re: #24 CuriousLurker

Most worldviews—be they sociopolitical, religious, whatever—usually sound good in theory, but fail in practice once imperfect humans get a hold of them.

>Edit: I have yet to see or read about any system that has successfully delivered “real happiness” for everyone. How could it when everyone’s needs are different the things that make any given person happy can vary wildly?

This assumes that ‘real happiness’ is some kind of cultural goal. A wide range of ideologies will work to raise a culture to hegemony, as long as they are minimally consistent with environmental and technological reality. The Egyptian, Chinese, Roman, Aztec, and British empires didn’t spend a lot on Gallup polling to see if everyone was happy.