Binx85

It is important to understand different historical methods of political change as well as their consequences. Blowing a system up with the intent to rebuild from scratch means there are new holes for the rats to hide in rather than revise a pre-existing structure with a knowledge of where and how many of those rats hide and being able to address some of them while avoiding creating too many new hiding spots.

This was the problem with both Bernie and Trump; however, Bernie at least held the interest of the middle and lower classes as his priority. It is pretty clear who Trump’s priority os.

Isn’t this the argument for remixing? If they use pieces of work from other sources, but recombine them in novel ways, it is original? I would say this is a win, but I have a feeling a typical artist will not be afforded the same defense.

It’s Florida. This was predetermined, but the fact that it wasn’t a landslide is actually significant. Populism gave him the office, populism can take it away. He’s trying desperately to take the power away from the people who put him there and they’re finally noticing. We can be angry at those people all we want, but it will be far more productive to find a coalition with them than to resent and perpetually admonish them.

I am (perhaps naively) hopeful that there can be mechanisms in place to avoid this. Ranked Choice Voting seems like one possible lever, but I think it’s probably true that any certain that has a hierarchy is vulnerable to capture by those with access to the most resources.

Genuinely: What are some political systems capable of avoiding capture by the elite (Bourgeoisie, Royal, etc. classes?

What are better indexes for this data?

The reason Marxist nations have struggled is due to elite corruption, not the ideology itself.

I think this is kind of my point exactly. I misunderstood the dictatorship of Marxism, but I’m not sure I believe there can be a “good” Marxist dictatorship that is broadly cooperative on a national scale because it will require intermediaries who are themselves susceptible of corruption. Occupy Wallstreet seems to be a great example of that working locally, but I’m skeptical it can be easy to coordinate nationally as a market can. On paper, the Marxist ideology is sound, in practice, human self-interest seems to not want it to work, though there is always an opportunity to try again somewhere. That being said, markets come with their own distinct style of corruption, as we’re currently seeing playing out right now.

I, personally, don’t accept any kind of dictatorship can ever be good. That there is a series of humans with self interest in between the resources of a nation and the populace of a nation leads me to doubt that possibility. If it were possible, we would have seen more than a few prosperous Marxist nations.

I’m referencing Marxism specifically because, to my mind, it requires individuals, like union leaders, to represent the interests of their union constituents (all of whom are shareholders of the means of production) and would require those representatives to act in the interest of the laborer-as-shareholder which, as I see it, puts them in a moral overlap between politics and economics. i.e., Marxism would be the most likely form of government to satisfy the conditions if a morally good dictator, and yet historically it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.

I actually fully believe in a genuine democratic capitalist government being a great means of achieving full democracy, but we have never truly been a democratically capitalist country.

Fair, in the sense that an independent or third party politician has a significantly lower likelihood of being elected.

Your take on genuine democracy is fair, especially if we’re referring to the US (as per my assumption). According to this Wikipedia article on The Economist Democracy Index:

In 2016, the United States was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy; its score, which had been declining for some years, crossed the threshold from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016. The report stated that this was caused by myriad factors dating back to at least the late 1960s which have eroded Americans' trust in governmental institutions.

The question we’re facing is, if we make it through Trump’s term(s?) with a functional federal gov’t, how can we begin to return to a full democracy, and is that even possible given the trajectory of our economic system.

Think about it this way, why would funding campaigns matter if the vote wasn’t real? There is no correct answer, because each culture has it’s own power structure, but look at the history of each political system, starting with your own to see how the rules started and each incremental change and shift between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

It might help to watch Adam Curtis’ The Century of the Self as a starting point (better yet, Hypernormalization-> Bitter Lake -> Century of the self if you want to go from today to 1920s. Reverse that if you prefer to start earlier).

It would also hell to understand economics as globalization, which is a huge part of the current political climate, is an economic tide (See Thomas Friedman). Milton Friedman (different than Thomas) is really important to current political events, too. I personally like Niall Ferguson and Joel Mokyr as scholars of economic history, but to each their own.

Violence as a last resort, as it has always only been appropriate for.

This is why it’s important to provide a counter narrative to the romanticized version of revolution. The reality is nothing like the story.