"letting the market rule" just means letting employers rule. The more de-regulated and laissez-faire a market, the more power and wealth tends to be accumulated by the very rich and massive inequality is rampant. Sooner or later, elections are for sale and you live in an oligarchy. Vast inequalities in power and wealth are incompatible with democracy.
What Do You Think Really Happen with Religions in ST?
- Thread starter Paradon
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"letting the market rule" just means letting employers rule. The more de-regulated and laissez-faire a market, the more power and wealth tends to be accumulated by the very rich and massive inequality is rampant. Sooner or later, elections are for sale and you live in an oligarchy. Vast inequalities in power and wealth are incompatible with democracy.
^^^ The problem with that is when we did have a "not quite laissez-faire" and far far less regulation than we have now, we (as a society) didn't have many of the problems that you sight.
"power and wealth tends to be accumulated by the very rich and massive inequality is rampant"
Simply exchange the word rich with the word government, and your statement would be true. Wealth and power are increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a very few, the hands of the central federal government.
"power and wealth tends to be accumulated by the very rich and massive inequality is rampant"
Simply exchange the word rich with the word government, and your statement would be true. Wealth and power are increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a very few, the hands of the central federal government.
^^^ The problem with that is when we did have a "not quite laissez-faire" and far far less regulation than we have now, we (as a society) didn't have many of the problems that you sight.
"power and wealth tends to be accumulated by the very rich and massive inequality is rampant"
Simply exchange the word rich with the word government, and your statement would be true. Wealth and power are increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a very few, the hands of the central federal government.
your post is very vague. What "problems" did we not have when there was a less regulated economy?
As for your second part, in what way is wealth being concentrated in the hands of government? If you mean taxes in the U.S., as has been pointed out, they're not particularly high right now historically speaking, and taxes are the government's source of "wealth."
Unlike your post which was an expression of a particular ideological view with no data, I can cite stats that show an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1% over the last thirty years. That's not an ideological perspective, that's fact. That kind of increasing inequality and power in the hands of an unaccountable few makes a sham of democracy.
Further, at least governments are in theory democratically accountable in a way the ultra-rich are not. Plus, government can use its revenue and power to promote effective social programs, etc. Government is not a business nor does it have the same objectives or goals as one.
I colorfully overstated my case if anything. The problem isnt government or business but fanaticism. A just and productive balance needs to be continuously restruck between the two, factoring for change - social, technological, etc. Entrenching yourself in one camp and demonizing the other is easier and a lot less lonely than walking that tightrope but thats the way it is so far as I can tell.
EDIT: removed my edit.
EDIT: removed my edit.
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Gene Roddenberry disliked religion strongly, and tried to push a very secular, if not atheistic viewpoint. However after he was no longer involved, we saw that not all, but some have spiritual paths. Which is only Logical.
As the great novel Dune says -
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied....
As the great novel Dune says -
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied....
No.
I generally agree with your views that the less government there is, the better.
However, claims that there is some kind of all powerful, almighty being that lives outside of time and cares about all of individually has not been substantiated. And faith is no way to substantiate such a claim.
Yes.
I think it's a matter of how you feel about other yourself and other people....respect and compassion. And one can hope!
Everybody is defective in some ways....
I can understand some people dislike for Organized religion (even if I am a rather devout member of one, I spent the majority of my life outside of such things) but I never understood the pure hatred and fear of some have to someone who wants to explore spiritual themes in life. After all, "To one that has faith, no explanation is necessary, and to those who do not have faith, no explanation is possible."
Since I found faith that rewards me in this life, I have to point out a logical thing. If there is no god, and after we die there is nothing. Then I as a man of faith have lost nothing. However if it IS true, then I have gained so much, and those who do not believe in a afterlife have lost a lot.
Since I found faith that rewards me in this life, I have to point out a logical thing. If there is no god, and after we die there is nothing. Then I as a man of faith have lost nothing. However if it IS true, then I have gained so much, and those who do not believe in a afterlife have lost a lot.
That is the fun of finding out about faiths and perhaps one day you will KNOW which one is correct. Hard to explane, but if you ever had it happened, you don't need to describe it.
Nail on the head.
Ultimately what Trek is hinting at is that humans solved their problems without religion. Hunger, bigotry, disease, all solved by human ingenuity and technology.
Well the bigotry and behavior part, I have no idea what they did.
So if science did what religion failed to do, would it be shocking to see many non religious people in the Trek universe?
Yet obviously too much science and materialism and no spirituality leaves people (and the scripts) empty.
So no wonder the religious themes keep popping up.
Which is why the government doesn't try to solve EVERY person's problems. Just MOST people's problem. In your mining accident example: if you slip on a rock and shatter your femur on the job, you should probably go to a doctor. If the company you work for has been jeopardizing your life and the lives of every other miner in the country by relaxing safety standards, you should probably call the government.
It's got nothing to do with the lawsuits. It's because the insurance industry has thrown down an enormous bureaucracy around their heads and they have to navigate the inconstant shifting walls of red rape just to treat their patients effectively. It isn't the fear of a lawsuit that hinders them, it's the fact that medical care is INVARIABLY too expensive for most people to pay out of pocket and that leaves both doctors and patients at the mercy of their insurance carriers.
And ALL of those stores and restaurants must abide by public health regulations at all times or risk being put out of business. If competition alone was sufficient to keep restaurants from slipping into potentially hazardous disrepair, Gordon Ramsey would be out of a job.
And regulations say they HAVE to make the customer aware to avoid accidentally killing them. It's that bare minimum "they should" that regulations provide. So when a paying customer tells you to prepare his food with allergy considerations and you cook it with peanut oil anyway, YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW. The market may not hold you accountable (dead men issue no complaints) but the health department will.
No it isn't, not at all. In the first place there's more room for variation depending on local conditions (Earthquakes, hurricanes, etc) where in food safety standards have to measure up to a minimum standard of safety for human consumption. Rat feces, for example, is unacceptable no matter what state you're in.
And the unusually high number of people who believe that pitbulls make the best attack dogs correlates with the unusually high number of people who try to train pitbulls to attack prowlers. Then the dog goes running out of the house and mauls the neighbor's two-year-old... well, gee, that's the responsibility of the dog owner, isn't it?
Systematic abuse of an entire breed of dog, in this case, results in a systematic problem. Some communities respond by banning pitbulls altogether, others require background checks on pitbull owners. ALL of them have laws against animal cruelty, and dog-fighting is illegal in nearly every state of the union.
And so to answer your last apparently rhetorical question:
We do. I think maybe you have a very fuzzy idea about what regulation actually means.
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