Does Democracy Work Well?

"What has democracy to do with capitalism?" Well, for a start modern Western Democracies rely on huge amounts of money to help us decide which big chief to vote for. If you haven't got any money you can't be a candidate (unless someone with money supports you) and, all things being equal, without a huge propaganda campaign you wouldn't stand a chance anyway... not to mention you'd probably be shot if they thought you did stand a chance. More importantly, capitalism is run by powerful people who through lobbying and other built in policy biasing can pressure governments to do what they are told and of course they like to make sure that people who are elected (democratically) are beholdent to them (campaign funds etc.) Worse, these capitalists tend to run International conglomerates which can pressure foreign governments too - which can, in turn, bring down democratically elected 'chiefs' in favour of a government which is more 'understanding'. I could go on but I think I've made my point. Now I'm not arguing that Democracy is any worse than any of the alternative methods of choosing leaders but rather that it is no better and much better is what we need if we hope to prosper as a planet.

Before I say anything else I feel I should point out that I have never suggested that either causes the other FTSE. What I did say was : "Can modern Democracies or indeed any system of government that serves Capitalism hope to get us through the gathering storm?" You seem to be arguing that Democracy is simply the method of choosing a govenment and that the chosen government is only subject to the will of the people once every four or five years - and of course, in practice, your right :O) However, in theory a Democracy is supposed to be a system of government that represents the will of the people and governs in their name. What my question seeks to ask is not whether Democracy is related in any particular way to Capitalism - although it is and I have mentioned a few ways in which it is - but can ANY system that serves Capitalism hope to get us through the gathering storm?

I say that Democracy SERVES Capitalism, not depend on it, FTSE because it manifestly does. I'm not saying that Communism doesn't SERVE Capitalism and you need only look to China to see that it does, indeed some would say that China is heading toward becoming a Capitalist Democracy... I would suggest that people who believe that are dreaming and that China is a wonderful example of 'if you can't beat the system from without then do it from within - beat it at its own game'. However, whichever turns out to be correct the Chinese are just as guilty of playing the stupid game of 'Chicken' as the Capitalist countries are. Blinded and frozen in the headlights of the on coming juggernaut of Climate Change, and the Extreme Weather that it is causing, like all the other players they strive to be the last to jump out of the way and so win maximum advantage from the negotiations!

You seem to be saying that the world has become Capitaist Pia - I think that might sum everything up nicely. By the way FTSE. I'm asking people who I consider to be extremely bright to help with my pendulum project. I'm wondering if you might find a few spare minutes... I'm just wanting to be certain that my assumptions are sound as regarding calculating the inertia of curving from the acceleration and speed of a pendulum bob which has a swing period of 2Pi seconds.

I'd say it is good hearted people that are needed much more than clever ones - it is the clever ones that made the mess in the first place, Pia :O)

I would say that Mugabe and Gaddafi play a fairly small part in the mess the world is in, it is just that they are pariahs and so easy to kick. Warren Buffet is hailed as one of the cleverest Capitalists, certainly one of the most successful investors in the world. He warned that “Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.” long before people discovered just how right he was. However, I wouldn’t particularly blame either him or Alan Sugar for the mess we are in - but I would blame those who came up with derivatives and cynically and cold heartedly sold them around the world. If you want to understand just how clever Capitalists played such a large part in causing the mess we are in start by watching... 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room

It is not really the foolishness of it that I find the hardest to bear it is the sheer cold heartedness. Food prices are not going up by accident and God help us all when the extreme weather means production of some staple foods is low enough to cause the economic viability of cornering a substantial enough part of the market to make it feasible to manipulate food prices in the same way as they presently do with oil. 'Instead of discussing the real problems we talk about democracy and capitalism.' So what are the REAL problems then FTSE?

I think I catch ‘blighter’s’ drift… he has cleverly seen through the con trick. Democracy is just a front, a façade, a screen of respectability behind which the corrupt and the greedy hide, disguised as bankers, politicians and big business men. They use their ill gotten gains to buy privilege and status (and protection from the politicians and the judicary) so that they can rob, cheat and lie in complete safety and the public at large will be fooled into believing they are good men :O) It is interesting that clever people often look down on simple folk that speak little and speak plainly when they do speak. You see a lot of it in many places in Asia where the privileged believe that their education makes them special and that the poorly educated country folk are too stupid to know what they want. They are forever jeering at the country folk telling them that they are too stupid to see that they are being fooled but the biggest laugh is that it is these very jeerers themselves who are being fooled. People who think they are clever, who believe that being civilised is simply lying about who they are and what they feel, are so used to lies that they can’t tell lies from truth. The country folk, by and large, are honest straight speakers and they can tell a liar at fifty paces. It is the jeerers, in their arrogance that are taken in more often than not by the silver tongues and persuasive lies of those who know how to blind with science or baffle with logic. Sadly it is these arrogant jeerers that have the privilege and the power and so the Emperor still walks naked there for the child's voice cannot be heard above the jeers. In the West we believe much the same nonsense as the jeerer's but being civilised we keep our mouths’ shut and let our precocious children jeer :O)

Hi Richard, I was very impressed by your earlier post. Have you read my http://www.abctales.com/story/mangone/why-fence-us ? Hidden behind the subtly adjusted Cole Porter song is a lot of wonderful quotes from American Indians... including : “Red Cloud (Makhpiya-luta), April, 1870. NB Great Father was the title given the American President. "In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease from fighting. But they wanted to send us traders on the Missouri, but we wanted traders where we were. When I reached Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just." “....I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.” "My Father, you have made promises to me and to my children. If the promises had been made by a person of no standing, I should not be surprised to see his promises fail. But you, who are so great in riches and power; I am astonished that I do not see your promises fulfilled! I would have been better pleased if you had never made such promises than that you should have made them and not performed them..." Note, Blighter's was refering to this post but I felt I should add the extra Indian quote and so it moved down the thread. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As much as I liked your arguments about Democracy it is important to keep a sense of proportion. Just as it is crazy for people to blame all of the faults of religion onto God when the fault lies with men; So it is also unwise to blame the faults of men onto Democracy. You can probably make a system damn near foolproof but never corruption proof. As I was hoping to make people realise, any system which serves Capitalism is certain to be more prone to the lure of materialism, more especially in those places where spiritual and moral values count for little and the only deterrent to corruption is usually a corrupt legal system which has one law for the rich and another for the poor. Perhaps the best hope is to keep Democracy and change the people ;O) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Statement by the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians... "The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call 'assimilated', bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way. We want freedom from the white man rather than to be integrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, or bankers... we want to be ourselves.

:O)

When I first became disillusioned with Democracy Thatcher the Snatcher was in power and I was so disgusted by the way she handled the Miner’s strike that I began to associate with a very left-wing group. Everything I heard seemed wonderful at first but, slowly, I began to realise that beneath the Marxist fervour wasn’t so much a desire to change the system as to run it. I could already see that the Earth was suffering and that a new way forward was necessary but all they could think of was taking over the means of production and carrying on as usual. It may be that they were not typical of the Left but my experience with them served to teach me the truth of the old adage ’talk is cheap’. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that replacing one lot of politicians with another would necessarily make much difference in the long run. You need only look at Obama as the hope he engendered slowly turn into despair as people realise that even if he still wants to, he can’t actually deliver on his promises and despite a change in tone with his administration many are starting to say that many of the policies are little different to those of his predecessor. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Obama I’m just trying to point out that in practice the inertia of the ’system’, the entrenched bureaucracy (which Wiki defines as 'A system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives') and your political enemies will all conspire to find ways to oppose everything you try to do that will impact on their cosy little world. I posted this over a month ago on May 20. "President Obama wants to narrow the federal budget gap and reduce debts, in part, by ending tax cuts for higher-income Americans enacted under President George W. Bush but so far Republican lawmakers refuse to consider it. Meanwhile The United States has reached its $14.3 trillion limit on federal borrowing which leaves Congress until, effectively, the end of July to raise the threshold. If there is no agreement then the government could default on its debt for the first time, threatening both the national credit rating and the dollar and also risking a financial panic and another recession. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!" The latest news is that the Republican's have walked out of talks... I just hope Obama does not cave in again! What was Obama's electoral motto "We can do!"? I can't even remember now... Just checked it was "Yes we can." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY Watch the link if you can bear it...

I’ve heard it said that God became tired of criticism, from certain heavenly quarters, that He was not doing as good a job as He could be, and so he proposed a simulation on which those angels who thought they could do a better job could test out their theories. God promised not to interfere. If we were living in such a simulation I think many of us would agree that every system of government that has been tried leaves a lot to be desired and certainly all the more obvious present ones do. Personally, I have wondered if there could be some truth to this and if most of those who are presently dying are actually the good leaving the game. I can’t think of a more fitting finish than to leave those who have become addicted to running the planet to enjoy the tribulations that they have helped to cause ;O) "In the final days they will want to die but they will not be able to."

This is a video of Democracy in action. Red demonstrators being shot and killed in Bangkok last year. It is over a year ago since over 90 people were killed and thousands were wounded but the government says it does not know who was doing the shooting. All the evidence points to the army but they deny it. If it wasn't the army then who else? http://www.youtube.com/v/fWPH9mbFA98&hl "For the past month, I have worked 16 hours a day, without pay, on a story that is likely to be widely denounced. It is a story that has already cost me a job I loved with Reuters, after a 17-year career. Once it is published, I will be unable to return to one of my favourite countries for many years. There is a risk – small, but real – that I will face international legal action. And several people who I consider friends will be dismayed, and probably never talk to me again. The obvious question is: why?"... http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/andrew-macgregor-marsh...

I think that the extreme weather will force changes around the planet and however bad Capitalism might be it would probably be suicidal to try and get rid of it now... We must concentrate on getting through the gathering storm and that will mean a change of priorities from chasing profit, creating better weapons and searching for God particles to finding pragmatic ways to deal with the global challenges to come - such as shrinking food production and the growing need for fresh water. Better, and cheaper, methods of desalination should be a priority as should International cooperation on crop mixing and moving to suit the changing climate. When I was a child I couldn't catch a thrown ball because I was always trying to catch it where it was and not where it would be by the time my hands reached it... that seems to be the fault with modern governments... their failure to anticipate.

I entirely agree that Capitalism has been standing in the way of efforts to save the planet, in fact I would argue that it is Capitalism that is the biggest threat to the planet. Yet, we both agree that it would be unwise to try and ditch it just yet... In spite of the fact that it is essentially Capitalism which is preventing any Global agreement on measures to combat Global Warming and Climate Change. The profit motive is the core of Capitalism but I'm simply suggesting that we should change the game from 'grab as much as you can' to 'take sufficient for your needs'. I can still remember the days when Capitalism still had principles of fair play and people were content to get a fair price. Capitalism has grown greedier as the world has grown more materialistic, and that will be the seed of its destruction. However, if you look around the world you can already see the beginning of a revolution because food is getting too expensive and hungry people are harder to control... Couple this with the simmering anger over austerity measures which people are rightly unhappy about and you see a lot of trouble ahead... I'm simply suggesting that Capitalists should realise the benefits of an enlightened Capitalism which sees that it is better to make less profit and have contented customer than to grab as much as you can and face riots. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect then to listen. Anyway,to desalination - Wiki says… Multi-stage flash distillation (MSF) is a water desalination process that distils sea water by flashing a portion of the water into steam in multiple stages of what are essentially counter current heat exchangers. Multi-stage flash distillation plants produce 64% percent of all desalinated water in the world, although a different type of desalinators, Reverse osmosis plants, are more numerous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-stage_flash_distillation In Thailand reverse osmosis water is available quite cheaply - it doesn’t taste great but its fine for drinking and cooking and bottled water is much more expensive. I heard that desalination can be done using LNG but I can’t find anything about it on the ‘net. If it is an economical process then it could soon be widely used as LNG is the new oil. “Royal Dutch Shell's Pearl gas-to-liquids plant at Ras Laffan in Qatar delivered its first cargo of synthetic fuels on June 13, and at full capacity, it will yield a quarter of Qatar's entire oil output. Halfway around the world another enormous project is taking shape, Shell has just committed to building a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at its Prelude field off Western Australia. The plant, which will super-cool gas so it can be delivered worldwide by tanker, will be the largest floating structure ever built, six times as large as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.” http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/ener...

Well-wisher; while I agree with your sentiment, I think that you are doing the same thing with Capitalism that Richard was doing with Democracy… It seems to me that you are blaming the faults of men onto the system that they have chosen to express their faults through. I think we all three of us hate, and I mean hate, the greedy, grasping, soulless demons that have no concerns beyond their own well being and take what they want regardless of the consequences for everyone else. Yet, it is not Capitalism that creates these people as Communism has discovered to its cost. My original questions were “Can modern Democracies or indeed any system of government that serves Capitalism hope to get us through the gathering storm? If not, what can?” I think that the growing conclusion is that nothing can. Because the people who cling to power and profit are too powerful, arrogant and short-sighted to allow the fate of the rest of us to count for enough to make them change. In the US they are turning public opinion against Obama because he wants to limit their power and they are using the media to stir up the fools, who support the rich because they dream of being rich themselves, into supporting their pet politicians in refusing to do anything to save the country unless Obama agrees to let the rich keep the tax cuts given to them by Bush. This sort of suicidal Capitalism will undoubtedly bring the next dip in the double dip recession and this one will be far, far worse, than the last! The only hope for America, and perhaps the world, is to remember the words of great men… Men like, President John F Kennedy, who said: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich" "My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man" "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate" No wonder they shot him is it!