engine on test stand sure enough develops thrust; what could go wrong?

I think social engineering is like that -alot-; folks who have never actually 'run an economy' see only too clearly the 'science' of how it should be done. Mainly because, in their entire lives, they've never actually constructed anything complex in the real world, only in academia.

regards,
Fred

Post 53

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - 2:01pm

An insight into the Harrier incident:

American aeronautical engineers are taught from a slightly different bias than European aeronautical engineers, at least as their first blush explanation of why wings generate lift.

They are not taught totally different things so much as the emphasis is placed on different parts of the same physical phenomena.

European AEs are taught that wings generate lift from the change of momentum of the airflow; American AEs are taught that wings generate lift from the integrated pressure differentiual over the upper and lower surface of the wings.

In fact, the two are integrated parts of the same equations of motion... does the pressure differential result from the change of momentum, or does the change in momentum result from the integrated pressure differential?

F = PA = d(mv)/dt

Moot, its kind of all the same thing. But because of the European AE bias, a kind of focus on momentum as the primary driver of generating lift, and so, in the case of the first Harrier... ooops.

For a really nerdy insight into the cultural differences of European AEs, compare the Whittle Engine in the UK Meteors with the German engine used in the ME-262. The British not only tried to make but did make a jet engine from inefficient centrifugal components, the Germans from inefficient axial flow components; the inefficient cancelled out, but the torturous flow path of the centrifugal design and the necessary high speed gearboxes to match flow coefficients made the Whittle engines mechanical Rube Goldberg brute force monstrosities compared to the simple German design.

The much simpler German axial flow design -- even with inneficient(like 3%!)untwisted axial flow stages -- was much more suited to aircraft propulsion -- and is the basis for jet engine design ever since.

It is a wonder that we won that war. The Germans had the potential of a totally effective air superioroty advantage, but couldn't/didn't produce them in the numbers or rate needed to assert that superioroty. We out-attritioned them.

regards,
Fred

Post 54

Friday, November 1, 2013 - 1:37pm