Oh, yeah, that's different... good to know...

But seriously, how can you even argue that the world is run by good people now? I don't think you are, but when people do I hear them saying, "So what if a flesh-eating bacteria come to life from BP's tar balls in the Gulf and Fukushima's radiation is clogging up the west coast... so what if one of the biggest storms in recorded history is making landfall, it's only in the Philippines, who cares...."

Then they go listen to Rush Limbaugh and Friends bloviate about how abortion is terrorism.

The people who say good people aren't running the world have not been providing alternatives, instead throwing up their hands in defeat. They also can't accept or celebrate small victories, it has to be all or nothing. This mentality leads to despondency and disillusionment, and the result is that policies get worse.

I don't really have much patience for this attitude. The non-stop negativity towards the prospects of progress via government is entirely self-defeating and is causing self-inflicted crises with disastrous consequences.

If you don't like who runs government, do something productive about it.

Like what, overthrowing it? I have one vote. That's all I've got. Change.org is not some great resource or something. Sorry if you don't have patience for someone that doesn't like to use the great freedom of online protest.

Organize. There are people out there working for change. Join them. Run for local office. Run for school board. Try to unionize a workplace. Any number of things. One person quickly becomes several people because there are a lot of people out there waiting for somebody to get the ball rolling. Read Saul Alinsky, he wrote a lot of helpful, practical things about organizing.

Some local communities are able to make themselves into nice places to live. They're able to implement sensible and rational policies that help make people's lives better. Sure, the greater the area the greater the capabilities to make positive strides. But you have to start somewhere.

I'm only a pessimist because I see people giving up. We used to be a society who thought we could do or build anything now we think we can't do anything. People mock and ridicule Marxism-Leninism but at least it was an idea that people worked toward, an idea that made people strive for a better society, instead of the new anarchistic mentality on both the left & the right of tearing everything down.

Talkin 'bout a revolution..... oh the times they are a changin'

Can't tell if you're a motivational speaker in disguise or just trying to show a pragmatic side. I'm under 18, I have no way to coordinate change in this country. I'm a go-big-or-go-home type of person. I played the second-most important position on the football field and I hit in the middle of the lineup in baseball... that's just how I am. Nothing I can do in this country for another month, and even then, I'm just one person.

It's always amazed me how much easier it is to cause change somewhere else than it is here, or even for someone else's life than one's own. I'm on my regional board for Invisible Children and I'm one of the students leading an effort in my school for LiNK, which has already raised enough money to get a North Korean refugee across the border, through China, and into the US. I've been with Special Olympics for eight years and my religious school for five... yet when it comes to coordinating change in my own life it's seemingly impossible. That's what I don't get, Putin, about the way things work here and about people like you that tell me all of these things are possible when there are so many more important things I can do at much less effort and cost.

Hope that makes any sense at all.

"I'm a go-big-or-go-home type of person" - if I use my google translator for this phrase it comes up with 'Citizen of the USA".
I have seen this philosophy first hand in pizza and rib joints all across the country

ANARCHY RAHRRRRR SET FIRE TO EVERYTHING!!!BURN ALLL RAAHHH RAHHHH. MOLOTOV COCKTAIL TO YOUR FACE ASSWIPE. WE ARE LEGION.

I'm sorry putin, but that won't happen if your government fails. A government is just a group of people after all, a corporation with a monopoly, which for some reason, people think is the answer to all. I laughed at your prediction that no new technological advances will take place due to lack of government. Please, give me one source, ONE (that isn't from daves_true&credible_facts.blogspot.com) that states the soviet union had more technological advances as opposed to the US. Governments and other coercive groups have been a pain in the ass for scientific advancements, be it the soviet union, N Korea, who just managed to create their own laptop (with Chinese help obv.) Europe during the inquisition etc. Government isn't the only group able to provide that infrastructure needed for scientific progress.

Anyways, I see the future as more authoritarian, more spiritual (but not religious, no one will be Christian Muslim etc, they will all worship some retarded mix of them all with hindu elephant god idol.) atheism won't be a big thing
Family value will be frowned upon, divorce rate will be huge, a kid with un-divorced parents by the age of 10 will be a rarity.
Freedom of speech will be almost impossible due to libel, spiritual sensitivities, minority sensitivities, pussy sensitivities, keeping public calm/order, government criticism, leadership criticism laws.
People will be *given* rights by their so kind government, instead of being born with them.
A colony on mars will be established, but will be abandoned shortly.
Capitalism will be frowned upon as favouring the rich and promoting selfishness and being against the common good.
Food shortages will arise as governments in a last bid nationalize food production and order which crops to be cultivated and which not.
Everyone will be permanently connected via social media by google contacts.

I'm not either of those things. I spent a lot of time doing political activism (maybe too much time, roughly 2001-2009). I myself demanded the world and was pissed at everybody in politics for not thinking like me. I encountered a lot of similar people. After a while I discovered that this mentality doesn't get anything done. I also met people who spent their life putting their money where their mouth was, so to speak, did all the hard grunt work of activism (and it is indeed thankless gruntwork) for no glory. They were orthodox Marxists who kept the faith throughout the dismal years of the 1990s, and rebuilt an organization out of nothing to be at the forefront of anti-war, immigrant rights, and labor organizing, despite still being relatively small. They were not loudmouths or sectarian purists. They led by example. They convinced people that they were correct through work, not empty talk. I learned from them. I learned that if everybody demands the world, there can be no organization, and without organization, you're not going to do shit. The enemy is going to win. I also learned to appreciate what people have achieved, and not demand perfection. To celebrate victories when victories are won. My perspective evolved quite a bit. And my current perspective wants to kick myself in the ass for how I acted before, because I see its detrimental effects in current efforts to organize. That is all.

"I have seen this philosophy first hand in pizza and rib joints all across the country"

Who are you, Bill Maher?

"I'm sorry putin, but that won't happen if your government fails."

I don't even know what this is referring to. What is the *that* you're referring to? Much of what you're saying bears no resemblance to anything I said. I did not say that only government can produce technology advances. Or that no technological advances will occur 200 years down the line. Only that revolutionary changes to communication or transportation infrastructure will not occur, because such changes require large-scale coordination which the voluntaristic/non-coordinated market alone cannot achieve. Could the market achieve it in partnership with government, like most major infrastructure projects today? Yes. But if government has collapsed and only private forms of authority (gangsters/warlords) exist, then this is not going to be possible.

If the collapse of governmental authority wasn't a problem for major infrastructural development then we'd see a lot more of it in developing countries with weak or non-existing governmental authority, but we do not.

Face the fact that private voluntaristic initiative is not the be-all end-all. Stop retrofitting everything to your ideology.

Because the government isn't a bunch of gangsters/war lords cause they get to wear suits and use fancy words. Lol, taxes are definitely not "protection" money, as gangs call it.

Don't pay protection to a gang in their "territory"? You get fucked. Don't pay taxes to a government in their country? You're fucked.

Please let me know when La Cossa Nostra starts building water treatment plants & schools instead of selling drugs and running casinos. Also, please let me know when the US government or any other government starts executing tax cheats.

You retrofit every problem into your fatuous Manichean worldview of government always bad; private individual always good. I mean you're the same person who sees the pasteurization process that saved countless lives in the early 20th century as the embodiment of tyranny. It's nothing but hysteria, and it's exactly this mentality that is destroying civilization.

ILN is destroying civilization, I did have my suspicions ......

iBarack Obama 3.1, the 2nd clone of the current US leader and President for life of both the US and the Applesoft Corporation, finally closes Guantanamo Bay.

I have ILN muted. Another one bites the dust!

@bo "I'm just one person" Everybody who ever changed anything or did something heroic or created a masterpiece was also only one person.

In 200 years. . . . . I am still alive.

Sigh...

Not adding anything constructive, I just find a sentence of Putin33's to be extraordinarily hilarious. "It's nothing but hysteria, and it's exactly this mentality that is destroying civilization." had me laughing literally (1) out loud.

You guys completely buy into the bullshit that they spoon feed you don't you...

....saith bo-sox, the public school parrot

Please elaborate, bo_sox.

The public school parrot? What does that even mean?

SYnapse, grassroots movements don't work anymore.

bo - you recite everyting your schools teach you as if it is gospel truth, without question, generally speaking. You are a thoughtless parrot, most of the time. It's normal behavior....but it's ironic for you to call someone out for being spoon fed when you...well How many times have you used the defense when you express an opinion, and then get challenged on that opinion because it seems you are lacking facts, that you claim you are just a student, blah blah blah. In other words, you only repeat what you know, your opinions are based on the limited experience and education of your public school, and don’t go much beyond. You are a public school parrot.

As for "grass roots movements" not working any more.....funny stuff, bo....more indoctrination you have been spoon fed and repeat, because the Tea Party is a grass roots movement that seems to have enough power to shut down the government these days, that arguably started with a televised rant on the floor of the Chicago exchange...

So join a bigger movement.

Krellin, you have never been to my school, you don't know anyone that goes there, you don't know where it is or what it's called, you don't know what it stands for, and you obviously don't even know that it's not a public school. I offend other students at my school all the time because I'm not a dead-left liberal like they want me to be. I don't believe that people need the government's hand in everything. I don't believe that government should dictate marriage rights; I don't believe the government should take away guns; I don't believe the government should do anything noticeable at all. You really think there's a single school in this country that teaches that? You're talking out of your ass and you have no idea if what you're saying is true; you simply suspect it because I am not a dead-right conservative like you want me to be.

And seriously, my school teaches that grassroots movements are the way to go. They had an entire seminar that lasted a week earlier this year on the shit that I'm arguing against right now, how you can be great and you can make a big difference. I don't believe any of it largely BECAUSE I've been spoon fed that shit. It's dumb and it's a way to make people content with small changes that really don't make a difference in the bigger picture.

So before you talk out your ass any further and just assume that I am like everyone else in the world, and before you think you have any clue what my school is and does and teaches, and before you think you know ME and what I stand for, and before you apply a political label to ME that YOU created without MY approval, you should meet me and talk to me and know me and you should figure out where I go to school and match up the curriculums and the extracurriculars with the things I believe, and then you should go back and do the same thing with the political issues they teach, and then you should do the same thing on a micro level instead of a macro level, and if all of that adds up, go ahead, say what you want. But guess what? It won't, because that's not me, and you're not about to make it me.

SO SHUT THE FUCK UP.