zombyrus wrote:By that whole spiel I mean that institutions only do what they think benefits society, and what they think benefits society is essentially only what benefits them. Even though everyone and every institution tells itself that they are working toward the general welfare, it is in fact only working toward its own welfare, which leads to all the conflicts of interest in society. I guess what I'm saying is that I believe that everyone thinks they are helping the world, but nobody actually is..
I think that all makes a great deal of sense. The direction I've been thinking is to create social systems (not necessarily centralized government ones) which use reason and commitment to define how we can see the interests of all as the interests of the individual. We have a system mainly of violent disincentives, but we need to work more on the SOCIAL incentives. There are so many ideas that use to be a part of our culture which we have lost, like Henry Fords idea that he would pay his employees so well so they can afford to buy his cars. We are a greed centric society now, and so we do whatever crappy thing we can to achieve our bottom line. The truth, however, is that we can be both self benefiting and society benefiting in our goals if we would just lesson our dedication to greed. The great thing about it being social systems is you don't have to worry about trying to influence government before there are changes, rather you can begin with the people around you. However, the main problem, as I see it, is to correctly define virtue and then package that understanding in various popular mediums of communication so that message has the capacity to become widespread and easily accessible.
Choose? Are you kidding me? Would it not be best if schools were all equal? Would that not mean that students can compete equally within the school system, without the stigmata of a "bad school"? If schools have different standards then people are forced to move to get to better schools, which further increases inequality, because not everyone can. Also, schools aren't supposed to raise the children, hence the school the kid goes to should be irrelevant for the child's raising.
But don't you see? Competitions is what raises standards! You don't get a better football team by training all the teams the same, you have to innovate, to push forward harder, to keep trying, and to never rest on your past accomplishments! Public eduction might mean we all know the same stuff, but it equally means the quality of what we know is potentially equally poor. Now, I do agree with you on your last two points, and I'm fine to some degree with publicly funded competing schools, but there is a larger issue...
Why shouldn't we tell parents how to raise their children? Producing a person does not make you a good candidate for taking care of one. I don't think it is arguable that there aren't things that are inherently harmful, and if you know that there are harmful things going on, why wouldn't you try to stop them?
The larger issue is what you mean by "tell." Do you mean educate? Then yes, we should always educate people, including our selves. Government is like a parent itself, and as such should be constantly raising all its kids with the capacity to be its replacement. As it is, governments all too often seem to aim at keeping the people in a state of perpetual dependence. And THAT is my problem, when the "tell" becomes violence and the control of opportunity. Are there times when violence is acceptable? I think so. Yes, child prostitution warrants any rescue possible, even the most violent. And yes, parents incapable of truly preparing their children for the world need help. That is all of us to some degree. I'm not against socially (not necessarily governmentally) funded education, just it's homogenization and control by a central government.
Because there is only so much time, and this really shouldn't be all that relevant.
It should be up to the community. I'm actually fine with it not being taught, so long as that is the will of the community. But my problem is that ignorance is always disastrous. America's war with the Islamic world is a bloody disaster because we don't understand their religion. If we did, we would know that putting military bases on their sacred lands will ALWAYS provoke terrorism. Instead, we are trying the absolutely insane: to wage physical warfare on an idea. This can only bankrupt our whole economy, which is EXACTLY what the terrorists are trying to do. We are the perfect terrorist target: instead of acting wisely and carefully, we freak out and spend more and more money, and give up more and more of the rights our country stands on in order to protect ourselves. We are a very scared society.
I don't know about USA, but I defend it because I've seen it work.
So far as I can tell, it is far from working in the USA. Maybe it is where you live. Maybe the individuals in your culture haven't succumbed to the selfishness, greed, ad laziness of mind that most of us in the US have fallen under. If you have, then I can see why you would think democracies work. The point I'm trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that the only way ANY government can work is if the people are virtuous to begin with. If they are not, they can easily be manipulated into voting greedy hucksters into office.
The *point* of voting is to bring in people who do represent the will of the people. What would you say the benefits of not voting are?
Not voting isn't really my point. Doing something more is. My point is that we are NOT bringing in people who represent the will of the people by voting in America. We are voting on hucksters who have told us what to believe, who have control over the streams of communicating the candidates to the people (sense Ross Perot ran for president, it has become virtually impossible for a third party candidate to be on the presidential debates because the two parties have set the requirements so high. Why? To control the competition; to have a monopoly of power, to control this republic of the USA.), who are using the two party system to heard us into easily controllable polarized folds, and who are only interested in the APPEARANCE of benefiting the people.