"so if everyone's happy, that makes their happiness itself validate the state as of things ideal." - no i think the state should be providing the individuals with the skills to find their own happiness and the power to change how the state operates - thus making the state a flexible thing which is determined by the citizens and able to change as neccesary - basically i'm not building a house, i'm defining the colour of paint we'd like to live with and requiring that all members of society know how to build their own houses, or make improvements to the parts they live in.

to continue the analogy - look at ireland in the 1800s land reform was a hugely important political issue - most of the Irish were poor tenants with little rights renting English owned property - while the english landlord may have infact lived elsewhere.

However no protection was provided for the tenants agianst eviction - so if you choose to attempt improving your home the landlord would be within their rights to come back from england evict you and sell/rent this better house to someone else (for a high rate)

this meant most dwelling continued to be of a rather poor standard (the english landlords had little interest in improving conditions because there wasn't much of a market to sell/rent high quality dwellings) If you look at almost any writings from the time they talk about the abject squallor the Irish lived in at the time - the idea of local government by the people - on a scale small enough that the community is actually involved is neccesary.

How do you people write so much?

okay, i think people should be empowered with tools too, i guess i just emphasize that this is more brute instruction and training rather than a sort of mystical teach a man to fish moment. i think the american system has been pretty excellent promoting community and property development. obviously there are always exceptions, but i would assume that's inevitable even in an ideal situation.

in my analogy i was talking about promoting a closer relationship between how the state runs and is built than actualy property development (emphasising the important of community involvement and local governance)... but you are the one who made the analogy about painting a house... i may have missed the point you were trying to make...

i think the best measure of the ideal state is whether it can provide those basic infrastructure which we can ourselves customize. you receive instruction in how to write, and so then you can express yourself through writing. you have the equipment you need in life like a house, but you can decide what color it is. that is the point i am making - the state needs to do the raw organizing, distributing, mechanizing and automizing of available human resources for productive purposes. people need to go along and experience it as they do in their own particular, individual way.

First-

Will you STOP with the mentioning of the G-word! For... for you-know-who's/what's sake, this is just ridiculous, you guys can't have ONE conversation without that exist/does not exist fight creeping back in?

Secondly, @Xapi:

We're not animals? To what extent do you mean that statement, because very literally I think we are... scientifically we'd fall in with the mammals and then the primates in the animal kingodm... even if you want to pull that word-that-shall-not-be-spoekn out and say we were divinely created, we STILL have the properties of animals (brains, we move, we eat, etc. to be VERY vague and not go into great detail about the scientific nuances.) We may be perhaps more endowed than other species, as we have all those things and then on top of that articulate speech, abstract thinking capabilities, etc., but that's ADDING on top of an animalisitic base, not a new base in and of itself.



We still seem to jsut be going in circles, though... everyone is just saying their own ideas, and if we just do that we'll have a million "perfect states" because we have such a diversity of ideas here.

Let's try and BUILD on each other's ideas here... which is why I'm saying let's pretend we're setting up a theoretical state (Theoretica or whatever you want to call it) and from tHERE, collaboratively, decide what to put in and what to leave out.

FIRST we have to decide, if we are going to skate the question of WHY we're setting up government in the first palce (which I guess we are, agaisnt my will) WHO is NEEDED and WANTED and EXCLUDED in our state.

We have no food yet...
No materials for building yet...
No clothes yet...
No tools yet...
No unified language yet...

WHO do we need to have in our little new state to have these things? What types of people and/or occupations are needed for these things?

lol you want a highly contrived scenario in which there is no language yet you are trying to pinpoint a reason for establishing a state, yet you don't want to talk about god? :P

Yes, g50.

Pretend this is... anyone ever play the first Age of Empires game?

You start with one or two lone shmucks, and from there... well, they need supplies and food and shelter and protection...

How do we get started? Who does what? Do they just do what they are best at (Plato and later Nietzsche's idea) or are they utility people who don't do one thing great but are all-around at least fucntional (the current deucational system's idea... I guess... ugh...)

We ARE God here, starting our new little tribe of people off to beign their Empire-

How do we start?

australian. white. christian. thirties. no political affiliation but i guess i'm in bed with the austrians/rationals/chicago/chilean boys.

i believe that the only two things a citizen requires from the state is individual freedom and economic freedom.

whilst i believe that individual freedom and economic freedom are equal in importance to me, i am yet to observe any society, and for that matter the state which governs it, that has been able to deliver individual freedom to its citizens prior to enforcing economic freedom.

"WHO do we need to have in our little new state to have these things? What types of people and/or occupations are needed for these things?"

what sort of start-up capital are we allowed? Also no i my utopian state we will not be dictating what individuals do - other than two years compulsory state service which will double as a practical learning expierence. We will not be telling people what type of person they need to be - that will be their own choice - and as i don't know/control what choices people make i'm not going to be able to define precisely what my state is going to be like. I am not really interested in compromising my state - there should be enough freedom in it that everyone is happy.

If you wish to take some of my ideas then feel free. How to get there is harder than defining where it is. Good luck. Also if we're starting with two lone shmucks, what else do we have? Are there any females? what are the local geographical features like? local sources of food?

We still seem to jsut be going in circles, though... everyone is just saying their own ideas, and if we just do that we'll have a million "perfect states" because we have such a diversity of ideas here.

Is this not proof that there is no such thing? We cannot satsify the minority, but the majority. Even the majority are not always satisfied.

Despite that, I believe we can create a much better society and state than we have now. (Including Denmark which is said to be the happiest country on Earth!) To achieve this we must completely disregard politicians and leaders who don't always give the majority what they want and will, as a whole, always be greedy for money and social status. Without them we wouldn't have economics. Without economics we don't have a satisfied nation.

The perfect state would have to be contrary to the following where the leaders are greedy, which will never happen. At some point or another the state will fall into a decline and won't perform their job like most don't today. In my opinion, the state is responsible for ensuring peace and happiness to its people as its first priority-not economics and diplomacy, although it does help.

It has been reasoned that history as we know it (by professional historians) has come to an abrupt halt, or is heading that way. I don't necessarily agree, but the premise of such an argument (and I read a report on this last year) is that the great historical ages with different forms of societal struggles/attempts at different political and economic systems is fundamentally over with (it's not a bright and happy article as you can imagine). Ergo, every system we can fathom has already been thought of, which leaves us with a list of things to try that have already been tried or thought of. God comes into play for some of those, but I will ignore the theocratic communal ideas. I wish communism was possible but just like true republicanism to match its ideal description one would have to rely on virtuous people, which I can't quite trust in yet enough. A democratic, communist state would be interesting for a while, but would eventually collapse. As Hobbes says a state of nature would see life that would be "poor brutish nasty and short" or something along those lines. I would like to try that out just for the hell of it! I realize that geographically it is necessary for systems of communication that require organizing bodies (some sort of government), but on a local level I wonder if the state of nature would be so horrible. Pure democracy failed under the Greeks (though if they hadn't execulted Socrates I might think differently)... I'm kinda stuck here. I might go with a socialistic republic, but like I said, all human designs are subject to human desires and corruption, it's just a matter of to what degree.

@otto:

"I wish communism was possible but just like true republicanism to match its ideal description one would have to rely on virtuous people, which I can't quite trust in yet enough" - trust must be built on. That others have failed in attempts of some ideas doesn't mean those ideas are impossible to run.

i'm not sure you really want to try living in an anarchy thomas thwaites (http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/thomas_thwaites_toaster_project_at_the_royal_college_of_art_13865.asp) tried to build a toaster 'from scratch' it took him 9 months and ~£1,100 (and that was with all the cool gadgets he had around his house at the time)

Things in the curent society will feel the strain and fail either to be adapted or replaced. We are not living in some stagnant uncreative place - we are many and we are creative.

I think I was a bit vague let me try one more thing-

When I say WHO do we need...

Well, Plato in "The Republic" builds his "state" by startin off with what occupational people you need... he says (and I greatly paraphrase):

-Well... people get hungry... it'd probably be a good idea to have farmers and hunters and fishers to start with, since all human beings need to eat
-Well, if we're going to have farmers and hunters and fishers, they'll need tools... now, they're farmers and such, so they won't be as good at making tools as a straight-up toolmaker, and it'll cut into their farming/hunting/fishing time, so next we need some toolmakers and artisans for our state
-So now we have farmers/hunters/fishers for food and toolmakers/artisans for tools and then plates and such to eat with... but our people are still NAKED, and that can only lead to incest and/or exposure and thus death, and it'll get cold here soon... I guess we need textile workers now, weavers ans sewers and tailors and such...
-So we've got the food-getters, the tool-makers, the clothes-makers... we're alive, but we're still living in the mud... let's get some builders so we can have houses and such
-So now we have the bare bones people of a state, food, tools, clothing, and housing, but now as we're growing a bit, we need more materials... explorers/foragers could help us find resources...
-Now we're much better off than we were before, we have food, tools, clothes, housing, and more resources coming in but... well, our foragers ay there's a shifty-eyed group of folks across the river who are alos making a state and they want OUR food and resources and land... and we'd kind of like THEIRS... let's fidn some brave young men and convert them into a full-time standing military so we have a permanent defense (and maybe offense) agaisnt intruders, and while they're at it, they can protect the foragers by guarding forage lines and building walls and forts...
-All's going awesome for us with the farmers, toolmakers, tailors, builders, foragers, and army now in place... hey, there's some nice folks over on the other side of that hill, they want some of our food and we'd like some of their nice warm clothes... let's have some traders to send over and go get that stuff
-So now we've food, tools, clothes, houses, foragers, an army, and traders... hey, we're getting to be a pretty big state, and its sort of crowded- but across the banks there's a shore there and its unpopulated, or so the foragers tell us... let's build a navy and have sailors and they can take some foragers/explorers there to settle the land for us

So, in that way we get the bare bones of society- farmers/hunters/fishermen, toolmakers, clothes-makers, builders, foragers/explorers, an army, traders, and a navy. No one has two jobs, everyone's specialized so they can be experts at their craft and spend all their work-time doing it- the builders are going to be MUCH more experienced at building a house out of heavy bricks and stone and such than, say, the tailors, and the tailors will be able to make better clothes than the farmer, and the army and navy will be much more adept to fighting and knowing WHEN and HOW to fight (as opposed to sitting on the porch with a shotgun ans blasting the first person who comes into sight) than the rest...

So begins Plato's Republic.

Notice that trade was one of the LAST things added (as we need to eat before we need to decide whether the pound is mighter than the franc or euro or dollar) and we STILL lack:

-WRITING AND ART
-SENATORS/A KING/A PRESIDENT
-Researchers and scientists
-ANYTHING luxurious
-A Constitution
-A national debate on whether health care should be government run or not :p

THAT'S what I mean.

Is that order of who gets added first right to you, do you agree with Plato (And, to an extend, Nietzsche) or do you have another order of importance for people, who would you add first or kick out?

Communism, true communism is the ideal state. Everyone is equal with eachother and it's free of greed, corruption and all of the other flaws of men.

Why is there no writing or music or constitution, you ask?

Plato had a reason... but frankly, this is where I start to look at him and wonder... I'll say what he said, and then give my idea.

PLATO thought that censorship, control and even to a certain extent eugenics was necessary for a strong state. Plato doesn't cry for the sick... they'll just take up resources and time and however nice they are (and he concedes they are possibly GREAT and WONDERFUL people) it is irrelevant, as the whole is greater than the one for Plato, and the sick must give way so the strong can keep on living and living better.

As for writing... it makes you wonder- if Plato had been aound for the 20th Century, what would he have thought THEN? Because he wanted to control literature and music and such EXACTLY the way the Nazis and Stalinist Russia did... if it's thought o make boys "soft" or "weak" or "feminine" (an equal rights activist Plato is not, at least here) then for Plato- chuck it.

Romeo and Juliet?
Burn it.
The Mona Lisa?
A waste of materials.
Beatles Music?
Smash it.

What DOES he want?

For literature- tales where the heroes are ALWAYS strong and brave and NEVER scared and NEVER vulnerable and ALWAYS ready to fight and die... essentially the "Aryan idol" Hitler Youths aspired to be...

Music- Throw away flutes, harps, guitars, anything with a "light feel." Plato wants trumpets, bugles... and LOTS of drums. In terms of artists, he doesn't want Mozart- he wants someone heavy but not tragic, as he thought tragedy or ANY kind of weakness would be detrimental to show boys (who might one day be soldiers) and so Plato... Plato would love, say, the national anthems of countries or The Imperial March music you hear in "Star Wars."

Art- none. It's nothing for Plato.


As for leaders- the strongest (as judged by... someone...) lead, and the rest follow. No constitution or anything just... strong rules, normal submit, weak die off.

Again- would he feel this way after seeing it in action in Nazi Germany and the USSR?



MY take on these things:

They are VERY necessary- but as the pinnacle, not the base. We need Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, his Hamlet and Othello and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Antigone and Hugo's Les Miserables and Hunchbakc of Notre Dame and Austen's Pride and Predjudice and Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Beckett's Waiting For Godot and Orwell's 1984.

The works of Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms and Bach and Verdi and Tchaikovsky and Gilbert and Sullivan and Strauss and Puccini and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (you know... back when music actually MEANT something, not just someoen yelling "Where Brooklyn at?" fifty times followed by ten different swears and slurs in a row...)

And I can't draw at ALL- but we NEED teh Mona Lisa and Sistine Chapel's ceiling and the sculpture of The Thinking Man and David and the one with the screaming person and the one with the melting clocks... Picasso... we need that (even if I don't know anyone except for Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Picasso.)

And we need the leaders- we NEED people all across the spectrum, from Alexander to Caesar to Queen Elizabeth to King Henry V to Churchill to the Louis XIV to Napoleon to Bismark to Ghandi to Washington to Lincoln to FDR.

But all those things and people can only shine if they've the foundation to build on... a work of art needs people to reach, and a leader needs those farmers and soldiers to lead, after all...

i think plato would reaffirm everything and be happy that everything worked out as well as he could have imagined it would.

As we have seen from the above posts, it's impossible to have a perfect world because how do you measure the perfection? Everyone has their own measurement... Some people don't like the idea of foreigners serving them in shops, but others don't like the idea of living in poverty when there are jobs available in other countries.

An interesting post above was the freedom to take any drugs you want. This falls under the right to be an idiot as long as your not harming anyone else. But it assumes that to take the drug is an informed decision. But the problem is if all drugs are legalised, especially addictive ones, then you will have the drug-producers trying to get everyone addicted, you'll have kids and stupid people taking drugs, and they become a burden on society. "If you're stupid enough to take drugs you deserve what you get" I don't agree with. It's sort of like saying if you're stupid enough not to wear a seat-belt, you deserve to die. We will still live in a world of drug-addicts or at least drug-takers. You will still have families destroyed because one member is on drugs. You will still have people high on drugs out committing stupid crimes. Only now it will be legitimised (ok not the crime itself, but the root of it)

As for freedom of speech, the iffy point for me is at the point of slander. It's difficult to be fair when only some people are heard. Someone might print a story condemning an alleged rapist who is still on trial. Then if that rapist is acquitted, and that person is under no obligation to retract that story. Even if they are, you can be sure it won't be front page news on the same dodgy tabloid newspaper. You won't have an A3 size headline, "SICK JOURNALIST CONDEMNS INNOCENT MAN!"

But how to create a perfect world is an entire forum with many sub-fora...

"Communism, true communism is the ideal state. Everyone is equal with eachother and it's free of greed, corruption and all of the other flaws of men."

Nay... It's not that true communism is free of greed corruption and other flaws, it's the other way around, you need to get rid of greed, corruption and other flaws first, before you can institute communism.

And communism doesn't allow much room for freedom to do what you want. It's like the country is a giant company which everyone has to work for, and can never quit to get a better job or start their own business or to follow their dreams.

@ Rule Britannia: "I mean if you're worried about drug's affects there is a case that you can just tax them very highly. Certainly in the current system, that's what I'd want. But in a perfect system, there'd be no V.A.T or tax on any goods, so there'd be none on drugs."

So you haven't answered my question. In your 'perfect system', how would the negative effects of drug use be mitigated, and how would this be funded?

@ Rule Britannia : "So if someone fuck's themselves with heroin, it's there own look out. If they as an individual had made a decision to get insurance, they'd be alright. If not, it's their own lookout."

But what happens if they die? Who clears up then? Under your system would we just leave bodies lying in the streets if people had not paid sufficient insurance to ensure their corpse would be tidied up?


@ obiwanobiwan: "WHY should people stop living in nature...?"

Because life in the state of nature would be highly unpleasant, or as Hobbes put it "Poor, nasty, brutish and short".

and a bit later: "We ARE God here, starting our new little tribe of people off to beign their Empire-

How do we start?"

What is the point? This situation does not exist, and essentially never has. Other apes have the basics of a society, so presumably our pre-human ancestors did too. Society predates humanity.

In any case we are not in a 'state of nature' now, so what is the point in talking about what kind of state we would create if we were?


@ Rule Britannia: "police should be provided, but not education."

So the children of poor people would get no education? As Xapi says, everyone has the right to a decent education.

@ Rule Britannia: "I accept that monopoly stopping regulation is needed."

Surely this flies in the face of everything you've said up to this point. If you believe that businesses should have the freedom to do pretty much what they like, why shouldn't a successful business have the 'freedom' to dominate the market, if it gets to that position by being more competitive than its rivals?

Either the government has some control over the economy, or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways.


@ Rule Britannia: "I honestly believe that less regulation etc leads to more happiness- leads to a more efficient and richer economy, and a better economy means everyone is better off. Maybe they don't get richer at the rate, but everyone gets richer.
A vast majority of people do think about money, rather than scientific advancement."

Then those people are stupid. Money is a means to an end - you use it to buy stuff. It is not an end in itself. You cannot eat money, you cannot wear it, you cannot shelter in it. It is useless except as a means to obtain other things. If your ultimate goal in life is "I want to have lots of money" then you are a cretin of the worst kind."


@ ottovanbis: "It has been reasoned that history as we know it (by professional historians) has come to an abrupt halt, or is heading that way."

Wrong. Fukiyama argued this in the 1990s, but his argument has been largely discredited since, to such an extent that he himself has basically disowned it. The 'end of history' has not been reached by a long shot.


@Iceray0: "Communism, true communism is the ideal state. Everyone is equal with eachother and it's free of greed, corruption and all of the other flaws of men."

Yep.

Iceray0 +1


@ komodosp: "Nay... It's not that true communism is free of greed corruption and other flaws, it's the other way around, you need to get rid of greed, corruption and other flaws first, before you can institute communism."

That's what Iceray meant. That's why he said TRUE communism. TRUE communism is the society you can get to once you remove those flaws.

"And communism doesn't allow much room for freedom to do what you want. It's like the country is a giant company which everyone has to work for, and can never quit to get a better job or start their own business or to follow their dreams."

You are, I presume, basing that entirely on the example of Soviet Russia, which only got a very short way along the path to true communism.

Re: Obiwan: "As for leaders- the strongest (as judged by... someone...) lead, and the rest follow. No constitution or anything just... strong rules, normal submit, weak die off."

regarding Plato and the Republic: did plato not call for a seperate class of philosopher kings, to rule jointly as an oligarchy; with the possibility of being promoted to this class through lottery (basically they would go through different education as children, and those who were good enough would be allowed to run the state, meanwhile those who were not would be returned to mainstream society, that way there would be room fro promotion)

Unless i'm wrong, he was looking for 'philosopher kings' who understood how the state was supposed to run and why everyone was in their place... (all those things he said were needed) Please correct me, it's been a while since i've read the republic.

@Jamie: you said "In any case we are not in a 'state of nature' now, so what is the point in talking about what kind of state we would create if we were?"

We are not now in the 'state of nature' as defined by hobbes, but it's a stupid idea to begin with, we have evolved as social creatures for millions of years. We are not as clsely bound to each other as ant colonies or bee hives, but we're also not lone wolves each out for our own interest alone.

This is our natural state, and it is natural for us to create mechanisms to promote our well-being, be they tools (for breaking open hard shelled nuts, or hunting large animals), social contracts (to encourage people to help/not harm each other) or educational system (to pass on knowledge to the next generation)

Finding the best (READ:ideal) system is natural, because we all want to minimise the effort, improve efficiency and take all the short cuts we can find. The ideal society would be the best way for all people to get the most for the least effort.

Hobbesian absolutism refers not an absolute moral system or something but to absolute rule by the a ruler, as hobbes advocated in the leviathan

@ obiwanobiwan " We're not animals? To what extent do you mean that statement, "

Why didn't you keep reading instead of answering to a single sentence in my post?

To the extent that we're capable of higher forms of thought and sensibility, and higher forms of cruelty and destruction.

I probably should have said "we're not just like any other animal", but if you had read my entire post, you would have seen what I ment.

Alright here's a question I posed in Poli Sci class but never got answered: Can you seperate equlity in essence (as opposed to conventional equality) from the idea of some higher power? Is there anything but the a higher power that lends legitimacy to the idea that "all men are created equal?"

Jamiet- you contradicted yourself, I said historians have posited that, you then stated the name of the author of the article I was referring to after saying that I was wrong about there being an idea in the intellectual community, I believe I said that I even disagreed with him... just bringing up the obvious, it is of trivial importance though. if you want to create the ideal state it needs to be independent from nationalism and religion in my opinion, if you can't believe in equality without a God then you have no real equality

obi- of course it is a logical fallacy to state that because systems have failed in the past that they are fundamentally flawed therefore. I think we can all agree on this. I stated that I liked the ideals of communism and republicanism both, but that it is unlikely in the near future for them to be realized especially because of the stigma on communism. once again, i like the idea of the state of nature just to try it out. I am a Freudian, a diluted Marxist, somewhat of a Nietzsche follower, while still being able to remain optimistic about possibilities of virtue for human beings...

I believe two things are essential for a significant societal/governmental improvement. First, a good standard of living, and second, social mobility. Not that everyone is the same, but a system based on merit but with a stable floor, a good fallback in the standard of living. And obviously, a few fundamental rights remain in addition to those improvements that assist the aforementioned goals.

Other than that, I believe in general that things such as socialist states ignore one simple fact: that such states are ideal but not practical. By that I mean that it totally depends on the people themselves. It would be ideal for everyone to give to the poor and needy and help each other and be generous etc, but you simply can't force people to live that way in such a socialist state. And people (most of them) aren't quite like that. In short, if people were perfect they would have a communal, socialist society, but they aren't.