Utopian States: Striving for Perfection

Democracy is allegorically like a society where the sheep vote for the obedience school that trains the sheep dogs that heard the sheep.  In the USA, the two main obedience schools are called the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.    The sheep dogs are allegoric to the police, the judges and the teachers in that democratic society. 

Webster defines democracy as a government by the people; rule by the majority.   An alternate definition is a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Seriously, the definition given by Webster is too flattering and too idealistic.  The people of world democracies are being domesticated just like farm animals.  The brains of domesticated animals are significantly smaller than their wild cousins.  Likewise, the brains of the modern domesticated man are smaller than their predecessors.  Yes, the brain of the Neanderthal was significantly bigger.

From page 56 of the September 2010 Discover magazine:  “Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1500 cubic centimeters to 1350 cc losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball.  The female brain as shrunk by the same proportion.”  Later on the same page: “Still others believe that the reduction in brain size is proof that we have tamed ourselves, just as we domesticated sheep, pigs and cattle, all of which are smaller –brained than their wild ancestors.”

The Utopian States is all about decreasing the domestication of man by creating governments that are nearly invisible, but more effective so that man will have more freedom and more opportunity.  Opportunity is what gives individuals their security.  With more jobs available for each individual, people don’t need government assistance.  Ownership of a small business will replace social security, unemployment and other government assistance programs.  It has been shown that an abundance of jobs virtually stops crime.

If the lack of a dominant and domesticating government causes an increase in brain size, then citizens of the Utopian States will have the largest brains in the world.

The only concept that justifies free trade is that currency exchange rates are also supposed to automatically adjust so that every nation has an equal opportunity to manufacture and sell their products.

China pegs their currency to the US dollar, thus defeating free trade.  They peg the currency by spending the money from the free trade of automobiles and electronics on TBills and other American securities.  You can verify this by looking at the exchange rates over the years; they haven’t changed by even 1%.

Plausibly, their communistic nation can control and suppress the wages of their workers.  That, coupled with the control of the exchange rates, effectively controls the wages of Americans engaged in manufacturing.

Plausibly it is the fact that this country is faltering is because the wealthiest 20% own more than 80% of the wealth of this nation while the poorest 80% own less than 20% of the wealth.  Historically when the poorest 80% own less than 20% of the wealth, we have a recession.

Why?  Obviously that if one person had all the wealth, there would be no trade and little flow of money as nobody would have anything to give the person with all the wealth.  While this is a deliberate exaggeration, it shows a probable reason for wanting the poorest 80% to have more wealth.  Calculus would show that the optimum amount of trade would happen if everybody had the same wealth.

It seems that China’s suppression of free trade, prices and exchange rates has disrupted the balance of wealth and has pushed the world economy into recession.  What do you think?

The USA (and other Earth nations) could be Utopias when:

 All the laws are entirely destroyed and replaced.

The correctional systems are entirely destroyed and replaced.

The two party system is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The system of voting is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The system of representation is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The system of taxation is be entirely destroyed and replaced.

The school systems is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The economic system is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The constitution is entirely destroyed and replaced.

The concept that there is one “winner”, one top dog is re-taught.

Sporting contests allow ties and cannot determined by officials.

My ancestors arrived on the shores of America before state government and long before the federal government.   My ancestors flourished and did better without government, the police or law libraries.  The majority concept that this nation is great because of government is not founded in fact.

Also not factual is the majority notion that this government has been virtuous or under the direction of any God.

This country was founded at a time when the largest city was Boston with a population of 7000.  In other words, a few thousand home schooled people of the 1776 era have more say than the hundreds of millions of people of our era.  Why are the decisions of the ancients valued more greatly then those of the people of this era?

The government was developed during a time when the telegraph and pony express would be considered high tech.  Now we have the cell phone, television and jet travel.  Why should we just assume that government reached the pinnacle hundreds of years ago?  In fact, for many, government immediately worsened things.  Many, my family included, were better off in the pre government era of the USA.

I have elaborated on the systems that need to be changed.  I will elaborate further.

Colonial America was great before 1776, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

You hear some argue that America is the greatest country on earth because of her government, the constitution, and the wonderful checks and balances therein.  The argument is made that the American government should not change because it has made America great.  This argument is myopic for several reasons.  America can be greater.  America’s government can be much better (and smaller) and the constitution can be greatly improved.

The book A History of Small Business in America  states that:

 “By the time of the American Revolution, the colonists (except for black slaves) possessed a standard of living higher in many respects that that of most Europeans.

  Of course the population of the American at that time was pretty small.  From The Penguin History of the USA:

  “Its [Boston’s] population had risen from 7000 in 1690 to 17,000 in 1740 and throughout the years in between it had been the largest city in the colonies.” 

Pre-federal America had a great standard of living and an even greater potential.  America’s greatness continued to increase during the antebellum years [pre-Civil War].  During this era, America had a small federal government that usually collected NO federal income taxes.  The only significant revenue came from import duties collected at the Custom houses of the port cities. From Wikipedia:

 The first Federal income tax was imposed during the Civil War, then again in the 1890s, and again after the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913.  From A History of Small Business in America: “[…] in the early and mid-1800s most Americans continued to share in a rapidly rising standard of living.  Despite economic downturns in 1837, 1857, and 1873, America’s real per capita gross national product (GNP) rose by one-third in the twenty years after 1839 and continued to rise in later years.”

America was great and growing before the federal government existed and great and growing before the 16^th amendment (federal income taxes).  The early era of small businesses was followed by an increase of big businesses and industrialization.  During this period (1869 to 1921) the per capita GNP tripled and the total GNP increased by a factor of eight.  During this period, the federal taxes continued to be small.  The tariffs were around 40 percent.

From A History of Small Business in America:

 “Between 1945 and 1960, the nations’ real GNP rose by 52 percent , with per capita GNP increasing 19 percent;  in the 1960s, real GNP climbed an additional 46 percent and per capita GNP rose by 29 percent.” 

 America was still expanding.  Note, however, that the War had just demolished the competition in Europe, Germany, Russia and Japan.  Tariffs were still high.  Debt was still low.  Big business expanded during this era and small businesses were in the decline.  People of this post war era wanted to work in large organizations.  Perhaps the men that had served in our Armed forces developed the goal to rise up in the ranks of organization.  Furthermore, strong Unions and  tariffs protected the wage of the American worker and they achieved a successful middle class lifestyle.

Is America great because of government?  From bea.gov data, the GDP expanded by 33 percent in the decade of the 70s, 29 percent in the decade of the 80s, 30 percent in the decade of the 90s and 23 percent in the decade of the 2000s.  You might get the impression that the government has presided over this “greatness”.  However, these figures are no better than the years before large government or, in fact, any federal government.  Looking at the inequalities in income, trade deficits, deficit spending and other statistics for a true measure on whether or not the American government has contributed to the American greatness or not.

From:  http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/markets/w07-1.pdf

[...] the bottom 28 million of American households in 2004 had nothing once their debt is netted out, and another 28 million households had only $47,153 on average in net wealth. The top 28 million households had $1,556,801 of net wealth on average, or 33 times that of the lower middle quartile in the wealth distribution. In contrast to the wealth distribution, the annual household income distribution in 2004 was much less uneven, with the top quartile having a share of 65 percent of total aggregate income, while the bottom quartile had at least a 4 percent share. The bottom 28 million households had an average household income of $12,688, but the lower middle 28 million households fared better, with $31,803 on average. The top 28 million households, on the other hand, had $177,265 on average, or more than 5 times that of the lower middle quartile. Nevertheless, both wealth and income distributions were less balanced by 2004 than in 1995, as indicated by the ratios of averages of top to lower middle quartiles. 

Is America great because of government?  The GDP did no better during the years of large federal government than during the years of small or non-existant federal government.  Look at the inequalities in income, trade deficits, deficit spending and other statistics for a true measure on whether or not the American government has contributed to the American greatness.   Perhaps America was destined for greatness despite government.  There is no conclusive evidence that the American government made America great.

The subject of police brutality includes framing people and false arrest.

From http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI.html

My name is Steve Moore; I retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2008 after 25 years as a Special Agent and Supervisory Special Agent. My entire investigative experience was in the investigation and prosecution of violent crime, from murder to mass-murder and terrorism. In my last such assignment, I was the Supervisor of the Al Qaeda Investigations squad, following which I ran the FBI’s Los Angeles-based “Extra-Territorial Squad”, which was tasked with responding to any acts of terrorism against the United States in Asia and Pakistan. I have investigated murders throughout the United States and the world.

I do not know Amanda Knox. I have never met or spoken with anybody in the Knox or Mellas families. In my 25 years in the FBI, I had come to believe that if you were arrested, you were probably guilty. I never had a person I took to trial who wasn’t convicted. I was especially tired of guilty persons claiming their innocence.

I had heard snippets about the Knox case from the news, and believed that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were certainly guilty. But then I began to hear statements from the press that contradicted known facts. Wanting to resolve the conflicts, I looked into the case out of curiosity. The more I looked, the more I was troubled by what I found. So I looked deeper, and I ended up examining every bit of information I could find (and there’s a lot of it). The more I investigated, the more I realized that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito could not have had anything to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher. Moreover, one reason that they were falsely convicted was that every rule of good investigation was violated.

There are a growing numerer of web sites and blogs on this subject.  Many, myself included, have the same convictions as the FBI agent quoted above.

Amanda Knox as a Child

 

Above: Amanda Knox as a child.

The Utopian States embraces all of these quotes about individual rights

All mankind… being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
John Locke

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
John Locke

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.
John Locke

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
John Locke

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
Ronald Reagan

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
Kahlil Gibran

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Ayn Rand

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
Ayn Rand

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.
Ayn Rand

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
Ayn Rand

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
Will Rogers

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.
Bob Marley

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
James Madison

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
James Madison

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.
Andrew Jackson

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.
Andrew Jackson

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
Calvin Coolidge

All initiation of force is a violation of someone else’s rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it’s supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals.
Ron Paul

The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.
Ron Paul

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.
Jimmy Carter

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
Jimmy Carter

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.
Jimmy Carter

If we must die, we die defending our rights.
Sitting Bull

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
Desmond Tutu

When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.
Marquis de Lafayette

We don’t need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.
Vladimir Putin

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.
Vladimir Putin

No references to the need to fight terror can be an argument for restricting human rights.
Vladimir Putin

I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomas

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Maximilien Robespierre

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.
James K. Polk

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee.
F. Lee Bailey

If government can give you rights, government can take them away from you.
Roy Moore

Communities don’t have rights. Only individuals in the community have rights.
Michael Badnarik

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Garrett Hardin

And government’s only role is to secure our rights for us.
Roy Moore

Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time.
Alfred Marshall

You don’t have to love them. You just have to respect their rights.
Edward Koch

Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
Larry Flynt

 Sea City from The Venus Project:  http://thevenusproject.com/

The Venus Project has some worthwhile ideas about one possible version of a utopian settlement.   I, however, think it is too costly and too socialistic in that it does away with money.   I feel that capitalism is like an auction that allows others to pay only what something is worth.  The Part of capitalism that I object to is having capital play such an important role.  I object to the stock market and large banks.  The structure of small businesses that America had during the 1800’s were more ideal.  People of that era loved the independence that owning their own farm or small business gave them.  The owners of small businesses were a very respected group in the 1800’s.CEO?  What CEO (who is a non-founder) is respected?  Buffet, Gates and Perot founded their own companies.

Prerequisites for a utopian government:

 1)      The constitution would have a bill of rights that would enumerate all the rights of the people.  Every right necessary for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be listed.

2)      The constitution would specify that the ONLY right of government is to protect the rights of every citizen.

3)      The representatives would be selected randomly from a pool of literate and educated people thus guaranteeing that every profession, race, color and creed is proportionately represented.

4)      The judicial system would not punish.  The judicial system would cause fair restitution.  Minimal prophylaxis would be used, when necessary, to minimize harm to citizens.

5)      The majority of the people or representatives could NOT vote to spend money on anything that did not benefit all equally.

Additional prerequisites for some utopian city-states:

1)      No company could have more than five employees or make more than fifty times the average wage.

2)      No products made by any large company outside of the city-state could be brought into the city state.

3)      Companies can work together to complete large projects.

4)      All the people must be taught to recognize truth and accurate logic.

5)      All the people must make the effort to achieve and maintain high levels of mental and physical health.

Most democracies will never create a utopia.

Government is what the majority wants it to be.  There is only ONE government for all of us.  Only one set of laws, one tax code, one court system, one police system, one president, two senators, etc.  If the majority voted for a car that their government would make, it might be a black 1968 VW.  Would you buy a black 1968 VW if you had an alternative?

I’m convinced that any truly Utopian government would have options, or at least, a few Utopian states that were totally different from each other.

When you think about government in terms of the blandness/sameness created by a majority vote, then the expression “United we stand, divided we fall” becomes false.  Truly the strongest government may be the government that nurtures differences.

There is NO part of government created by the majority that I desire;  my passion is for a utopia where we can all have the government we want.

Isn’t capitalism a democratic idea?  In a capitalistic economy we vote with our dollars – until a monopoly gains control and gives us only one product.  The optimal society would have many small businesses and many small governments.  Furthermore, any imported products would be only from small businesses that adhere to the principles adhered to by the Utopian businesses.

It’s plausible that a democracy of some type could maintain a Utopian civilization, but could NEVER create one.

While Guede was in Germany, police monitored a phone call during which he explicitly stated that Knox was not present when the murder took place.  This means that Guede, the man already convicted of this murder is, indeed guilty.  This also means that Amanda, now also convicted, wasn’t even there.

 The alleged murder weapon – the key prosecutorial evidence – did not have any blood residue on the blade.  The DNA on the blade was too small to reproduce the results with a repeat test.  [It is ABSOLUTELY necessary to reproduce the results since lab and other contamination could cause errors more than fifty percent of the time.]  The blade was too large to fit the outline in blood of the blade on the sheets and also too large to have produced most of the wounds.  Furthermore, Amanda’s DNA on the knives meant nothing since she used them to cook.  Kercher’s DNA on the blade could have been caused by a distant sneeze or by contamination.  Remember that sensitive tests did not reveal any blood on the blade and that this knife was randomly selected from several in the drawer.  The other knives weren’t tested.  Perhaps the steak knives had blood on the blade.

 There was no comingled blood found in the apartment, just Kercher’s blood comingled with Amanda’s DNA in the apartment (hair, dead skin cells, dandruff, sneeze residue, etc).  Only Guede’s fingerprints, and DNA was found in Kercher’s room, on her body, in the toilet and in her Kertcher’s body.

 The probability of Amanda’s guilt is extremely low.  If the prosecutor framed Amanda, he should go to jail.  The prosecutor’s guilt will never be discovered, however, as he will cut a “deal” with Amanda and reduce her sentence considerably in exchange for a signing a “confession” that he (the prosecutor)  will write. 

The source for this article is from the defense as stated in www.friendsofamanda.com.  A statement that no test is significant unless it can be repeated is mine as well as the prediction that the prosecutor will cut a deal for a lesser sentence in order to protect himself.

This is saved in the category of dystopian justice.  Justice is a crutial test of any utopian society for two reasons:

People have two responses to an attack.  They can fight or take flight.  People can fight two ways.  The can fight with force or truth.  When the truth fails, force is the result.  Any battle of truth requires that all people in that society can recognize source, fact and logic.  All members of a utopian society must be educated to participate intelligently in society.  Truth is a scarce commotity and requires proper validation.  Furthermore, people have to be trained to recognize the truth when they see it.