Who is ruling our country? ... Who is supposed to rule?

[hansda]

Who is ruling our country?

Is it the Politicians or the Industrialists or the God-men or the God-fathers or somebody/something else?

Who is supposed to rule?

[hansda]

Let us be ruled by Knowledge.

[Jeeves]

Who is ruling every country are the greediest and most ruthless. They don't have to be industrialists or anything in particular, just a handful of people who, by methods that do not bear close examination - have gained control of the officials and processes of governance.
Nobody is supposed to rule a democracy: it's supposed to be administered by a body of representatives, chosen through to fair and open elections by all the people.
In a monarchy, the ruler is supposed to be chosen by a god or a small group of elite aristocrats, be surrounded by wise counsellors, and be responsible for the welfare of the populace.
Neither of those processes guarantees competence, but as long as the laws are obeyed by both leaders and followers, either system can work fairly well. When hijacked by special interests, no system works.

[RoccoR]

hansda, et al,

It is not quite the right question.

It is not a "who;" but a "what" that is the constant. All the "who's" change over time, but the "what" is always there.

Who is ruling our country?

Is it the Politicians or the Industrialists or the God-men or the God-fathers or somebody/something else?

Who is supposed to rule?

(COMMENT)

In 1987, the movie "Wall Street" was made. In it, it had a character named "Gordon Gekko."

The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you.

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

• The "who" is anybody that catches the brass-ring.
  
• The "mantra" is to "maximize the wealth of the shareholder."
  
• The "winner" is the greedy guy that comes out on top with the most power and influence.

But behind it all is the greed for money, which gets you influence, that brings-on the power; that gets you more money, that radiates more influence, and brings more power.

The nation is not run at all. You have to think of it as an environment for the greedy, influential, and powerful. In science, we would call it the fabric of greed. The country runs, not to improve the nation, but as a component for the greedy, influential, and powerful to move, manage and manipulate factors necessary to attain more money. The rest of us are just expendable pawns. Mitt Romney makes millions, not helping to rebuild America and putting people to work --- but by chopping companies and selling it off in pieces (the break-up value). If people (you and me) lose our jobs, our homes our livelihood, it makes no difference to the greedy, influential, and powerful. We are colateral damage - insignificant to and unimportant goal of "maximizing the wealth."

Look at the key factor in the news today:

Obama makes fundraising push to keep pace with Romney‎
Washington Post - 1 hour ago http://www.washingtonpost.com/obama-...c85_video.html
Aug. 7, 2012 - President Obama continues to hammer home the message about Mitt Romney's proposed tax plan, while Romney took in $26 million more than Mr. Obama last month. (CBS News)

Romney trounces Obama in fundraising for 3rd month - August 7, 2012 8:50 AM
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_1...for-3rd-month/
"Over the course of the next three months, the other side is going to spend more money than we have ever seen on ads that basically say the same thing you've been hearing for the past three months," Obama said, then summarized their argument as "the economy is not where it needs to be and it's Obama's fault."

It is not about loyalty, honesty, integrity, wisdom, ethics and values that runs America. These are all showcase concepts - but the money, that is what is important. In America, the nation is run by the greedy, influential, and powerful that buy Congressmen, Senators, and the Presidency. It's like the propaganda movie that portrays the Administration being heroic and saving the nation using public funds (taxpayer dollars) to bailout the banking and financial industries; then the follow-on stories about the how much they paid the CEO's in bonuses for putting the crisis forward in the name of greed.

The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being *cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz22scbXQ9c

Do these names sound familiar? These are the guys that were too big to fail. We bailed them out, only to let them loose to do more damage to "America." When you can get the government to do that for you, that is POWER.

It's not a "who" --- but a "what."

Most Respectfully,
R

[Saturnine Pariah]

Who is ruling every country are the greediest and most ruthless. They don't have to be industrialists or anything in particular, just a handful of people who, by methods that do not bear close examination - have gained control of the officials and processes of governance.
Nobody is supposed to rule a democracy: it's supposed to be administered by a body of representatives, chosen through to fair and open elections by all the people.
In a monarchy, the ruler is supposed to be chosen by a god or a small group of elite aristocrats, be surrounded by wise counsellors, and be responsible for the welfare of the populace.
Neither of those processes guarantees competence, but as long as the laws are obeyed by both leaders and followers, either system can work fairly well. When hijacked by special interests, no system works.

Sums up every government that has ever existed throughout human history.

[kx000]

May I? I would keep mr. Obama close by.

[Saturnine Pariah]

(Raises eyebrow) Please explain Kx000 why you would want Barack Hussein Obama Jr. for another term in office?

[kx000]

(Raises eyebrow) Please explain Kx000 why you would want Barack Hussein Obama Jr. for another term in office?

You misunderstood me.

I want to be the king. Obama would make for a good piece to puzzle so to speak.

[Saturnine Pariah]

So a monarchy with yourself at the very top...so what qualifications do you have? What actions or series of actions would you have set in play to achieve your goal? From my perspective you sound like the individual that sees other humans as merely pawns in your game, a means to a self "justified" end? A "morally" righteous path conceived in your mind as you watch the events of human nature unfold out of favor of your ideological beliefs? To create “utopia” based on your individual philosophy an entire nation subjected to ideals that they must live under that are not one-hundred percent accepted. Wash, Rinse, and Repeat another government is born. All hail King Kx000!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oncmL69ZEJ8

[Yazata]

Who is ruling our country?

Which country is "our country"? Sciforums has participants living in many countries.

Just in general, I don't think that anyone totally "rules" any country. There's no single individual or group of people who are pulling all the strings.

Typically governments possess most of the levers of power. The police and military are organs of government power. Governments have great influence over the direction economies take. They announce no end of acts intended to define what's legal and illegal for individual people to do.

But governments' control over individual people is imperfect at best. There are often different levels and branches of government working at cross purposes and sometimes even in direct conflict. There are no end of private organizations that may possess considerable power of their own. And individual people often just ignore the government when it comes to conducting their own lives.

Who is supposed to rule?

Some countries try to maximize the power of government. They try to centralize all government power in the national capital, making all other levels of provincial/local government subordinate to and agents of central power. And these kind of countries may try to give this central power as much control as possible over as many aspects of daily life as possible. (They inevitably insist that it's for the people's own good.)

Other countries try to distribute power among different levels of government, and among different semi-independent branches of national governments. And some countries leave a lot more scope and room for private individuals and associations to acquire and wield power of their own.

Then there's the question of who controls these governments.

On one extreme, there's the old Athenian model of popular democracy. In Athens (and some of the other Greek poleis), major decisions were actually made by the people collected together in national assemblies, by popular vote. Some of the smaller Swiss cantons still govern themselves this way, I understand. It's only practical in very small states.

Some modern countries have tried to adapt this Greek model to the task of governing much larger states, by having the people vote for representatives that in turn meet in national assemblies. Some modern states will sometimes put major issues to popular votes in referendums and may even allow the people to directly introduce legislation for popular vote by gaining enough signatures on initiative petitions.

On the other extreme, there are states in which all power is theoretically concentrated at one point. Historically, absolute monarchs tried to maximize their own powers, typically at the expense of the traditional liberties enjoyed by feudal nobilities. The German Nazis introduced theories that imagined the state as if it was a biological organism, insisting that it could only thrive if all organs of the body were responding to the nerve impulses of a single Leader. And communism historically tried to place all means of production under the control of the central power, and then placed that central power in the hands of a self-appointed party politburo.

So perhaps the bottom line here, in distinguishing how states are governed, is the distinction between centralized top-down power in which individual people are ultimately subjects of the state, and distributed bottom-up power in which soverignty ultimately resides in the people themselves.

[kx000]

So a monarchy with yourself at the very top...so what qualifications do you have? What actions or series of actions would you have set in play to achieve your goal? From my perspective you sound like the individual that sees other humans as merely pawns in your game, a means to a self "justified" end? A "morally" righteous path conceived in your mind as you watch the events of human nature unfold out of favor of your ideological beliefs? To create “utopia” based on your individual philosophy an entire nation subjected to ideals that they must live under that are not one-hundred percent accepted. Wash, Rinse, and Repeat another government is born. All hail King Kx000!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oncmL69ZEJ8

I just want a utopian society for good and evil separate from one another. Nothing wrong with this.

[Saturnine Pariah]

An impossible dream, but an admirable dream. If we had the capacity to separate evil to begin with...why allow it to continue to exist in this world. Separation leads to segregation, segregation to inequality, inequality to anger, anger to hatred and hatred….to violence. What “evil” and what “good” are defined and how would it be defined? Would someone be pre-determined
“evil” and then subjected to a life devoid of the same rights as say a person that is determined “good” is that in itself moral? I have no animosity towards your dream…I wish we could rid this world of negative action and suffering…but then I remember that without it life would have less value, validity or purpose, the appreciation for what is deemed “good” would lose its value if their no comparative alternative to the present situation. Persistent happiness is just as detrimental as persistent sadness. These truths are why I cannot believe in dichotomous afterlife scenarios presented by any religion, one plain of existence of permanent pain, misery and anguish the other a permanent plain of existence of joy, happiness and bliss. “You would have to be a pretty sick fuck to enjoy heaven while knowing that others are suffering”- Unknown.

[RedStar]

Capitalists rule all countries. It's pretty simple.

[kx000]

An impossible dream, but an admirable dream. If we had the capacity to separate evil to begin with...why allow it to continue to exist in this world. Separation leads to segregation, segregation to inequality, inequality to anger, anger to hatred and hatred….to violence. What “evil” and what “good” are defined and how would be defined? Would someone be pre-determined
“evil” and then subjected to a life devoid of the same rights as say a person that is determined “good” is that in itself moral? I have no animosity towards your dream…I wish we could rid this world of negative action and suffering…but then I remember that without it life would have less value, validity or purpose, the appreciation for what is deemed “good” would lose its value if their no comparative alternative to the present situation. Persistent happiness is just as detrimental as persistent sadness. These truths are why I cannot believe in dichotomous afterlife scenarios presented by any religion, one plain of existence of permanent pain, misery and anguish the other a permanent plain of existence of joy, happiness and bliss. “You would have to be a pretty sick fuck to enjoy heaven while knowing that others are suffering”- Unknown.

They want to rape and murderer. They wish for this. Lets try it. More to come later on post #12.

[Crunchy Cat]

Who is ruling our country?

Is it the Politicians or the Industrialists or the God-men or the God-fathers or somebody/something else?

Who is supposed to rule?

No idea, what is your country?

[hansda]

No idea, what is your country?

Its a general question and not a speicific question for any particular country. So, let us try to find a general answer for this question.

[Crunchy Cat]

Why? It won't be anything close to correct.

[youreyes]

We should be ruled by a super smart computer that was designed by the civilization prior to our own.
We should be ruled by girls in tight short skirts, to promote gender equality.
We should be ruled by an outside party that will not loose or gain anything from impacts of their or own decisions/actions on our civilization.

ermmm...

[Saturnine Pariah]

They want to rape and murderer. They wish for this. Lets try it. More to come later on post #12.

Try what exactly? Also your grammer in the first part is off.
"they want to rape and murder" also who are "they" and why do "they" wish for any negative actions to transpire? Could you be a little less abstract.

[hansda]

Why? It won't be anything close to correct.

Why it won't be close to correct?


Our system of ruling has become such that human beings are being ruled by human beings. A human being is guided by various human factors. A human being is also guided by various non-human factors. Human beings are common for all the countries. So, i think a general answer can be found for this question.