Donald Trump

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NeroNoah wrote:

Hey, what's your job Dalailama? It seems you know a lot more than the average internet dweller about this.

Most of my knowledge isn't due to my job, it was due to living in the area for a very long time, and knowing people both in the civilian and military side who dealt with this for much of their careers. One of them really should have run for governor, but he'd preferred to let other people take the credit and make sure the dept he ran for the state operated smoothly.

A set B is a subset of set A if all members of B are members of A. Thus, it seems totally fair to say a government is (usually) a subset of a nation; those elected or appointed are normally all citizens, but not all citizens are elected or appointed.

However, this is true from the perspective of nations as republics. In a pure Athenian-style democracy, it would be somewhat silly to refer to government as a subset of the nation, as everyone would have a say in government.

Thus, the more one holds pure democracy as the ideal, the less true the subset thing appears to be, to include if one considers even the election of officials to be inductive of a true mandate of the populace as a whole.

That said, I firmly believe in the subset thing. At best, a mandate from a democratic election represents a particular subset - a majority. This is rarely every member, as decisions are rarely unanimous. And on more than one occasion, majorities in the US and elsewhere have been ethically in the wrong on key issues, ranging from slavery to women's rights to having government define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

I could go on, but it's all been said before; tyranny of the majority, etc. Pure democracy isn't an ideal worth idealizing.

All this talk of democratically elected people being representitive of the populace makes me chuckle.

How many do you think live in poverty? How many do you think are even worth less than the average american?

Any democractic system is warped by the mass media. You vote for the candidate/ issue/ or the party which spends the most money on advertising. Perhaps not individuals, but as a whole, our election results can be wholly determined by funding. And who makes the law on campaign contributions and funding?

I find this disturbing. And I face palm and the sheer amount of ignorance of the common man in regards to politics. Perhaps its for the best that the us isnt and never has been a true democracy (despite what the majority 'think' it is).

But still. Just because you are rich doesnt mean have any better judgement than the common man. Instead of rich manpipulators who tell people what they want to hear (regardless of if they plan to actually go through with their campaign promises), we need people at the top with good intentions and good judgement(regardless of their social skills or income level).

Thing is, cartel infiltration in the mexican government has been via bribes, intimidation and violence fueled by poor drug/trade policies from US and Mexico rather than an elected thing (it's mostly at the army/police level, and some top politicians), so it wouldn't make any sense to call them "representative of the population". Unless some of you say that you can distinguish a crook...but probably not.

I keep my point, you can't fuck with a whole nation for this kind of stuff, and less for questionable ideas about how to solve some problems. That kind of decision seems more fueled by an animus towards Mexico rather than a desire to solve anything. Yes, the place stinks from corruption, but you'd have to ask why.

By the way, Dalai's information about corrupt police might be a tad old (my friends who go to Mexico say it's getting noticeably better), but yeah, Juarez police would stop Americans and essentially rob them. You don't really need a visa to just visit Mexico, so if they said that it was probably just a slightly more clever way to steal one's stuff; they don't need to, and weren't always, so clever about it.

But that is really an entirely separate issue from cartels and drugs. Police turned into bandits who prey on tourists doesn't really have anything to drug trafficking. I mean, obviously the cause is rooted in the cartels - the brutal murders and brazen public display of corpses by cartels caused tourists to avoid the city and those with means to vacate it, and the subsequent abandonment caused the requisite desperation and lack of oversight to allow widespread police corruption to take hold. So cause and effect, yeah, cartels. But how does the banditry benefit cartels? If the cartels intended it, it was probably some Underpants Gnomes kind of plan: mug tourists, ???, profit.

Kinda reminds me of Detroit, the city I was born in. Anyone remember Kwame Kilpatrick? Although the reasons for Detroit's abandonment were much more gradual and perhaps less rational.

In any case, despite the opportunism against US visitors, I'm sure the police corruption eventually caught the ire of Mexican citizens as well, and it seems they're in the process of cleaning it up. I can't imagine that banditry is really in the best interest of the cartels, anyway; eventually even they would get behind undoing the situation.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

By the way, Dalai's information about corrupt police might be a tad old (my friends who go to Mexico say it's getting noticeably better),

It is, by about 5 years.

If it's getting better that's great news. There are so many fun places to visit in Mexico, and even though you aren't really spending a lot, you always feel good about just about anything you buy when you are down there, because the people are so grateful.

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NeroNoah wrote:

Thing is, cartel infiltration in the mexican government has been via bribes, intimidation and violence fueled by poor drug/trade policies from US and Mexico rather than an elected thing

It does go up to highly elected officials and the judiciary. It isn't in the first few pages, but if you read all the way through your sources, you will see it. The potential for reform still exists, but the US govt really needs to step up their support for the people fighting corruption and do more (to the extent we can without stepping on Mexico's sovereign rights, and working with their govt) to support those that do prosecute the corruption.

I can't imagine how many US politicians would be standing up for a cause, if they knew that almost certainly within a month or year, they would get whacked. Right now, I am thinking they need to figure out how the money is handled and just confiscate that. If the US and Mexican govt can find a way to just take back the funds, the cartels will be gone in five years.

I've no idea, how feasible that would be technology wise. They could find a way to make it happen legally.

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DalaiLama wrote:

It does go up to highly elected officials and the judiciary.

What I meant is that people didn't vote for this (given that some want to assign blame to the whole Mexico for some reason). But yes, it probably goes up to that place.

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DalaiLama wrote:

Right now, I am thinking they need to figure out how the money is handled and just confiscate that.

It's probably the same way people do tax dodges so I don't think it will be that feasible (compared, to, let's say, trying to cut their profits first). I've read banks like HSBC are involucrated in that stuff.

PS: I share this, some actual economists in reddit analyzing Trump's plan for the wall. I can't say how true the whole thing is (not an economist, I read some of it for fun and curiosity), but the point that trade tariffs are bad leverage seems legit (remember things that didn't work like the Cuba embargo, and that was a lot worse). Also, there is some analysis about the point that billions of dollars are sent to Mexico as remittances. Not the most glorious of sources, but whatever, I thought it was interesting.

The cartels could be defeated relatively easily: simply legalize their product in the United States. There is no way they could handle (murder) all of the new competition.

Oh but wait, Mr. Mackey said drugs are bad. Well in that case better build some actual fortifications for the war on drugs.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The cartels could be defeated relatively easily: simply legalize their product in the United States. There is no way they could handle (murder) all of the new competition.

Oh but wait, Mr. Mackey said drugs are bad. Well in that case better build some actual fortifications for the war on drugs.

I don't see that happening "easily" no matter what tactic/strategy the gov. takes.

Just no. In theory that has always sounded like a great plan. But just no. You cant sell METH and CRACK at the bodega, im sorry that isn't a good idea.

Because we cant control something instead lets just embrace it and normalize it even if its awful for people? We have enough with smokes n booze. No oneneeds recreational hard drugs.