I always wondered how much of that comes from East Germany's past as a socialist state.Originally Posted by WinnieW
I always wondered how much of that comes from East Germany's past as a socialist state.
I guess I have to clarify this point.
The system of government of East Germany from about 1961 to 1989 wasn't socialistic in reality. My pov is that true socialistic political systems don't exist or can exist for long, because they're not stable.
I'd label the form of governent in former East Germany as a covert dictatorship. The socialistic political system was established by some elitist groups, and was largely unwanted by the majority of people.
Why I call it a dictatorship? Because there was only one political party. No truly free elections. Because when there is only one political party, what's the point to vote at all?
And when it comes to political systems there are some distinctions between socialistic, communistic and social-democratic.
Socialistic doesn't necessarily means democratic, but social-democratic means democratic.
The influence of socalistic and non-democratic political parties in Germany is very small nowadays, but there is a tradition of social-democratic parties. And that means average citiziens are involved in political debates and decisions.
I suppose but in my view elections are really just lip service to freedom and democracy anyway. Whether you are in a one party dictatorship or a liberal democracy, you are most likely stuck doing what some boss tells you in your day to day life with little to say no say in how anything actually gets done regardless. I would support an iron-fisted one party state if it was fully devoted to improving daily lives if it's daily citizens and it needed that iron fist to get stuff done faster and more effectively. This isn't to disagree with what you said about East Germany's government being shitty and corrupt which I'm sure it probably was.
You think voting doesn't change much. I guess I know what you mean. It depends how much imfluence a goverment has on the economics of a state.
And I guess there might be less laws and more flexible regulations in the USA compared to European countries. But that's only a rought estimation from what I know.
Mostly, yes.
That's sound so Beta to me. I guess you're type is Beta ST based on that statement.
Bettering the lives of people to force them into a certain behaviour? That's actually restricting the freedom of people. How should that improve the lives of people?
It's proven that carrots are a much better motivation for people than sticks.
People accept ideologies better when they served together with carrots then with sticks. Don't take my words literal, it's a (carrots and sticks) metaphor.
The problem was more like that it was a police state. A lot of people actually were members of the secret police. So freedom of speech was repressed because everybody had to fear jail sentence for political non-conforming behaviour.
Freedom in the realistic, meaningful sense is people having high wages and low working hours. The only reason millions of people are still stuck in wage slavery in developed Western nations is because we have paralysed, ineffective federal governments that allow for economic parasitism and grossly mismanaged and destributed wealth. America's government was in fact intentionally designed to be weak and paralyzed because it's founding fathers were wealthy aristocrats who wanted America to be a utopic playground for people like themselves, and less so for all citizens as whole. To do this they set up a government that would essentially just keep public order and maintain a military to protect against foreign threats, while having no power to reign in and subjugate the rich towards the collective good. Elections are just a way to keep the government flip-flopping between different parties and policies and prevent any effective, long-terms visions being from enacted by the government that may subjugate the bourgeoisie, for lack of a better term.
To have a happy and prosperous people, you need a government which actually has the to power to address issues and orient people towards what's best for the nation as whole. When everyone is devoted to the interest of the nation and you don't have a few individuals hoarding and squandering all the wealth, that is what makes high wages and low working hours possible, aside from other uncontrollable factors of course.
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