"When Utopia is achieved everyone will be conservative"

[Hygro]

Rather, Utopia would allow partying but no hangovers. Imagine this elimination of downsides applies elsewhere...

Strange way to define a Utopia, although I fail to see why not having a hangovers is a problem.

 

[Cutlass]

request to use more traditional definitions of liberalism and not the American media one?

Works both ways. As an example, the people who dealt with hard times were more open to new ways of doing things. The people who never dealt with hard times doubled down on 'tradition'.

 

[CavLancer]

When Utopia is achieved everyone will be conservative.

When everyone is conservative Utopia will be achieved.

Just playing. Actually the best government is half/half so nothing but balancing the budget is achieved.

 

[Hygro]

Just playing. Actually the best government is half/half so nothing but balancing the budget is achieved.

What are the consequences of not doing so?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I didn't want to let this slide:

Consider the persecution of Jews: Did it make their position more precarious in modern society since WWII? No, and if anything, stronger. Likewise, all-out government efforts to destroy poverty among minorities in the United States did not help and may actually have had the opposite effect. Now, I am not advocating inhumane treatment as a means to train a people, nor do I oppose a government or the adoption of a technology that steers things a little bit to improve some things in a small way.

Yet there is some reason why Jews and Asians are overall less often caught committing crimes and have lesser amounts of poverty in the US: They were raised to be this way. I do not attribute it to a racial superiority or inherited factor of any kind. People from these communities just have been more imbued with wisdom by their environment. Neither government nor technology can fix that, it has to come from within a community. At best, governments can accelerate the process of adjustments.

Western European countries also did not became free and prosperous nations because of good government policies, but because its populace is politically conscious enough to support such policies. Say, if Traitorfish were to convince me that Anarchocommunism would be the best society, I'd still say we collectively do not deserve it until we are smart enough to realise such a society ourselves.

Sorry to be blunt, but that really seems like an unholy mess of over-generalization and ... more mess to me.

The bottom line of yours seems to be that there is some sort of one-way road between the people and the system their inhibit. Instead of interaction. Which seems neither plausible to me nor do I think that observation supports such a claim.

To pick up on some points of yours

Consider the persecution of the Roma.
Consider the oppression of the black people.

Consider the slums in countries with less help for the poor. Consider how European countries do which do a lot more for the poor than the USA.

I agree that an environment which is tougher on you tends to make you tougher. I don't see how you get from there to the notion that political structures can not also make people "better".

And it to me seems like a grave distortion of history to surmise that prosperity was based on a decision by the people.
My impression is rather that people muddled through and adapted.
I could also cite Japan as a classic example of fundamental top-down change. German industrialization was also organized more top-down than the other way around from what I know.

 

[CavLancer]

What are the consequences of not doing so?

The US economy.

 

[KMRblue1027]

The US economy.

Care to back that up? That's a pretty bold claim considering the 70+ years of deficit spending doesn't seem to have a negative effect.

 

[CavLancer]

I take it you didn't lose your ass? Neither did I, saw it coming.

 

[Tahuti]

Strange way to define a Utopia, although I fail to see why not having a hangovers is a problem.

It's are not really hangovers per sée. I just want you to imagine a world where there would be no downsides to anything you do. Hangovers would be one of them, though certainly not the most important disappearance.

I didn't want to let this slide:

Sorry to be blunt, but that really seems like an unholy mess of over-generalization and ... more mess to me.

The bottom line of yours seems to be that there is some sort of one-way road between the people and the system their inhibit. Instead of interaction. Which seems neither plausible to me nor do I think that observation supports such a claim.

To pick up on some points of yours

Consider the persecution of the Roma.
Consider the oppression of the black people.

Consider the slums in countries with less help for the poor. Consider how European countries do which do a lot more for the poor than the USA.

I agree that an environment which is tougher on you tends to make you tougher. I don't see how you get from there to the notion that political structures can not also make people "better".

It is intentionally an overgeneralisation, since I wanted to demonstrate a point. Yet I have not encountered any observation that disproves it (please show me one if you know one). Why is there corruption? Because the ordinary folk tolerate it. To not condemn a vice is to condone it. And some people are raised to condone it.

My point is that political structures must fit with social structures to work and if not, social structures will (violently) bend politics to the reality of societies. Social structures can either only change from within, or most be receptive to political authority, the latter of which can't be taken for granted at all.

And it to me seems like a grave distortion of history to surmise that prosperity was based on a decision by the people.
My impression is rather that people muddled through and adapted.
I could also cite Japan as a classic example of fundamental top-down change. German industrialization was also organized more top-down than the other way around from what I know.

Japan is an exception to the rule because the Japanese Emperor was considered a deity, who surrendered to the US. Thus when the USA wanted Japan to become like the USA, the Japanese people followed. 'It couldn't be helped' the Japanese would say. Japan's social structure refitted itself to the political structure imposed by Americans, and this was possible because a god-emperor set in motion the events to make it happen which the Japanese people acknowledged, even when the aforementioned events led the Japanese emperor to renounce his godhood.

By contrast, the Taliban resists the Americans. Their deference was not towards a god-emperor who surrendered to the Americans and instead is towards a religion centred around god, who has no worldly presence and makes no worldly decisions. The political structure imposed by the US clearly does not fit Afghan society and Afghan society would have to change by itself, by its voilition, to do so.

 

[gay_Aleks]

When Utopia happens, there'll be no hangovers.

That's all I've got from this thread.

 

[Tahuti]

When Utopia happens, there'll be no hangovers.

That's all I've got from this thread.

This one's sigged!

 

[Traitorfish]

The US economy.

The success of the US economy is a consequence of the federal government maintaining a healthy deficit.

A Good Post.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Did the USA accidentally find the backdoor to Utopia?

Find in the next issue of CFC Daily!

 

[Tahuti]

The success of the US economy is a consequence of the federal government maintaining a healthy deficit.

A Good Post.

Didn't the feds had a budget surplus during the Clinton era, just before the bust of the dot-com bubble or Afghanistan?

 

[Farm Boy]

When we speak about "utopia or near enough" are we considering it to be populated by humans like we are now? Or humans that are different in some significant way? Because if we're talking about the ones we have now I'm going to have to join the camp that thinks we're not built for it. Not everybody, but enough somebodies need to feel purpose in what they're building, fail to provide something of grave enough weight(that they're also capable of doing, that isn't drastically too difficult) to satisfy the drive for purpose and they'll start tearing things down instead.

 

[timtofly]

So are we saying that when people realize they cannot get what they want, they will?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@Kaiserguard

From what I gather huge junks of human history are a of history of people by large having no say in how society should organized (Medieval Age). But okay, you didn't say that people necessarily need to support how things are, you speak of social structures.

But that social and political structures somehow need to be in sync is such a general statement that it IMO is a meaningless truism. It doesn't tell us what changes what how and why.
That said, social structures themselves necessitating change instead of a political will will tend to be a lot more powerful, I give you that. But such structures don't happen in a vacuum. They are a product of political structures as much as political structures are a product of social structures. I really think it is absolutely undue simplification to want to establish one as the endogenous and the other as the exogenous factor, instead of making the more complicated and inconvenient assumption of a continuous interaction.