Zanket, You have some good points about Clinton. I don't know much about him, but I read a little before posting... The bio (short) that I read didn't state whether that Rhodes scholarship got him through both Oxford and Yale. If so, then I am forced to agree with you about the hard-worker thing. Paying off a house and being worth a million, I don't know... I guess that depends on the size of the house. I am 3 years into paying mine off, and I think I might be worth about -$3000 or so. I guess I figured some "special interest group" had taken a special interest in Bill and hooked him up with the education he needed to get him into the White House. I have read that it happened that way with his political career; supposedly, the widow of George W. Bush's grandfather's mentor (Pamela Harriman, widow of Averell Harriman) "picked him up, dusted him off and made him chairman of PAM-PAC--the largest fund raising source for the Democratic Party" after he lost the campaign for gov. of Arkansas. (see http://www.trunkerton.fsnet.co.uk/skull.htm) It seems like there is all sorts of this back-scratching going on in the political world these days, and it's gotten so routine, that we as citizens just tend to accept that politicians are sneaky and fraudulent... when we run across an honest one, it seems too good to be true, you know? Scary. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Give it some time on your house; they tend to go up in value exponentially. Figure that when Clinton was governor for 8 years and with Hillary a go-getter too, they probably grossed $250K a year (today’s dollars) and had free housing to boot (governor’s mansion). They would’ve had to make major financial mistakes to not reach a million after that. Here’s a little story about Clinton: When he began campaigning in 1991 I didn’t have a good impression of the guy. When he became a front runner for the nomination he visited my state to speak. At the time I worked for the hotel he was staying at. I knew he was expected to return to the hotel immediately after the speech, and security had roped off a path from the lobby’s front door to the elevator. With no press in sight and maybe a hundred curious bystanders tops present in the lobby, I expected Clinton to jet from the door to his room with no comment. Instead, he spent an hour in that lobby just talking to people. He wasn’t glad-handling; he was having involved conversations. I thought, this guy is gonna make a great president.
That sounds really great. I would've expected the same thing that you were expecting. It's always nice to be surprised by someone's integrity. I should've done more research into the candidates and their stances when i was younger. My first presidential election, (92, I think) was when I was right out of high school, and very subject to my parents' republican standing, they just said "Be sure to vote Republican!" and I did. That stuck for a while, it was just easier to vote for who would most likely win. I remember feeling such a sense of defeat when Clinton won. I have no idea now why I felt that way; I was truly on neither side. Thanks for the insight on Clinton, and for generating enough interest to force me to look it up!
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Alright, maybe clinton was a "common person" wealth wise, but the proportion of extremely weathy people in our government is not in line with the proportion that exist in society, he's just an exception. This doesn't have any real relevance to whether or not a system of government in which people's views are judged by the amount of money they have can be a democracy.
In theory democracy allows for anyone to have the opportunity to achieve. But democracy unfortunately does not guarantee protection from falling through the cracks. But in a way, that is a societal problem. Americans (and not just the wealthy) have as a rule insisted that government be involved as little as possible in our lives, which makes it difficult for the central government to provide a safety net for everyone. However, democracy still allows the basic individual freedoms that allows for the privately-owned small business, which are still an integral part of the capitalist system. Monarchies, oligarchies, dictatorships, and totalitarian states have traditionally not allowed for capitalism. The crown or nobility controls the wealth, or in the latter two forms of government, all business is state owned. That's not capitalism. History says that is not the case. You're right. Democracy does allow for whatever people vote for. And in every democracy people have chosen an open market. And if you are in that market you have the opportunity to set the goals you choose. No guarantee of achieving them, but the guarantee of the opportunity. Unless you are talking about true communism, which is a small tribal community with no government, all forms of government are controlled by the wealthy. But in a democracy that doesn't mean nobody else can excel, or even that the poor can not achieve wealth. Look at Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller for examples, two magnates of the industrial revolution. Both started from scratch and built industrial empires with US Steel and Standard Oil. I can't imagine any other political system where they could achieved rags to riches. No but you said that because wealth wasn't distributed equally in a capitalist system it couldn't exist in a democracy. At least that was my interpretation. So far, there has yet to be an example of a communist government being economically successful. China is trying, but much of its recent success has been because of Britain turning Hong Kong over to the Chinese in 1999. China still imports huge amounts of grains and other foodstuffs from the US and Canada to help feed its people. But what we've seen in communist countries, using the Soviet Union as one example, distribution of wealth means a lack of incentive. If you can't strive to get ahead then there is no point in excelling. That is one of the advantages that democracies offer, and a good example of why the US has been successful in its relatively short existence - the open market guaranteed by our democratic government meant the opportunity for upward mobility of our citizens.
China's recent success Most of China's recent success can be credited to the fact we are allowing them to produce an outrageous percentage of our consumer goods. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html Democracy can no longer be defined in static terms as it has been in a state of continuous flux in recent years. The majority makes some gains then experiences some losses depending on the political climate.
True, in theory a democracy would allow for everyone to have an equal oppurtunity to achieve. This is far from being the case in our society. Here people are born into a class, and their status from then on is largely determined by this. Some people by luck and hard work are able to raise themselves from a lower to a higher level, although this is becoming harder and harder. Americans will "demand" whatever the information they have tells them is best for them. As the flow of information is controlled entirely by the wealthy Americans will "demand" whatever the wealthy want them too. This is very different from people making informed decicions using objective information. Small business is one of the things that is being done away with in our country as larger more wealthy business finds ways to scoop up the profit theses small business' were making. This of course is facilitated by our government. capitalism has existed under monarchies in the past, granted it was kept more reigned in and subject to the will of the monarch, but people were still allowed to compete to make more money and garner more favore from the king. As I said before, there has never been a democracy. The wealthy aristocrats who control the countries that call themselves democracys today chose an "open market" In this market everyone has an oppurtunity, only some people have success just about guaranteed and others are almost guaranteed to fail. All governments to date have been ruled by the wealthy, I agree with this. However, as people become wealthy in this society they effectively pull the ladder up behind them, for example, whoever started starbucks is ensuring that no one else will ever make money off a coffee house unless they work for him. The way things are going eventually all industries will be controlled by huge corporations leaving no room for new entrepreneurs to emerge. There has never been any communist government. There have been attempts to establish communist governments but the governments that people are always holding up as proof that communism doesn't work were NOT communist. One of the primary problems with these countries in my opinion was that they did not have any real democracy. This led to much of the problems with motivation. There is nothing to say that in a communist society it would not be decided that people who worked harder than others wouldn't be given special privilidges, just that people would not be able to seize all of the privlidge they were able to and permanently monopolize it.
Granted that it generally is easier for someone born into wealth to have a better chance to succeed, but every one still has a chance. It may be more difficult for some than others, but the opportunity to succeed is still there. And it is still not difficult to get government grants to open virtually any type of enterprise. For 200 years Americans have 'demanded' a free market. Increasingly, some Americans have put more demands on a welfare system as well, but I suppose that is something for a separate thread. Small business is still alive and well and is the backbone of a capitalist system. The only such systems that I am aware of that a monarch didn't control all the wealth were oligarchies, where wealth was distributed among the nobility. But there was no significant trickle down. The only monarchies I know of where capitalism has been allowed to exist have been constitutional monarchies such as Britain, where there was a parliamentary system that held more power than the crown. Well, I suppose technically you could call the US a republic with a representative system. But that's semantics. That's not really true. The American colonies had an open market while still being part of the British empire (constitutional monarchy). The Founding Fathers upheld that idea. It was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1824 (Gibbons v Ogden), when an attempt at a steamboat monopoly was struck down in New York state. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the 1890s gave the government the power to breakdown trusts, and Teddy Roosevelt attacked several of those huge monopolies. In more recent times AT&T was broken up giving opportunities for companies like Sprint and MCI to come into competition, and more recently the courts have gone after Bill Gates and Microsoft. I think 'guaranteed to fail' is too pessimistic. If they have a good idea, good work ethics, and good business sense, more often than not they will succeed. Doesn't mean they will get rich, but they can sustain and do so without being forced back into a work for wages position. And with the number of small busniesses out there, and the numbers opening every year, I would say the system still provides great opportunities to the average American. As I said above, if Starbucks ever truly monopolizes the market (and they haven't yet) then someone will challenge them. In the urban area I live in there is plenty of competition for Starbucks. I agree. As I said earlier, the only true forms of communism to date are in small tribal systems. It's much more difficult in a larger system. Marxism called for the disestablishment of government, allowing the people to equally run their country. That is virtually impossible to achieve in a nation/state, which needs some sort of government infrastructure to exist. I agree wholeheartedly. True, but to date no country that has attempted communism has been able to work those problems out. A major problem, at least as I see it, is that man is by nature aggressive and always strives for more. Also, if you try and have democracy in a communist system then you are subjecting that system to decisions being decided on by a democratic vote. Hence, a majority rule system. That's not communism. What you are wanting is a utopian system, but in a modern industrial state I just can't see it. But that's just my opinion anyway.
The fact that the oppurtunity is there is not meaningful in my opinion given the obstacles that some people have put in the way of taking advantage of it. As I said, people will "demand" whatever the information they have says is best for them. If that information is controlled by the wealthy then it will lead people to believe that what is best for the wealthy is best for them. All around the country small family business are being driven out by large corporate chains. Small business are certainly not alive and well. It may not have been capitalism as it exists today, but even if the only peopel allowed to have wealth were the aristocracy these people still competed and attempted to take as much as they could for themselves. Historically, under monarchies/aristocracies/etc a small portion of the population controlled all the wealth and power. Much like in the United States. This is only semantics, and is not what I'm talking about. Direct democracy really isn't feasible with this many people at present. I don't have any problems with representative democracy if the representatives are actually serving the interest of those who elected them. The founding fathers were not exactly farm laborers. Attempts to curtail capitalism by legislation prohibiting monopolies are doomed to fail as the government that judges what constitutes a monopoly is controlled by the monopolys...its true that at time corporations get broken up, but it makes little difference to the average person...microsoft still has a monopoly on operating systems and my guess is they always will. So some people through hard work and perserverance if they are lucky may be able to pull themselves out of the work for wages position, and others are born not having to do a day of work in their lives. This is unacceptable to me. My guess is that starbucks will never even be challenged, as they'll never drive ALL the small coffee houses out of business, but here in NYC there's one on every block just about, and more and more opening every year. Small coffee houses continue to go out of business. As a final step Marxism calls for the "melting away of the state" as it becomes unecessary, but prior to that it calls for a much larger state to set things in order so that that melting away becomes feasible. communism does not specify totalitarian rule. A communist system could very well be run by majority rule. Man is aggressive by nature and will always strive for more. A communist(well, closer to communist than capitalist anyway) system of government could be set up in such a way that people COULD gain privilidge and status through hard work, as judged by the society as a whole, but safeguards would be in place to keep small numbers of individuals from seizing control. You're right, what I'm looking for would not be communism in the original sense, and could be described as a utopia. I don't believe that makes it impossible. Things can always be improved.
I guess we just have a different outlook on it. I do understand what you're asking for, and sure, a utopian society would be the ideal. I don't think it could be achieved in an existing state today though. Too many different interest groups. But who knows what the future holds. Anyhow, enjoyed the discussion.
