Topic 1 : The World is screwed up, the Government is corrupt, people are evil and self-serving and common decency is becoming extinct. The only way left to rebel is to be a genuinely good person.

- Everyone is creating jobs, but only those who use their money and circulate it. If you save your money, you are creating nothing with it. Rich would be creating jobs if they would spend their money, but most just sit on huge piles of money and spend only minor percentages of it. – olomorn

- The thing is we might be better today than in the past, ok, but we are still used to thinking like wild animals. We can see that in movies and literature: we still enjoy the f*ck out of low instincts like violence and sex over more sophisticated and intellectual stuff. So we may have laws and helicopters and sh*t, but in the end we are just a bunch of apes who will never overcome corruption, violence, and injustice. We have been ruled by the dumbass military aristocracy for millennia. – laser_pizza2000

- In my view, a perspective like this is evaluating the whole based on the masses and the lowest common denominator. We can continue our painfully slow march toward true civilization a few steps at a time. We make progress where we can. We can each take actions to ensure we leave our individual worlds better places than we received it. It's a march whose lifespan transcends any and all of our own. When we give up the fight (no matter how small our battles), we make it that much harder for our spiritual kin to progress. Have faith in us and yourselves, and we can improve the world. It may not be as grand an improvement as you'd like, but it's there, and it will be felt by future generations. – jeffem

- There is nothing wrong with self serving. You must serve yourself first if you you want to be able to help others (otherwise it's not sustainable and is .. suicide). – hahoahoa

- The only way? I think: it is always like that. You can change the systems but unless you can change people's mind, then nothing happens. But hey, we are not Jesus. So, we'd better change our own mind first. That's why some say: meditation is charity. – daonq8787

- To the guy who posted this: you are a good man. This is what all the religions ever said. But most never got the message, turned against religion rather than blaming their own wrong doings. – ahmedinram5584

- I personally believe there are way more good people still than "evil" people like you say. It's simply that the negative stuff is blown out of proportion by the media and generally something bad is remembered a lot longer and more vividly than something good. – boneflesh

- You seem to be under the impression that the world was alright and then it decreased in quality becoming screwed up. You think people just found out how to be evil and governments are now trying this new thing called corruption? No... It's been screwed up since it began and it did change for the better. Yes, it could be worse and it – trevor_philips

- I take this as a good thing. Finally people might realize that being a genuinely good person is something that is beneficial to everybody. It sucks that the world has to be screwed up in order to make people realize this, but change never happens when things are "more or less Ok". You need a tragedy; economic collapse, earthquake or genocide to actually make people change. Hopefully this realization is what is going to change everything for the better. It's always darkest before the dawn. – biomarie

- Pick one specific problem, unite with people who have picked the same problem and tackle it until it's gone. Hope other people are doing the same and someday the world will be a better place. Make sure you finish the job but also care about how you solve it and how far you go. Hitler had the right ideas at first, too, but few would call him a good person in the end. – unbeginning

- More simplistic; people are stupid! few thousand years ago people were more helpfull towards eachother because they saw that it would also benefit them. nowadays people are just disconnected from society because it's so big. it just isnt clear anymore that helping someone is also beneficial to you. we're all in the same boat. I help, but thats only because of my egotistical behavior. i know helping them would benefit society which would benefit me. and it make's me look nice. it's a win-win.

- Hate to break your rebel bubble, but the world is actually getting better and better, and fast. Crimes are down, poverty is decreasing, there is less and less hunger. Think about through cognitive bias: everyone thinks the world is going to shit, so they only follow things that strengthen that view. Due to this, good news rarely sell, so we are bombarded with bad news daily, even though statistically there are way more good news, on a large scale.

- People become evil and self serving when they feel threatened. Self-preservation is the first instinct. Right now, most of our economies are up shit creek, our jobs are scarce and underpaid, and our way of life is threatened by beauocracy, political correrctness and a guilt-ridden metropolitan elite. Fix the system, and people will be happy again. – mj_hammer91

- Also, to be informed of what's going on. Then you can be a good person, and informed. Because being a good person is good, but being a good person and standing up for the right things every now and then, when the opportunity comes, is better. Or you can be an activist and make opportunities. – kirillz29

Topic 2: Communism vs. Capitalism

- You do not understand the idea of communism. Nobody lacks anything. There still is a private property. You get everything you need and more. Because stuff is taken from those who have too much and given to the workers, so everybody is equal. In modern world just a small bunch of wealthy people own the majority of resources, money etc. It would be shared amongst workers. Assuming that you are a middle class citizen, you would keep your house, car, all your stuff, plus get something more. – slopraprotnik

- he main idea is that since people are "equal" one job is no more prestigious than the other. Since there is no consumerism you get as much as you need so you don't strive for food or to feed children. These factors combined mean that instead of the job you have to go to to survive, you can do whatever you want and realize your potential. Marx wrote about alienation. When you do what you love you are creative and happy, you invent. – eichhorn

- Communism is not a good idea at all. The concept of everyone working together for the greater good of humanity and splitting everything equally is simply unhuman. There will always be those who pull no weight in society and bring people down. There will also be those who are forced to do more than their fair share with no additional compensation. These utopian societies are always destined for failure. It's called natural selection: those who pull their weight move forward. – jason905

- To be honest, the only way for people to live together is the socialism. Because people being divided in strata and loosing their dignity isn't going to work much longer. We need an improved version of socialism in economic way, otherwise it's not going to work. Social rights are more important then money aren't they? - slopraprotnik

- Just my two cents, none of the "communist" countries so far were actually communist, they just used some of the ideas (very few actually) and the name to appear something different, no true communist country will appear through revolution, only through evolution to it. – thesoulmaster

- Guys, the idea of communism sounds like "from everyone by their ability, for everyone by their needs". Think yourselves whether it is good or bad. – arutrixxx98

- ...the problem is people always blame rich people for poverty, what's wrong with people who accumulated wealth? Think about it like this - It is bad that people are starving, but that doesn't mean it's bad for other people to be rich. You cannot end poverty by taking wealth from the rich, that's just a made up definition of equality. I too am sorry for starving or very poor people, but that doesn't mean I can compare the to wealthy people, 2 different matters.

- Just to put things straight people - For an economic system (how you organize means of production) you can have a capitalist system, a socialist system or a mixed economy system (usually free market + government owned economy) = All 1st world countries are mixed economies, no country survives solely on socialism or capitalism (just look at north Korea, they are solely a socialist country), even Scandinavians are mixed models, they are not solely socialist or else they would bankrupt.

- The problem here is, each country can be prosperous and developed, but the solution is not the same. For instance in Scandinavia socialist measures work great, but in my country people hate paying taxes, so it wouldn't work, and our politicians are too corrupt to benefit us. – blackout94

- We need each other. We only exist as a society together, so, I cannot bring myself accept a system where a big part of society lives crushed and barely survives. I just don't understand why people can't see this, why so many people would rather gather money to just sit on top of it instead of contributing to a system (as flawed as it is) that, somehow, helps people live with some dignity. I don't care if some are lazy (sometimes it's the system's/society's fault), I care if they live. – dryah

- Communism is actually a good idea. People are just not good enough in their core. As someone said above (I'm in a mobile and this is tiring) "I don't want to work for the lazy,so I'll just seat back and get what I can" yeah.... he thing is, I agree our society can't take it, because people,in general,were not prepared for this. To do the best as they can in what they do, just because it is the right thing to do. We are suppose to contribute to the society. (and I'm not talking about goods and property or wdv,but it applies) and communism, when it was applied,for example by Lenin,worked extraordinarily well. The problem was that afterwards someone wanted to get rich. Yeah,the human problem got in the way),the people didn't like,so the only way to keep the regime was by force. And that's the only example of communism that passes again,the dictatorship and hunger. – dwolf

- I feel like Karl Marx, along with me, would agree that communism didn't work because those countries jumped straight into communism. They didn't have the correct cultural, political and economical environment in which communism would flourish (ie refined socialist society), and so they turned into communism's opposite, a dictatorship. Many people seem to have given up on humanity, and want everyone else to do the same, but humans are very adaptable, and I think any one who thinks socialism is impossible simply lacks the imagination and vision to see it's possibilities. – angry_paranoia

- You defined it well, it's an utopia, humans have always been greedy and selfish. Heck I'm greedy and selfish, why should I share what I've legitimately earned with people that don't contribute to society? I don't mind donating and helping people, but please don't force me to do it as if I had an obligation. By the logic of

humans being good and not greedy, I actually think anarchy would be a lot better. – blackout94

- There is fantastic information that only a market driven economy with prices can provide. How does the government know how to make the billion decisions that an economy needs everyday? Say that want to build a factory. Without real estate prices how do they know where it should be built? Lets say there are interchangeable components that need to be included in a finished product. If you don't know the price of each which do you choose? – landjim

Germanizer (long post)- You know humans traits like greed are exacerbated because of the environment

around them. If you have a society where there is scarcity, inequality which makes competition a more necessary trait you will have more greedy humans. If you a society where there is less scarcity, less economic equality in which cooperation between humans is cultivated you will have less greedy and power seeking humans. If greedy and power seeking are the minority, they'll have less effect on society.

- Take for instant psychopaths and sociopaths: there are people which are born with the tendency to become one. But if this person has an healthy envionment, which means a stable fammily and social life the most likely won't become sociopaths, this is a scientific fact. A more unequal society can make some negative traits become active, and exacerbates the one traits which most likely inherently human.

- That all said I don't think the bad traits of humans won't allow a society to be socialist. I think with socialism is achievable through voluntary association of the individuals, abolishing of the State and worker control of the means of production and resourses, and making public as working place decisions through direct democratic process. Take for instansce how Zapatistas proceed, and also the occupied Argentian factories in the last years.

- "There is enough for every-bodies need, not for every-bodies greed". There is enough resources in the world, the problem it is poorly distributed because a thing called "private property". I really don't buy the argument of scarcity: it is common sense that there is enough food to feed the world, and how much empty land that could be cultivated an empty houses are simply sitting there because of speculation? Much more could be said... that Direct Democracy sucks because people are ignorant, is the same argument a monarch would give to not give up his privileges and power. It is really condescending saying people could not be educated out of ignorance! But nonetheless Catalonia is an example of how even ignorant people can educate themselves and organize in an horizontal way that did boost the industry greatly of an almost pre-industrial Spain and did confront very hardly an centralized and trained fascist army!

- Also, even in a Direct Democracy you can elect representatives. But you can withdraw them in the moment that you don't fell more represented by them, and this is how it should be. The most important feature in a truly socialist way is that the work place works through Direct Democracy, that's the way workers decide for themselves what to do. Nowadays societies call themselves Democratic, but if

you are an employee, you face 8 hours per day in a place that is not democratic at all.

- Hierarchy is necessary for all societies, we wouldn't survive without it, maybe in a perfect society we would, but not in real life. Like the Romans said, authority without freedom is tyranny, and freedom without authority is caos, we need both. What guarantees do I have that those people would be capable of managing economy, creating laws, defenses, health etc? How would I know that their decisions would be better? Is there authority? –blackout94

- Obviously most people don't question the system they grew up in. Capitalism does, what it is supposed to, namely fuck up most of the people so badly they don't even realize it and serve a powerful elite's perverse fantasies of power. When you examine it with proper reflection, you might notice it as what it is: a cancerous tumor. It serves nothing but itself (like a cancer) destroys the world it lives in (like a cancer), and will die, once it drained its host. – fredhoven

- Capitalism means that the production facilities are in the hands of private entities and everything gets played out in the market. We are talking economy here. Looking out for your population does not undermine the trade, it's just sane government. It can arguably be labeled as socialist, but as long as you don't disrupt the capitalist economic principles, you are still a capitalist state. I like northern europe style socialist government practices. – thefelix

- ...People need a minor political/economical class: My political science professor distinguished between political regime (Democracy or dictatorship, and the latter can be totalitarianism, fascism or authoritarianism), form of government (republic or monarchy in modern days mostly, but it could be aristocracy etc), system of government (presidential, parliamentarian etc) and economical system - Capitalism, socialist and mixed market system) – blackout94

- The idea of communism is good, but it cannot be done, because it's against the human mentality. Most of us likes beign rich, having more money and/or stuff than others. Usual thinking: first ME and my family and then everything else. If you must choose between eliminate every debt of your goverment, or 10 million euro on your account? I have no doubt what would choose 99% of the people in the advanced countries. – kombinator1991

- In my opinion I think that having a capitalist system is the best in regards to innovation and personal motivation However I think there should also be guaranteed free healthcare, education & (crappy)housing for the homeless. Those are the only 3 things. It's then up to individuals to decide how they wanna play this game called 'society' – jayjayere

- The alternative to capitalism, like capitalism itself, is a spectrum, it goes: social liberalism, social democracy, socialism. Dialectically Communism is only really

Leninism and Stalinism, and suffers from the fatal flaw that it doesn't follow Marxist historical process. Because the people went straight from feudalism to socialism, with no capitalism in between unlike Marx's idea, they did not demand enough freedom from their leaders. – juliusagricol

- Every form of society that take as its center the society, the economy, or every other thing that is not the well being of every single person is wrong. Especially if you bring these societies to the extreme (capitalism or communism). How can a human be happy in a society where the value of his existence is almost nothing and he have to live for the economy or a superior being called society? It should be the opposite. – blackcom90

- Communism breeds laziness. When different levels of work elicit the same rewards, regardless of time put in or product put out, people are going to do as close to nothing as they can, cutting production to almost nothing. Pure capitalism IS a perfect system, unfortunately no such system exists in this universe. – noahstepp

- Capitalism is unsustainable and communism always leads to oppression. – nihilism70

Topic 3: Education makes people harder to fool; politicians hate it. + Eliminating poverty via Education

- The better the education, the easier the worker is to retrain and teach him new skills. Education improves your intelligence level, which means you're more flexible. You can more easily change fields and you spend less time unemployed. Actually, globalization has mostly positive effects, the only downside is that the losers aren't being compensated due to the political problem. Also, if you wanna talk unemployment, it's a vast field and with many ideologies based on different assumptions. But I will give you one that's easy: unemployment depends on anticipated demand. If the consumers have no money cuz of low wages and unemployment, the companies will not produce goods and will not hire people, resulting in +unemployment. - ds344

- When the efficiency of work thanks to better ways to produce increase and the need for "more stuff" decrease ( because people may understand sometimes that we do not have endless resources on this planet) we will have to rethink the role of work and society anyway. The globalization is not bad, its just fair. – thiesclausen

- Unemployment goes down when demand goes up because there is a strong middle class. The problem is that middle class is disappearing. We have rich and poor only, neither of which create demand. Education (college-level) is half of the problem. The other half is corporate personhood and low tax rates on the rich (who don't create domestic jobs at all by the way, middle class does that too). – dltamer

- What the markets are demanding now are people not with lots of knowledges, but with selfconsciensness, social habilities, capacity for cooperation work... The clue is to teach this to students, not lots of stupid things that wonr be usefuls for them bcause they will talk about them so little and so superficially that they will have forgotten just made the exam! – casapan

- Education is the number 1 tool to have vertical movement in life. If however you believe sandwhich making is your true calling then why go to university. You are only indebting yourself. If you want to be a business owner and be successful, education can play a big role in youe success. As well education is not merely a degree or certification. – whymustmynameap

- Most educated people who do crime fool the uneducated population. (politicians,companies, scam artist and so on). What we would get would be fewer petty crimes (i think) but some really elaborate great ones! (Trick the trickster so to speak) – JappJapp

- Well educated population is a good thing. However, you can never eliminate poverty. In a fair society every man has the same chance of becoming rich, but

not all of them have the same ambition. So some of them won't study and work that hard, stay poor and they'll be fine with that. If you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone the same amount of money/resources, you're building an idealistically socialist society. - jimmyyyyyyy

- There are not many "dumb" people out there, just the ones who haven't trained their brains. Most people are capable of actual incredible things. Think of how many millions of years evolution has brought us. Just think about that for a second and how many people died and how many strong ones conquered and survived and outwitted. We are the product of those successful people. We all have capabilities. Inspiring speech done. – drspon

- The post said eliminate poverty through education, not government jobs programs. But neither of those is going to eliminate poverty anyway. You can provide all the education and jobs programs you want, and there will still be millions of poor people. Some people simply aren't interested in education, or in working to support themselves. Some people are just useless, lazy fucks. That will never change. – psaltriparus

- Eliminate capitalism and replace it with a resource based economy. Automate as much as possible and educate everybody to the highest level. That's how it should be done. However, probably won't happen anytime soon, because the only people with enough power to initiate quick change only see $$$$$$$. – yumbamikelol

- Education won't eliminate poverty. It will create huge amounts of educated, but still poor, , and therefore more disgruntled, citizens. This already happened in ex-communist states in the 90s, where inefficient economics, and free education created hordes of people with university degrees, but nothing to eat. I don't say that education shouldn't be free and accessible to everyone, but it's not the only answer to the poverty problem.

- Getting "tough on crime" should be a combination of everything - creating opportunities (=jobs and support for small businesses), social services, legal infrastructure, law enforcement, access to education, and lots of other things – vadim6385

- The title explains well why we are heading towards the middle ages education-wise. Want less people aware of what's happening? Overprice education, making it only available to the rich; capture their attention using decoy media events; then profit! – 9raf9raf

- Politicians need crime to promise to get rid of it during election years. They also need dumb voters to believe in those promises. – Lteddy

- Without poor people, no one would be at the drive-thru to take your order, no waiters, no janitors, no cashiers at the store, no one to do the jobs you would never take because of the salary. Your entire lifestyle would change. The little

gears keep the big ones turning. Even if you paid them all more, you would just redefine what income is poverty level. Getting paid equally across the board would just be socialism and would eventually crumble from corruption just as capitalism did. – joshjohns

- The best way is to increase the estimated punishment for commiting a crime. education doesn't stop people from being egoists or douche bags. education alone also doesn't stop people from acting careless or thoughtless. if the estimated punishment is high enough then crime would get down a lot. just imagine that people would have to pay 5$ each time they jail walk, or walk on red light. in my city people do that easily a dozen times a day. if they got a bill for a single day, they'd stop... – sfvdibuk

- Yeah, like maybe we have a "War on Poverty" or something. We'll call it the "New Deal." Seriously, this idea is 50 years old. I guess a half century of history and experience can't outweigh something that sounds good. Poverty and lack of education do NOT cause crime -- they are things that you get along with crime when you have single mothers and absent fathers. – steveobeda

- Some people won't learn, some people don't want to learn, some people actually know but they still doing what their do...so...how is education going to avoid this kind of people from killing, from raping, not everybody can be educated. – pablongo12

- You want to eliminate poverty through education, but for education you need to eliminate poverty first. And even if that wasn't such a vicious circle and you succeeded, you just get rid of the small fry, the losers, the low-lives. The real problem are the white collar criminals and the top-1%-super-rich fuckers. They have all the money. That's why the rest is poor. – port0r

- NO. This is only partial solution. The most antisocial and destructive individuals are resistant to even best education systems. Therefore, we need to introduce mandatory abortion and sterilisation of individuals that have tendency to crime and/or parasiting on social care or show signs of retardation. I don't give f. if you compare me to Hitler, I think the procreation should be PRIVILEGE, not right. Just like with adoption.

- And it has to be education and NOT indoctrination. Education can make people independent and successful, indoctrination teaches drones how to hate people who are more successful than themselves and rely on politicians to take from others. – danielkhiga

- Poverty will only go away when the interest based monetary System is abolished and replaced by a gold backed currency aka gold/silver coins. Watch "Money as debt" to understand the current system and how Money is created.

- What if I told you that there are some people in the world who will never have the capacity to learn enough to avoid a life of crime, and there are those who will always be criminals regardless of how educated they are. – catbug

- Eliminate poverty? That's kind of a childish dream. I think a more practical approach would be eliminate materialistic ideals. Some one will always be richer. And real world knowledge tells me not everyone is made for school that doesn't mean they are dumb or useless. Let's also not forget some people are just born stupid and others evil. – rylo704

- This is way too vague though. Firstly, you fail to make it clear that the crime you're referring to is crime based on a person in need of money or some other source of survival/sustenance. Secondly, I highly doubt you could eliminate poverty. At best what you'd probably due is set up a new baseline which would be considered poverty. Poverty is dynamic. – johnrchrichton

- Imagine that there are 100 beans in a cup and ten people in the room. Poverty is when 7 people only get ten beans and the rest go to the other three. There is a finite amount of wealth in the world, but it is more than enough for us all to share and live comfortably. Then greed gets in the way and those three people do their best to ensure that poverty doesnt go anywhere. – thedarktortoise

- There must be a balance in everything. If all people are educated , they will all strive for a better position , leaving the bottom positions empty. The economy will go haywire and the religion will lose power. Cause more often then not , an educated person choses either to disregard gods , or believe in a deity , but live by their own morals and rules. And lets not forget that the biggest criminals are educated , well respected people. - abidos