I'm in the U.S. and I think the government is doing a good job overall considering the landscape. Could be a great job if some weren't committed to tearing the nation down. So any success, like the $369 billion bill climate bill that was unveiled yesterday (and will pass), which will reduce our carbon emissions by about 40 percent in eight years, is a big deal.
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government - except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
@ElwoodBlues Other countries' drivers manage to do much better. Compared to Norway the US has six times the death rate per 100k inhabitants, nearly five times the rate per 100k vehicles, and over twice the rate per billion vehicle-km.
@GeniUs Before pronouncing on what works and what doesn't I think one needs to specify what counts as working. For quite a few people unrestrained capitalism as in the UK and US in the 19th century was working.
@ninalanyon It's a good point, everything does need defining in this age. Personally and I'm open to debate on this the most menial of jobs should pay a 'living wage' for a 40 hour week. And accepting that there will always be some unemployed people for various reasons at least 95% of those who need to be employed to earn money should be. This would be a starting point. edit- whichever government could achieve this is halfway to Nirvana.
Yes and no. I live in Norway and they did a good job with COVID. They aren't so good with energy policy though and our electricity prices have gone up rather a lot.
nothing is perfect but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else(Canada). more money needs to be injected in healthcare and roads but there is also so much corruption in construction that we get robbed in terms of what we pay for building roads and infrastructures like hospitals. the last giant hospital that was build in montreal made a huge scandal because of corruption and the guy in charge of building it fled the country (full story is a bit more complicated...) . but there's not much violence, school is almost free, healthcare also mostly free.
We have a two party adversarial system that largely keeps us in stasis. We have also drifted from the core values of these parties so we end up fighting about things on the margins instead of the big problems that impact us all. Failures are just written off to the obstruction of the other guy.
I’m a single issue voter. Education and science research. We under fund schools K-12 by $150B+ per year. And guess what, our students rank 30th in math and 20th in science. 60% of basic science is funded by the federal government, and we are slipping behind in global dominance in technology. The US is increasingly no longer the premiere place to study science.
If the government isn't willing to change, that is the beginning of it's end.
If anyone hasn't figured out that change is in everything then they are ignoring change and therefore will be changed by change itself.
Change abhors a stasis. Whether that change is for good or bad. Change just doesn't care about good or bad. Just about changing.
It's why there is even a Chinese government to begin with. Many still say China is a bad form of government. Yet the China of today isn't the China of Mao Tse-tung.
Mao Tse-tung would never allow corporations to exist!
@DeWayfarer I did have to look this up to get it right (I'd heard it a while back)
Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself.
Prof Leon Megginson summarising some of Darwin's work.
Ever had enough calculus to not only take a second derivative as well as know what it means?
The second derivative is how even a rate of change changes. Although that as well isn't precise. It's more of a guestimate. The first derivative is just a simple rate of change.
Something may tend to go in a certain direction. Yet that is dependent on any or all other factors. Which are literally endless.
we should go back to living on the land as much as possible. quit producing and consuming unnecessary garbage and have a more pastoral life. i realize there are big cities and that is not possible for everyone. but if the goal is to make everywhere like NYC or LA, that's not a world I want to live in.
There are a lot of things the US government is doing a good job at. Postal service is alright and getting better again. GPS system is awesome. They do really good weather forecasting. Food safety tends to be alright, that's hard to get perfect. Most of the things our government does well is either taken for granted or corporations step in as middle men and take all of the credit for the efficient government work.
A lot of the areas where the government fails are areas that are purposefully sabotaged by politicians doing favors for capital interests. Like they tried to do to the post office just a couple years ago. US public housing was great before realtors lobbied to limit it to low income so they could sell more houses.
Honestly, even my local DMV runs pretty smooth these days and has for the past dozen years or so.
"I'm not a Biden fan, but comparing him, or anyone to Trump is silly, imo."
It is silly, but not for the reasons you think.
The MSM has been protecting the Biden crime family every step of the way, while at the same time peddling daily front-page stories for every lie the Democrats have cooked up against Trump.
But lately, Biden's incompetence has become so monumentally impossible to ignore, that even 75% of Democrats don't want him to run again.
Their only problem is, no one on their bench is much better. 🙄
