In Nothing We Trust

Hugh Pickens writes "Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton write in the National Journal that seven in 10 Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track; eight in 10 are dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed, only 23 percent have confidence in banks, and just 19 percent have confidence in big business. Less than half the population expresses "a great deal" of confidence in the public-school system or organized religion. 'We have lost our gods,' says Laura Hansen. 'We've lost it—that basic sense of trust and confidence—in everything.' Humans are coded to create communities, and communities beget institutions. What if, in the future, they don't? People could disconnect, refocus inward, and turn away from their social contract. Already, many are losing trust. If society can't promise benefits for joining it, its members may no longer feel bound to follow its rules. But history reminds us that America's leaders can draw the nation together to solve problems. At a moment of gaping income inequality, when the country was turbulently transitioning from a farm economy to a factory one, President Theodore Roosevelt reminded Americans, 'To us, as a people, it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life.' At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt chastised the business and political leaders who had led the country into ruin. 'These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men,' said FDR. 'Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.'"

Re:Why is this here?

[jdgeorge]

I remember the story about Skype [slashdot.org], Robo-graders [slashdot.org], Gov't funded science [slashdot.org], Robotics competition [slashdot.org], Eliminating Comp Sci dept at Univ of Florida [slashdot.org], but before that, my memory's kinda fuzzy.

It's not even that as much as the EC

[Sycraft-fu]

To become president you need to get 270 electoral votes. Not the most, but 270 (or more). So what happens if you have more than two candidates and it ends up such that nobody gets 270? You have no majority and nobody wins. There's no revote or anything, instead the House of Representatives elects the president, and the Senate the vice president. Yes, really, and it happened in 1825.

Well that gives a real incentive for a two party system. With two people it is nearly impossible to not have a majority winner. It is technically possible to split the EC, but hard. However with each additional serious contender, a no-majority situation becomes increasingly likely.

Queen Elizabeth 1 did

[Kupfernigk]

She expected the Spanish Inquisition. Which was why the English fleet was waiting in the Channel for them. Because we expected them, we didn't get them. So, for our safety, we should all expect the Spanish Inquisition. And equip our ships with the latest brass cannon. Where was I...oh yes, the powerful, sinister organisation which is ruthlessly stamping out leadership...it's called the electorate. It may be true that politics is increasingly driven by shrieking PR drones, but the electorate has to be stupid enough to listen to them, doesn't it?

Re:I trust

[flink]

There's a big difference in the self-dependence of New England as we understand it today (New York state and everything to the north) and the self-dependence of the entire eastern seaboard, obviously.

As a New Englander from Boston, I take offense in your lumping New York in with New England. Despite the name of their baseball team, they are no true Yankees :)

Quoting FDR Is Ridiculous

[Jane Q. Public]

Quoting FDR in regard to national recovery has to be some kind of joke. FDR helped to prolong the Great Depression. There is literally no evidence that anything he did helped to bring us out of it, and a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

FDR's own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, believed FDR's fiscal policy to be completely insane, and FDR himself to be a complete loon. (And the economic numbers tend to back him up.)

From Morgenthau's diary, in the seventh year of FDR's "New Deal" program (May 1939):

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot."

Note this is by the Treasury Secretary himself, not (no surprise) some socialist journalist or armchair economist of the day.

Government spending does not solve economic recessions or depressions. It never has, and it never will.

Re:And yet

[AmberBlackCat]

They'll post every detail about their life on Facebook.

This is a big problem with Slashdot. If they don't like what you say, you'll be modded off-topic. But if they like what you say, you can be as off-topic as all hell and still get modded insightful. What's the point of having a moderation system if it won't be used properly?

Re:The best/worst things about the US government

[TheSync]

Even Worse: Companies are defined as People (very rich and powerful People) and decide what our government will be.

I dunno, what companies caused Mao to starve 20 million Chinese people to death during the Great Leap Forward?

Powerful populist leaders can be very dangerous.

Re:I trust

[Quiet_Desperation]

All you would get is a fresh slate of alpha sociopaths.

Go ahead and start a PAC. The alphas will control it before the ink is dry on your flyers because they are willing to do what it takes to get to power- things you are not willing to do.

No, I don't have a better answer. What do you do against people willing to do anything in their drive for power?

Re:Thanks, media

[RealTime]

Anything that requires effort, creativity, or willingness to take on risk in order to be created or provided (housing, food, health care, etc.) cannot be a basic human right. There is no way to guarantee those things without enslaving someone else:

• health care: you must enslave the doctor, who spent years of his life learning his profession, by telling him who he must treat, how much he must charge for his knowledge and labor, etc.
• food: you must enslave the farmer, who accepts weather and crop failure risks and expends his labor in the fields, by telling him what to grow, how much to plant, and to whom to sell and for how much.
• housing: you must enslave the contractor and the construction worker, telling them what to build, where to build it, and how much to charge for it.

Those "rights" boil down to either the enslavement of the persons who are the producers, or the confiscation by force of the wealth produced by the labors of others in order to pay the farmer, doctor, and construction worker without enslaving them specifically.

Basic human rights are the intangibles that do not require something to be coerced from another human being:

• life: murder should be illegal, and your government should not be able to coerce you with force.
• liberty: freedom of speech (even political speech), the right to bear arms (to protect your liberty, not just in self-defense, but even from a tyrannical government), etc.
• pursuit of happiness: being able to choose a career (but also to be responsible for the consequences of that choice by not impinging on someone else's liberty or pursuit of happiness) and gain materially from your efforts and to own personal property.

Using the government to ensure material results into basic human rights is tyranny.