Do we have Democracy?

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Do We Have Democracy?

Democracy is based on the Greek words for people and power, a democracy is a society in which the power is in the hands of the people. Most societies on earth claim to be democratic, often because they hold periodic elections to allow the people to choose their rulers, but does that mean that power is in the hands of the people? As soon as the election is over no, the people do not have power, the small number of people the small majority of them chose will hold power until the next election. If the election goes well and the people are informed, the best people will be chosen to rule, (although that is rare), This is at best a meritocracy, (rule of the best) where some have greater liberty than others (see the video: democracy).

And even if the best people for the job are elected, the people are not misinformed by the media, Corporations don’t control the campaign process, school has not created mass apathy, and religion has not taken a voice in state affairs, Even if everything goes right, there is one power that transforms the best meritocracy into an authoritarian society, bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy comes from the French word for desk and the Greek word for power, literally power of the desks, in practice it means that the real power lies not with the elected politicians but the appointed officials who work in government departments, it is their job to implement political decisions, which means in reality nothing happens without their say, because they have the power to say how much something will cost, how many people they will need to do it, how long it will take, etc. and if they don’t want to do something they just say it’s expensive it’ll take too many people off of other projects (or it won’t take many people if it’s a make work situation) and it’ll take a looonngg time, and if the politicians call they’re bluff it’s within their power to make implementing the proposal an expensive, obstructive, and lengthy process.

This has a lot to do with how a bureaucrat measures success, it’s the same way someone in the business world would, money, however unlike a business which makes a profit bureaucrats get budgets. The bigger the department, the bigger the budget, the bigger the pay checks for bureaucrats (because it’s a bigger responsibility). It is in a bureaucracy’s interest to spend as much as possible, that’s why your taxes always seem to be going up.

We do not have Democracy. We have bureaucracies, disguised as meritocracies, calling themselves democracies. If we want Freedom, power must rest with the people, and that means organizing society to be truly democratic.

Part 2

John Locke was famous for his thought on the social contract, the idea that there is contract between the people in a society and those who rule them. Back then such things were rare or didn’t exist, now a day’s we’re familiar with them, they’re called constitutions. Lysander Spooner pointed out the problem with the social contract school long ago, in his famous essay “No Treason” he argued that:

 

a supposed social contract cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation, because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all. (not a quote)

 

So how do we solve this, simple, we don’t base governments on geography, people should be allowed to choose freely who they pay taxes too, where they vote, and what services they receive in return. The first step towards freedom and democracy is to let each person choose the government that is best for them. The second step is to make sure those governments are representative of the people who chose them: By giving them the right to self and elective representation. That is to say anyone may go to the governments and vote on any piece of legislation with their one vote at any time, or because that’s simply impractical person A could sign their one vote over to person B who could then use both their votes, of course person A would have to be able to take their vote away from person B at any time, but otherwise that’s how government would work.

You may have noticed some one would still have to carry out the decisions of a democratic government. We haven’t seen the end of the bureaucrats yet. But by allowing freedom of choice of government, bureaucracies now have the same reason to lower costs and be more efficient that business’ do. The more they can do with less income from taxes, the more citizens will join the government. It’s simple.

*Smart internet people may have noticed an inter-governmental legal system would have to exist if governments weren’t geographically based, because there be a huge deal of interaction between people following different laws from each other, how would wrong doing be determined, how would trails be carried out, etc. videos on this subject are slowly on their way.*

If people are free to choose their governments and control it democratically. Then power will finally rest with the people.

What's with Capitalism?

Let’s talk about Capitalism, the free exchange of commodities between individuals. Commodities being: goods or services which are a conjunction of three things, labour, capital, and raw materials, of course we should see that raw materials are commodities as well which are at some point solely labour and capital, all the way down to the mine or forest or farm.  So the capitalist economy is the free exchange of labour and capital. Every economically active person takes part in the economy as a consumer (the exchange part) an owner (the capital) or a worker (the labour). Everyone is a consumer, many people are workers, some people are owners and many people do all three. I want to note white caller managerial work is work, as is its blue-collar brother.

Now there’s a problem with this system known as capitalism, and that is the way in which it rewards people. Workers are rewarded by means of wages, and owners are rewarded for their contribution in terms of profits. Now wait a minute, what do owners contribute, capital, capital is money. Capitalism is a system that rewards money. And beyond that it actually rewards money more than it rewards labour. Let’s think of the economy in terms of growth, growth being an annual increase in the entire amount of wealth or value in the economy, macro-economic growth is of course allowed for by improvements in technology or discovery of new resources. If the economy grows and that growth is not reflected in wages, then capital has been rewarded more than work, even if wages were to grow by an equal percentage to the entire economy, the gap between capital rewards and work rewards would still increase giving more of the growth to the capital.

Of course this could be counteracted by shrinking in the economy, in practice though this is an extremely rare event in fact there is not a solid 5 year consecutive period in US history where the economy has shrunk, even the great depression only showed 4 years of shrinking. And on a global scale the economy, has never shrunk to date. 1 2 3

 The only other way the gap between wage earnings and investment earnings wouldn’t grow apart would be if wages grew disproportionally faster than the economy, which would either run into mathematical issues as the lines cross, or more likely bring the economy to a state where everyone would have to be a worker/investor, which is exactly what we’re going for.

So if we understand that Capitalism is a system that rewards money, or more accurately put, it rewards people who have money by giving them more money without working for it what happens. What happens when people see that it is money and investment that will get them ahead and not hard work, we create an investment economy. Now there are two glaring historical examples of investment economies in North America, where the philosophy was to make your money work for you, because that’s where the reward was. Those are of course the 1920’s and the first decade of the 21^st century (right now). The great depression of the 1930’s and what’s beginning to happen now are the results of a system that rewards having money, over and above working hard.

*Some will claim that both of these events have been caused by corrupt banking systems, specifically the “fed,” but the point stands regardless: interest is the most basic example of money making money, if money makes money then there is no value created and it will devalue said money, value being created only through labour.

If an economy rewards work over capital it will not build the kind of investment economies that are guaranteed to collapse given sufficient time, because it will be based in real value. Value being a product not of investment and ownership, but of LABOUR.

If you have to spend money to make money, why bother with hard work, skill and creativity, just go and spend some money.

So capitalism is a system that rewards money over and above work, where the rich get richer, and where the only means of maintenance in the system are periodic recessions, crisis and depressions, which are unnecessary in other systems, and completely destructive to human well being, spirit, and life.

To solve this problem we must tie work and capital together, invest were you work, work where you invest, and thereby own what YOU make. We should have an economy that rewards hard work, skill, and creativity, not an economy that rewards already being rich.

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Healthcare and Freedom

Everyone sees the need for health, in response to this need most nations have created some kind of healthcare system, some are public, some are private, some are a combination of the two, but no matter what they all have problems.

Some of these problems are minor, such as waiting in line, some are major such as iatrogenesis (medical problems resulting from medical treatment), and some are simply absurd such as the actions of the massive modern pharmaceutical industry who’s wrong doings range from the encouragement of over diagnosis by doctors to outright criminal drug experimentation in Africa eerily reminiscent of Nazi scientists treatment of their Jewish test subjects in the holocaust.

The medical institution is one of the most powerful in the modern world, most people are born into a doctors arms, and chances are good they will die in them as well, throughout life you are expected to get regular check ups, at any injury or disease you’ll be heading to the pharmacy for pills or in serious cases you’ll be making an actual trip to the hospital, you will probably be put on courses of drugs to deal with your maladies, you will consume thousands of manufactured chemicals which you will of course eventually dump into the environment. And what is the upshot? You will live slightly longer, you will get a few more moments of breath let’s hope those moments collectively are longer than all the time you spent getting treated.

Constant treatment and prolongation of life are not health. Health means being healthy not being sick, when we take courses of medication we often see them as treatments allowing us to act healthy while we are in fact sick. That’s not health; the goal of healthcare should be the creation of health not merely the treatment of sickness and injury.

Interesting reading.

So how do we do that? First we decentralize, and we become self reliant in many ways. Perhaps taking the time to learn about our bodies and what would be healthy for them, instead of allowing an unhealthy lifestyle to lead to bad health. Even then most common diseases, sicknesses and injuries can be self treated or treated by anyone with even limited medical knowledge. Keep a first aid kit around, know how to use it, this shouldn’t be hard in fact maybe we should reconsider school courses to include first aid, I mean what’s more important in life: knowing how to calculate the 87^th number in a geometric progression, knowing every Russian ruler since 1800 in chronological order, knowing how to identify iambic pentameter in Shakespearean sonnets OR knowing how to administer CPR, knowing how to diagnose common diseases, and how to make a splint. That is the first step to fixing healthcare, it is to stop relying so much on the system, do it yourself, and have the knowledge to say when to let someone help.

In workplaces and schools there should be those who can be relied on to have some more advanced medical knowledge, without being necessarily being dedicated as school nurses or staff doctors, simply members of the group who may leave their station to help their fellows.

Beyond that we must look at reform in the medical industry, looking towards holistic medicine that doesn’t simply attempt to treat disease but actually heal it. The elitist idea that only western medicine is valid must be abandoned. Hospitals themselves should be re-evaluated they shouldn’t be a place that literally scares children, I know I’m not alone when I say hospitals scared me when I was little. And the system must be funded intelligently; by those who are in it. Money should be drawn from a social pool, and its direction should be chosen by doctors, nurses, and patients on the ground, not by government bureaucrats, and not by insurances companies.

Healthcare should become about health and caring.

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