People can sense who deserves trust, even if they do not know it. One can learn to see through deception, however disillusioning or painful that may be. Deserving trust requires blatant honesty, much more than avoiding blatant dishonesty. It also requires meaning and substance behind words.
Trustworthiness is a meaningful concept, despite mockeries like political and moral leadership. Ordinary people have a better grasp than experts. Truth is a matter of degree, and its expression more so. Yet absolutes exist, such as life itself. People have limited ability to express absolutes, so a truth can have only as much meaning as people can find in it. Meaning comes across when people speak with real feeling, but expertise generally comes across as know it all style arrogance. In the name of what is best for the public, experts enforce standards of behavior they define as normal.
Humanity has not learned anything if it thinks it has found a final answer to anything. There is always a better way to express things. Few theories stand up to the test of time. People have access to information on many matters, but reliability is always in question, more so if money is involved. Money entangles so heavily in politics that it seems to have a stranglehold.
Politics ought to belong to the people, but is not designed for that. All the noise about democracy only goes so far; the people lost all control when warlike men rampaged civilization millennia ago. The forms have changed, but women still get raped and people die of malnutrition, all over Earth, our bountiful nest ever more fouled just for money. Loopholes allow modern capitalism to appear to flourish. Free enterprise accountable to the people has the potential to lift the standard of living for everyone, but capitalism as practiced has never fulfilled that promise. Competition without rules tends to degrade to the vicious. This is not a problem unique to competition; as a force, it has benefits and dangers.
Making free enterprise accountable to the people is not as difficult as it may seem. The difficulty is caused by momentum, disinformation, efforts to stay in control by people in positions of authority or benefit from business as usual. This problem is made to seem inevitable, insurmountable, but no problem caused by man is insoluble. Solutions abound, but generally get ignored, squashed, or bought out as life goes on as usual. There is another way. Make your vote count. If you think you can represent your ideas of the public interest better than those in charge, run for office. Dare to create controversy; that is inevitable whenever difficult issues are raised.
Free Soil exists to raise that sort of issue, to invite a free for all public discussion. As a political party, it has its party line, defining principles, charter, priorities. People may agree with some, none, or most. The point is to make one think, whether things are the way they are because they have to be.
Trustworthiness is a meaningful concept, despite mockeries like political and moral leadership. Ordinary people have a better grasp than experts. Truth is a matter of degree, and its expression more so. Yet absolutes exist, such as life itself. People have limited ability to express absolutes, so a truth can have only as much meaning as people can find in it. Meaning comes across when people speak with real feeling, but expertise generally comes across as know it all style arrogance. In the name of what is best for the public, experts enforce standards of behavior they define as normal.
Humanity has not learned anything if it thinks it has found a final answer to anything. There is always a better way to express things. Few theories stand up to the test of time. People have access to information on many matters, but reliability is always in question, more so if money is involved. Money entangles so heavily in politics that it seems to have a stranglehold.
Politics ought to belong to the people, but is not designed for that. All the noise about democracy only goes so far; the people lost all control when warlike men rampaged civilization millennia ago. The forms have changed, but women still get raped and people die of malnutrition, all over Earth, our bountiful nest ever more fouled just for money. Loopholes allow modern capitalism to appear to flourish. Free enterprise accountable to the people has the potential to lift the standard of living for everyone, but capitalism as practiced has never fulfilled that promise. Competition without rules tends to degrade to the vicious. This is not a problem unique to competition; as a force, it has benefits and dangers.
Making free enterprise accountable to the people is not as difficult as it may seem. The difficulty is caused by momentum, disinformation, efforts to stay in control by people in positions of authority or benefit from business as usual. This problem is made to seem inevitable, insurmountable, but no problem caused by man is insoluble. Solutions abound, but generally get ignored, squashed, or bought out as life goes on as usual. There is another way. Make your vote count. If you think you can represent your ideas of the public interest better than those in charge, run for office. Dare to create controversy; that is inevitable whenever difficult issues are raised.
Free Soil exists to raise that sort of issue, to invite a free for all public discussion. As a political party, it has its party line, defining principles, charter, priorities. People may agree with some, none, or most. The point is to make one think, whether things are the way they are because they have to be.