I have Seguey's report again as it tries to grapple with developing events in its adopted habitat - our earth and its inhabitants. I thought I'd let It contribute to this blog another time. Seguey dispatches reports everyday but it picks only those that It feels It can share and keep much of what It sends out off limits to human view. As you all know by now, Seguey is learning our system but it is often unsure of what it is observing. It might be onto something though.
Report, Seguey, Sector 3rd Planet from Medium Stellar Mass, Constellation Cassiopeia
Several hundred thousand or so years ago early humans begun to settle down, first by abandoning cave dwelling to nomadic lives in search of food and better habitat to establishing permanent shelters to forming communities, switching from hunting and gathering to agriculture and domesticating livestock, to organizing themselves to the point that would become the prerequisite to forming the earliest form of government. It was a "government" dictated by the strongest among each group which was at first not much of a departure from how the alpha male and female ruled a pack of wolves. Very harsh description but it was what it was and it worked. Today, naturally organized intelligent species, except for humans, still continues to subscribe to that system. There are still packs of wolves, pods of dolphins and orcas, clans of hyenas, etc. It's been known that an entire gam or pod of whales would beach themselves and die perhaps merely following the lead of the dis-oriented or somehow disabled alpha whale.
When it comes to organization, the most successful of all species of life forms are colonies of ants and termites. They are never concerned about extinction despite best efforts by the most dominant species of the entire planet - humans - to eliminate them from their surroundings. So much research, so many different ways had been experimented on, developed and used against them to no avail. Termite prevention and control alone is a 4 billion dollar industry worldwide. For perspective, 39 countries - from Montenegro to Tuvalu - have each of their yearly gross domestic product (GDP) pegged at just about $4 billion annually.
GDP Comparison aside, albeit neither here nor there, termites and ants will be here until the next asteroid catastrophe which they will for certain survive. Their system has worked, unchanged, since they first appeared between 140 to 170 million years ago. Between then and now they went through and survived every natural cataclysm thrown at them including the big one that occurred 67 million years ago that wiped out the gigantic dinosaurs. Termite and ant colonies had remained unchanged from then to today, adhering to one system.
Matriarchs of their system, the termite and ant queens, are absolute monarchs. The workers do all the work, they get to keep just enough of the food they gather, just to sustain them literally for just a day, and the rest is at the discretion of the queen. Here's how it works. Much of the food goes to the queen (first) because it needs a lot of it to produce and lay eggs every day and then it dictates that the rest go to the larvae and soldier ants and termites that care for them; and workers to build, expand and repair damages to the ant and termite hill.
In other words, the colonies' queens operate as a dictatorship, as well as maintaining a socialist system where workers surrender what they earn, except for their daily sustenance, and the queens make all the decisions. Depending on the needs of the colony, the queen will determine what eggs to lay so that some will become workers, soldiers and caretakers, as needed. How the queen does it is something to behold. It had worked for millions of years. A perfect system! The queen presides over the "government"/colony. For all intents and purposes it is in reality the government. It collects the taxes, disburses them for public works (maintaining the colony infrastructure), defense, and social programs for the young.
The termite and ant queens, are respectively shown below. When they die, their entire colonies die. Their relative sizes compared to their ordinary subjects conjure an image of a bloated government; but unlike it's human counterpart, the queens summon a portrait of a benevolent dictator, dedicated to the welfare and survival of the colony, free of prejudice and political malice.
I am still trying to understand earthling humor. I still do not quite get this one.
Did I mention that every ant or termite in a colony is directly descended from the queen? Is this why this is funny?
Over a much shorter period of time compared to how long the ants and termites had been around, humans for their part have experimented with all the different ways they can govern themselves, or, how it is they wanted to be governed. Initially though, perhaps by pure inertia, monarchies prevailed for quite some time. It was then the best way to protect territories, maintain order and identity. Subjects were the lifeblood while the ruler kept the bloodline. It worked. For a while.
Then between the 18th and 20th centuries, not that long ago, a blink of an eye relative to the entire history of the earth, the people - the subjects, the ruled, the oppressed - revolted against their rulers. There were 10 + 1 such major upheavals that changed history and many more minor ones across the globe with only regional consequences but nevertheless just as meaningful. In just over two hundred years, modern empires fell, monarchs were deposed, the ruling class diminished and bureaucrats, mandarins, functionaries were driven out in many attempts to change how people preferred to be governed in a series of political and social experiments.
Ranked in order of significance, No.1 was: "The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in both French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed within three years".
Though No. 2, the American Revolution (1774-76) actually preceded the French Revolution. It was an "eye opener" because "The American Revolution initiated a series of social, political and intellectual transformations in early American society and government" that inspired others to follow.
The October Revolution of 1917 (No. 4) was the exclamation point to the end of the Romanov empire that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The 1911 Taiping Rebellion (No.5) ended the Qing empire in China. The Ottoman Empire ended with The Young Turk Revolution (1908).
There will be a point to all of these in a moment but I thought it is important to make note of these pivotal periods.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) was No.7. The PRC came about after a protracted Chinese revolution that actually begun in 1911 and ended in 1949 when Chairman Mao first established the Party that today is still the seat of power behind the PRC. Later on this.
The Cuban Revolution (No.8) was an interesting one. In the spring of 1952 a Cuban general named Batista overthrew the duly elected president Socarras. A lawyer named Fidel Castro revolted against Batista's government but lost and was imprisoned. Batista released him in 1955, a mistake, because Castro reorganized and successfully drove Batista out of power and became premier and later became "President for Life" in 1959.
The Islamic Revolution (No.9) in Iran overthrew the Iranian monarchy of the Pahlavi dynasty, the last vestige of the Persian Empire.
No.10, though a minor and regional one occurred in "Saint-Domingue (French pronunciation: [sÉ›̃.dÉ”.mÉ›̃É¡]) was a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola from 1659 to 1804, in what is now Haiti". It was pivotal because it ended the last hold of both the Spanish and French Empires and parts of the British Empire when slaves revolted in 1791 against the harsh treatments by plantation owners.
No. 10+1 was the Spanish Revolution. Spain was once a powerful empire. Check the list of Spanish speaking countries in South America and Mexico. The Philippines in Asia was a Spanish colony for 300 years. The only reason it is not a Spanish speaking country was because in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War (1898), the victor (U.S.) promoted English as the country's second language (even today). The Spanish empire was already waning at that time in 1898, preceded by unrest in almost all of its colonies worldwide. It was between 1936 to 1939 that they had their own civil war. Like England, today, Spain maintains some semblance of their monarchy. Rulers with little power, powerless to oppress, neither allowed the ability to dictate to their subjects with impunity.
Since the days of the Roman and Greek empires, countless experiments were made to determine how best to run them. The word government may not have meant much until after those empires were toppled to be replaced by a series of many until the present time when people are still faced with the same age old question.
What kind of government do they really want? How do they want to be governed? What do they expect from their government? What should the government expect from them?
Where do all of these come down to? It comes down to nations left with the choice between democracy (capitalism) and socialism or communism. I am still trying to unpack my research on the issue because, from what I have deduced from where I originated from, my world, a star system or even in another galaxy, functioned under what humans would define as a "Benevolent Dictatorship". So here are some of what I picked up that summarizes the difference between the two dominant systems of human government here. I will set aside monarchies and theocracies. The only meaningful monarchy in terms of real power is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The only theocracy that causes some worry in the eyes of the west and its neighbors is Iran.
I am trying to analyze the two dominant forms of government.
Both are economic systems; however, their political platforms are diametric opposites.
A. Capitalism
1. In a democracy, its economic foundation is the capitalist system. It puts no limit to how much individuals, or groups pooled together into corporations, can earn in terms of return on what they put into a business. This creates different classes of people, tiered into Rich, Upper middle class, Middle class, and the Poor (usually needing public assistance)
2. Government is not generally involved in commerce
3. Individual freedom is guaranteed
B. Socialism
"From an economic perspective, socialism and communism are the same. They’re both based on government ownership, central planning, and price controls.
From a political perspective, however, there’s a difference. Communism is an authoritarian form of government, while socialism can be the outcome of the democratic process".
--------- Dan Mitchell
1.There is no class system, strictly speaking but in reality there is.
2. Individual freedom is severely curtailed. The power of the state supersedes everything
3. Resources and wealth belong entirely to the state
The two statements below are a way of looking at the difference between the two systems:
"It is easy being a communist in a free country
Try being free in a Communist country".
I have no opinion at the moment, except to observe that half of the young people in my present adopted land (for now, in my evolution) seems to favor a socialist system, or at least they show enthusiasm to try it and it is gaining momentum. I could be wrong. But then they too could be wrong as well.
Observations:
1. Although there is supposed to be no class system in Communism, I see where 99 per cent are those belonging to the working class, collectively called the proletariat, but there is the one percent (could be more, actually) that is the ruling class - the upper echelon of the Communist party. The latter live a substantially better standard of living compared to the general population. I observe this in North Korea, the PRC and the former Soviet Union. What is happening in Venezuela today is the glaring tragedy of socialism gone terribly wrong.
2. The democratic system is not perfect either. It could conceivably come to a point where in an effort to gain power or have more control over the running of a government, one side, say one party, can become so dominant that its leadership could come under a sort of monarchial hold by career politicians. It can happen when politicians become no different from the fiefdoms (members of congress), regional lords (state governors and mayors) of a monarchy system, where the central government holds power over the press that produces a monolithic agenda by manipulating the information conduit to the people. When that happens the nation turns into what it was like before the French Revolution. In communism, the state and the media operate as one.
I am here only to observe and that is the best information I have for the moment. Until the next report. I still don't get the following human humor though:
1. "I finally understand the difference between capitalism, libertarianism, and socialism.
Capitalists hire libertarians to say socialism is bad. Socialists say capitalism is bad for free. And libertarians will say everyone else is bad as long as they get paid".
2. "Socialism is like Jazz...
It's full of obvious mistakes, but somehow still manages to sound good".
Note: Although Seguey did make a passing historical reference, It did not emphasize the fact that the American Revolution unarguably set the example for other nations to follow as a tool against oppressive and abusive monarchial rulers and regimes. However, today America maintains its democratic principles that adhere to capitalism as its steadfast platform and remains the best example of the free market system. For now, anyway.
“Socialism only works in two places: heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.” – Ronald Reagan
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” – Ronald Reagan
“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” – Ronald Reagan
