Democracy is a millipede, and communism is a bee hive.

@plungesponge
You raised many good points worthy of comment and discussion; however, I want to zoom right into this one first. AI is great for management of determinate systems. You and I are are not only complex but indeterminate. Science define us as biological organisms. The body, in a sense, is; however, we are much more than the body.

What are we? Thinking machines? At the basic level, the human mind uses language that runs on deductive logic. This is the way we reason in the acquisition of knowledge. Without language, we can't think. Intelligence is something else, it is not mechanical and much more than reason which is mechanical.

There is a part of us, a vital part that is mysterious and indefinable.

@plungesponge
What do you mean? Democracy is a plan for organizing the way we (Americans) live. It is based on the assumption that we are determinate human digits with known needs. The plan did not factor in the need of the organization itself: the nation called the USA. If the USA wants war (chaos), Americans must die for the organization.

First of all, we are not human digits (Americans). How is it that we must die for a non-existent virtual entity called the USA?

@plungesponge
Not sure what you are saying here. We need money to live on and there is no way around that. Also, we live within the infrastructural, power, and communications grid. Money (i.e central bank) is indeed the engine of the social system. I realized that a long time ago and that is why I have no family and live alone to minimize my dependency on the system. Even then, it is not possible to escape from the system unless I give up the world of Caesar and live with God like an ape in the forest.

@WintaTheAngle
What does it mean when Joe Blow votes for the US President? Joe could be anyone in this forum voting for or against Donald Trump. Do we have any idea how he runs the country? Sure, it's all clearly stated in the Constitution.

Not even the US President understands how the government actually operates. So, everyone gets to vote has no meaning. Trump thought he would be running it like Trump Organization, as easily as the way he drove a car.

China's government makes no pretensions about state power to govern. If you want to govern China, you join the Party; otherwise, you contribute to the nation's economy as a citizen. If you choose to govern, you start at the bottom in your village or town at the local level and work your way up. By the time, and if you get to Xi Jinping's level, you would have earned the right to commit the lives of 1.4 billion Chinese and risk them all to take out the US President and 350 million Americans in an all out nuclear war for the betterment of mankind.

@sree251 You’re an odd fella. With a head full of strange ideas. After you pass we should open it up, I’m prepared to be there’s some anomaly that medical science will find curious.

@WintaTheAngle
And you are a smart fella who noticed the strange ideas. This is a philosophy thread. It is for checking out normal ideas that are supporting war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, men marrying men, and a Punjabi succeeding Churchill as Britain's Prime Minister.

@jshm2
How is that? There is no freedom anywhere both in the natural world as well as in the artificial reality of mankind. There in implicit order in nature. Freedom of the kind we worship - eat what we want, sleep around with who we like, kill because we can - is chaos.



Of course. We live under the impression that democracy confers power on us, the people, to choose what kind of prison we want to live in. We get to choose the prison, and that's all that matters.


You are talking about law breakers who were caught breaking the law. The rest of the American population are also imprisoned by a justice system that is more tightly maintained than any other in the world. There is no way for any American to escape the reach of the Department of Homeland Security.


Are you referring to China? It is not a communist state. China practices Confucianism: socialism with Chinese characteristics.


I consider America's democracy as a sham. It is not a social system that caters to the welfare of its citizens. It is an arena for the survival of beasts.

@gol979 You can, up to a point. I am like you. I quit my career 10 years ago and don't participate in hive activity but I still am dependent on honey (i.e. money) and need to live within the hive (i.e. grid). I live from hive to hive (i.e. travel abroad) but have to return to my home hive once a year (i.e. maintain US citizenship). So, doing "your own thing" doesn't mean much unless freedom from hive activities (i.e. doing what Americans do) is what you need.

@jshm2
We know what democracy is. As an American, I live in that social system. Taking your analogy, I feel like a free range chicken compared to an imagined farm chicken. I say "imagined" because I have never been to mainland China and observed how people live there even today. I have seen pictures of Chinese back in the days before China opened up. They were all dressed in blue outfits and caps riding bicycles everywhere in the streets. And that looked like "farmed chickens" to me. Modernized China is governed by a political system similar to that of Singapore, a parliamentary democracy set up by the British. However, the Chinese in Singapore is nothing like the Brits in the UK. The way they practice parliamentary democracy is modified by their Confucian cultural values: family before self, society comes first. China has adopted the Singapore model.

@BohoBabe [quote] China isn't communist, they're state capitalist. [quote]

I don't know what that means. One thing is for sure. You won't be able to make a billion dollars singing rap or playing basketball in China. Is this what you mean by doing much worse than Americans?

@sree251 State Capitalism is where corporations are privately owned by the government.

The Chinese have a lower living standard. The average worker has less money, worse health, less freedom, and so on.

@BohoBabe
How much money do you think the average American has? The average American splurge more, than the average Chinese who is frugal. They save for a rainy day. I am not sure you are correct with regard to their health.

@Roundandroundwego
A bee hive is a community. A millipede is not.

Americans are like the legs of the millipede controlled by the American Elites.