Ask Dick: Has Feminism Affected Anything?
Necroswordsman of decayingsword.mabtw.com has sent me the following question.
Hey Dick, I have a question. In most of my life I have wondered how feminists have affected the media. For example, nowadays, a children’s presenter has to be clearly a young guy or they’re branded a pedophile. You get what I mean.
I’d really like some answers.
And I’d really like those barking-dog shock-collars to become the hottest women’s fashion item for 2007. Imagine what a utopia that would be. Every time a woman went to open her mouth, she’d get an electric Five Across the Eyes.
Women are too terrified during a crisis to say anything anyway. What’s the downside? At least this way they’d have an excuse. A sexy excuse.
Thinking back on children’s presenters, a few legends immediately come to mind: Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Wizard, and Mr. Rogers. Unlike any goddamn woman has ever done, these men brought smiles to the faces of millions of children for decades. That makes them a million times better than your average mother. I have a word for these men: legends. Women have a word for these men as well: pedophiles.
Women are so far up their own ass with how fucking great they are, they can’t give one ounce of credit to anyone who has ever done anything fantastic — or should I say mantastic. Women never get any credit for anything in the first place, so who can blame them. You can’t give someone a backwards purple nurple if you don’t know what it is. And it’s not called credit when you get the blame for fucking up, which women get and do constantly. It’s called blame. That’s why it’s actually called blame and not credit. Blame is all women know and that’s why they shoot it out of their mouths all day like broken sprinklers of shit.
But did feminism cause this?
Absolutely not. I was thinking about this while I was writing the above — that’s just the average day in the life of a man: thinking, writing, watching TV, snacking on some cashews, and not listening to someone on the phone all at the same time. I came to the conclusion that feminism has not affected shit in society.
The reason women call men children’s presenters pedophiles is because they’re immature and they think it’s funny.
Women have the emotional maturity of methadone addicts. They think everything in the world is funny. Shit, I make women laugh all the time and I don’t even try; they’re like retarded. You don’t even have to make a joke and they’ll laugh at it. And that includes laughing at the hard work and child rearing programmes put out by these brave men called children’s presenters.
Feminism didn’t make women behave poorly. They’ve been doing that for eons. Feminism just called attention to it.
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March 28th, 2007 at 12:45 pm - IP Man-Hash: 4555637db20cf
Every now and then there is a post that just simply brightens up a fucked up day. You see, today my team got its ass handed to it by a bunch of Aussies, and I was rather unhappy. Then I read that line, and things changed drastically. It brought a big road smile to my face, the way only a good clever comment can bring.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm - IP Man-Hash: b970e8787af34
Dick, the words and phrases with which you write are so harsh. But…but.. it’s all T R U E. Girls do pass blame all day. In fact, every article you write is so unbelievable true, it’s insane that more men aren’t privy to the absolute true annoyance and peril of these walking vaginas and their brigade.
How on earth did we end up this way? Why are men so mawkish for pussy? How are we going to get these menstruating beasts out of the voting booths, out of the corporate offices, out of the universities, and back into the laundry room where they can truly shine?
I swear if I owned a business I would never hire a women. I simply could not bring myself to do it. There is no amount of money you could pay me to hire a woman. I’d rather attach my penis to a car battery. Their beaver-trap brains just can not handle the thought processes needed to avoid danger and process problems. Instead, all they do is incite danger and instantiate problems. In today’s society, you can get sued for even saying you wouldn’t hire a women. And the females and their thought-police would actually win!
Have we lost all decency in our time? Has everyone lost their fucking mind? Is there no way back to the natural order of things? Are we destined to suffer at the whim of these estrogen-beasts and their followers? Please tell me there is hope for a return to decency.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:14 pm - IP Man-Hash: 41d1817bb2e08
Any manpoints lost for googling “backwards purple nurple”? Hope not.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:38 pm - IP Man-Hash: c20b47cbcee08
Of course they did :)
March 28th, 2007 at 6:27 pm - IP Man-Hash: 4a1207b9a8d74
I have a female friend (practically a sister, I’ve known her since kindergarten) who proves this constantly. I make a game of it.
All I have to do is look her square in the eye, straight-faced, and say just about ANY word and she’ll start laughing.
March 29th, 2007 at 1:31 am - IP Man-Hash: 9d1bff40f6840
He didn’t say anything about females down under, so you creamed your jeans for no real reason. Only men can compete with men.
March 29th, 2007 at 4:45 am - IP Man-Hash: 4555637db20cf
I’ve just lost a few man-points. I read that silly line
and I immediately felt like applying My Five Across Her Eyes. Violence against women is abhorrent.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:36 am - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
I swear if I owned a business I would never hire a women.
Probably quite a few businessmen who would agree with you. Especially when you are talking about areas where high commitment is required or where efficiency is important. But guess what? You don’t have that choice. If you’re not meeting the quotas for male-to-female ratios - heaven forbid, you’re employing only men - you will be fined and life/business will be made hard for you.
From the Angry Harry blog quoting Fred Reed, “The Equality Scam”:
Full article here: http://www.fredoneverything.net/WomenandAfAc.shtml
Of course, as women become dominant in professions, corporations and academia (because it’s always a “boy’s club” unless women are at least dominant), they are the ones that will have female-only recruitment policies. Neither the “de-patriarchalised” courts (read zero-justice) nor the feminist Governments are going to give a shit either.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:46 am - IP Man-Hash: dc4b477cfd13b
They’ll be out of the voting booths the next time your government collapses. Here in the USA, it’s getting closer every day.
Again, when your government that empowers them collapses. Here in the USA, it’s probably inside of ten years, but the current monetization of the Iraq War debt and subsequent runaway inflation brings the Big Crunch ever closer, ever faster.
Yes.
Again, it’s government that empowers them, and that’s becoming a more and more temporary situation every day.
Depends what happens after the Big Crunch. If we insist on instituting yet another fascist/socialist government with unlimited powers as we have now, then yes, it’s going to be problematic. If we go for something that has powers that are so limited that it can’t even coin money and killing elected officials and their staff is legal for any reason, then maybe we have a chance.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:59 am - IP Man-Hash: 35a3bf5e9bc19
I stand corrected Dick. It’s just women’s fault, not feminists. Stupid to think feminists actually do things.
Just get rid of George Bush and it will improve.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:00 am - IP Man-Hash: 35a3bf5e9bc19
Actually, a mistake. Feminists actually do something. Bitch.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:06 am - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
Dakota Smith, I would not be so sure about Patriarchal Socialist Government or the US Government collapsing. Nor do I see a “Big Crunch” in the next 10 years. The economic means for a total collapse are not there. Yes, the economy is becoming more global, but a catastrophic collapse? No. More likely you’ll have a minor recession as we’ve had in the past.
None of the economists are predicting a US (and consequentally, worldwide?) collapse in the next decade, and quite frankly, there is no way I see it happening either.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:08 am - IP Man-Hash: 35a3bf5e9bc19
It would be an implosion if you will. It’s own foundations would crumble ‘and Jill came tumbling after…’
March 29th, 2007 at 8:09 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
Again with the puerile libertine libertarianism dreams, Dakota? Government isn’t inherently evil. It’s just your who’s in your government who’s inherently evil.
Who will print the money? Ma and pa? Microsoft? Enron? Who, may I ask (in my misguided impudence)?
Will you print them yourself just before you go shopping?
March 29th, 2007 at 8:12 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
Anon, just pray trading in Euros doesn’t pick up with more OPEC members or the Saudis. Lest the money tree shrivels up all of a sudden.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:14 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
You CANNOT have a viable national economy without government. You can’t have any economy or trade without at least local government.
To think otherwise is foolhardy and delusional.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:24 am - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
It would be an implosion if you will. It’s own foundations would crumble ‘and Jill came tumbling after…’
Again I don’t see this as a means for collapsing an economy. Single-motherhood and family breakdown have been part of Western life for a number of decades now and, on the whole, society continues to work. It’s certainly not “crumbling”.
Thanks, sonyad, for pointing out the lack of any concreteness in what DS is saying. Yes, Patriarchal Government are the ones “empowering” women (often with men’s taxes), Patriarchal Government, having usurped men’s providing role is quite anti-male nowadays, but let’s look at the economics of it sensibly.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am - IP Man-Hash: dc4b477cfd13b
Again with the peurile socio-fascim dreams, sonyad?
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is as true today as it was in Lord Acton’s time. Failure to understand this one simple fact is the sole cause of tyranny in the world.
Anyone who likes and can convince buyer customer that there is something real backing it.
Nope, no doubt some system will be agreed-apon by the market and I’ll use whatever it happens to be.
Incorrect: all that government does is interfere with free trade among individuals through regulation and theft.
Government theft at all levels in the US inflates shelf prices of every good and service on the market by at least 800% while simultaneously stealing at least 50% of every individual’s income — and that’s not even counting the incredible inflation caused by government in just the last couple of years, which devalues the currency to nearly the point of worthlessness.
No private system could operate that way because it would drive away its customers. The reason government can get away with it is because we have no choice.
Explain the black market in drugs, then. It operates totally outside the sanction of government.
It’s certainly true that government helps the drug trade through prohibition. Without prohibition, most drugs (like everything else) would be damned near free to the consumer.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:36 am - IP Man-Hash: 6545d23cd19c2
I do dislike how my taxes go towards paying for a single mom to drink beer and smoke while yer 8 kids from 8 fathers sit in their own feces.
I wish I could direct where my money goes.
I’d put it all into R&D research.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:38 am - IP Man-Hash: dc4b477cfd13b
In a free market, you can. Only government forces you to pay for things you don’t like or never use.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:41 am - IP Man-Hash: 4d18bb7f039b0
The US is a dying beast. It’s easy to say “well families are all fucked up but most people still have jobs”.
Jobs mean nothing at this point in the great Empire’s fall. Jobs are the last thing to go. Civility, faith and family are the first. Eventually when the great parasites suck those out for long enough that the honorable men powering this country realize they’ve been made fools and cuckolds and start not giving a fuck. Then comes civil war or violent religious rebirth. Either one sounds like very fun living conditions for the cunts who did this.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:41 am - IP Man-Hash: 6545d23cd19c2
Sign me up then!
March 29th, 2007 at 11:50 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
Ok, Dakota. Keep reciting the pipe dream of libertarianism.
It would be an atrocious society that which would conceivably attempt it.
I seriously doubt civilised society in any form resembling what we’ve come to even most leniently deem as such can coexist with a libertarian ‘economy.’
It’s all really just the philosophical aberration of anarcho-capitalism under a more appealing name. The same contradiction in terms.
Fortunately, the textbook libertarian propaganda silly little factoids you cite do little to sway my ’socio-fascist’ self.
You know what I believe? Every nation on Earth enacts libertarianism tomorrow (assuming there’s any unitary, cohesive, non self contradictory ideology thereof) and naturally dissolves into anarchy and in a thousand years, assuming any human being will still be alive - let alone any semblance of society exist - by virtue of libertarianism alone, you’ll have amalgamous states and governments all over again.
Only more egregiously corrupt, decrepit, nepotistic and inhumanely evil despotic social hierarchy and structure than anything the world has seen to date.
No such thing as human rights, decency, humanity towards another, emergency medical service, ubiquitous and assured rule of law or continuous strife towards.
No supreme arbiter to insure fair trade and balance monopolistically abusive policies by business conglomerates, cartel economic policies, murder, mayhem, abuse, corruption and nepotism by the now private institutions of legislature, justice and law enforcement…
I could go on and on taking apart the childish madness that is the dream of libertarianism. But it’s not really the most fun I could have with my time.
Have you read Philip Kindred Dick’s ‘Solar Lottery’?
I strenuously suggest you do.
The social structure that book portrays as a possible future for mankind does not even begin to compare with the abuses, inequities and inhumanity of what an attempt (it is only a pipe dream, after all) at libertarianism would certainly entail. You yourself would be yelling for it to cease and be undone, or rather for the old order, with all its ills and flaws, to be rebuilt, within the year.
But easier to make a new man than change another’s true convictions.
Threat don’t. For I threat we may yet live to see your desired world order come to pass and hell on earth likewise.
Cheers.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:36 pm - IP Man-Hash: dc4b477cfd13b
Interestingly enough, one would think that after literally centuries of nothing but tyranny and bloodshed, one would think that the pipe dream of socio-fascism would be fairly obvious.
I mean, it’s not like it’s not obvious that human progress is directly linked to the only country on earth whose government from its inception was forbidden from doing everything socio-fascists like yourself suggest would make a utopia. Nor is it any accident that since the limits on government were abandoned, human misery has increased in direct proportion to the amount of government in place.
In short, I’ve got all the evidence, and you have the pipe dream.
Then why does it work so well whenever it’s tried? While your brand of socio-fascism continues to create nothing but misery and human suffering?
Hit the history books. If you actually read them objectively, the evidence is quite clear.
Oh, I’m sorry, I should have been more specific:
Anarcho-capitalism is the goal. It’s just unlikely we’ll ever achieve it due to socio-fascists like yourself. Consequently, we sit around trying to dream up ways to thwart your ideas of how to get rid of individual freedom.
Again, it’s the socio-fascists like yourself, whose goals create nothing but tyranny and human suffering, that have the contradiction in terms. You have precisely no examples where a tightly state-controlled economy, individual liberty, and choice have produced anything other than misery. Indeed, from the beginning of human history to the present time, that’s all it produces.
I, on the other hand, have a number of examples where tightly-bound government authority works extraordinarily well and produces wealth beyond imagining.
I know. While we agree on women, I fear that the next war will be fought with you and I on either side. Our worldview is utterly incompatible, and the kind of human suffering you’d create disgusts me. Therefore, you and other socio-fascists are eventually going to have to be eliminated.
Well, it’s all a work in progress. The sooner we destroy the socio-fascists who are the root of the problem, the better, I suppose.
Human rights are inherent. No government grants them and every government violates them. I dare you to prove otherwise.
Government is the primary creator of indecency and inhumanity. I dare you to prove otherwise.
Government doesn’t create emergency medical services. Rather, it drives the cost of medical care so high that only the well-to-do-and wealthy can afford it. Were the free market allowed back into medical care, doctors would be forced to lower prices and make house calls, and emergency medical care would be damned near free.
I dare you to prove otherwise.
Again, government creates unequal application of the law. See any wealthy person in the world for proof.
No such arbiter presently exists, nor can one exist except in a global feudal state. Which, sadly, is the ultimate goal of socio-fascists like yourself.
Government creates monopolies. They cannot exist without government sanction. I dare you to prove otherwise.
Again, you’re describing the current situation under socio-fascist policies. Whenever the alternative is tried, it works.
Again, individual freedom works wherever it’s tried. Wherever socio-fascist policies are enacted, corruption, human misery, and poverty are rampant. It continues to amaze me that after thousands of years of trying to make socio-fascism work and failing that anyone believes that it’s workable.
I always assume this kind of cognitive dissonance is some sort of as-yet undiscovered form of personality disorder. Were it so diagnosed and the sufferer treated, we might not have to eliminate you and your intellectual bretheren for our own safety.
Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to be rid of a miserable genetic strain is to cull it.
March 29th, 2007 at 1:21 pm - IP Man-Hash: 139b502a327ba
Who cares. Government officials know things that no one else does.
March 29th, 2007 at 1:26 pm - IP Man-Hash: 497a2bd14e918
There is one fact that has remained throughout recorded history - every empire/civilization has fallen. They have a life cycle. This one is in its final stages of corruption and decay.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:44 pm - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
I’m speechless.
Your argument, far from inexpugnable, is just a myriad of fallacies, falsehoods and outright nonsense sewn together.
Most are not even your ‘arguments’ but totally unoriginal silliness you scrounged off of unconvincing deranged/evil cons conniving for a constituent base large enough that they too might, hopefully, someday be a legitimate party instead of a scarce bunch of nutters.
I threat they may yet get their wish but I really can’t be bothered to take the entire stinking, twisted patchwork apart for you. Arguing with a zealot to the cause of ‘libertarianism’, linux and other such nonsense to no end really doesn’t touch me the right places.
Heck, the cornerstone of your rant is you daring me prove some utter foolishness or other wrong, again and again… without actually ever citing concrete examples or situations as proof in support of your position.
Nope. It’s me who has to grapple with nonexistent facts and factoids, ey? Not you, who has the burden of proof on his shoulders in regard to his exultant reviews of a… something that never actually really existed and is actually contrary to common sense.
I dare you to name a single nation ever to have tried something similar to ‘anarcho-capitalism’ and succeeded at something else than failing miserably and completely before they even got started.
Well? Cargo cults? Something? Perhaps the utter failure of libertarianism is preferable to its resounding success, as far as the ‘greater good’ is concerned.
Is only stating logically completely unassailable nonsense your strategy to win skeptics over? Or maybe ominous threats of some vaguely nondescript ’solution’ for dissenters and naysayers?
Thousands and thousands of years of governed human history with states, sovereign and satellite nations, empires and republics… wow!
What inept fools we’ve all been for such long while!
I hope you’ll show me the regard to come watch in person when they deport me to the firing squad/concentration camp with all the other ’socio-fascists.’
All for the ‘greater good’, of course.
Cheerios.
- Dj Optik - Surrender
March 29th, 2007 at 3:30 pm - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
I know quoting Wikipedia is poor form. And what I quote is doesn’t help. But here goes :) :
___
___
___
Cheers. Nighty night.
- From Dusk Till Dawn - Pussy lovers
March 29th, 2007 at 3:31 pm - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
Oh please. We are living in the most remarkable, advanced and globalised civilisation in history, one that is built on firm, male-engineered economics and technology. None of the old rules apply. The “life cycle” of an “empire” does not apply to the Global Westernised culture we have today. There is no empire.
The decline of great empires in times past could have been predicted and indeed were the result of specific circumstances - e.g. weak military, stronger neighbouring tribes, lack of economic need for colonial arragements, etc. Similarly, if the 21st Century West is to fall, there will be definite signs of weakness showing; a collapse will not come simply out of nowhere.
As technology and military organisation are at very advanced levels, and wider society is by and large functioning quite well (crime rates down, employment good, homelessless low, disease low) the only thing that could topple our civilisation is a fundamental economic problem. That fundamental economic problem would surely have presented itself in the half-decade or longer that Global Capitalism has reined. It hasn’t. Because there isn’t a fundamental problem with Capitalist economics or global ecnomics.
Please, in the interests of clarity, specify what “only country on earth” you are referring to that subscribes to, and implements, libertarian ideals? Could it be the USA? Not it any of our lifetimes has it been governed by anything near the system you are describing. Rather, it has been a staunch proponent of moderate socialist policy, and Globalised Capitalism which requires big Government. Why? Because economically, it works. It’s controllable and adaptable.
Pity that son of the sons also seems to agree with DS’s non-sensical worldview (i.e. one disconnected with economic and political reality):
I’ve said what I said about “empires” above. What you’re saying about Western civilisation falling because of corrupt morals, of “civil war or violent religious rebirth” is all very nice fantasy, but you’re not providing any real political, social or economic basis as to how the collapse will happen. It’s just a kind of “I think society is corrupt and it deserves to collapse, therefore it will collapse.” As a consequence of what? “As a consequence of me saying so.”
March 29th, 2007 at 3:36 pm - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
Oh crap. The bed beckons, I really can’t gather myself to stay and read this too, however much I’d like…
- DJ.Tonka - She Know U
March 29th, 2007 at 3:42 pm - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
* half-century or longer…
March 30th, 2007 at 2:07 am - IP Man-Hash: 001a1de92075b
What a fascinating topic. Strictly speaking, it belongs more in Politik, on the forums, but I for one find the discussion sufficiently interesting as to not quibble on that point, and I hope Dick won’t either.
We seem to have at least three strains of thought on Government: Sony’s, which appears largely indistinguishable from Senator Clinton, Dakota’s libertarian views, and Anonymous’ more conventional though utopic views.
While I disagree with most of what Sony has said, on the grounds of rationality, I am struck by the wisdom of one of his early statements:
Presuming that Sony is referring here to a nation-state, I agree entirely. I think, if he reflected, so too would Dakota.
A merely libertarian-inclined society might well have some vestigal government, and hence some distinguishable ‘national’ economy. However, I do not readily see how a nation-state would exist in a truly anarcho-capitalistic society, hence, no ‘national economy’ would be imaginable or even possible.
Sadly, Sony fails to see the wisdom inherent in what he has written and goes on to proclaim that local economy is impossible without local government.
The fallacy?
The local community exists, with or without government. So too does the local economy in meaningful, measurable form.
A ‘nation’ of people may exist without government, but a nation-state certainly won’t. (True, pace [for women reading, I use this word as a preposition, rather than a noun or verb] government or the absence thereof, one could still, I suppose, speak of a “Canadian economy” in the absence of a Canadian nation-state, but it would be about as statistically meaningful as speaking of a “left-handed glassblowers’ economy”.)
Sony makes one other point which is rather impressive:
Actually (and Dakota seems to have addressed this point), many people, myself included, find anarcho-capitalism far more appealing than libertarianism. Moreover, speaking strictly for myself, I find conventional (if there is such a thing) libertarianism encumbered with certain views and beliefs that I find anathema, and, in certain cases, downright illogical.
An example? One of the few things Sony and I would agree on, I think, is the matter of abortion. Our views would be diametrically opposed to those of most libertarians.
More to follow.
-wolfe
March 30th, 2007 at 2:29 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
Firstly, welcome back, sir. Was beginning to threat there that the feminist to gobble up the wolfe was finally devised.
I’ll read and pertinently parrot the log in my own eye.
- rivera rotation - on the beach-smc
March 30th, 2007 at 2:40 am - IP Man-Hash: 001a1de92075b
@Dakota it’s excellent to see you posting here again. Even when I disagree with you, your thinking is generally highly rational and logical.
@Sony: On the question of printing money: you’re no doubt aware that governments never used to have a monopoly on printing this? Economies were indeed viable, robust even.
@Dakota:
As a historian, I think it’s a mistake to view the US as the only country on earth to institute significant restrictions on government. There is a golden thread, as Mortimer might say, of liberty that runs through the English-speaking world. It may well culminate in the Bill of Rights, especially the now-forgotten Ninth Amendment. But it did not originate there, nor would it have been possible for the US to have achieved what it has achieved without what had gone on before.
Since I do seem to only post points of disagreement, let me say that I agree entirely with you here. (And I am actually for some form of statist pinko-commie health care system. What I propose will indeed drive up some costs, anger some doctors, and increase the cost of emergency health care. My concerns are the mentally ill (libertarianism seems to assume rational actors), the very poor, and catastrophic illness).
@Anon
So said Athens. So said Carthage. So said the Romans. They were each right, in their time and in their way.
You make the same mistake I cite above. You confuse the 21st Century West with America. Live in London, one of the great centers of the modern West, for a year. Tell me you think crime is down.
Check out Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. Look at what he has to say on demography in Europe. I find it disturbingly persuasive.
I agree with much of what you say, Anon, but by no means all. (I agree with some of Dakota’s arguments and wish I still believed his philosophy. The nature of man, in my eyes, weighs against it).
It’s important to understand that I do not cite my evolution below (other than my childhood belief in statism) to denigrate any particular belief or to imply it is less mature, less developed than others. I simply note the changes I have passed through as a man and where they have led me.
Regards to all,
-wolfe
March 30th, 2007 at 2:43 am - IP Man-Hash: 001a1de92075b
It’s nice to see you too, good sir. I’m not sure if I shall be posting much. Demands on my time have become rather staggering, both personal and professional.
-wolfe
March 30th, 2007 at 2:58 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
You cannot have a monetary economy without some form of state and government.
Someone needs to print the money and guard against counterfeiting as best possible.
Someone needs to be the ubiquitous guarantor (and enforcer) of the market’s rules and society’s laws (against thievery, for example) else it’s the rule of the strongest, regression to feudal society, the dark ages, etc.
Even local economy and trade is not possible though the scale might mislead some to misname it different from government despite its role and function being the same for the scale, albeit operating under wildly differing forms.
If an allegory is permitted me, would you even have a market without the city?
Which is better? 10000 autocracies, with their own currency, dialect, laws, industry, taxes and tolls etc. per every city over a million inhabitants or a aspiringly democratic government per nation of several tens of millions?
These are my views.
- Sash! - Mysterious Times
March 30th, 2007 at 3:10 am - IP Man-Hash: 980cc8a8ac1a7
From this I draw but two conclusions.
1. You were a precoce and most wise kid.
2. Your wisdom fluctuated greatly with age.
- Daft Punk vs Robbie Rivera - One More Tribal
March 30th, 2007 at 4:41 am - IP Man-Hash: 2448b0cfc2f97
I still disagree. The Romans didn’t have a Theory of Relativity, and atomic energy, did they? They weren’t aware of the full surface of the Earth and its geography. They did not have anti-viral and anti-bacterial medication. These are among the things that profoundly affect how our civilisation works. I still think that, in light of those profound scientific and social advancements, none of the old rules apply as to how long a civilisation will last.
Nevertheless, surely you acknowledge that if Western civilisation is to fall, it will fall because of at least one specific weakness. There will be a logical reason for its decline. Please provide the reason why Global Capitalism (not necessarily US Capitalism, though the US model continues to be exported/adopted worldwide), and hence civilisation, will fail.
I am from Western Europe myself, though I’ve never lived in London. I will say that the murder rate has to be a valid indicator of criminality, in 2005 it was 6.9 per 100,000 in New York; it was 2.4 in London. Which would imply that London, UK is safer and that society is at least as stable, if not more stable, than it is in America.
I would take care not to extrapolate alot from relatively isolated gun-crime incidents which the media gets frenzied about. The reality is most people, especially in middle-class upwards, have a high standard of living. Social order in London, the UK, and Europe is not crumbling.
It’s not my experience or opinion that Europe is vastly behind America economically or socially. Indeed I would say that making such comparisons is somewhat futile as they both essentially follow Globalised Capitalism. They are both a central part of the Western picture and they are both stable. American-style Capitalism tends to be the model and it continues to transform Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. You said that I confuse the West with America; what I’m saying is that Western and Westernised countries are modelling themselves on America to the point where economically they must be seen as similar entities.