A Comment on ”How diversity will lead tothe collapse of civilization” by Stone Zhang.

My first impression of the title of this article was more of sociology / philosophy concept of arguments but when I finished reading it, I found myself puzzled; the piece was about economy so I read it again and still in my opinion the title doesn’t really represent the body because it’s mostly about “Capitalism” and “economic inequality” rather than “economic diversity". Beside the title and concept of this article there are some statements made by Stone that I would like to address:

1.   The article starts as: “Economy is the centerpiece of society” which I believe otherwise. A society, most commonly, known as: “a group of people with common territory, interaction, and culture”. The role of the economy is to establish formal relationships among people as their daily business of living.

2.   Natural Resources: Natural resources undoubtedly play an important role in the economy of many countries but it doesn’t guaranty the economic prosperity because depending on its easy revenue takes away motivations to develop other areas of economy and can cause corruption or conflicts. While some of the richest countries in natural resources remain undeveloped there are countries like Japan, South Korea or Switzerland who thrived to become world major exporters with no natural resources.

3.   I don’t deny that some of the wars are motivated by economic interest, however some others have geopolitical importance such as civil war in Syria which is the war between two global-regional rivals, Russia - Iran on one side and United States - Israel on the other side. Syria by itself does not carry any economical importance.

4.   Wealth inequality: The graph bellow is based on some of the facts from “Why Nations Fail” book written by Acemoglu and Robinson, and it demonstrates the growth of wealth inequality in some of countries from 1985 to 2012, however as it appears some countries have been able to slower it by offering a better social services to their citizens and more effective tax policies.

          I believe that wealth inequality will always remain as part of our society and technically it would be justifiable to some extend, however I am not as pessimistic as stone and trust that our society smartly will be adjusted and corrected accordingly in the process of evolving and progress.

Guns and Politics in the United States

On December 15, 1791 the first ten amendments as the “Bill of Rights” were adopted to the United States Constitution. The Second Amendment which, is one of the most controversial passages of it, reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.

Many citizens are surprised to learn that until recent years the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun. In fact, until 2008 every other time the court had ruled otherwise. So, what had changed? And why the Supreme Court ruled differently, in the battle of Gun Control and Gun Rights, this time? The answer is: NRA, National Rifle Association. 

Michael Waldman the author of The Second Amendment: A Biography, in his article, How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment, shows us how NRA and gun lobbies succeeded in planning and influencing the politicians, especially conservative presidential candidates, which can lead to appointing a guns friendly General Attorney or  Supreme Court Justices. So the law and interpretation of constitution has changed gradually and firmly within a decade not sudden. 

Despite the facts and statistics that show the catastrophic effects of guns in our society, still many of our citizens are obsessed with guns and NRA fuels this obsession to its benefits. Here is a brief gun related statistics for the year 2015:

•               Mass Shooting: 372 mass shooting, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 people.

•               School Shooting: 64.

•               All Shooting: Some 13,286 people were killed and 26,819 people were injured.

It is so saddened and disturbing that NRA and gun obsessed citizens use the same statistic to justify the needs for more guns for self defense against gun violence. They choose to ignore the fact that there wouldn’t be such high rate of gun violence in the first place if we had efficient gun control laws. The diagram bellow compares the homicide rate and guns contributions to it between USA and some other advanced democracies with restrictions on guns:

                                   

The role of guns in crimes seems so obvious and I believe we can use the experience of other countries such as Australia on gun control to save lives. A study shows a strong effectiveness of adapting such law by Australian government. As the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced.

            I support a very restricted gun regulation with these parameters:

1-   All the automatic and semi-automatic guns should be prohibited for everyone other than military and law enforcement.

2- Hand guns only by federal government's permission for private citizens, due to special circumstances, and public servants as needed.

3- Shotguns and rifles for hunting and as sport would be allowed for private citizens with state issued license. 

A short comment on “Why Donald Trump Should Not Become President And Why I Disagree” by Angel Vigil, November 04, 2016.

Obviously the post was published 4 days before the election in support of Donald Trump and I would like to congratulate Angel for the victory of her presidential candidate, however I respectfully disagree with her arguments for the following reasons:

·      A healthy and constructive methodology in any election should be choosing the best and most qualified candidates for the job not voting for someone because we dislike his/her opponent.

·      The statement: “she is a criminal and should punished for the crimes she has committed” seems to be inaccurate. Hillary Clinton had only been under investigation and never been charged with any crime. We cannot call a person criminal unless he/she has been formally charged by the prosecutor and found guilty by the court of law. As Democrats are not supposed to call Donald Trump a criminal while he is not convicted in “Trump University Fraud Case”, yet.

·      Angle has a valid point about minimizing America’s involvement in the conflicts around the world and spending the resources in our own country, however we need to remember: 1- the effects of globalization is a reality of modern world and we are part of it, 2- it was a republican president who started two massively expensive wars. It was a Democrat president who brought most of our veterans back home.

·      Lying (to some extend) has become part of politics, we like it or not. So, in response to the statement in the post: “Anyone that lies the way Hillary Clinton does doesn't even take pride in herself, so she can not take pride in her country”, I refer Angel to “POLITIFACT” or many other fact checking institutions who have compared two candidates during their campaign and debates. A diagram from “Politifact” in below shows a comparison between president-elect Trump and secretory Clinton:

U.S. Presidential Election System

Expensive, outdated, and inefficient

History tells us that the founding fathers had legitimate concerns about the political system they were developing after achieving independence and they explored different options for replacing monarchism with a “government by consent of governed” for the new “Republic.” 

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, including selection by Congress, by the governors, state legislatures, special group of members of Congress, and by direct popular election, however as a result of that convention and few amendments later, we have inherited our current Election system with some unique and often obsolete elements.

•        Voter Registration: this requirement of the voting process is a perfect example of outdated regulations. In the old days, you needed to register for voting so the state could verify your eligibility with certain criteria which some of them don’t exist anymore. It’s easier to provide U.S. citizens with a national identification card (like many other nations), which could be used for many ID purposes including voting eligibility verification.

•         Electoral College: in a historical context and with all the challenges that Founding Fathers had to solve, it was easier to appreciate the Electoral System but in the 21^st century it’s less complicated and more democratic to implement a “Direct Vote” and value the popular vote for the highest office of the land.

•         Election day: many of citizens don’t know why should we be voting on a business day (on a Tuesday in November), and it seems there isn’t a willing power to change it. Yes, historically we were an agrarian society traveling by horse and needed a day to get to the county seat without interfering... but we are not that society anymore. We are living in a different world.

   These are not the only problems our election structure is suffering from. The American presidential election process is very long and therefore expensive. There is no starting point limit for campaigns. Long campaigns don’t necessarily increase the participations, and often have negative effects on public affairs when people get tired of too much political noise. Here is a diagram comparing U.S. elections with some other democracies:

           It seems trying to change or improve the entire system of the presidential election might be a long shot, and perhaps hard to reach in one step, but replacing the voter registrations by using a national identification card and changing the Election Day to weekend or making it a national holiday makes it much easier for the voters and we can expect a higher participation rate.