Have you ever considered why we choose our systems of government?

I believe our fore- fathers began a democratic government to escape the old ideas of dictatorship, communism and the like to create a system for equality of all people to share in their governments processes and provide oppurtunity to everyone in their pursuit of happiness. One in which the people of all income levels and stature would have to abide by the same rules. A system in which all people had a say in their governments dealings. All of the systems broken down from the judicial, executive and legislative branches all have their place in keeping fair order and protection of this countries libertys. It may not always be a perfect one, but by far the greatest invention of mankind unlike the world has ever seen in it's past and still succeeds those other of our present.

I agree! I majored in government and politics in college and can tell you that one of the main reasons we chose our form of government was in reaction to the types of governments in Europe and England at the time, and in the past.

One major example of this is our desire to keep religion and government separate. You can see all kinds of horrors resulting from the old European practice of people being penalized by their government for something that was considered a sin, or such things as burning women for being witches.

Another thing we made sure was not in our form of government was the old practice of having "titles of nobility" wherein certain people were automatically better than others if they were born into certain families.

In short, earlier forms of government were often cruel, ever barbaric, in their operation and did not offer rights to their citizens such as we have today. Our forefathers recognized this as evil and patterned our form of government to grant the people the right to govern themselves rather than basing it on some monarch's or "royal" family's claim to rule.

In short, our form of government was established mainly to avoid the evils of past forms of government. By the way, Communism was not in existence when our nation was founded.

[quote=JimGunther;1497143]I agree! I majored in government and politics in college and can tell you that one of the main reasons we chose our form of government was in reaction to the types of governments in Europe and England at the time, and in the past.

If you agree sir, you can always rate my answer as such!

But thanks for the further insight. I did not know that communism was not in effect at that time. Can you explain some other forms of government in existence in those days?

Around here they don't really like it when you ask a new question in response to someone else's question. However I will briefly state that most governments at that time were monarchies or other related forms of government where the king/ruler had pretty much absolute power based on a concept known as the divine right of kings, or simply the fact that the ruler had the strongest army.

Also in England for example the government was controlled by the state church. But in our form of government separation of church and state does not mean what the ACLU has twisted it into today. It only meant that the state (government) could not dictate which or what religion was the official religion of the realm. In other words, you are free to worship in any church that you feel is correct for you.

Some of your assumptions are a bit off. Communism attempted to narrow the gap between the wealthy and the working class. In a communist state the goal is for everyone to make the same amount of money and have the same lifestyle and simply be happy that they are serving the collective good. The system in theory is the least 'greedy' of them all. However, people will be people and those in power in a communist system wanted special privileges for themselves; it becomes corrupt. But the system itself is not greedy in terms of distribution of wealth, quite the opposite. Is that system good, by most accounts, no.

Capitalism on the otherhand uses greed quite well. It is the drive for more that drives capitalism, which creates economic expansion; hence more more products, inventiveness, and then jobs as people with capital (money) will try to make more of it.

So capitalism is the greedist of all systems, and it has a large disparity between wealthy and the working class; but as the rich get richer, the argument is that the working class will be pulled along with them to a higher standard of living.

Most democracies have capitalism because democracies (the people) will not stand for the government control that communism requires to make sure greed doesn't get out of hand and that all people are making the same or similar amounts of money, etc.

So I don't really understand your point, or you have it backwards. In my opinion, greed is good, greed is capitalism, democracies are capitalistic and greed as a system (provided that the greed is legal and people aren't defrauded of their hard earned money) is what fuels the economies of the world.

I disagree that greed is good with respects to capitalism and besides greed is NOT a system. Greed is a human characteristic used to divide people whether you label it legal or not. With "greed" comes displaced power.

To quote the words of John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, or Baron Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Therefore any political system will always be "greedy" due to imperfect man.

Capitalism is an economic system not a mode of governing people.

Is it really greed or self interest that drives the consumer to get the best value for their money? Is that a bad thing? Is it greedy to pay $3 dollars for a gallon of milk instead of $6for that same gallon of milk.

Was Stalin's and Mao's killing tens of millions an attempt to make sure that "greed does not get out of hand?"







G&P

Sorry, keep in mind that I am by no means highly educated on government and politics, this was simply an observation I made when I was considering I theory I have. Again sorry, I didn't mean to impose that when our nation started we sat around asking which system to use lol, I just gave examples of some governments more greed oriented.