Sorry which democracy? If these talks and their outcomes are already a secret (without discussing matters of national security), then this is one more reason for me not to consider the EU nor the US a democracy. The people have just a tiny fraction of power compared to the corps.
Let's just be fair and teach the next generations that our countries have been hijacked by corps+lobbyists, and that democracy is just a word used to make people accept their totalitarian power.
To be honest I don't believe anybody really cares about the ideals of democracy. If the same secrecy was being used to push legislation you supported you wouldn't be whining at all, you would probably be defending it instead because you would rationalize that passing the law is more important than the method used to pass it.
Later politicians coopted the term "democracy", as marketing. One source to learn more is Graeber's "The Democracy Project". (http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/democracy-what-is-it-good-...)
Pushing a button every few years for your new corporate-sponsored king isn't meaningful democratic participation.
http://www.opensecrets.org/PRES08/contrib.php?cid=N00009638
Maybe you were thinking about Bernie Sanders?
I'll give you though that the first-past-the-post system is terrible and you would be better off with a proportional system.
And sure, maybe it's voter intelligence or apathy rather than some conspiracy. Doesn't matter. I'm just saying the result isn't representative and shouldn't be framed as the will of the people. I'm not saying anything about the root cause.
Fine, but then you can't really frame anything as being or not the will of the people as there's no point of reference. You can't say that TTIP and TPP and TISA are not the will of the people just because Reddit and a bunch of news sites like to hate on them, for instance.
Often the two do line up. Sometimes they don't. The fact that these officials were elected doesn't automatically indicate either way.
They won't get the exposure. They'll be pigeonholed as the joke candidate by the well-funded machines that have interest in making sure you don't consider leaving the two-party system that's worked well for them.
Needing excessive funding and backing by elites to really be considered a candidate implies that only those who promise to uphold their interests will be portrayed as being a legitimate choice.
The option for a third party is in the specification, but we've purposely implemented it in such a way that power remains in the hands of the few.
I bet a country like that would fall victim to a two-party system virtually over night. I wouldn't even be surprised if it ended up being a single-party system where the two parties were only superficially different.
I think we should try it, like trias-politica and all, by trying to keep our legislative leg free from non-democratic influences. Like those mehhhh lobby organisations.
You can fight them, you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
If anything, the high unemployment in the EU over the past decade would have been a fertile breeding ground for such ideas. I'd say we're doing pretty well so far as a society by not engaging in more drastic measures given how much our rights are trampled on.
We aren't as violent as we used to be in the 1970s-80s (violent crime has dropped precipitously, for instance). Perhaps because we don't use leaded petrol any more.
The far-right consists of anti-immigration people. That's not far-right. That was a normal centre-right opinion just a few decades ago. It's definitely not Fascism despite the implication.
The far-left consists of people wanting to protect their government pension funds, green activists and people who do not like meddling by the likes of the IMF and WB. That's not far-left either. They definitely aren't communists.
It's ridiculous how the media portrays these mostly sane political opinions as extremes held only by extremists.
I agree that there are very few far left parties in Europe with any number of elected politicians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik
[2] >In a newsletter published by a group calling itself "The trade union of Hungarian police officers prepared for action", the following was allegedly printed: "Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews." The editor of the union, Judit Szima, was a Jobbik candidate in the upcoming election for the European Union parliament. Haaretz alleged Szima "didn't see anything wrong with the content of the article."
I think Golden Dawn waving Swastikas around counts as fascism, even if some of the other right-wing parties in Europe are more tiptoeing around it.
I honestly doubt real fascism will make any great gains until the financial elites feel their masters of the universe positions threatened, at which point some of them will throw their lot (and considerable wealth) in with the far right and ramp up the rhetoric and the violence. That's when things are going to get scary real fast.
We're not there yet, but the potential is growing very quickly. The fusion of a lot of cash, a paranoid elite and a bunch of terminally unemployed very pissed off young people is explosive.
>The far-left consists of people wanting to protect their government pension funds, green activists and people who do not like meddling by the likes of the IMF and WB. That's not far-left either. They definitely aren't communists.
There are communists in Europe, but yes, what is designated far left by the media these days is pathetically middle of the road by historical standards. Syriza's a mildly lefty damp squib.
>It's ridiculous how the media portrays these mostly sane political opinions as extremes held only by extremists.
Of course.
That said, left/right/far left/far right are all relative terms.
The EU is doing that right now, debasing the Euro to reduce the overall massive debt load and fake growth to placate the population and pretend to show things improving. Being able to abuse the currency makes it easy to continue to meet social obligations, but in actuality they're defaulting on those obligations through currency devaluation (ie the net result being citizens of the EU will suffer a lower standard of living, while most people won't realize what's happening until years later).
If Japan couldn't abuse the Yen to fill the huge hole in their budget that their debt is causing, what would happen to their government? It would have already collapsed, unable to pay its bills. It's only the fiat system that enables them to continue. Japanese savers used to pay for the debt accumulation, then their savings rate collapsed; so now the Japanese government is taking wealth from their citizens via currency devaluation instead to keep covering the debt costs.
You can have a "class consciousness" without pulling out the hyperbole and Stalin card.
This consciousness is what afforded us civil rights, granted us a safe work place, an eight hour work day, labor rights and bought us social programs that keep people from dying in the streets.
Somehow these "class conscious" revolutionaries didn't let society devolve into chaos.
It's this consciousness that we need to remind ourselves and those with power of our worth. Otherwise, we'll continue to get fucked over. No one will offer to make us concessions that we never had the power to ask for.
The majority of the third world and anyone who wasn't born into the right religion/race/family in the first world would like to have a word with your first point, though.
I guess we shouldn't realize nor negotiate from our position in society since being run by plutocrats isn't so bad because you say so.
Good plutocrats try to make sure their population has "just enough" that they don't rally in the streets with guns. Relying on the goodwill of these people is an absurd expectation.
This isn't true at all.
So, "corporatocracy" is not a valid word.
It would be like calling a dictatorship a "manocracy."
On the subject of political vs. economic systems: a specific political system implies a specific economic system, and vice versa, so there isn't the distinction here that you think.
corps+lobbyists+owners of capital(wealthy)
Neither the people nor corporations are supposed to have any power. "Power," here, means the ability to weild force against others.
The founding ideal of the US was that nobody could do that; in other words, it was supposed to be a system of freedom, as opposed to coercion.
I was not trying to hint on what it is supposed to be.
If you allow the rich to establish treaties that prevent nations from exercising sovereign power to bring those same rich people in to line, and you do it in private preventing the citizens/subjects from even knowing the details of the regime you intend to impose then you're operating well outside anything that can be described as democratic. TTIP seemingly intends to go further still, not only preventing nations from exercising sovereign powers against corporations but allowing the corporations (which are really proxies for the plutocrats) to exercise equivalent powers over those nations.
We've seen these sorts of powers in use by tobacco companies suing countries for trying to improve citizens health.
It's fantastic capitalism - profit above environment, profit above health, profit above morality, profit for the few against rights and freedoms of the many.
2) >It's fantastic capitalism - profit above environment, profit above health, profit above morality, profit for the few against rights and freedoms of the many.
This statement shows that you have 0 understanding of capitalism in regards to society. Capitalism is not about selfishness. It is about self-interest. For example, it is not in the long term self-interest of energy companies that we are experiencing global warming and they know it, and despite what you think they are working on fixing that. It's just not so simple to shift.
3) Having said that, I for one, don't want someone who has such strong feelings about things he understands so little about, to have a say in policy making. He can be swayed so easy by emotions and articles in the NYT and form an opinion about complicated problems he has no clue about. But representative democracy is great, right?
Indeed, democracy is flawed - IMO it's the least worst system we have a chance of implementing effectively and with relative stability. I may not want a particular group's opinions but I'm prepared to accept that system over others.
As for "0 understanding of capitalism in regards to society" - I'm using capitalism as a short form for "Western capitalism" which is epitomised by things which aren't truly "capitalism" per se.
Semantic niceties aside energy companies in my country regularly act against their long term interest as do most businesses. Indeed they usually only act in a way that might be termed moral to fulfil legal obligations and then they tend to find a way to subvert their obligations. But then as the rhetoric here often reminds us "companies are there solely to make profit", shareholders complain if they do anything beyond their obligations. Energy companies are looking at their own goals and not societies needs.
As for 3 ... I'll confess now I didn't read the NYT article [I just assumed it was the same content as has been doing the rounds in the last couple of months - very similar to what's happening with TPP], I've been following TTIP since I learnt about it from ex-colleagues in the IPR community about 18 months ago. 38degrees started their campaign about 14 months ago IIRC. I'm the first to admit I'm ill informed on it, but that's almost the whole point - negotiations and details of the direction and end goal are hidden and actively kept secret even from representatives. There's no way for me to be completely informed. Representative democracy can't work if the representatives aren't even allowed to access the knowledge needed to make decisions for the people and it fails to be democratic when the people aren't able to see if those representatives are acting in their own interest or in the interests of the people they deign to represent.
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