NAOS
Well-Known Member
I read it a long time ago. It's sitting right here on my shelf. But you could synopsize the greater part of my intellectual development as occurring along those paths which lead furthest from Plato.
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I read it a long time ago. It's sitting right here on my shelf. But you could synopsize the greater part of my intellectual development as occurring along those paths which lead furthest from Plato.
Well, I guess it was Plato, according to the webz sources. Some interesting stuff. Plato with the light show reality made up for the slaves, with an elite set of real policy makers and a "Guardian" class of brutes to effect policy, and a sham "democracy" that would let the little people feel involved, though not really. hmmmm. . . .
Aristotle wanted real participation from people and objected to the arbitrary hereditary class system. . . . hmmmm. . . . .
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
Oh yeah. Plato advocated for a very regimented society that would be ran by philosopher kings, but they weren't to be advantaged tyrants. IIRC they were to have no possessions and live in the baracks w/the guardians. It's very 1984.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't think you leaned toward Plato, but I would be surprised if you hadn't read it.
I am amazed that anybody really buys into the idea of a government-mediated or managed "utopia".
yeah, we need roads, that's why the Post Office was included in the plan. Ever been lost in the woods east of the Mississippi? Canals were a good idea, too. Same with dredging some inland waterways or ports, and keeping the navigable rivers open for commerce. But our present govt. is anxious to sell of these assets to private corps, just because the politicians who would facilitate our being robbed collectively are getting fat manila envelopes dropped on the doorsteps in the middle of the night.
The more power you give the govt. the more those thieves can steal from the people.
DutchJazzer
Banned
the government should stay the **** out of our lives.
The one nice thing about Karl Marx was his futile hope that governments would, in the end, wither away somehow. What an insane fantasy.
The reason "government" will never stay outta our lives is because, to be something that identifies with "government", it has to get noticed somehow by disrupting personal lives. Governments, by definition, are the institutions that enable a few people to interfere with what the rest of us want to do.
So, anyway, just to be realistic, the best we can do is limit what a government can do, by defining and making popular actual human rights.
Last year, a lightning strike caused a fire. The interagency govt experts called it a beneficial fire, deemed to be mainly clearing out some overdone underbrush. It was on the Forest Service site for days, with signs on the road instructing passersby "Management Fire. Do Not Report".
Then a windstorm came, and it burned huge stands of trees, leaving nothing at all.
Then rain came, lots of it. Black, charcoal-filled muck carried timbers ten miles out into the desert valley, knocked over fences, destroyed roads, filled my ditches, washed away my diversion dams, destroyed a water system that would cost a million dollars to rebuild.
Then a windstorm came, and it burned huge stands of trees, leaving nothing at all.
Then rain came, lots of it. Black, charcoal-filled muck carried timbers ten miles out into the desert valley, knocked over fences, destroyed roads, filled my ditches, washed away my diversion dams, destroyed a water system that would cost a million dollars to rebuild.
Old-timers told me that "my" creek used to be the best stream in the valley, that's why my place was the first settled way back in 1890. It ran all year, until a flash flood in the 1930s, and after that it hardly made it to the mouth of the canyon, where the dam is located and the ditch begins.
turns out, that muck from last summers fire, has changed all that. the stream is once again flowing over a sealing layer of clay and no longer just sinks into the cracks in the rocks along the channel, and is running all the way to the ranch, ditch or no ditch, dam or no dam.
turns out, that muck from last summers fire, has changed all that. the stream is once again flowing over a sealing layer of clay and no longer just sinks into the cracks in the rocks along the channel, and is running all the way to the ranch, ditch or no ditch, dam or no dam.
LogGrad98
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What is your starting wage? Do you have a good relocation package?
you wanna come home that bad? I thought you'd be doing six figures in dollar terms, for sure. Besides, you're management. I'm talking Mexican labor here. . . .