BREAKING: The US is an Oligarchy

Xelebes

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Which is why a lot of people (generally called minarchists) support having those basic services of national defense, courts and police handled by some form of government. I learned long ago not to argue that people can survive without some form of government around here, so that's why I stick mostly with minarchism, although it gets equated with anarchy and chaos anyway, so why bother?

Does it not strike anyone that what minarchism wants to whittle things down to is a government that is utterly paternalist? Defense, courts and police and nothing else? All masculine roles, no feminine roles of nurturing or what not.
 

kuwisdelu

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Does it not strike anyone that what minarchism wants to whittle things down to is a government that is utterly paternalist? Defense, courts and police and nothing else? All masculine roles, no feminine roles of nurturing or what not.

While I tend to cringe at attributing stereotypical roles to "masculine" and "feminine," I think that's an interesting point. I can definitely see the parallels between such a government and a patriarchy.
 

Xelebes

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The expectation of those roles is that they be unrelentingly upheld. A woman might by necessity have to cease nurturing but by a majority have the ability to nurture at some point, while a man cannot but can devote himself entirely to the minarchist roles as listed.

But let's not get too concerned about whose roles is what.
 
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Hapax Legomenon

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The expectation of those roles is that they be unrelentingly upheld. A woman might by necessity have to cease nurturing but by a majority have the ability to nurture at some point, while a man cannot but can devote himself entirely to the minarchist roles as listed.

But let's not get too concerned about whose roles is what.

This is... a good point. It's almost as if we expect "feminine" services to fall out of the sky out of the goodness of people's hearts. It's like we assume "feminine" services are not hard work.

Huh...
 

benbradley

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This thread sure took an interesting turn:
Does it not strike anyone that what minarchism wants to whittle things down to is a government that is utterly paternalist? Defense, courts and police and nothing else? All masculine roles, no feminine roles of nurturing or what not.
So you're saying government should be nurturing - nurturing what?
The expectation of those roles is that they be unrelentingly upheld. A woman might by necessity have to cease nurturing but by a majority have the ability to nurture at some point, while a man cannot but can devote himself entirely to the minarchist roles as listed.
(My bold, of course) So you're saying a man cannot be nurturing???

There's breastfeeding, which might be considered a part of nurturing, but still, a lot of babies are bottle-fed, and that doesn't need a woman to do it.
But let's not get too concerned about whose roles is what.
But now you have me wondering...
 

Xelebes

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It is an overly simplistic breakdown of roles.

As for a government nurturing, it is about government making sure people don't fall through the cracks, especially with concern over disability and responsibility.
 

Diana Hignutt

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Princeton Study Finds US No Longer a Democratic Republic


Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased​
Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
So, this is how democracy dies...with a little murmur over a statistical study...better than thunderous applause....I suppose...​
 

Zoombie

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So, were we a democratic republic when women couldn't vote?

Were we a democratic republic when black people counted as three fifths of a person so their owners could get more votes?

Were we a democratic republic when most of the country won't vote for someone if they aren't Christian? Oh wait, that's right now.

America's story has never been "glorious experiment in republican thought, brought low by the failure of the current generation", which is the bullshit conservatives have been saying since...well, since the damn country was founded.

America's story has been the slow, painful struggle to try and actually embody the ideals of a republic, while being run by incompetents, racists, and sexists (usually with a mix of all three.) And, like most of American history, this moment is a combination of great, dizzying success, and terrible failure, leaving us with a complex, difficult to untangle legacy that will take a horrific amount of work to make sense of, let alone try and bring to some ideal future.
 

Diana Hignutt

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So, were we a democratic republic when women couldn't vote?

Were we a democratic republic when black people counted as three fifths of a person so their owners could get more votes?

Were we a democratic republic when most of the country won't vote for someone if they aren't Christian? Oh wait, that's right now.

America's story has never been "glorious experiment in republican thought, brought low by the failure of the current generation", which is the bullshit conservatives have been saying since...well, since the damn country was founded.

America's story has been the slow, painful struggle to try and actually embody the ideals of a republic, while being run by incompetents, racists, and sexists (usually with a mix of all three.) And, like most of American history, this moment is a combination of great, dizzying success, and terrible failure, leaving us with a complex, difficult to untangle legacy that will take a horrific amount of work to make sense of, let alone try and bring to some ideal future.

I would address those legitimate questions to historians. We're talking about now, when we as citizens have a responsibility...Now...is our chance...I can't do a damned thing about how we got here...but I will do something about what we are...

Your racist, sexists, and nincompoops have had their day...now the day belongs to corporations...and they want to take everybody's rights away equally...

I suppose saying that things, have always sucked, suck now, and will always suck is one way to go...I, however, will not accept this....hoping people do better isn't an answer...doing better ourselves is...
 

RichardGarfinkle

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The paper makes for interesting reading, but it doesn't say what the dramatic headlines say. It contrasts four different models of policy control and finds that economic elites and interest groups are the two models that correlate strongest with actual enacted policies.

It is not an historical analysis, so it doesn't ask or answer the question whether this was always the case.

Their model of majoritarian politics is, deliberately, I think naive. That is they look only at the opinions of median income people as representative of majoritarianism. But they don't ask what those people do when they care about an issue. They also rely on a rational actor model in which people will make the best choices in pursuit of their stated interests.

As to the success of interest groups. They don't consider where interest groups come from and how they are sustained, what their relationship is to the interests of various segments of society etc.

It's a worthwhile paper and its conclusions are worth deeper study.