It's a fact that the government IS selling bonds backed by your children's future labor (should you have any). That's a fact. When the bonds are sold to the Chinese, then it's they who OWN your childrens' future labor plus whatever interest the unelected Fed Chairman decides should be added in - to sweeten the deal. If it's 25%, then your children will pay 25%. As simple as that. How would you like it if someone where to sell your future labor? AND forced you to work and pay it back? AND you had no say, NONE AT ALL. And if you didn't pay it back - you got a gun in your face and sent to live in prison. I think most people would think of this as human slavery. I find it interesting how the abstractness of money can mask this so easily. Combined with 12-years of unquestioning normalization. It's no wonder the North Koreas worship Dear Leader as their world collapses around them - and have done so, and will continue to do so, for generation after generation after generation. The facts staring them square in the face, yet they're totally and utterly blind to see them. They'd DIE for Dear Leader if given the chance. Pretty crazy - no more crazy than seeing our government sell our children's future labor. But, that's "normal". You know, because I use the roads and all. These are the facts, whether you want to acknowledge them or not. And the next generation WILL pay for those crimes against their person, never understanding why their life was less prosperous than yours, they'll pay with their lost prosperity. Probably unquestioningly. Maybe, if the Government decides to start a War with Iran or China, they'll pay with their lives. Wouldn't it be ironic if they called out one of GW Bush's grand-kids names in love as they took a bullet for their beloved Bush Jr Jr the III POTUS!..... in some shit hole country. Sound farcical? It's happening right now, as we speak. Humans dying for POTUS Obama. You know, because them thar Terroreest is gonna git us if they doesn't die for the Nation. I wonder if they call out Obama! Obama! As they lay dying in some steaming pile of shit in some small shithole village no one cares about in Africa or Afghanistan. Do you think they see Obama as their life fades away from this world? Gone for all eternity..... I hope you like those FREE roads you're driving on. And the taste of crow.
That was a free agreement you signed when you bought Westinghouse. If you find their products to be inferior and the quality of your warranty sub-par, then you won't buy from them. This means they'll try harder for your business by doing more to meet your desires at a price point you are happy with, or they will go out of business. YOU don't HAVE to do business with Westinghouse. Do you understand that? You have the freedom NOT to do business with that company. A MARKED difference with the relationship you share with your government. You do NOT have the freedom NOT to do business with the government. As a matter of fact, they can legally come over to your house, and evict you. They can sell bonds on your children's labor - and they do. They can inflate away your savings - and they do. They can force you to pay for your labor, with your labor - and they do. AND if you dare to not do business with them, they can put you in prison. That's a fact Asguard. Why on Earth you love the one group of unproductive people in society that can legally murder you is beyond me. As a matter of fact, if ANY OTHER group of humans were to treat you as the federal government does, you'd be down right pissed off. Goes to show you how much 12-years of Government "Education" does to alter a person's perception of what is moral and immoral. Were you ever taught in school the difference between a public and private bond? Did you ever learn what interest rates were? What equity was? Was 'money' made clear to you? How about the debt based monetary system? Were you taught how money comes into existence? What labor is? What private property was? Did you learn the arguments from the great intellectuals of the past? Both way? But did you learn them? To think skeptically? Critical of the government? Or to play along, to pass the MCQ tests, to hope for that wonderous job in government or some other fascist state run enterprise as a small happy cog....
You can look into the Big Dig yourself. Which 'word' do you think it being misused? It's not my fault you confuse Liberal with Progressive. Or Anarchy with Barbarism. I'm simply using the standard Kantian definition.
This is the guy whose usual posts consist of "I was talking to someone who is a qualified <insert something here> and they said <current theory considered gospel>...." One of these days, you lot are going to beg for men to come and save you. Only, there won't be any left. If I had only one wish, just one, I'd wish to be able to see what you're all going to do when you finally get what you want. Heh. To think that my one wish would be the result of schadenfreude.
How much of our debt is owned by the Chinese? How much of our debt is owned by us? Google it and get back to me. Yes, some day my children's labor will be owed to a group of people. Those people, for the most part, will be my children. I like it a lot! By selling my future labor I was able to afford the house that I am now living in. I thought it was JUST LIKE HITLER. Or like killing puppies. (All 100% emotion 0% logic arguments.) Yep. And I am paying for the previous generation's borrowing, and my father paid for his parent's borrowing (which, BTW, was a lot worse than today's borrowing.) Excellent! 110% emotion 0% logic! But again, I think a Hitler reference would work well here. Maybe say "didn't HITLER demand obedience and send the nation's kids to war TOO?" Never tried crow, but god knows we have enough of the buggers around here.
They'll own debt, the labor is only there to repay it with interest. I do hope you understand that. They don't own their labor, you spent it for them. They own your Debt obligations. Your children will pay for your debt, in their lost prosperity. So, I do hope you like the use of those free roads - it cost you a grandchild or two. Humans who will never see the light of this world, because they'll never exist. Children you will never miss, because you will never have known their love, you'll never see their faces light up in smiles, you won't watch as they grow into adults. They just will never exist. Isn't it nice like that? How you lost something and didn't even know it. Instead you get to see stressed out children who will be working longer hours, weekends, weeknights. Missed University joys as they have to go deeper and deeper into debt. They won't be able to afford to have those children whose smiles you'll never know. That's how it works. When the politicians are promising you free roads, what they mean to say is, those pot holed roads cost you the blood of a couple generations, please enjoy. So, again, I do hope you enjoy the roads, the drones, the wars because it cost you never to be known smiles, memories and love.
This is completely different. Yes, YOU have the right to sell YOUR future labor. It would not be moral for you to expect YOUR CHILDREN to pay for the house you are living in now. Even worse, to expect other's children to pay for your house. There are plenty of very wealthy Americans who live in very nice large houses thanks to you and your labor. See, your labor was sold decades ago, to over-pay for a "public service" (example: the manufacturing of obsolete bombs that were never used, $1000 toilet seats, all sorts of things). Those Bonds were used to pay for the building and maintenance of a rather large house, with servants, staff and nice grounds. See, there is no ACME bomb toilet seat factory. These items are produced by private corporations. Welcome to Fascism. How lucky of you, you get to pay for some Korean War bombs and toilet seats and radios and all sorts of crap, with a lower standard of living unbeknownst to you. You know, because *gasp* we needed to fight to protect poor dumb Americans against an ideology! Progressive Socialism in the form of Communism... *GAAASP*...... the Irony. Oh, well, you are paying on the interest and so will your children should you have any. They'll pay more for their university, they're receive less when they do pay for 'Public Services'. Their standard of living is and will be lower. Oh, and so will your children's children. They'll probably work full time just making payments on the interest! If you're lucky maybe you'll have to sell your house to make your interest payment.... for the 'Social Good' of course. The children of those politically connected who are able to get on and ride the gravy-train of public contracts live in that nice house, own private businesses, which get bailed out if they start to fail, they send their children overseas, to private schools, have private insurance, private tutors, they live the good life. They help write the laws that keep your children in Government Education for 12 years, make sure what is and isn't taught in those Public Lord of the Flies Schools. They make sure your children pay the income tax that maintains their lifestyle. AND best of all, if you or your children ever do decide maybe you don't want to pay, well - you can meet Mr Police Officer's Gun in your face, who'll happily take you off and put you in prison for 'The Good of the Nation'. See, some of those taxes pay his wage, and you do use the roads after all. But, I'm sure your children will never question things. They'll normalize to them and they'll pay. This is a fact, not some alternate mad-max Libertarian world you're worried might pop into existence should we *gasp* shrink the size and scope of the government, but the reality of the world as it exists right now, today. That's how Bonds work. It's a good gig if you're first in line selling them. Sweet deal actually. ADD to this Inflation, where the banks get money when it's worth something and sell it to you when it's worth a lot less of something. ALL for the Public Good mind you. Which is why this was all very much illegal, you know, back when those idiots like Thomas Jefferson were helping to form a 'more perfect Union'. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of USA (1743 - 1826) Try and recall back when the rich were failing, suddenly we heard something totally new to the Americans discourse Too Big Too Fail! Haaaaa! And the Democrats and Republicans were able to come together over a few short hours and sell TRILLIONS of dollars worth of debt, the very debt you're paying on, to bail them out. ALL of these charades about Fiscal Cliffs and Wars on Terror are just the modern day equivalent of Breads and Circuses. Designed to keep you supporting the very State that's slaving you out. I have no problem with private debt, bankruptcy, private risk, private rewards, privately sold stocks, bonds, futures. Those are all perfectly fine and completely the opposite of public debt. Which is why to sell public debt you need to ask private people to think in metaphors like the 'Social Good' or 'The Good of the Gods and of the Nation'. Never mind there are no Gods and is no Nation. Just pay.
Attn: MODERATOR, This thread has evolved a log way from the tragic school shooting the threads name and OP reflect. Anyone affected by this tragic incident may find this thread which has become some sort of anti-government tirade while searching google. Edit, rename, close, I don't know. It is a sad state as it is. It has been off topic since about the 2nd - 6th page. @ Michael, So what is your plan. Do away with government?
While I agree with your sentiment, I would assume that by now anyone who was personally affected by 12/14 has probably already read and/or heard every vile, flippant or personally insulting comment that has been made. In any case, this is not my board so I have no power to edit threads. You'll have to take it up with madanthonywayne. This is his turf. BTW, it's been suggested by many writers that we should take care to call last December's tragedy 12/14, rather than naming the school or the town. There are still people living in that town and kids going to that school. Let's not pile any more sadness on them than we have to. This is what we ended up doing for 9/11. No, most of the right wingers simply want less government, not none. I was a Libertarian and a libertarian for about thirty years so I understand quite well the arguments. Basically, for me it comes down to the fact that a government is an organism. Like all organisms, as it continues to grow without limit, it moves more slowly, it becomes less sensitive to external stimuli, and it uses an increasing fraction of its energy and other resources simply to manage its own internal metabolism rather than actually "doing something," This is why the Aussies can't understand why we can't simply make our government function more like theirs. After all, we have so much in common, what's the holdup? The answer is that Australia's population is only equivalent to about seven percent of ours. Wait until Australia has 300 million people and get back to us, mates! Your government will have ten more layers of civil service "jobs" in which people sit around all day "administering" each other. Only ten percent of the money it collects in taxes will ever find its way back into the community--with the exception of the salaries of the "civil servants," of course. It will respond so slowly to crises that you'll always be on the verge of an economic disaster. The only thing guvvies can administer halfway decently is a military force, so you'll take over our role in trying to "bring freedom and democracy" to all the world's downtrodden people, whether they ask for it or not. And you're so close to China, I can't imagine how that dynamic will work out! So this is why the Libertarian Party and the libertarian community basically had one goal: reduce the size of government. The reasoning was, "They're not doing much of anything now except fighting wars of opportunity (which should be illegal--oh wait they actually are, dammit) so it's difficult to imagine how reducing their size could make them any worse. People mis-quoted us saying, "If the problem is bad government, then the solution is no government." This isn't very close to what we actually say: "If the problem is too much government, then the solution is less government." Do we really need an agency developing anti-smoking posters while another agency is paying a subsidy to tobacco growers??? The problem is that doing this right now is the worst possible suggestion. During a bad recession, the only thing that will improve the economy is to A) increase government spending, creating new jobs for Americans rather than the jobs in China that Romney and his ilk want to create, and giving those new workers a multiplier effect so that by spending their money they keep the pump going, and B) lower taxes, so people have more money to spend and feel more optimistic about the future--encouraging them to spend more and even go into debt. So to take the classic Libertarian position and lobby for reducing government spending (at least they also want to lower taxes so they're only half wrong) will just slide us further into the hole. Sure, spending more and taking in less income will push the national debt ever higher. Well, big fucking deal about that! Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is more than 200%! I haven't seen international bankers rushing to downgrade Japan's credit status, have you? Do whatever it takes to get things moving so we can climb out of this hole we're in. The debt ceiling problem? Well we'll just have to put that off for another day, like Japan so successfully did. Obviously to reduce spending and raise taxes is long-term thinking. But the problem with long-term thinking is that the short term always comes first.
@ Fraggle Rocker, Still off topic. I have not seen any reference to OP in many pages. I am pretty sure Michael has been advocating no government not less. I recall thinking him a bit nutty holding that perspective based on his comments throughout the Forum. He indicated even Police were not necessary which I feel is one part of government that holds order.
It is good to see Fraggle finally leave the Libertarian ranks, but he is still doing a lot of window dressing for the cause. Libertarians are a diverse group. However, it has become more and more extreme with each passing year. Some use the party as a protest to the traditional American political parties. And there are those who, like Michael, are very extreme in their views. And there are Libertarians who recognize there is a need for some government, but where they draw the line varies considerably. Generally this faction will allow for some but very limited government regulation. Some would contract out your fire & police and prosecutors, others would not. Some would favor a mercenary defense force, others would not. Where some of the more liberal factions of the party draw the line between government and private industry gets more than a little vague. What is consistent through all factions of the Libertarian movement is the belief that government is first last and always inferior to private industry. Because they believe government is ownerless and therefore inefficient. Whereas it is in the interests of private owners to always be efficient and sensitive to customer demand in order to maximize profits. The belief is wrong on a number of levels. The assumption is government is without ownership, and that is simply untrue. I guess they haven’t heard about citizenship and patriotism. Two, the belief ignores ability. Libertarians always assume that private ownership always equals ability. Our bankruptcy courts are littered with individuals who had the money, had the ownership, but not the ability. So that notion is untrue as well. And it ignores the fact that owners are not always driven by profit. Owners are not robots; they are a diverse group with differing abilities, needs, motivations and wants. So the bottom line is the core Libertarian belief about government and private industry is simply too simplistic and ignores reality.
libertarianism is at its core utopian in nature. and like all utopian ideologies it has only a passing aquaintence with reality.
They are free to leave the house if they do not like the terms that it will be given to them under. Likewise, they are free to leave the country if they do not like the terms of living here. Freedom, while a troubling concept to some, is a pretty good deal overall - although sometimes it means you don't get what you want handed to you on a silver platter.
That position was proposed by the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant as being an ideal form of Civil Society. He's just couldn't envision how such a society would take hold and so he reluctantly concluded that a society based on violence, the one we live in, would have to do. If you are asking my position it's quite simple. Shrink the role of legalized Violence in society. Perhaps if, after a hundred years of peaceful parenting, we have a new type of human (which we seem to be well on our way towards) these people will eradicate by simply not wanting it in their lives. So, it will simply fade away and in many ways, already is. Only the die-hard truly believe Centralized Planning can do anything better than the private market. Hardly anyone who can afford to, willingly sends their children to public school or public hospital - not if they have access to a private hospital and private school. This isn't a Utopian society. It's not some dreamland. People will still be jealous, they'll still cry and laugh. Everything that we now do. Only violence will be much much less so in this society (trends show violence has been reducing decade after decade). They simply live life in a society that is structured around voluntarism. THAT will seem as normal to them, as Government Violence seem normal to us. Government violence will seem as perverse to them, as peaceful voluntarism seems to (some) of us. Asking what exactly that would look like is like asking someone from a hundred years ago to describe the internet.
No you're not. You are not free to 'leave the country'. You first must apply for passport. Once that is obtained you will be restricted to a country to enter by the VISA you are granted. That VISA will have a time limit, usually 3 month, after which you will be forcefully detained, put in a prison, and shipped back to your so-called FREE country. So, the analogy actually doesn't work. Just imagine a Chinese wanting to leave China and live in Australia. Or a North Korean. There must be millions, 100s of millions of Chinese who'd like to jump on a boat and go to Australia, except if they do that, they'll find themselves in a detention center. A better analogy is that you are cattle on a ranch being milked of your labor. A very small number and select few Cattle are allowed to, after years of hoop hopping, allowed to live on another ranch - where they will be milked of their labor. The Farmers of these ranches trade options on their cattle's productivity. They sell Bonds on their Cattle. Just as any farmer does with his livestock. They sell the meat and milk. Allowing some degree of freedom will ensure a productive herd. Thus, lets allow the Cattle a vote once in awhile. Let's divide them into thinking Bush Jr and Obama II are very very very different. BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE, once you make your vote, you must return to the pen - you are after all cattle. You will either willing walk up to that milking machine and get milked or you will be beaten into doing so. Your choice which you want to do this. There's your "freedom". If you do not do so, real men with real guns and real cool looking blue costumes are going to come over to your real house and cattle prod you up to that machine. Either by making your life so difficult you 'Freely' do so, or if worse comes to worse, put you into the slaughter house to wait out the rest of your days until you die. I imagine they'll allow your family to visit, probably more as a means to scare them into being good little cattle. And that's the way it works. Right now Farmers in other parts of the world are buying the milk and meat of your children - with interest. What's the most interesting, is how angry and mad, and spooked the rest of the herd gets when one of these cattle pops it's head up and says..... you know, I don't want to get milked..... Funny how cattle are like that. YOU EAT THE GRASS they'll say, maybe earning them a pat on the head once in awhile, if they're really lucky they can mind the gates for the farmers, then they get a hand full of grain and boy boy does the farm like me, I got to lick his fingers.... Moo Moo Moo..... Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor in 1816. He wrote, "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." What is happening, has happened time and time again. It's why some of the Founding Fathers wanted us to use gold and silver. I personally think that so long as Income Tax doesn't give 'money' an advantage, anyone should use anything they they like. If the USD is so wonderful, then it'll be worth something without income tax. Ah, but back then it was backed by gold. Now, it's only backed by the futurity of your children's labor. That's a fact. Jefferson's comment to John Wayles Eppes, "Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs."
In reply to the Sandy Hook incident, the economy is the social fabric. Trying to diagnose what went wrong means taking a further step back and asking what's wrong with society. One thing at least is that public schooling is not natural. The grades are unnatural to learning. Summers off is not conducive to learning. Classrooms are unnatural. Sitting within a peer group is unnatural. One adult to 30 children is unnatural. Classrooms are wonderful if you want to train solders. Or simply train cogs to work in factories (which is why public schools were devised by the Prussian Aristocracy a hundred years ago). But they are far from natural. Children having to raise their hand to pee, that is no natural. If you saw that happen in a friends home, you'd be horrified. Worse still, it's perfect for breeding and maintaining a very unnaturally compliant herd of humans. Ones not happy with questioning the statuesque, not trained to think skeptically. It's now becoming common to put little children on anti-depression, anti-anxiety, anti-anything medicine. When you read of children who have 'snapped' and got their hands on some guns and went into these unnatural school environments (many now with metal detectors and guards) .... almost all of them have been taking very powerful psychotropic drugs for years. Even as young as 6 months. It's not uncommon to put 4 years olds on drugs now. Why aren't mothers at home with their children? Or at least one of the parents? I personally find it SICKENING that children a few weeks home from being born into this world are carted off to child supervision faculties. This is what poses as Normal. That is a sickness. The legacy of beating, hitting screaming at children, again, a sickeness. And when you see it in public, a father or mother hitting a child, don't you feel sickened? And it's no coincidence that since we allowed a private banking cartel to set the value of our labor, we have watched that value shrink year by year .....as they grow, like a cancer, year after year. It's no wonder husband and wife (often childless) work fulltime just to live a middle class life. Hoping maybe they'll make enough to buy their dream house and watching as the Federal Reserve does everything in it's power to take from them and give to the criminals on Wallstreet. Americans are swimming upsteam and the force of the water is only going to get stronger. Which is why the very rich are pushing up property prices where rent seeking can be made profitable. And why wealthy overseas Chinese are likewise buy rental properties. You are indeed becoming Slaves in the lands your forefathers conquered. Perhaps its Karma? If you want a peaceful society, you have to deal with living voluntarily and peacefully. That's kind of how it works. It means you don't get to stick the government's gun in your neighbor's face and say YOU USE THE ROADS now give me your son. You don't get to sell Bonds on your children's labor, and not have that boomerang around and hit you smack in the head. No, that's not how it works. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes — a principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. --Thomas Jefferson
What natural is for humans to be raise in tribes, learn their roles per gender, learn by watching their elders and replicating their roles, and then as adults go out and kill and rape each other! What is natural is for male humans to have at least a 15% chance of being murder and for females to have probably equal or greater chance of begin abducted and raped becoming her abductor's sex slave wife. Today's tiny murder and rape rate in comparison (including war) is unnatural, all this civilization has made us too gentile, too squeamish such that when a person going out and murdering 20 children we think it's shocking, when this is normal inter-tribal activity out in the amazon or jungle of the Congo, or new guinea, or for our ancestors thousands of years ago.
That is not entirely true, humans have BOTH the natural capability of cooperation with other unknown humans (we bred with pretty much any hominin we could as is evidenced by our DNA) as much it is natural to fight them for resources. As a mater of fact, for the vast majority of human history it seems there was so little of us, we didn't seem to do a lot of attacking other humans, but instead working with them in cooperation. Add to that, Civilization comes before the State. It must. Did humans eventually get to a point where killing and enslaving other humans was more the norm? Obviously, we're living proof of that. So it seems like we're as predisposed to working together as to killing one another. This is the thing unusual about humans, we learn in a way no other species does. That learning can create entirely different types of humans. Reading isn't natural, but it must seem like second language to you? Speaking of which, language itself isn't natural. Communication is, but which language you learn to speak in is entirely up to how you were raised. Even how we communicate non-verbally is culturally learned. If humans learn to engage peacefully and voluntarily, they will speak that language. It's that simple. Humans who are not spoken to while children, have no language. They may not even think in the abstract way we can. Language seems to BE our thoughts. No language, maybe no thoughts (at least not as we would think of them). Slaves were taught to think slavery was normal and natural. Most did. Masters thought likewise. Slavery is relatively modern. It's more an effect of settlement. Humans, like any animal, try to maximize their gains and minimize their efforts. Saves on calories. Slavery is a way one group of humans came to do that. Religion yet another. Income tax still another. Mennonite societies are evidence of peaceful parenting. Some haven't had a case of reported violence in generations. When it does happen, it's very very rare. Minus the religion, theirs is a good model for the larger society IF peaceful interactions, maximizing win-win engagements and creating an immensely prosperous society is something people truly do want.
Raping a women is not exactly cooperation. There is a reason why the mitochondria genetic linage is much other then the Y chromosome linage and that is because man got killed of and women bred (often enough againsty their will) That statement runs contrary to evidence, from all the homicide describe in our past in ancient written record from times when total human population was 1/10-1/20 what it is today, to modern hunter gathers and subsistence farmers living sparsely in still uncultivated lands. Humans do work together but usually in tribal family units, that shows little or not care for others not part of the tribe. This explains our instinctual attachment for family bounds, to family first. This explains our inherent tendency toward racism and -ism of the like that allow us to prejudice others and thus make it emotionally easier to murder them and take what was theirs. Civilization has grown slowly of a progressions to gracilize our selves to be lest violent and more cooperative regardless if working within the tribe our outside of it, in fact the tribe was enlarged into kingdoms, then states, then nations, but yet the primordial "us and them" mentality remains. How is enslaving others = "working together"? This brings into question what is naturalness? because I could technically claim that if we humans are created by nature then everything we do is in fact natural, that language, technology and social order might in fact be the NATURAL progression of sapient animals with opposable thumbs. Aah the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, I disagree. Many animals lack language display high levels of thought, even counting, Thought existed before language, language just allow for a way to convey thought and to convert thought into units that could be manipulated and improve upon, thus creating a feed back loop that was sparked by thought. Yeah I refuted this claim before with references in just minutes of Google searching of Mennonite crime and violence. But sure win-win social interactions should be encouraged, don't see how that make giving every child a free education stands in the way of that, how raising children in day cares so their parents can be more productive, or medicating children that might suffering from debilitating mental conditions.
I'm not quite sure if there is evidence for this you'll have to elaborate. How long are you referring to in terms of time? Recent history, then yes that's somewhat true. But. if we're talking 200,000 years ago, how can we know if women bred against their will? Maybe they did, maybe not. Why does the vagina support healthy sperm for up to a week in vivo? The fact that we have a sense of humor is IMO evidence women were choosing men with high functioning mental cognition over that of pure brawn. Joking and laughter is a window into cognition. Someone quick witted probably has a very well functioning brain (which is why they can sometimes get their arses kicked by brutes who don"t think their jokes are so funny). Our large neocortex is also evidence brain, not only brute, won the day. Even to this day most women will be "turned off" by a man who is patently moronic - even if he's a good looking man. A man who has a "good sense of humor" is often found attractive. At this level, I'd agree that yes we have genetic predisposition towards certain types of abstract thought. Empathy for example. However, I'm not convinced higher order cognitive function is possible without a language to support it. Children raised without language can't develop language later in life. I was under the impression they have difficulties recognizing types of abstract thought. Such as color being separate from an object. You're referring to, what? The last 15,000 years. That's relatively recent. Although, I have read the human brain has lost about 6% volume over the last 10,000 years, so I'm open to the notion we are drastically altering it in ways we may not fully understand. Obviously the group doing the enslaving are working together. Many cultures, Asians as an example (Japanese in particular) stopped using Slavery in favor of Feudalism. This suggests some level of freedom is more productive than outright Slavery. Slavery in Roma, was more akin to an internship - lasting about 7 years. Many Citizens were ex-Slaves. The city is surrounded by headstones from ex-Slaves. Again, suggesting if people are given a chance to live with more freedom, that they are more productive. I'd argue Bonds are a form of Slavery. Children are being sold into slavery to pay for things here and now. Things they never had a vote on. That runs counter to our supposed tradition of "Democracy". It's completely counter to the notion of Taxation without representation. Likewise inflation. This is again a tax on the pensioner and the saver. In the 1800s a banker caught purposely causing inflation was sentences to hanging. How the times have changed. Have to thank our Government Schools for ensuring most people never actually think about this. That's true. Maybe Natural isn't the best adjective. What's an adjective for "an environment that is conducive towards peaceful disposition and cooperation with others"? They don't seem to have the level of abstract thought as humans. Other Apes can be taught some sign language, but it's also amazing when they fail to do things a wolf can figure out quite quickly. Dolphins may have some abstract thought, but, they also have a 5 layer neocortex. Ours is 6 layers. Can they ever think as we do? Maybe, probably not without some serious genetic changes to their species. I'm certainly not saying we should be Mennonites, they're religious for Christ's sake. But, they're probably one of the only groups of humans in the modern day to take an active stance against violence as a community and so they should be studied. SOME of those communities have had no recorded violent crime in a generation. I'm for studying all nonviolent societies. People are studying them right now. Not a lot of people, but some sociologists. I read one who suggested the low rate of violence was correlated with no hitting children. But sure, an extremely violent government, like North Korea, may have a low rate of violence between citizens. It's also not a healthy environment as evidenced by their poor standard of living. Oh, there's no "FREE" education. Everything comes at a cost. The question should be do public schools cost too much and deliver too little education? I personally think it's a systems problem. Public schools are structured to train people to work in factories. Which is why there's an emphasis on conformity and rules not critical thought and free learning. Even the Grade 1, 2, 3, .... is structured to progress cogs in a factory and are often referred as such by teachers among themselves (we have a new batch of sausages coming off the assembly line... that sort of analogy is common). If education was truly desired then educating children at home using the internet, with access to private online tutors seems to be a better approach. Attending small "class rooms" once or twice a week for assessment and learning strategy would replace traditional schools. In this way the individual child is looked after by the person who cares for them the most - their parent. Which is where they will learn just about everything from, through observation. You smoke, they will think smoking is good. You tell them it is not good, they will think your logic is faulty. Etc.... You speak to them logically, they think logically. You hit them, they learn fear. You kiss them, they learn love. If you have good relationships, they learn how to form those. Putting children into daycare may allow the parent to be more productive. But, so too would housing all parents in dorms next to the factories - never letting them escape. That is not mentally healthy for children. There's good evidence that babies NEED skin contact with their mothers and that without that contact they are more susceptible to depression. The productivity gains made in one generations of humans working and not in contact with their children may be lost when those same children require so many more resources to deal with their depression - ultimately effecting their productivity. There really isn't a free lunch.
