Seth, I quite understand and appreciate your dedication to threfolding. If you are willing, I'd love for you to go to www.RepublicForuSA.org and explore a bit. How would you see the Republic, given to us by the founding fathers, working in a three fold way - if at all. Looking forward to your thoughts
Hey King - I can't say I really understand the initiative you shared. All I read was the home page and then I also watched the video, but it left me with a lot of questions. Maybe you can shed some light on them.
It seems like the main concern of the initiative is that an 1871 act defined the USA as a corporation. But I'm not sure the significance of that. I believe the word "corporation" has always been ambiguous - it just means a "body" of some sort, and not necessarily an economic entity. So if a town was "incorporated" in 1912, is this initiative saying that the town became an economic entity - a business - in that year, and not that it became an official town in the eyes of the government? (Which is how we usually understand incorporation...) And if that's what is indeed being said, What does it mean? The town isn't acting like a business in the same way as Microsoft or Google, is it? A business has to structure itself according to certain laws and regulations, but those aren't the same for a town, state, or federal government...
So, according to this picture: What would be different if we lived in a republic and not in a corporation? I heard some of the goals - we keep more of the money we earn and have low inflation, but how is a republic going to ensure that? It seems like they're saying that things would be different because a republic would have to hold much more strictly to the constitution, and specifically that the Supreme Court would have to uphold the constitution much more strictly. But do they think that the Supreme Court currently understands itself as not upholding the constitution? Do the people involved in this initiative imagine that Sotomayor is saying to herself "Well, if we were a republic I would have to take the first amendment seriously, but because we're a corporation I don't." If not, if all the justices actually think we're a republic - even if they're wrong - but nonetheless this is how they're choosing to interpret the constitution, I don't possibly see how they would change their mind if they suddenly found out that it hasn't been a republic for the last 150 years, but now we've just re-established the republic so now they realllllly have to uphold the constitution. Do you see what I'm getting at? I just don't see how things would concretely be different.
My interest is in concrete ways that our government can become more democratic. One of the ways that Steiner talked about, and that I've written about at TWS, is by recognizing that the government should only make laws concerning those things about which every adult can judge. The basic rule of a democracy should be equality - What are all able to decide upon simply because we're adults? If an issue requires expertise - be it cultural or economic - it should be left to those bodies to figure out. And I have other questions concerning democracy, for instance: How to move beyond representation to more direct forms of democratic process? Etc, etc.
Does this question of republic vs corporation really address such issues?
Seth, I quite understand and appreciate your dedication to threfolding. If you are willing, I'd love for you to go to www.RepublicForuSA.org and explore a bit. How would you see the Republic, given to us by the founding fathers, working in a three fold way - if at all. Looking forward to your thoughts
Hey King - I can't say I really understand the initiative you shared. All I read was the home page and then I also watched the video, but it left me with a lot of questions. Maybe you can shed some light on them.
It seems like the main concern of the initiative is that an 1871 act defined the USA as a corporation. But I'm not sure the significance of that. I believe the word "corporation" has always been ambiguous - it just means a "body" of some sort, and not necessarily an economic entity. So if a town was "incorporated" in 1912, is this initiative saying that the town became an economic entity - a business - in that year, and not that it became an official town in the eyes of the government? (Which is how we usually understand incorporation...) And if that's what is indeed being said, What does it mean? The town isn't acting like a business in the same way as Microsoft or Google, is it? A business has to structure itself according to certain laws and regulations, but those aren't the same for a town, state, or federal government...
So, according to this picture: What would be different if we lived in a republic and not in a corporation? I heard some of the goals - we keep more of the money we earn and have low inflation, but how is a republic going to ensure that? It seems like they're saying that things would be different because a republic would have to hold much more strictly to the constitution, and specifically that the Supreme Court would have to uphold the constitution much more strictly. But do they think that the Supreme Court currently understands itself as not upholding the constitution? Do the people involved in this initiative imagine that Sotomayor is saying to herself "Well, if we were a republic I would have to take the first amendment seriously, but because we're a corporation I don't." If not, if all the justices actually think we're a republic - even if they're wrong - but nonetheless this is how they're choosing to interpret the constitution, I don't possibly see how they would change their mind if they suddenly found out that it hasn't been a republic for the last 150 years, but now we've just re-established the republic so now they realllllly have to uphold the constitution. Do you see what I'm getting at? I just don't see how things would concretely be different.
My interest is in concrete ways that our government can become more democratic. One of the ways that Steiner talked about, and that I've written about at TWS, is by recognizing that the government should only make laws concerning those things about which every adult can judge. The basic rule of a democracy should be equality - What are all able to decide upon simply because we're adults? If an issue requires expertise - be it cultural or economic - it should be left to those bodies to figure out. And I have other questions concerning democracy, for instance: How to move beyond representation to more direct forms of democratic process? Etc, etc.
Does this question of republic vs corporation really address such issues?
Thanks for sharing it. Hope all's well with you.