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[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I think we can all agree that the truly best form of governing a society is to have a pugerment where the entire world is just ruled by Twi's pugs.

I mean come on, they bring people shoes, that's about 1000x more helpful than most governments.

 

Mollie especially makes sure to bring people shoes when she sees they're feeling sad, so they care more about mental health than the US government, at least. 

[DreamEternal]

What if I prefer my shih-tzu to Twi's pugs? What if I want cats and dogs to have equal rights? THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM POLITICS!!

[Voidus]

Also on the non-government option my only issue would be research funding would become basically non-existent which eliminates all of my job options and also significantly slows scientific advancement. But I know that some people would genuinely prefer to live in a less-scientifically-advanced society so that's not necessarily a negative but for me personally it would be an issue.
On the law enforcement side of things I tend to side with the Anarchists, people are perfectly capable of policing their own societies, nomadic societies manage it fine. It's one of the reasons the US always confused me since they have both a massively over-equipped police force and very little gun regulation for regular citizens. I think trying to have both is only ever going to escalate things. But that's just my (probably completely insane) opinion.

 

What if I prefer my shih-tzu to Twi's pugs? What if I want cats and dogs to have equal rights? THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM POLITICS!!

Have you seen Twi's pugs? Those things are so damnation adorable that cats watch videos of them and make cute memes of lolpugs.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Voidus

[Delightful]

What if I prefer my shih-tzu to Twi's pugs? What if I want cats and dogs to have equal rights? THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM POLITICS!!

Four legs gooooood. Two legs baaaaaaad.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Also on the non-government option my only issue would be research funding would become basically non-existent which eliminates all of my job options and also significantly slows scientific advancement. But I know that some people would genuinely prefer to live in a less-scientifically-advanced society so that's not necessarily a negative but for me personally it would be an issue.

On the law enforcement side of things I tend to side with the Anarchists, people are perfectly capable of policing their own societies, nomadic societies manage it fine. It's one of the reasons the US always confused me since they have both a massively over-equipped police force and very little gun regulation for regular citizens. I think trying to have both is only ever going to escalate things. But that's just my (probably completely insane) opinion.

 

There's a ton of controversy surrounding the whole gun debate here in the US, but the two main opinions are like this: 

 

Conservative: If gun ownership is made illegal, it will only disarm the responsible gun owners, not the criminals who the gun control thing is intended to disarm, since they can just buy guns on the black market and don't worry about breaking the law. Not only that, but it runs the risk of making police abuse more dangerous, since what's to stop an armed officer with no conscience from trampling all over the rights of an unarmed citizen? 

 

Liberal: Guns are the best weapons for pulling off a mass shooting or something similar. Keeping guns legal makes it easier for the sort of people who pull off mass shootings like the one in Newtown or Umpqua to access those guns, so the best thing to do is just make them illegal. Not only that, but if a child finds a gun and it's loaded, tragedy can result.  

 

I tend more toward the conservative argument, though I know both arguments have good and bad points. The conservative argument doesn't satisfactorily address how to prevent mass shootings, and the liberal argument doesn't take into account areas where the police can't or won't arrive to the scene of a crime in time, so the victims are left to defend themselves. It's a pretty contentious debate over here. 

[DreamEternal]

Four legs gooooood. Two legs baaaaaaad.

Some animals are more equal than others?

EDIT: On the policing issue, I think it is easier to instill a mentality of impartiality, respect for life and merciful justice in a select trained group than in a whole community. I don't know many nomadic societies, but I doubt their sense of proper justice aligns with mine.

Of course, here in Brazil there are both policial executions of minor criminals and wild lynch mobs and vigilantism. I wonder if I shoud feel grateful for not being poor or guilty that these dangers seem so distant I feel like they are happening in another country.

Edited October 12, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Voidus]

There's a ton of controversy surrounding the whole gun debate here in the US, but the two main opinions are like this: 

 

Conservative: If gun ownership is made illegal, it will only disarm the responsible gun owners, not the criminals who the gun control thing is intended to disarm, since they can just buy guns on the black market and don't worry about breaking the law. Not only that, but it runs the risk of making police abuse more dangerous, since what's to stop an armed officer with no conscience from trampling all over the rights of an unarmed citizen? 

 

Liberal: Guns are the best weapons for pulling off a mass shooting or something similar. Keeping guns legal makes it easier for the sort of people who pull off mass shootings like the one in Newtown or Umpqua to access those guns, so the best thing to do is just make them illegal. Not only that, but if a child finds a gun and it's loaded, tragedy can result.  

 

I tend more toward the conservative argument, though I know both arguments have good and bad points. The conservative argument doesn't satisfactorily address how to prevent mass shootings, and the liberal argument doesn't take into account areas where the police can't or won't arrive to the scene of a crime in time, so the victims are left to defend themselves. It's a pretty contentious debate over here. 

It was before I was old enough to even remotely understand the issues involved but Australia used to have some problems with guns and mass shootings but since we've imposed stricter regulations it's been pretty well resolved so I suppose I'd lean towards the latter.

[DreamEternal]

The main problem with people having guns at home is that they are either close enough and easy enough for a drunken or unstable adult or teenager to pick and use, or hard enough to reach to be generaly useless.

[Kobold King he/him]

In your hypothetical anarchist society, how would be crime dealt with then? What would stop criminal from setting themselves as local lords?

 

First off, in family-oriented tribal societies, crime as we know it is virtually nonexistent. People can be selfish, even controlling to the point of hierarchy, but violent crimes among societies like the San of Africa or the peoples of the deep Amazon are hardly ever seen. Committing a heinous act against another tribe member isn't just unthinkable, it's stupid. They rely on their friends and family in the tribe for their own continued survival. Alienating them is the last thing they want to do.

 

But let's look at this from a Westerner's "civilized" perspective. I ask you--how much does the government really prevent violent crimes? I've already described how my home town suffers because the law enforcement won't do its job, and most American prisons are stuffed to the brim with people who made a poor decision about drug use, not violent crime. To get me to accept government as a defense against violent crime, you'd have to prove to me unambiguously that government can deliver wholesale on its promises, and that the protection it offers counterweighs the blatant robbery it performs daily on its citizens in the form of "taxes."

 

(That's what people don't get. The government isn't protection from bandits, they are the bandits.)

 

Frankly, to put it in violent, crude terms, I'd rather every member of society be versed in the art of killing bandits than to have one uniformed gang of bandits extort from everyone.

 

 

It is wonderful home schooling worked for you, but I doubt it can work in every family out there.

 

Private schooling is a thing. Besides which, a tribal society doesn't need organized schooling, and an advanced society like ours has all the knowledge a child could ever need available for free on the Internet. I don't see the public school system as a sufficient argument for the existence of the United States Federal Bureau of Banditry.

 

 

So your community produces all it needs on its own? And it is invulnerable to anything that may hamper or destroy such capacity in the local area?

 

The Apache, the Inuit, the Zulus, the San, the Carib... there is not a stretch of inhabited land on this earth that a clever society can't harvest all of its needs from. If civilization collapsed overnight, the people of [REDACTED], Texas would have to adapt to sustainable, tribal ways of living in order to survive long-term, but it is more than possible to do so.

 

No culture is invulnerable. Not a single one, even with roads and air supply lines. But I'll point out that tribal cultures didn't build their settlements on shores prone to hurricanes, like ours has, or build nuclear reactors that have a tendency to melt down and irradiate everyone, like ours has, or launch missiles at each other capable of vaporizing an entire city, like ours has (twice.) Tribal societies could dodge or swing back from natural disasters like ours never could, and at least they weren't responsible for half of their disasters.

 

 

A new tyrant is generaly worse than a old one, either for having even less reason to care for your well-being or for the shear damage it will do by conquering.

Maybe, but a lot of them will be killed. And some consider it better to bow under a tyrant than to die for freedom, depending on how bad the tyrant is.

 

A new tyrant is also more likely to be resisted by the people.

 

If they want to bow, let them! I don't infringe upon their right to submit to the first army than marches into the land. But if those people try to seize my money, land, or liberty for the sake of building their own army, then they are no better than the invaders themselves. They have no right to impose their decision onto me.

 

 

Not everyone has such compassionate family and community.

 

 

In tribal societies, yeah, they do. In many tribal societies, which are probably the purest and least screwed up societies on Earth, abandoning your elderly forebears to die would be seen as just as horrid as a mother eating her own baby. And if by some chance there was no one available to care for an elder, there would be countless other members of the tribe willing to pitch in.

 

In any case, if the government is a glorified bandit gang (as I've established), whose idea was it to give our elderly over to bandit gangs so they could be fed in their old age by stolen goods?

 

 

You don't sound rude, for what my opinion's worth. I disagree strongly with you, but that's nothing new for me. 

 

My stance on government is pretty simple: if you're going to steal my money or lock me away forever in a concrete prison, you'd better have a storming good reason for doing so.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

The main problem with people having guns at home is that they are either close enough and easy enough for a drunken or unstable adult or teenager to pick and use, or hard enough to reach to be generaly useless.

Depends. Most gun owners I know keep their weapons in a safe, to which only a handful of people knew the code or the location of the key, but that was within easy access in the case of the break-in. In Wyoming, there aren't a lot of accidental shootings, even though nearly everyone owns a gun, because parents educate their children about the dangers of guns from the time they're small. They also don't keep their guns loaded, so that helps.

[DreamEternal]

Depends. Most gun owners I know keep their weapons in a safe, to which only a handful of people knew the code or the location of the key, but that was within easy access in the case of the break-in. In Wyoming, there aren't a lot of accidental shootings, even though nearly everyone owns a gun, because parents educate their children about the dangers of guns from the time they're small. They also don't keep their guns loaded, so that helps.

I didn't mean accidental shooting as much as passional crimes. Of course, it all depends on the mentality of the local population. My opinions may also have been filtered by nationality(god save Brazil) and by the number of fights I get into with my brother, some of wich I believe to have been on the edge of something more dangerous.

Edited October 12, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Voidus]

I think we should all encourage Kobold to pursue his anarchic dreams.
And no I'm definitely not just saying that because it would disrupt his internet access and thus limit his rep gain. 

[DreamEternal]

And no I'm definitely not just saying that because it would disrupt his internet access and thus limit his rep gain.

As if any of us mere mortals would ever reach the level of the Upvote God. No, I prefer crushing his dreams with my golem army.

I mean, amazing reasoning skills

Edited October 12, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Kobold King he/him]

I think we should all encourage Kobold to pursue his anarchic dreams.

And no I'm definitely not just saying that because it would disrupt his internet access and thus limit his rep gain. 

 

Hey, I'm pursuing them. I raise as much of my own food as this day and age allows, I compost my own waste, harvest my own electricity from the sun, and frolic through the daffodils with nary a care in the world.

 

If that's not true freedom, I don't know what is.

 

 

Besides, I've gone up to a week without posting before and still had noticeable rep gain. I'm not even sure if I could stop garnering rep any more.

[Voidus]

Hey, I'm pursuing them. I raise as much of my own food as this day and age allows, I compost my own waste, harvest my own electricity from the sun, and frolic through the daffodils with nary a care in the world.

 

If that's not true freedom, I don't know what is.

 

 

Besides, I've gone up to a week without posting before and still had noticeable rep gain. I'm not even sure if I could stop garnering rep any more.

You could make a post that you hate Brandon as an authour and that you think awesome magic systems are stupid? That'd probably put you in the red pretty quickly

[DreamEternal]

You could make a post that you hate Brandon as an authour and that you think awesome magic systems are stupid? That'd probably put you in the red pretty quickly

Not enough. It would probably be hailed as the pinnacle of Art.

Edited October 12, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Kobold King he/him]

You could make a post that you hate Brandon as an authour and that you think awesome magic systems are stupid? That'd probably put you in the red pretty quickly

 

 

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

 

 

 

"Marvelous! What brilliant satire!" 

 

—Sharders

[Kobold King he/him]

"Marvelous! What brilliant satire!" 

 

—Sharders

 

So far, what I'm getting from Sharders is complete apathy. I'm a little let down, to be honest. I expected at least two or three downvotes by now.

[Voidus]

So far, what I'm getting from Sharders is complete apathy. I'm a little let down, to be honest. I expected at least two or three downvotes by now.

*Upvotes just to be contrary*

[DreamEternal]

So far, what I'm getting from Sharders is complete apathy. I'm a little let down, to be honest. I expected at least two or three downvotes by now.

You could get more downvotes by exagerating and warping your anarchist beliefs into a insane terrorist satire of them and posting a Mad Bomber Manifesto in a random popular thread.

Of course, that could be taking matters a little to far and would undermine acceptance to your philosophy.

[Guest]

 

...

 

 

One of my colleague is from Brazil.... He has told me... things   and why he chose to leave     

 

As for the entire guns discussion, I live in Quebec. We are fervently against guns. We are in favor for a stronger gun regulation and it baffles us our Southern neighbors are so strongly against it. We are utterly appealed at seeing children being armed and taught how to use guns in certain States. I saw a girl accidentally shooting her instructor to death in one of those "teaching" programs. Kids aren't taught how to shoot guns here. It just does not happen. Under-aged individuals should not handle guns. This goes as strongly against our beliefs as any religious argument other people may have. 

 

We don't have shoot out in schools once every month. We have had two shoots out in the last 20 years in schools and both were massive events. The first one led to a stronger regulation when it comes to guns. People aren't killed in shoot out in our streets either. These just do not happen or if they do, they are extremely rare occasions.

 

I am fervently, totally, completely against gun ownership. Any gun being sold should be registered, authorized and secured, for hunters only. Anyone not hunting should not own a gun. Period.

 

I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I simply completely disagree with all current policies adopted by my Southern neighbors when it comes to them.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

One of my colleague is from Brazil.... He has told me... things   and why he chose to leave     

 

As for the entire guns discussion, I live in Quebec. We are fervently against guns. We are in favor for a stronger gun regulation and it baffles us our Southern neighbors are so strongly against it. We are utterly appealed at seeing children being armed and taught how to use guns in certain States. I saw a girl accidentally shooting her instructor to death in one of those "teaching" programs. Kids aren't taught how to shoot guns here. It just does not happen. Under-aged individuals should not handle guns. This goes as strongly against our beliefs as any religious argument other people may have. 

 

We don't have shoot out in schools once every month. We have had two shoots out in the last 20 years in schools and both were massive events. The first one led to a stronger regulation when it comes to guns. People aren't killed in shoot out in our streets either. These just do not happen or if they do, they are extremely rare occasions.

 

I am fervently, totally, completely against gun ownership. Any gun being sold should be registered, authorized and secured, for hunters only. Anyone not hunting should not own a gun. Period.

 

I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I simply completely disagree with all current policies adopted by my Southern neighbors when it comes to them.

 

 

My take is that not everything that works in one country will work in another country. I lived in Wyoming as a child—which, from the sounds of it, is as close to opposite Quebec on the gun issue as you can get. My dad just….always owned guns. I don't recall a day when he first brought a gun he'd bought home, and I don't remember anyone in the community making a big deal about guns. They're just part of the culture. In Wyoming, there are very few accidental gun deaths, and I don't know of any mass shootings there.

 

This will probably horrify you, but my brother first learned to shoot a gun when he was very small. It wasn't an Uzi—the type used in the accidental shooting death of the instructor you mentioned; children have NO business even being near guns that powerful—but rather a .22. Basically a few steps above a BB gun (which he got for his birthday when he was eight or nine). A .22 can kill small animals, but not humans. If you were shot by a .22, it would hurt, but the chances of you dying or bleeding out are quite low. He shot that .22 with the full and constant supervision of my dad and several of my dad's friends, and as he grew older, he graduated to larger calibers. All of these were used with the supervision of my dad; when those guns weren't being used on the shooting range, they were locked up in a safe. 

 

For as long as I can remember, I was taught gun safety. I was constantly reminded that guns were not toys; they were weapons. I don't recall me or any of my siblings ever touching one of my dad's hunting rifles, unless he was right there and we were at the shooting range. We were taught to respect guns for what they could do, to learn as much about them as possible, to avoid them unless adults were present. 

 

Back to Wyoming as a whole. I mentioned before that guns are just part of the culture, and they are. But not in a Wild-Wild-West-shoot-anyone-who-looks-at-you-funny sort of way. There are a lot of hunters in Wyoming. Every year, those hunters will pay for their tags, go out into the wilderness, and shoot deer, elk, antelope, grizzly bear, or some other big game. All of the hunters I knew took pains to use every part of the animals they shot; when my dad went hunting, we'd eat venison steaks and hamburger and sausage for months afterward. (And it was delicious.) Guns in Wyoming are tools, the same as a hammer or a saw. Dangerous in the wrong hands, yes, but kept away from those without proper training. It's kind of odd. It's not a celebratory attitude, as you've probably seen from some pro-gun protestors; rather, it's just a casual one. You wouldn't celebrate your right to use a screwdriver; it's a tool you use to complete a specific job. That's how guns are in Wyoming.

Edited October 13, 2015 by TwiLyghtSansSparkles

[Haelbarde he/him]

So far, what I'm getting from Sharders is complete apathy. I'm a little let down, to be honest. I expected at least two or three downvotes by now.

I'll save that post and come and down vote it once the forum update lets me undo it upon regretting that decision.

[+Slowswift]

I would love to toss in my two cents, but I can't really do so as thoroughly as I'd like because reasons time. But I can offer a couple views.

 

I believe that yes, a natural human government will inevitably deteriorate towards corruption. My preferred solution would be a... deiarchy? Basically, rule by God. But that won't happen until the Second Coming, and I don't know when that will happen, so for now I'll settle for a republic.... so long as that republic is run by honest, good men. Which leads us back to point one, unfortunately.

 

By the way, I do wholeheartedly support the Constitution (I'd consider myself a Constitutionalist). I believe it is a divinely inspired document, but that it was meant for a religious, moral society. Which we're drifting farther and farther from every day.

 

Ah, gun control. I'm with Twi here. Ideally, there would be no need for guns (outside of hunting). But as that's sadly not the case, I believe guns, as long as they're used responsibly, should be allowed. Also, see the 2nd Amendment.

 

Basically: don't ban guns or restrict them to the point of uselessness, just teach people to be responsible. It's perfectly logical, I think, to have regulations. Just don't take it to an extreme.