Well, in matter of military power the only nation rival with U.S was Soviet Union, i matter of economy China WILL pass U.S. for sure. But I think the only viable way humanity follow now is a communist revolution explode wordwide.People say bad about communism without even reading Marx books or knowing about the routine of people in communist countries during Soviet time.

I agree with you that there were way too much repression and the dream of a classless society was out due to bureaucracy, but, there were great living there. I have an Aunt that lived there for 5 years, she said that the most well-paid jobs used to be street cleaner, driver of bus and train, hard works in general, the kind of job nobody wanted to do. What just sounds about right to me, those job are shit but need to be done, so, let's pay more for who does.

And about repress government don't work, I mean, isn't repression what those companies makes, putting all the society away in benefice of their profit? How could this be acceptable?

China's probably the next laboratory in terms of a new social experiment.  They've got a bizarre mix of communism and capitalism that has turned them into the new kid on the block almost overnight.  They are skewing democratic in some ways, but the central government exercises a lot of power over the economy.  And frankly it is working extremely well.  Their economy has been and remains phenomenally strong.  Not to mention they've got such a large population they still have room to grow.

It's not because China has some awesome mix of government, it's because they're invested heavily in industry. India's growing quickly too, and their government holds much less control over the economy. China is doing great because they've been working heavily with the world's greatest superpower for decades, much like the U.S. did in its early days with the British Empire. We provided them cheap labor, China provides the same for us. Not complicated stuff.

Haven't been paying much attention to China lately and just assumed because it's not on the news networks it's doing great?

China's economy has been struggling since last year.  They just keep it out of the meida.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122990342979025141.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/will-chinas-economic-cris_b_230068.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/7856636.stm

Truth is... China is doing good because they have a far way they can go... but the further they get to the top, the more it's going to drip... and the more democracy is going to take hold.  Afterall once they get stuff... they're going to want rights.

This is a great post, and one I agree with 100%.

People think just because I am for small government and Capitalism, that I am somehow "pro-corporate", and that's not remotely true.

I am "pro-rights".

People in power are corrupt. It does not matter who they are, a CEO, a President, whatever. I don't trust one over the other. I don't trust either of them.

But, the CEO of a company answers to me. If I think Sony is corrupt, I make sure I never buy a product with a sony component in it. If I do that, I don't really care how "evil" a corporation they are. It effects me none.

Government does not answer to me. They answer to us as a collective, so if I have a problem with Government, my only course of action is to discuss why with the rest of the world, and hope they come to the same conclusion I have come to.

Being that government answer to all of us equally, I think the best way to make government work for the people, is to reduce the number of people who it answers to.

Obama, for example, answers to 200 million or so voters. I am 1/200,000,000. Not much influence. my mayor however, answers to 3,000, so I am 1/3000.

Where do you think I will be most heard? This is why I think it's best to remove things government should not control in the first place, and then push as much as posable down to the states/county/city level.

This would mean lobbyist in washington would have very little they could lobby for, and it would remove power from corporations and government. 

Look at it this way... the volume of power is fixed. Power is control. If you remove power from government and corporations, where does the power go?

It goes to the people, and I think that's where it belongs. In our hands, not theirs.

^ Corporations have plenty of real world power. When you "remove" things from govenmental control, private concerns will of course snap them up.  Boycotting a company doesn't always mean it can't hurt you. 

Also, although the federal government is known for inefficiency, there is still economy of scale to consider. 

In this case however, you’re arguing the extreme. With government, I am arguing the norm.

I will take the odds that corporations care about my money over governments caring about my feelings, every time.

As far as scaling and government, it’s not really a matter of personnel, as much as it is a matter of authority. People are already in place to run things more localized, just thanks to the problem (people want more power), the ability has been taken away from them.

Back in the day when I first moved out of my parents house I figured that I could buy £15 worth of adequet nutritional food a week, cook a big batch of 7 - 10 servings over a couple of hours one day and live off the batch for the week, merely heating it up in the oven. It works. Each week you do something different so you don't get bored, you get to eat healthily and you only have to cook once a week. It was a real time and effort saver so I could focus on other things. win-win

Well, I agree that it's rare for something to happen like, oh, those small towns that get their water supply poisoned and everyone gets cancer or whatever.  But there is plenty of stuff that corporations do -- and would do even under your model -- that impacts people's lives ... negatively. 

With scaling, I had in mind stuff like one bureaucracy being better and smaller than the sum of ten bureaucracies covering the same area. 

A different aspect -- here I have an actual example -- would be something like the regulation of the Great Lakes.  Zebra mussels and quagga mussels are a terrible invasive species; they hit the Great Lakes system in 1989 and just exploded all over; they're spreading through the whole US, it seems, through personal watercraft.  Anyway, in reaction to this sort of thing happening, the Great Lakes states have all seperately come up with regulations to try to stop ships from bringing in these ... unwanted immigrants (heh).  And it's a hodgepodge, because all the states generally have come up with something different from (or at least not quite the same as) any of the others.  Companies would like having just one set of rules to follow, but they're afraid that any federal law passed at this point would just stack on the state rules instead of replacing them. 

All this in spite of the Great Lakes states having (IIRC) some kind of alliance to try to coordinate and cooperate with regards to that watershed. 

Of course, if regulatory laws aren't among the things you want to decentralize, then this sort of objection might not apply.