EnviroLink Forum

I can agree with that. They all are doing what they think they need to do to get elected again rather than doing the job of looking out for the welfare of the country and all of the citizens.



But given the status of the organization he can all but eliminate it since there is no requirement to keep it. The laws enacted would have to be upheld in some fashion, but he could do a lot of damage to the agency.



With just the President and no change in Congress I see little change and even less movement. The President can veto and Congress may not be able to over-ride, but nothign gets done .... just like now.



Yes, in a perfect world ....well, we would not have had the problem to deal with in the first place. A lot of the problems stem from the previous Russian invasion there and the previous invasions throughout history to a degree.



Yes, but the price for a total solution would be the same as now and extended longer.



True, but at the time Iraq was more of a personal target, both because of the threat to G H W Bush and the oil and contracts that the companies wanted. IMO.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Maybe one day...when we as voters start doing the same.



On a term to term basis, maybe. Even had Obama got nothing done, even if he's not re-elected, one more brick in the wall of racism, a pretty big brick, has crumbled in the name of positive change. Paul, I believe, would represent yet another type milestone in the realm of federal politics.



Not really what I'm saying, as we cannot change the past or even present circumstances.



Exactly. We were so caught up in doing something that we cared less about what we actually did. All I'm saying is that it could have been handled more effectively. We must overcome this notion that "rogue regimes" are so separated from the populaces that enable them.

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TANG SOO!

Now you are just talking crazy talk ....

There is a reason the founding father set up the electoral college to elect the President ... they knew the common people would not make the best choices.



I would rather see fewer cultural milestones and some actual work toward a United states rather than the Political states.



True, but if we learn from the past and try not to repeat the same mistakes over again we may change the future.



True, although I agree we should have gone into Afghanistan there should have been better preparations and planning before we acted.



Some of them actually are. The North Koreans for example are so brainwashed by their isolation they have little real understanding of what is going on. The same for the Chinese of a few decades ago. The Afghan reliance on their religion and those religious leaders being the militant terrorists are another type of isolated entity.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

You're buying the notion that they are "innocent" bystanders. A population that allows such rule is not so much and is indirectly responsible for the actions of its rulers.

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TANG SOO!

How are children not more innocent as their age decreases? How are people indirectly responsible for their rulers if they have no say in who those rulers will be? Even if the population has a say there will still be those who would oppose an action but are still in the minority so would also be innocent of the actions.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about the population as a whole. It's not a matter of majority, minority, age, or whether or not someone has a say. It boils down to there being enough of something such that the rest is overwhelmed. A culture will recieve what it is willing to tolerate and then some. Whether or not they deserve it is also beside the point.

_________________
TANG SOO!

Ahhh, I see what you were saying now, sorry. The reference to populace threw me a little, but they need to be removed from their source of power, which is in many cases the might of some armed forces or a strong religion instead of a population per se.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Because the common individual is too ignorant to be able to make rational choices. To become educated enough on the various issues requires more time and effort than most will be able to apply. A pure democracy will collapse in upon itself due to the volume of decisions which have to be made.[/quote]


We all want to be lead. We all want to be told what to do ..... Looking for the "better" political leader and the next one wil be better than the present one. We've had a thousand leaders and they have all failed .....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9h1Rzwv31A

They have all failed .... the transition of humans from nothing to civilizations and the current freedom oriented focus was a total failure I am sure.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

I don't know what you mean when you say, .... "the transition of humans from nothing to civilizations and the current freedom oriented focus was a total failure I am sure."

I simply do not understand that sentence.

You presented the failure of a thousand leaders, ignoring the improvements to human living from the time we had nothing but sticks to the civilizations built after that with all of the "failed" leaders. We have seen these failed leaders take us to more equality between the genders, races, creeds, colors, and religions in the last century. The elemination of most slavery in the previous century and all of the other failures in "between" ......

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

We have leaders now as ancient Egyptians had Pharoahs .... and the Egyptian people also revolted against those Pharoahs eventually. The question might be .... "Why do we have leaders at all'?

Just asking.



This is an abdication of our innate intelligence and a cop out! I disagree that we are not able to make rational choices. You mentioned (in another post) the unfair treatment of the normal and average citizen who created the film "Gas Land". I just finished watching it and it is a revealing account of the complete subjugation of folk to the money hungry corporations involved in "natural gas". (Corporatins are made from individuals who, for one reason or another, go along with the injustice). Gas Land is an an example of how we can not rely on governments or leaders to watch out for us. They are sold to the corporations ..... and the natural gas companies who are poisoning the common folk are not much different from Monsanto. The world needs energy just as the world needs food. But you suport GMO's such as Monsanto because the world need food .... while they are doing the same harm as these gas companies who are fuelling the world with much needed fuel?

Ahhhh ..... and then you mention the volume of decisions. But if communities could decide for themselves .... people are not stupid! And if the volume is reduced, we could make rational and humane decisions for ourselves.

Leaders are born just as artists and educators are born.
The common individual is in no way too ignorant to make decisions.




[/quote]

Civilizations ..... culture, art, inventions .... are because we had elected leaders? We went from "nothing" to whatever we have now because of elected leaders?

From nothing, we would have had to go somewhere. Cultural evolvement is inevitable now just as it was then. We have come from very little and we will continue to evolve in these ways ..... artistically, philosophically, intelectually etc. You mean we would not have had any evolution in these pursuits at all ... unless we had elected leaders?

What, you think we would have stood still regardless? No way. Not possible. No wonder I didn't understand the sentence!



You presented the failure of a thousand leaders,

By "presented" you mean that I quoted Jiddu Krishnamurti's partial speech about the psychological and cultural tendency, which is conditioned, to expect leaders to show us the way. We have been accustomed to have leaders and to expect them to know what is best for us. Our leaders, we have been conditioned to assume, know what is going on and know what we should all agree on. Afterall, they are the "experts" ... they have studied the subjects thoroughly and we can therefore depend on them to know what is right and good and just. We give them the authority to decide for us. All we have to do is elect the right one and if and when they screw up, it's okay because the next one will be better. Or so we hope ....and expect, regardless of history.



You mean if we never had leaders, we would also never have any improvements .... any evolution of any kind? Without leaders we would not invent, or create art, or know how to treat each other? Without leaders, we would still be living in the sticks?

Leaders are a cultural invention. They are part of our culture which we have created and co-created. We are responsible for "which" leader just as we are responsible for the fact that we have them to begin with. But without leaders .... and at some point in ancient history we agreed to have them ... and having leaders has become part of out collective story and out collective psyche and, yet, but .... NOTHING is written in stone. They are part of a system which we invented in the first place.

Wayne .... entertain the query. Do not agree or disagree. At least for a moment .... entertain the possibility of not having a centralized leader who makes colossal decisions. Entertain the possibility that we can make decisons that are rational and sane without a centralized "guy" who agrees to the pressures of corporations.

Whether democratic or republican .... it doesn't matter anymore. The world is run by corporations and the president, whoever may be elected, is run by those corporations who stand to make the most profit.



Since we have them .... and we've never been without. Have you ever been without an elected 'leader' in your life time? The speaker in the video is asking why we have leaders at all? Why do we assume we need them? It's a query .... an investigation. Your reaction to that query is interesting in that it is a pure 'reaction' without the slightest indication of the actual "juice" of inquiry. An invitation to inquire ..... your reaction is not inquiry ... it's a reaction, and not an uncommon one.

If you already have the answer, where is there room for inquiry?

The speaker is asking a question .... to answer so quickly and with such knowledge is an excellent example of the conditioned mind.

[/quote]

This is perhaps a territory that you are unfamiliar with .... there were leaders at the time of slavery too.

I tend towards voting .. but it is always the lesser of two or several more evils and I am tending more to not voting at all. There is no real choice. All of them have been injected with a healthy dose of corporate sponsorship.

My original queastion was, ... "We have leaders now as ancient Egyptians had Pharoahs .... and the Egyptian people also revolted against those Pharoahs eventually. The question might be .... "Why do we have leaders at all'?

Have times changed? Why have leaders at all? Power corrupts. We have what is needed to lead ourselves .... and we are going to have to create and sustain communities in the coming years. If there are leaders amongst us, let them emerge as the artists and educators will. This is evolution.

No, a simple fact of life, which is being ignored in favor of uninformed opinion.



Many people can make rational choices, but some cannot. The problem is making INFORMED choices, which is related but different. Choosing to make an unnecessary decision without sufficient information is not rational.



Yet you believe the individuals can or will do so without the information? Would that line of reasoning also indicate those individuals you say "go along with the injustice" should do otherwise? You seem to believe mass assumption will always give good decisions.



Unlike the individuals who make the "correct choices" such as short term jobs being more important than long term environmental damage? There are many cases of just this type of decision being made by the same people you think should make all decisions.



That seems to be your belief. Can you provide the evidence to support the claims of real, not imagined possible future damage by GMOs?



Sure they are. There are plenty of stupid people out there. There are a lot of intelligent people too. The intelligent ones tend to have fewer children too. That means the stupid people have a long term advantage if they do not kill themselves off too quickly. There are people in between too, but you get the general picture.



How do you reduce the volume of decisiond to accomplish this goal? Magic? Wishful thinking? Having leaders who make some of the decisions? Wait, that is what is supposedly being replaced in this series of assumptions.



But you do not want leaders, right?



This illustrates the fact that they are to ignorant because if they were not too ignorant you, as a common individual, would know that statement is false. Can you tell us off the top of your head what the student teacher ratio is for your local schools? What is the long term infrastructure plan for development? What are the crime rates? Which would create the greatest immediate gain with an increase in budget? Which would create the greatest long term gain? Do this on a weekly basis forever.




[/quote]



Not elected leaders, just leaders. Elected leaders did not become popular for quite some time after, but yes, leaders allowed the formation of civilizations.



See above.



No, we could have stayed at that point as there are many isolated tribes which have not gone far from nothing.



Not without specialization, which leaders are a very necessary specialization for such advancement.



Not really. Without leaders everyone would have to provide their own support in addition to sharing the leadership, which would not leave much time for other pursuits or if the leadership was by ignorant choice there probably would have not been a lot of survival chances.



You do not understand a lot more, it seems. You have assumed a lot to compensate, however.





Yes, you presented that in the context of the idea every individual making the joint decision would be somehow better than those individuals making the decision of which leader would make the better decisions. I bet you do not even see the irony in that position either.





Yes, even though we had leaders even then.



No, culture is the invention of leaders. There are leaders in nature, but still no culture.



They are a part of our culture because we would not have a culture without them.



No, leaders were around in nature before we as humans evolved. The leader has evolved with us, but the leader preceeds us.



No, the wolf pack has a leader we did not invent. The leader was probably already a part of the ancestors to modern humans and just evolved along with us.



That would be entertainment. It would be fiction of the highest order.



Elimination of the president, and there are a lot of other leaders in the US and moreso in the rest of the world, would not eliminate the impact of the corporations. It might make it harder to see the influence, but it would still remain.



No. Have you ever led anything? Do you know how efficient a committtee is at making an informed decision? There is a reason day to day operations of companies are not run by committee because no company would survive. The government is often hamstrung by the committee of Congress, which has internal leaders to help prevent that.



I told you why, but you wish to disbelieve in favor of a dream of utopia. That is a problem with many Libertarians in my experience.



I do not assume we need them, but history has shown us that mob rule does not succeed.



No, you assume because I do not agree I did not think about the point. I did and tried to give you a logical answer supported by evidence.



My "reaction" was to respond to the inquiry. I could have posed the answer as another inquiry, but that would be a waste of time and effort on my part.



If the reason for the inquiry was not to get answers, what was the reason? It seems to illustrate why decision by committee is so inefficient.



Or of an mind using that knowledge and experience in the realm of leadership, decision making and history to reach a logical and informed conclustion.



This is perhaps a territory that you are unfamiliar with .... there were leaders at the time of slavery too.[/quote]

Yes and the common indivduals also supported it. Your point being?



That is your choice, but it seems you are making a very large generalization since all elections do not involve such sponsorship. Maybe it is because the majority of the individuals vote for those candidates who have such sponsorship in the more visible elections?



The answer is still the same as nothing changed other than semantics.




No we do not. How long would it take you to become familiar with the budget of your city, county, state, and federal budget each year? Who would propose the budget without leaders? How would it be presented? What would you do in your spare time?




But you just asked why leaders were needed since we have what is needed to lead ourselves. Either you do not beleive the stance that leaders are not needed or you are not really thinking about what you write.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein