"The majority of those in power have no responsibilities to anyone other than themselves. They do not care for those who are "under" them. If such was the case, as I said, you wouldn't see heaps of homeless, starving, and war-devastated people in the world. And you wouldn't see a lot of other bad things, too."

That may be your experience. My experience - at least at the local level - is rather different. That is not to say that leaders are incredibly compassionate and caring people - those traits taken to the extreme make leaders ineffective, for one thing - but I have found leaders to desire the general health and well-being of their people.

Only to the extent that "their" people (i.e., subjects, employees, etc.) remain just healthy enough to reproduce and ensure them and their successors a continued supply of subjects, workers, etc. An ideology that supports individualism so heavily does not lend itself to compassion.

The reasons for homeless, starving, and war-devastated people in the world are a bit more complex than a lack of caring from the top,

No, it's not. It's about the people at the "top" continuing to support policies that does not allocate what those people need, and to continue starting and fighting wars because of how they profit from them. It's not due to "complicated" factors beyond their control.

though that is sometimes present. Most persistently homeless people, in particular, have personal problems that are not easily addressed.

Providing a job that pays well, and which is in their interest/skill set so they can do a good job and achieve happiness, and to present them with reasonable shelter and physical and mental health care of sufficient quality to keep them off the streets is quite easily addressed. The refusal of people at the top to do this when the resources are readily available casts their compassion in doubt. People who become homeless will tend to develop personality problems for obvious reasons; those who developed them beforehand were likely not provided with good jobs that facilitated their personal talents, or failed to provide them with a decent living. People at the top do not have to worry about "petty" things like their next meal or a lack of interesting things to do with their lives, so even when they have severe personality problems (and many of them do), their privilege still enables them to "fail upwards" rather than down into the gutter.

"Omg -- did you laugh at him then?"

Not out loud ... but, yes. I chuckled a little to myself.

Did you at least berate yourself afterwards?

"many smart people in positions of power keep making the same errors over and over again,"

True, in part because intelligence is not the same as wisdom, in part for ideological reasons that makes them resistant to believing a certain action can fix a problem even when they have seen it happen repeatedly. (For example, capitalism of either the free market sort or the neo-feudal sort best exemplified in Japan has consistently lifted people out of poverty and provided them with a decent standard of living and a fair amount of equality, while communism and socialism of every sort have consistently mired its victims in grinding poverty, even grinding relatively wealthy nations like Venezuela into horrors of starvation and wretchedness while a few politically favored people live in luxury, yet this has not prevented otherwise intelligent people from attacking capitalism and promoting communism or socialism as a way to eradicate poverty.)

Okay, you had to go there, so I will go there, albeit briefly. Your "free market" capitalism depends on a large underclass that works for tiny overclass that depends upon disparity of wealth, poverty, war, etc., to keep those at the top in power. I have refuted your intellectual dishonesty about your deliberate misunderstanding of what socialism is numerous times before, so I need not do it again other than to remind you that you do not know what you're talking about or even referring to, so I need not waste bandwidth by doing it yet again, since we can go in that circle endlessly yet again. I understand the dig you gave me at the end, and since the evidence of a huge amount of homelessness, poverty, environmental destruction, and economic insecurity of the masses continues to refute your defenses of capitalism as I see it, I stand my frequent previous assessments.

I am not going to go easier on you due to friendship, because you know quite well that was an antagonistic move on your part that will result in anything BUT a civil conversation. Your memory is not bad enough for you to convince me it was anything but. Remember the part of our discussion about repeating history, and how that always goes?

Now, with that made clear on both our ends for the 250th time now, do you want to continue to go there, and let it continue until all the usual frustrations lead to all the usual insults and personal attacks inevitably borne out of that frustration begin? Especially since you know Qtns will join in, and you are well aware he will be even worse than you in terms of those insults once the frustration goes? The last time I came close to ending my friendship with him for good because how far his insults went. We've been through this in circular fashion over and over again, and it's pointless to continue unless all we want to do is beat on each other.

But on the other hand, I can't think of any people in power (who are not mere puppets) who, after learning a simple three-step process and repeating it over a thousand times would come back the next day and ask "Now how did we do that again?"

Except history has shown they keep making the same mistake over and over again, because they are well aware that truly doing things differently might entail dealing more fairly with those under their charge, and this would undermine their power.

But on the other hand, I can't think of any people in power (who are not mere puppets) who, after learning a simple three-step process and repeating it over a thousand times would come back the next day and ask "Now how did we do that again?"

"Um, those "smart" people were well known for being vicious tyrants."

If I were to agree that those smart people were vicious tyrants, would you agree with my point that they have done far more to improve the lives of the vast majority of humanity than all the well-meaning but incompetent people?

No, I wouldn't, because having deliberately bad intentions do not lead to good outcomes any more than good but misguided people. Usually the improvements come from those at the "bottom" they hire to, not the people at the top themselves, since being at the top requires no intelligence whatsoever. More often than not, it involves the luck of what family you were born into, or doing just the right thing at the right time due to being born at the right time.

"And this lot of smart people were working at the bottom, not by making decisions from the "top.""

Granted. The chief, most important decision made at the top was to stay out of the way. That's what Laissez-faire means.

Here you go again. No, "laissez-faire" means (and you KNOW I'm not talking literal translation; I'm talking how it turns out in practice), let people at the top acquire all the power they want, and those on the bottom beat on each other and fight each other so that a few of them can make it there all they want. You are NOT going to change my opinion on this, Baldur, I have seen and experienced too much to do otherwise, and while you obviously think I came to the wrong conclusion, I obviously do not think I did, and that is not going to change for as long as the two of us remain alive. As one friend of mine who used to disagree with me on the exact same manner once told me, all we are going to do from continuing this subject is aggravate and anger each other. So, please consider exerting the same degree of common sense that other friend of mine did, and consider just ending that argument instead of taking the high road when you well know from past experience the one place that route will lead to. Hint: NOT with either of us being convinced by the other to our very opposing ideology on the matter.

"what would you be doing around a Belarussian in the first place?"

Why wouldn't I know a Belarussian? I know lots of people from all around the world.

I just can't see you having an extended conversation with a Balrussian.

"the attitude has always been that obeying authority figures is always more important than doing the "right" thing."

Are you sure you're American?

Considering how little things change, and how poorly the status quo is ever challenged en masse, then yes, I can see how I do not sound very American by suggesting otherwise. You totally got me there, Baldur. I'm actually Asgardian.