What if there are no solutions?

B

Bevo Incognito

5,000+ Posts
It seems to me that we approach politics with a mindset of "well, if only we did X or elected Y, things would change for the better." Usually we couch it to ourselves in "Us vs. Them" terms, thinking that our particular flavor of ideology is the correct, or at least the better, one.

But what if there simply are no solutions? What if we've invented a system and come to a historical place in which the problems just cannot be solved? What if, just as an example, it turns out that building a world in which the dominant economic paradigm hinges upon the exploitation of the earth's natural resources for personal gain was not a wise move because it ends up destroying the environment? Or what if it turns out that putting our cities and state and national government on the hook for 66 trillion or 81 trillion dollars worth of unfunded liabilities is simply beyond the scale/scope of solving?

Do you think the U.S. would become an anarchic place under such scenarios or would people shrug, roll up their sleeves, and help one another? Would the U.S. become more agrarian, for example, as more people were forced to grow their own food? And would neighborhoods then become cooprative in nature? Or, in a world that doesn't have money to pay for police, would lawlessness rule the land?
 
It would appear we've arrived at a place where the people with the means to pay don't want to fund the amount of government demanded by the dependent class. This country is furked until the two are reconciled.
 
The title of the OP is so appropriate in my opinion. Just like our public educational system: there are no solutions. New ideas to fix the schools are hatched every 4 or 5 years only to continue to see scores decline. Rinse and repeat.
Just as a teacher or principal cannot force a student to study, the president cannot cure the ills of society that are causing our country's decline.
 
By far the biggest problem is the fiscal crisis. There are solutions. The only issue is whether there are any politically viable solutions. Right now we have two political parties who both prefer fiscal Armageddon to not getting their way, and that's a dangerous place to be. However, I don't blame the parties themselves. I blame their constituencies. The people are the problem.

If things completely collapse, I don't know that you'll see people growing their own food. More likely I think you'll see a massive underground economy based on the barter system or perhaps on a more stable foreign currency (not sure what that would be. The American currency will be worthless, so no one will trade in dollars.
 
I'm afraid the election of Mitt Romney as President would mean that nothing significant would change. Romney is a moderate and he's not much of a visionary or a leader. So, I think we plod along with Romney as president. On the other hand, I think the re-election of Barack Obama would cause a hard shift to the left and I think our economic house of cards would succumb to the weight of our debt and entitlement burden. In other words, all hell would break loose.

Just one man's opinion.
 
In answer to the OP, there are vast places in the US where the lack of solutions has already resulted in collapse of the social structure. Not much work being done, lots of lawlessness, most people drunk or stoned all the time. They just got there first. Under the OP's circumstances, things get really weird. Most middle class people do not know how to be real cash poor.

The idea of retreating to agrarianism is probably not viable. Most Americans have never lived on a farm and would not know how to raise their own food or raise chickens or rabbits or livestock. And bands from town would raid them anyway. A few little problems: most of the seeds we have today are dependant on fertilizers and pesticides to make a crop. Both would be in short supply.

It is one thing to raise a garden to grow your own tomatos or peppers, quite another to put food on the table regularly

Read up on urban life in the late 20s and early 30s in Germany and the US for an idea of how things worked then for what it might be like now. And those people were largely rural in origin. Lots different now.

Another huge problem: We are much more mobile now than then----Bonnie and Clyde times 1,000 now.

The cops would be really poorly paid and corrupt as could be.

Think Road Warrior.

It would not be pretty.
 
Romney was interesting today when he spoke right to the problem -degradation of the family unit- at the NAACP conference.

I don't remember exactly how the stat went but it was something like a 72% chance of not becoming impoverished if you wait until age 21, with a HS diploma before you have babies.

If we could only get more people talking this line.
 
ShinerTX,
Not trying to be antagonistic, but what would you call 'real leadership'? A stick to your guns, ram it through pres....just in wolfs(I mean GOP) clothing.

The man in the WH has shown that kind of leadership and trampled all over the constitution in the process. We don't need anymore of that type, from either party.

We need a centrist that will negotiate and compromise. neither the Dems or GOP have a lock on smart. Some aspects of both their platforms are what the average american would like to see, IMO. That's why our country has regularly hovered around the 45/55 split +/-3. We have lunatics at both ends but 60-70% of this county is marginally left or marginally right and want policies that reflect that.

We do have a systemic political problem and it only got worse when the friggin SCOTUS ruled on Citizens United.

A corporation is not a person and moeny is not speech.
 
if we simply followed the constitutoin almost every financial abortion our government has created for itself woudl disappear overnight.
 
Stampede, you know that I come from the far right politically. I believe the country was founded on individual liberty and freedom and it is freedom that makes this country great. We are not Europe and for damn good reasons.

My comment was not political, however. We need leadership. We need a Kennedy or a Reagan. We need someone who can lead and inspire. If you think we need a President that is a centrist, fine. One would be hard pressed to find a candidate more centrist than Mitt Romney. I think Mitt has proven that he has the ability to take on centrist ideas and work with democrats. Romney is certainly light years better than Obama in that regard. My concern is that Romney is not an inspirational leader, so he will not be able to get the big changes made that we need right now. Obama is hard left, so his ideas and policies are quite the opposite of what we need right now. Fortunately the Tea Party will make it more difficult for him to ramrod a hard left agenda in the next four years but I fear that if he is reelected then the division of powers and the constitution will get trampled on worse than we could ever have imagined.
 
Kennedy? He got nothing done; his entire legislative package was bogged down and going nowhere. He was in over his head, just like W and Obama.

As for following the constitution, it is a very malleable document, which is what the founders intended; they compromised all over the place, a fact that can be verified by reading the notes on the convention that drafted it.

Read the Federalist Papers or the anti federlist papers and you will see they compromised at every turn. Something the two serpeant/parties are not going to do.

One poster said there are solutions at hand; solutions which cannot be agreed on are not solutions.
 
The main problem with our political/social/financial system is that proposed changes that would help fix problems generally extend beyond a politician's election life.

For example, take social security. We all know it's broken. Fixing it would take measures that would not be readily apparent as working until well after a hypothetical president's 8 years in office. No way a guy is going to get elected by honestly stating that he'd make changes to social security that would piss off current or soon to be seniors. So, the status quo remains in effect and nothing gets resolved.
 
A leader can explain the situation to the American people and execute a plan that's fair to everyone. Unfortunately the best leaders in America don't want to take on all the other BS associated with running for POTUS.
 
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