The Greek philosopher Pythagoras (6th century BCE) found out that Earth was round, and that

the moon was shining at night due to reflected light of the sun. Eratosthenes, a Greek who lived in 3rd century BCE calculated the circumference of the earth with 2% accuracy, and even calculated the tilt of earths axis. Again, in 3rd century BCE another Greek, Aristarchus calculated the proportional size of the moon vis a vis the earth, and actually calculated the distance from earth to the moon. He also attempted to calculate the distance from earth to the sun. His result was inaccurate but he deduced that sun was much farther away from the earth than moon was. He even speculated that the earth revolves around the sun! There was another ancient Greek who proposed that the universe was infinite, all stars were like the sun. (Forgot his name). Regarding the ultra small stuff like atoms, Democritus in 3rd century BCE said that all matter were composed of atoms which moved in straight lines. His disciple Epicurus revised it and said that not only that, but all things and variations that we see in nature are because of random motions of atoms. His most revolutionary theory was that not only atoms moved randomly, but they did so without any purpose, and it was impossible to predict what the atoms did. This was actually a precursor to the modern quantum theory. Incidentally, Epicurus was also modern in his ethical attitude and he allowed women and slaves in study in his school. By the way, he was an atheist.

Philosophy Club
Main Categories => Political Philosophy, Politics => Topic started by: Cory Conley on January 28, 2014, 09:40:29 AM
Title: How can one measure a successful government? Post by: Cory Conley on January 28, 2014, 09:40:29 AM Successful will be left to be defined by each commenter. Basically what features would a government have for you to call it a successful government and can or how would those be measured. Title: Re: How can one measure a successful government? Post by: Wu Li on January 28, 2014, 06:10:47 PM You can measure a successful government according to whether it meets its own definition of success. For example, the US is supposedly a democracy, but in ten years online I have yet to find a single person who can tell me the simple distinction between a democracy and lynch mob. If people don't know what a democracy is they can't have one so the US fails it's own criteria if you ask me. Title: Re: How can one measure a successful government? Post by: William Irizarry on February 05, 2014, 06:41:46 PM I agree with Wu Li's statement that success depends on whether the government in question meets it own definition. During the tenure of the USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, some here in America were critical of its own liberal democracy, suggesting its system inferior and slow in comparison to these other regimes. Quote Some looked to the Soviet Union, envious of its capacity to deploy multiyear plans to rapidly modernize and surmount the speculative boom and crisis patterns of capitalism, and for its propertyless class structure.

Excerpt From: Ira Katznelson. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. iBooks. Quote The dictatorships projected many alluring answers. With market capitalism performing so poorly, the Italians put forward a corporatist model that coordinated matters of labor and capital under the auspices of the state. The Germans advanced a highly managed capitalism. The Soviets, who had eliminated private property and markets altogether, pushed ahead with an ever-more-ambitious planned economy. Excerpt From: Ira Katznelson. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. iBooks. Quote While the United States was struggling with how it might engage with global affairs, the dictatorships projected a sense of assurance and apparent knowhow to enhance their might and maintain national security. Excerpt From: Ira Katznelson. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. iBooks. To expand on Wu Li's comment, I think that the realization of success remains contingent upon two elements: fundamental principles and the mechanisms put in place. I personally prefer the principles of a liberal democracy. Some features I would include are the freedom of speech; a separation of powers, such as the three legislative branches and two chambers of Congress here in the U.S.; an equal protection clause or amendment; a system of adequate representation; the right to peaceably assemble; and all would indubitably be listed in the form of a social contract. SMF 2.0.7 | SMF 2013, Simple Machines
First of all let me separate a government from a political system. A government resides within the system, and is constrained by the system. So far we have seen that every government is victim of its own success. This is because a successful government becomes popular (in case of a democracy) or find more support by way of cooperation from officials and citizens (in case of totalitarian government). Inevitably popularity causes everyone to relax and get into the groove. Whatever system the government follows, it goes into extreme --- controls are increased, or lasiezze faire becomes even more so, till power gravitates towards some at the expense of the other, and the sufferers wake up when it is too late. They start protesting, again too late because the very fact that power and wealth has been transferred to those benefited by the system makes it even more reluctant to give it up. So there would be mass protests, retaliation, and finally, maybe a change of government. So in the interim process the governing suffers The next government that comes in is expected by the voters to reverse the damage which they believe was done by the previous government and usually the first few months are spent in witch hunting. If the witch hunting is too mild the voters feel cheated, and if it is too strong there will be retailiation from the hunted because they are still holding some of the ropes. Often the chaos continues for at least a year or more till some stability is achieved.

Now what is going on here is not the government per se, but the system. The system should have an option for automatic tightening and loosening of the governmental power in various scenarios. And that should be constitutionalized. All citizens should have access to the parameters which makes this tightening and loosening possible. For example, corruption is on the rise, workers are becoming militant. The system collects statistics transparently, analyses them and indicates the necessity to tighten government control in that particular area, suggests targets to be achieved, assigns departments responsible and fixes a time frame. The system keeps monitoring the parameters and when satisfactory levels are reached, it signals to end the initiative and return to normal levels. This prevents human ego to take control. This would need full transparency to work. It seems to me that 21st century is ideal for such a system to be put in place. The overall performance of the central government, state government and local governments can be seamlessly monitored this way by using statistics. No government can be good or efficient indefinitely. This is because human individual and social perceptions and thinking are rooted in the past and therefore heavily biased and resistant to change. The reality of the present is seldom recognized, let alone acted upon. Society always wakes up and presses for changes at the 13th hour, when the errant system would have become too entrenched and will have enough ammunition to delay changes, raising further emotions so that perceptions of reality and needs for the future may become even more unrealistic. This makes all transitions painful and wasteful the difference is only in the degree. Till recently we had no alternative for the human mind. But in the future, we may be able to use power of truth as its manifests the form of information. Handsfree mining of information and processing it to chunks easily understandable by the common man may actually show everyone what is actually going on, and what citizens, irrespective of their power, actually want. Would it be possible to data-mine this relentless flow of information, untouched by human interference, and make it all available to all citizenry without any restriction at all? This information need not be individual-specific but trend specific. To give a random example, we wont know A raped B, but that in this particular area rape has occurred, or there is an allegation of rape, or such number of persons have been arrested/punished. All these are given automatic weightage rumor, news, police complaint, court proceedings and final conviction, and how this may have changed statistics later. This mega program will be resisted by politicians so it should be left to an agency like the UN to create the software, test it extensively, taking, say, about ten years, and then make it available free to individual countries for implementation. Initially such statistics will be advisory for a period of ten years and the system will be tweaked according to local requirements. In stage III all countries will be required to mandatorily accept the system as part of their legislature. Each government can then be asked to incorporate into its constitution so that the system derived suggestion gets about 2% weightage in voting. Why such a low weightage? Because if the system is shown to be reliable, the voters and legislators may be influenced by it. Essentially the system I suggest is to make people realize the truth of what is happening, and so give them an opportunity to go beyond their emotional and memory based biases. Then I believe the human intelligence.

and project to all transparently acts for changes when it is too late, and not when it is appropriate. This lethargy causes governments to become entrenched in power before the society realizes it is time to change, and by then the government would have acquired I think the good government of the future will function differently from the good government of the past by incorporating the greatly enhanced information availability to monitor the system. The system should be modified so that any bill should be passed with at least 10% weightage to pure real time statistics. Suppose currently a bill needs majorityof legislators approval. Make it 40% + 20%, the latter being recommendation processed statistically. This statistics should be transparently collected and processed and all stages of collection made available to all citizens. The statistics should be initially advisory, and tried in a dummy mode and then made mandatory. But few politicians would be willing to vote it into place, citing all sorts of reasons, like people (being themselves) being replaced by machines, may try to delay its implementation etc. For facilitiating the technology, then, United Nations should be given mandate and the technology should be available free to all countries.