Utopia Summary/Explanation Part 2 - pages 20-41

-People are essentially accountable for all parts of a society, and people are to act as a unit rather than as an individual. This manifests itself in almost all policies that Raphael describes. One of these is the system of having people in the city also working in the country. People are also not allowed any property. They are to move from home to home every few years and can be ordered to move from place to place as the government sees fit.
*In theory, this is excellent. However, I am more of an individualist and I believe that you should only be accountable for yourself, and to give what would be property in our society to all of the community makes you rely on the goodwill of others to have a good life. I do not agree with the idea that the government can move people from place to place, because I believe in autonomy.

-People are not to be overworked. With this idea in mind, the number of hours a person works is regulated by the government. The people are to dedicate a great deal of the rest of their time to reading or going about other ways of improving their minds.
*I think the idea of having more people on the whole working less hours individually is good because it burdens all of society with the workload rather than a few people who work. However, I do not know how to get all of the population to work. I also do not know how a culture would be able to motivate its whoel citizenry to strive to attaining knowledge.

-There are rules regarding how people should be frugal. This includes the idea that people should only own one set of clothes. They also have a unique way of holding onto their gold and other precious metals. They keep their gold on slaves and diamonds are just child toys.
*I think it is noble that the people are not eccentric, but the personal expression that clothes allow for is a freedom that I do not think the government should intrude on. But for a country who does not rely on money for exchanging goods, the ways of keeping gold/diamonds is a good idea.

-Utopia will never use its people to fight in war. It will instead pay for mercenaries to do the fighting, and the only just cause of war is to set up colonies when the cities in Utopia are overcrowded and the land they are taking over is idle.
*I think that war is rarely just, and to take land from another nation by force because you have become overcrowded is one of those cases.

Assignment 1 - pages 1-20 concepts introduced by raphael

The first concept Raphael introduced that I was able to identify contrasts with the United States today. Raphael argues that it is unwise for a nation to maintain a standing army, because it was the maintenance of standing armies in Rome, Carthage, Syria, and other nations and cities that was their downfall. He supports this argument by saying that statesmen will seek out war in order to keep the armies from becoming idle. Raphael also argues that perpetually equipping armies is a financially costly undertaking. Next, Raphael uses a conversation with a lawyer about how to properly punish thieves to introduce a concept for governance. He says that it is not just for all crimes to be capital. If the punishment for theft is the same as the punishment for murder, then the criminal who would have only stolen from another man would also kill the other man. The next three principals that Raphael introduces are similar in that they are all related to economics. The first is that a king should forfeit his throne if he has made his subjects poor and miserable through oppression. The second is that a king should care more about the wealth of his kingdom and those inhabiting it more than of his own riches. A public’s safety is closely related to its level of impoverishment, and it is unbecoming of a king to rule over beggars. A king is less likely to oppress his people if money is able to be exchanged through an equitable and free system of commerce. Still, Raphael actually believes that a kingdom will be ruled unjustly and its subjects will live unhappily if there are notions of property and money becomes the standard of all things. He supports this by saying property and money will be divided in a way that makes parts of the population unhappy. Finally, Raphael explains that a nation should not seek to expand, but should instead govern itself efficiently. The conquered people will always be in revolution or under invasion from another force. This means they will constantly be displeasured by war and the king will be able to pay little attention to the new land.
I fundamentally agree with the first argument regarding standing armies. An army of professionals costs the state money to maintain and encourages rulers to act aggressively. Yet, I think it is a dangerous option to have no military at all, so I believe a military should be restricted in size just as a leader should be restricted in the ways they could use the military. I also agree with Raphael’s next argument regarding the punishment of crimes. It makes perfect sense to me that not all crimes are proportionate in the way they affect society, and it therefore fits that the retribution would be most just if the response to the crime is proportionate. The next two arguments deal with a king’s economic duty to the kingdom, and I agree with both of Raphael’s concepts. I believe a country’s leadership is in place to serve the country so it may prosper, and by hoarding money or instituting oppressive monetary policies a king is not serving the country properly. However, I disagree with Raphael when he says that a nation cannot be happy or just if it is based on a system of money and property. If he were alive (and non-fictional) I would challenge him to offer an alternative method of exchanging goods and services. This sort of system would only work if a nation were to never expand and people were able to be self-reliant, but in the modern world it seems like it would be impossible. Finally, I disagree with the notion that a nation should not seek to expand. I do not see how a population would be able to contain itself in a given area of land over an extended period of time if that population were to continually grow. As the number of people living in a nation grows, the infrastructure to support the growth must grow alongside.