Several things I noticed about FF's "verse"

POSTED BY: Allronix
UPDATED: Monday, December 30, 2002 14:48
VIEWED: 10617
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MILLERNATE

Friday, December 27, 2002 5:16 AM

Well I'm taking a lit match to a lake of gasoline but here goes:

Quote:

Hjermsted wrote:

And before anyone tells me about "all that open space in Montana" global overpopulation isn't about physical space. It's about spread of disease, consumption of natural resources and pollution.

Well basically this isn't a question of overpopulation to me so much as wise resource usage, which can technically be a problem with any size population (though of course larger populations with unwise resource usage policies can cause problems quicker...).

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I don't pretend to have the answers, but I am concerned that the U.S. (the number one over-consumer of the world's resources) has moronic leadership. It's time to get educated people back in the White House and our legislative bodies.

Well I'm not going to address George Bush but most of the other people working in the White House are very smart. Dick Chaney, regardless of what you think of his ethics, is an intelligent man. THis is even more so with Colin Powell and Colendezza Rice (and don't I just know I misspelled her first name...). In congress I can count a decent number of educated people (particularly senators like Carl Levin and John McCain).

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You have to try it to know whether it would work or not.

This isn't a knock on your politics but rather just on this statement: If you see bad results from a policy in a similar situation then you can exposite that it would be a bad idea for you to do so. I mean, I don't have to turn into oncoming traffic to know that it would have bad consequences for me

.

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1. Majority Preferential Voting-a voting mechanism used in Executive position elections... President, Governor, Mayor, etc...

I'm not going to address this directly but I would advise you to take a look at the critics of Lani Guiner (who has proposed a voting system much like this) and see if their objections have merit (if you haven't done so already, which you likely have

).

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2. Binding National Referendums- The citizens of the U.S. vote bindingly on the big issues at the Federal level. Dozens of democratic nations around the world enjoy this voting mechanism.
Let Congress figure out how/where to spend the $$ and let the Prez be our figurehead. But let the people be the steering committee. I personally would have loved to vote at the polls against NAFTA. I would love a shot at this Star Wars fantasy missile shield. In other words, I would love to see this republic infused with more democracy.

The issue is that this takes away from the advantage of having a representative democracy. Not to mention the fact that you'd have an increased number of uninformed people voting on matters of great importance. The logistics of making it work (as these issues come up more often then our only national political race) would also be daunting.

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3. Proportional Representation- Make the representation in the legislative bodies (Congress, State Houses, City Councils, etc) match the actual population's idealogical leanings... some refer to this as "parliamentary politics" but that's really just one method of proportionalization.
If a political party has support of 5% or more of the voting public, they get the same percentage of seats in the Congress. This would elminate the need for voting districts and put the focus on the parties themselves. This would also flood the legislative bodies with new ideas. Presently we are stuck with the limited imaginations of two idealogies: Democrats (corporate philosophy -- moderate to conservative) and Republicans (corporate philosophy -- conservative to reactionary). More parties equals more ideas and I maintain my assertion above that the U.S. hasn't had a non-market based new idea since the '60s.

I would advise you to look at the political stability of the countries that currently use this system. THe usual result is a coalition government that falls apart at the drop of a hat (I believe I

GATORMARC

Friday, December 27, 2002 5:21 PM

HKCAVALIER and soleta,
Obviously my example of the two societies was an example to demonstrate the concept of the "wealth gap" and how it could be used incorrectly to compare societies, and not actual figures for two societies for comparison. I'm appears that you missed the point while still trying to argue it.

XED,
Many interesting points in your posts. I cannot refute or agree with them all because you have many more specific resources at your immediate disposal on the issue. My posts have been based on the stats that I've seen but I don't have well documented research and am not readily familiar with your sources, so I will stop at saying that your points are well worth consideration even though I am not adopting them.

Very interesting discussion...

GatorMarc

Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.

HKCAVALIER

Friday, December 27, 2002 8:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by GatorMarc:
HKCAVALIER and soleta,
Obviously my example of the two societies was an example to demonstrate the concept of the "wealth gap" and how it could be used incorrectly to compare societies, and not actual figures for two societies for comparison.

Marc,

You can stop banging your head against the wall on my account. I know what you meant. Of course, you weren't discribing a "real" society with your "example." It was just a poor choice of statistics.

I mean, if you're trying to make a point to an animal rights activist, you don't start off your "example" with, "Look at it this way, say you shoot a deer in the head..." As penetrating as your insights may be, you're just going to alienate your audience.

Similarly, if you make a model of a society that, hypothetically of course, discounts the existence of people who's anual incomes fall below $20,000, you gotta expect some of us are gonna pick up on the irony. There are all kinds of people who discount the existence of those who's incomes are below $20,000 a year, Marc, and they tend to be, you know, rich people!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

GATORMARC

Saturday, December 28, 2002 7:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKcavalier:
You can stop banging your head against the wall on my account. I know what you meant. Of course, you weren't discribing a "real" society with your "example."

Now that's just more frustrating to me...

You understood my point in the example the entire time but chose to argue a technicality rather than the merit of the example.

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Similarly, if you make a model of a society that, hypothetically of course, discounts the existence of people who's anual incomes fall below $20,000, you gotta expect some of us are gonna pick up on the irony. There are all kinds of people who discount the existence of those who's incomes are below $20,000 a year, Marc, and they tend to be, you know, rich people!

With a simple example, I didn't feel the need to complicate it with more detailed labels. I chose "poorest" instead of some statistically significant number like "bottom 10%" vs. "top 10%" since it would be ridiculous to make up statistically significant categories if I were going to populate it with made up numbers.

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It was just a poor choice of statistics.

I disagree... it seems that I made a simple example to prove a single point - that a "wealth gap" isn't in and of itself bad - but the made up statistics were being debated instead of the actual point.

GatorMarc

Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.

HKCAVALIER

Saturday, December 28, 2002 7:00 PM

Marc,

I'm sorry. I know it can be very frustraiting when what you think is important about a thing you said, is not what someone else thinks is important about what you said, but I'm afraid that is how it goes. Sometimes the way we say something is just as important as what we're trying to say. I'm trying to say that your rhetoric got in the way of your point, which btw I'll agree is a pretty simple, accessible point (people in America, for the most part, are better off than people in Afghanistan, for the most part, even though the income gap here is wider). But the way you made your point was more important to me than your point.

What strikes me as really interesting as I reread this thread is the deeply marxist lesson sci-fi seems to teach. In Firefly we have the eternal end-game of capitalism, ever-expanding, ever-depleting, necessarily colonial. Whereas, look at Star Trek, nice homeostatic socialism with a green earth and nobody hungry. From a dramatic standpoint: rapacious capitalism--exciting; complacent socialism--boring. Capitalism looks very pretty in the shortrun, while socialism in the shortrun looks to be a beurocratic mess. But when we look at the future, capitalism seems really ugly and socialism in the long run might save the planet.

Hey, I don't know jack about economics but it seems to me that somebody has to cook up a way for capitalism to tolerate homeostasis or we will destroy whatever we touch. Can capitalism be so saved, or is socialism the only sane (albeit, boring) answer? XED seems to have done the homework asignment, maybe he knows. XED?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean, we don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

DELVO

Saturday, December 28, 2002 8:44 PM

Actually, there's nothing to indicate that there's much of a capitalist theme to the Alliance, and the only major thing we know about them goes solidly against it: that they are into dominating and oppressing everything in sight, not allowing people's free wills. Meanwhile, the GOOD guys on Firefly are the ardent capitalists, trying to engage in trade whenever they can sneak it past the enterprise-squashing Alliance.

It's not capitalism that's too consumptive and needing to expand all the time. It's just any economy, at least while the population keeps going up. And socialism sure can't be the answer, because it ultimately destroys more to produce less for people, and keeps on collapsing under its own weight.

ALLRONIX

Saturday, December 28, 2002 11:40 PM

LOL!!!!!

OK, now it's time for me to get my gloves off. The small businessman in modern capitalism is the guy who gets stiffed the worst. He has to shoulder the tax burden for the large corps that can and will squash him like a bug.

And a system with the sense to say "enough for the needy, not enough for the greedy" will require more to produce less while the "grab and gobble and crush faster then your opponent" is sustainible?

SUUUUUUUUUURRRRRREEEE.

Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!

DELVO

Sunday, December 29, 2002 12:16 AM

Keep your gloves off. It'll make it easier to take notes if and when you decide to get a basic education in elementary economics or history.

ALLRONIX

Sunday, December 29, 2002 2:19 AM

Look, Delvo. I'm not interested in turning this into Philosophy Sphere. We're here to talk Firefly, remember?

I've more than a basic education in history, and am familiar enough with economic principles. The more I learn, the more I'm staying with my Christmas-colored politics, thanks. Take me up on private e-mail (allronix@hotmail.com) if you'd like to discuss it...any of y'all.

That being said, I should have been more polite in my last post.

Co-founder of the Evil Writing Crew - causing hell, one hero at a time!

TALLGRRL

Sunday, December 29, 2002 7:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JOHNNYREB:
I wouldn't go so far as to call the crew anarchists. [snip]Inara openly supported unification, and the Shepherd is more concerned with The Lord,I think, than with toppling the powers that be.

Ni hao, y'all...

Shepherd is a mystery.
I have a theory: maybe he is a Shepherd...now.
How is it in "Safe" he gets first rate med treatment at an Allliance (or is it Fed) facility, and is released with no questions asked?
Maybe he was a high mucky-muck that left out of disgust. He never went so far as to fight with the Rebel forces.
I'm thinking something happened in the war that so disgusted him that he turned his back on The World and went into spirtual seeking.
He seems to know a lot about some things...like firearms and shooting and war('War Stories'). And he knew where a part of the ship's engine was when Kaylee was wounded and needed help in the pilot episode.
In short (yeah, too late for 'short', eh?) I don't know if he's so much concerned about the Lord as that he's maybe searching for something that he couldn't find in his previous life, and something that he didn't completely get in monastic life.

"creativity lies at the interface of discipline and chaos."

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