An American Queen of Sweden?

[Claeyt]

@Claeyt: I believe nearly half the states in the country have some form of medical cannabis use (20 states and DC have existing laws, 6 have pending laws according to a site found through Google, which means about 3/4 of the countries population has access to it in some manner). In California, it might as well be legal, and other states can be as strict as relegating it to use for a very small number of ailments.

More than I thought. In my state they actually recognize the med cards for people from neighboring states even if they reside in this one as long as they don't have permanent residence in this state. This leads to the bizarre occurrence of two students getting busted smoking on their porch for a quarter of weed in my town (where's it's only a ticket) and the guy from Michigan pulling out his med card and driver's license from there and the cops giving the weed back to him and also ticketing his friend from here for $100.

[Syndarn]

First of all, thanks for writing a long post and taking the time to explain your view.

Number 1- stop defining citizenship by race and language. This is where Royalty gets in the way of most European monarchies becoming modern international states. We've seen our first 'Black' president and we're slowly moving past race here in the states. When are we going to see our first multi-racial royal family in England, the Netherlands or in Sweden. Would people accept it?

I imagine that people would have to accept this if a princess or prince married a asian, afrikan, indian or arab. It's not inpossible. If it would be accepted somewhere more than in other places i would vote for Sweden. It's a very open country and they discuss everything. But then again you can't force anyone to marry someone they might not like, just to make it look good in eyes of the world. You know what i mean.

Number 2- Although it's interesting and good to know your history and keep old buildings and things for the next generation encourage experimentation with your arts. So many artists move to the United States to become known it's amazing. Even Banksy seemed timid and not at all revolutionary when he was here this summer. We see more experimental art, music and architecture on a daily basis in some cities in the States than in all of Europe. When you build modern architecture in Europe it stands out as an eyesore because it's surrounded by a museum. Architecture was not perfected in the 19th century no matter how much Jorb wants it to have been.

In europe we stand on our forefathers shoulders and build up from where they left off, we naturally take the good solutions out of it and change the bad. I can imagine that when artists move into the US they become famous. We have alot of art here in europe and it's evaluated very strictly, so i can imagine that it is easier to become more popular in the states. We do have alot of experimental art in europe aswell. I can only speak for Finland when it comes to this because i have not traveled as much as i would like. I do not agree that all of our architecture is crap. But sadly most of it is because it is riddiculously expensive to design it and build it, specially now when the european economy is slowly trying to stabilize because of greece. I am sorry to hear if you have seen something retarded like someone has built a modern architectural building next to a old house(museum). It generally shouldn't exist. We do try to save our old architecture in europe we usually end up dividing them into "the old city" and the "the new city". Were as in the old city, if you build something it has to look old from the outside (architecturally), but inside it's top notch. We also renovate our old buildings to keep up the standards of today. We don't simply tear everything down and build anew. We find it very wastefull of natural resources and destroying it seems like we destroy something culturally inportant. Sometimes it might be unavoidable to level the place and build something else, if it's in such of a bad condition that it's not worth it anymore. Old buildings and items have their own charm, as does new ones.

I do study construction engineering myself so i do know quite abit of my trade.

Number 3- Help and develop a more populist political leadership. The Elite political structure of most European countries hinders change, instead it tries to maintain what is. Populist and Progressive leadership isn't always good and it can be scary but it does open new paths. Too much of European populist politics is from the right and is seen as ugly. I'd love to see a Green party leader in France or a Pirate party head of state in Germany. Our mostly two party system in the states has problems but it also allows a wide diversity of political beliefs within the system. It's one of the advantages of an open declaration of party (anybody who wants to can declare themselves Republican or Democrat) and an open primary system (Anybody can run for president on either party ticket). It's why the tea party can do what it does.

Well you might be right here. But it always comes down to if the leaders can be good enough and make the right decisions. I don't know what's going on in EU really i see completely retarded suggestions both there and sadly here in Finland aswell. It's very hard to have competent politicians and on top of that have competent democrats who know what's good for them. Most of the guys elected don't know what they should do because they have not lived, seen or experienced enough to become good leaders. On top of this most of them have somekind of degree in economics and social science, so when it comes to practical and techy questions they have to ask the the big corporate experts who will ***** them over to get more money for their trade.

As for everlasting progressive economical growth. That is just a pure childish thought. It is never going to happen unless we can colonize another planet and mine the asteroidbelt or kuiperbelt for minerals. The natural resouces we have on this planet will run out and cause more recession, just as it has done with the oil. The next one will be clean water, or food caused by the lack of phospherous it's running out. If we want something that works we need to make it stable first, and try to keep it that way and think of the intrest of the people. Plan ahead. The only thing that seems to grow on this planet is the peoples hunger for more money and status. The population who has no concept of what things are worth and throws them away without a second thought of even trying to mend it first.

Number 4-You'll notice that none of this included encouraging capitalism, de-regulation or "free trade". All of those are wrong. Instead loosen your Bankruptcy laws and encourage new small businesses while maintaining your labor laws and requiring similar labor laws in countries you import from. Those will create more jobs than any of the other things you hear the Right in America say Europe should do.

I could come up with more like encourage development of independent University systems and tripling your private and public research money but the U.S. has rolled back on that a bit lately and we need to do more of that too.

We are doing this atleast in Finland, but it's quite hard. Also investing in infrastructure and how fast products move helps to create new jobs and a chance for businesses to compete with eachoter. The economy is so ***** up that the small businesses can barely stand on their own and you can consider yourself lucky if you can take any money for yourself after paying your employees. I do agree that some laws in the US are better. For example i heard that when a new business starts, you don't need to pay taxes for like 5 years?, the idea i believe was to make the foundation of the business strong and stable so you can start paying later. If the current situation continues atleast Finland will be in so deep **** that it will never see the light of day again. And this is mostly because we have those incompetent idiots leading the country and more idiots in EU trying to pass legislations and laws that are totally pointless in practical terms and only there to create more income to cover up their mistakes.

Also what would save money to pay off the debhts is if people would have a healthy lifestyle and take care of their health. That would mean, less food consumption, less goverment money spent on socialcare.(it's a huge anmount), more efficient workers and more happy people.

I do think that as a democratic country, it should educate it's people so they can make the right decisions for it's future. The school system in Finland is one of the best in the world. (i am personally not yet satisfied with it, there are certain aspects that are getting forgotten). Anyone can apply here and get taken in if they pass the entry exam and get enough high scores. The goverment pays a sum every month to help with rent and living expenses. You can also take a student-loan that is backed up by the goverment, this loan has close to 0% intrest when it's time to pay back. Not sure how the gov pays if it pays at all for abroad students.

-Kruger

[Claeyt]

1. It'll happen someday and then that country is going to really have to look at what it means to be a swede or an englishman or dutch.

2. The problem with nostalgia and saving ALL the old buildings is that you end up being like the Attic of an old woman. Lots of nice beautiful things but nothing new and beautiful.

3. Whenever anyone tells me that we're going to run out of minerals or oil I always tell them about the great whale oil shortages long ago when the whalers had hunted all the whales to near extinction and had to travel farther and farther away to catch them until they were going all the way around S. America and up to Alaska to catch whales for 2 years.

The point is that we found something else to light our houses besides whale oil. We'll find something new if we ever run out of oil, in fact we probably already have.

4. There are economic development zones where businesses will commit to staying in an area or a city for say 20 years and they'll receive lower property taxes for a certain amount of time, maybe even the whole 20 years. In my town it's called Tax Incremental Financing and is controlled by the mayor and city council. If someone starts a business or bulds somewhere then the may receive less in tax demand or maybe none at all.

There are other subsidized loans and federal tax subsidies for new businesses here also but those are based off Income. Businesses are only taxed federally off their profits.

[MagicManICT]

In europe we stand on our forefathers shoulders and build up from where they left off,

You say this as if nobody else in the world does this....

The question is thus: "when is it wise to learn from the forefathers' mistakes and change a system?" The United States was founded on ideas based on the way things operated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since then, there was a bloody revolution in France that slew nearly every person of Nobility in the country (and lead to a series of bloody wars throughout Europe), Germany overthrew their monarchs, the British crown has decreased in power steadily since the 18th century, Spain overthrew their royalty (after many of their colonies revolted)... Anyway, you can see where I'm going with this. I'm not saying it was a good thing, but it's the history we had. Let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. Monarchies that still exist are not the same as they were 300 years ago mostly due to the British revolts and the American Revolution. So you're welcome.

[Tonkyhonk]

Isn't it bizarre in this day and age that the concept of Royalty still exists? Thank our founding fathers that we don't have to deal with that ***** anymore.

ahaha.
so you believe Douglas MacArthur stripped the political power from Japanese Royalty but left their existence alone for the concept, so that Japanese can continue struggling to deal with the so-called "*****" further forever?

[Dallane]

Isn't it bizarre in this day and age that the concept of Royalty still exists? Thank our founding fathers that we don't have to deal with that ***** anymore.

ahaha.
so you believe Douglas MacArthur stripped the political power from Japanese Royalty but left their existence alone for the concept, so that Japanese can continue struggling to deal with the so-called "*****" further forever?

Hasn't the emperor basically been a "puppet"(not sure of the word i'm looking for, influenced by?) of other governments forever?

[Tonkyhonk]

Hasn't the emperor basically been a "puppet"(not sure of the word i'm looking for, influenced by?) of other governments forever?

i dont know what you mean by "other governments", but the emperor is supposed to be a "symbol" of Japan
under the current Japanese law, he is not even a human-being.

[Dallane]

Hasn't the emperor basically been a "puppet"(not sure of the word i'm looking for, influenced by?) of other governments forever?

i dont know what you mean by "other governments", but the emperor is supposed to be a "symbol" of Japan
under the current Japanese law, he is not even a human-being.

Hate to use wikipedia but this was what i was trying to ask lol.

Japanese Emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees

They are more of a symbol rather then actual rulers of Europe right?

[Tonkyhonk]

Japanese Emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees

im not really sure what you meant by "external", but lets see.
the situation changed many times in history. some emperors in the past did govern the country as political leaders, some were said to be either not smart enough or not strong enough and let the powerful noble houses rule, some just didnt want to, some stayed in power as regent or retired, and so on. many emperors, however, always had political advisory and were influenced and often used/controlled by them.
for example, Kamakura(1192-1333) was the well-known era that shoguns governed the country, but at the end of the era, the emperor at the time reformed the administrative by force and ruled the country again. Edo(1600-1867) was again the era of shogun ruling, but it ended up giving the power back to the emperor, some say it was due to the spread fear of Westerners' colonization in Asia.

They are more of a symbol rather then actual rulers of Europe right?

the word "symbol" was used by American GHQ of Occupied Japan for the law made by Americans. till then, you could say that there were times that they might be like symbols, but i dont think japanese necessarily saw them as symbols. in Meiji-era, the emperor was considered(or taught) to be a human-god.
Meiji emperor was very active and led wars as a leader. the next emperor was not healthy nor smart to lead, but people expected him to be the leader. the next, the most famous Showa emperor, Hirohito, was smart but the politicians around him had stronger power than they should by that time and it was said that he could only read a poetry at a conference to cry (to complain) how he couldnt avoid the war they were facing, and ofc people never saw him as the symbol until they were told to do so after the war.

one thing for sure is that Japanese emperors always had "authority", but not always had "power".

[Dallane]

ah ok cool thanks tonky