Post originally by Spike at 2005-06-15 15:23:22
Converted from Phorums BB System

I agree, there are many many examples of people, nations really, working on flawed systems. The outcomes are nearly universal, however.
Lets examine one real world example: Communism, a fundamentally flawed economic system that, even with the fall of the Soviet Union continues to have adherents. Communism, like most Socialist economic systems (ignoring the political side of things here) is flawed because it fails to take into account basic human nature, we are lazy, selfish and greedy, as a species. The Soviet Union imploded after only eighty years, there were Russians alive who remembered the Czars, so we can say it lasted less than one lifetime. China tried the same basic system, currently they are attempting to survive by cutting out the very heart of the socialist structure peice by peice to acheive equilibrium. To keep it on life support until they succeed they allow purely capitalist enclaves to exist to feed the beast, despite the simple fact that capitalism is the economic (and political) opposite of Socialism. India, for reasons that baffle me, attempts to have a 'capitalist' political system and a Socialist Economy, which is why monthly rent in New Dehli is fifety cents a month, but you have to pay your landlord a bribe of $100,000 dollars to move in, in the first place. Of course, he'll probably pay you about the same to get you out when you want to move...

In short, the response to a fundamentally flawed system in real life is one of two extremes: It dies, horribly, and often with a great deal of violence as the most put upon members of the culture take it out on those who continue to profit from the broken system.
Or: The system is changed, either from those in power until it works, or from those without to make do until it does change.

Leaving aside purely economic arguments for the time being, let us adress some flawed sociological factors.
Take the US circa 1950. Troops returning from WWII found their wifes, sisters, girlfriends working in the civilian sector in greater numbers than before. Faced with a large population of trained soldiers with no real occupations available, the US Govt. phased out the idea of women workers until the only real viable sociological option for women was June Cleaver, stay at home and care for the kids. This was, debateably necessary, but sociologically unworkable, as it put half the population into a tiny box. As the daughters of the June Cleaver generation grew up, they naturally rebelled against this, the result was the Feminest Movement, which in some ways went too far, becoming on the fringes and anti-man movement. This was equally unworkable, and so the vast majority of Feminists today are actually pretty concerned with Male issues. The same result as before, the system either implodes violently, or changes until it can sustain itself. In this case, the 'unworkable sociological flaw' lasted barely a decade or two. A generation, no more.
I could go on, the examples are regrettably as numerous as you suggest, and cover the entire spectrum of human existance, religion, politics, even science.

For the curious: Religion- martin luther, preists not marrying...
Politics- discounting the capitalist/socialist models expressed above, consider USA's Federalist party, it almost killed the democracy in it's infancy, but public backlash made Moderate politics more viable, I expect to see this again in a few more years...
Science-Start with the Aristotolian model, move up through Alchemy into Science as Heresy, into more modern times when Scientist attempt to defend views about racism and creationism in the face of facts and public opinion.

Luckily human sociology is a dynamic system, so that flaws don't eventually lead to a catastrophic breakdown that dooms us all.