Charles M. Blow on the fall of democracies

Charles Blow is deeply worried about Trump’s presidency and what it will do to American democracy.  See “The Anti-Inauguration”, New York Times, 2017-01-05.

"Spend part of the day reading about the rise and fall of empires and how it always seems far-fetched and inconceivable until it actually happens. There are many books that address this topic, but if you want something shorter, try Andrew Sullivan’s 'Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic,' a counterintuitive meditation on how tyranny can spring from populism, or my colleague Paul Krugman’s 'How Republics End.’"

These two articles do take time to read, but if you care about a democracy for the many as opposed to a kleptocracy for the few you will be rewarded with some thoughts for protecting and enhancing democracy.

Why you should always vote!

I would rather see a 90% turnout with 60% voting for someone I didn't like than a 60 % turnout with 60% voting for someone I liked.

Think about it!  In the first case 54% of the eligible voters elected the winner.  This is democracy.  A government by "the people".

In the second case 36% of the eligible voters elected the winner.  This is oligarchy, government of the few.

Always vote!  You may not like your choice, but if you don't vote for "the lesser of two evils" you may get "the greater of two evils".

Also never ever believe polls.  Did they ask you who you would vote for?  Chances are better than 90% that they did not even call you.

Never respond to polls.  If you don't respond you increase the uncertainty of polls.  By increasing the uncertainty you will decrease the uncertainty of people who might not vote because their candidate was "down" in the polls.

Polls have another bad effect on democracy.  Candidates may change their messages to align with the polls.  If candidates ignored polls, they would work harder to convince you of their solutions.  if candidates adjusted their messages to match the polls, they might give you solutions which they have no intention of implementing.

Finally, my favorite mantra that I have yet to see elsewhere:

Always vote!
The only way you throw you vote away
Is to stay away!

Oligarchy by apathy

Many are worried about corporations running our government, giving us an oligarchy, government by the few.  But we already have an oligarchy because too many eligible voters don’t bother voting.

In the Minnesota primary on August 12, the turnout was about 12 percent.  That means 88 percent didn’t give a damn about who was elected.  In other words, that 88 percent is giving government power to the 12 percent who showed up.  That is no democracy, rule by the people, but an oligarchy, rule by the few.

If you were one of the few anywhere, remind everyone you know to vote in the next and every election, no matter where in the world you live.

Always vote because every vote always counts. If you stay away you give the election away.

See also “Politics: Don Givadam wins again”.

Oil companies, Fortune 500, and U.S foreign policy

Another of my old notes: Does the fact that four* out of the top ten companies in the Fortune 500 are oil companies have any effect on U.S foreign policy?

The note reads six companies, but with mergers and the rise of other companies, the fifth oil company is now rated 33 in the 2013 Fortune 500 list. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/full_list/

Who has more say on foreign policy?  The people of the United States or the largest companies, especially oil companies?  Do we have democratic capitalism or oligarchic capitalism?  See “Democratic capitalism, revisiting an oxymoron”.

Democratic capitalism, revisiting an oxymoron

See “Democratic capitalism is an oxymoron” for my earlier thoughts.

I finally finished “American Umpire” by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman.  Her frequent use of “democratic capitalism” inspired the blog entry above.  She uses the term on her final page.

Reading that led me to think that a democracy can lead to capitalism but capitalism doesn’t always lead to democracy.  In a democracy, the implied individual freedom can lead to the raising of capital for various projects.  In a capitalistic society, the power structure can more easily lead to an oligarchy than a democracy.  Unfortunately, the world is filled with oligarchic capitalism.  Will the United States and other countries we call democratic move to oligarchic capitalism?  Your voting in every election can prevent such a change.

See also “Oil companies, Fortune 500, and U.S foreign policy”.

U.S. oligarchy, history repeats itself

"The Penguin democracy was not ruled by itself: it obeyed a financial oligarchy that put its opinions in the newspapers, and held in its hand the deputies, ministers and the president.  It was the final power in the finances of the republic and directed the foreign policy of the country."

Anatole France, L'Ile des Pingouines (The Isle of Penguins), 1908
My translation based on Google Translate

"La démocratie pingouine ne se gouvernait point par elle-même; elle obéissait à une oligarchie financière qui faisait l'opinion par les journaux, et tenait dans sa main les députés, les ministres et le président. Elle ordonnait souverainement des finances de la république et dirigeait la politique extérieure du pays."

Or as Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849:
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus_%C3%A7a_change,_plus_c%27est_la_m%C3%AAme_chose

Dictatorship of the directorate

I've long promoted the idea of withholding votes for directors of companies who are paid too much.  Well, even if all the shareholders withhold their votes, the directors of many companies get to keep their jobs.  All that is required is a plurality of votes.  Since one vote with no opposition is a plurality, they get to keep their jobs.  And their perks.  And accumulate more shares.  And run the company without any consideration for the owners.  Instead of Milton Friedman's corporate purpose of "shareholder value", they run the company for "director value".

For more, see "When Shareholder Democracy is Sham Democracy", James B. Stewart, New York Times, 2013-04-12.

Will U.S. be the Soviet Union of the 21st Century?

Is the United States moving towards

A single contradictory ideology
Seeing threats everywhere
Giving a large portion of its resources to military
Meddling in other countries' affairs
Being ruled by an oligarchy with sham elections

Or maybe it will become like today's China, building with few environmental considerations, obsessed with security and squashing dissent, and giving sweeping power to large organizations?

I do wish the U.S. would develop a party with enough confidence to stand up to the pseudo-conservatives who are driving most of the political "discussion".

Quote of the day - Competition

"When, for instance, competition laws are not enforced, monopolies grow, and with them the income of monopolists. Competition, by contrast, drives profits down." - "Some Are More Unequal Than Others", Joseph E. Stiglitz, New York Times 2012-10-26

The article relates how the oligopolists are over and over driving down their costs, including taxes and wages, and increasing their profits.

My thought is that there may be a time when there are no profits to made because few can afford to buy the oligopolists' products and services and there will be insufficient qualified employees because there were insufficient taxes to educate a large number of people.

See "fastest to ruin" quote in "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Why should I vote?

I posted the following on Join the Coffee Party Movement in answer to "What is your response to people who say, 'Why should I vote?' or 'Voting doesn't matter.'"

One: the only votes that don't count are those not cast.

Two: we do not have a democracy because too many people (the dēmos) don't vote. A 50.9% turnout does not give a "winner" a mandate.

Three: when you don't vote it is possible that a lots of people who you do not agree with will, and give a result even worse than you wanted. Example - Ninth Congressional District of New York was won by a Republican. The Ninth is 3-1 Democrats registered and the turnout was low.

Four: voting is one of the civic virtues that was valued by the writers of the Constitution. Since so many of our current politicians have so little civic virtue, we the voters have to show a lot of civic virtue.

Five: if you don't like anybody on the printed ballot, in many jurisdictions you can vote for "Wright In".

If you do nothing else on November 8, VOTE

Many localities and states throughout the United States will have elections for city, county, and school officials as well as referenda on taxes and constitutions. Whoever you favor or whatever your stance on referenda, be sure to show up and vote. Don't let the oligarchy that we've had for over 30 years decide our future.

Oligarchy? Aren't we a democracy? Only in theory, not in practice. The turnout in most elections has been pathetic and few have been elected with a majority of the eligible voters. Sixty percent of a sixty percent is not a landslide; it is a travesty. The oligarchs too often claim they have a mandate when less then forty percent of the eligible voters supported them. BTW, this includes President Obama too. See "Wisconsin - 'I don't give a damn wins again'".
 On each and every election day, please give a damn!

To my readers outside the U.S., remember to vote when your elections occur.

To my readers in the few countries without elections, your turn may be coming. I saw a video a year or two ago where ten-year-old students were campaigning for class president. This in a country where their parents can't vote for the nation's president. What will these kids demand when they are adults?

Let's kick the Koch-Cain habit!

Who decides the government of the United States? We the People or they the money?

Who decides the government of the United States? A well-informed populace of high-turnout voters or a secretive group of manipulators who only want their "people" to vote?

I thought I had a new revelation of how manipulated we are when I read "Pizza Magnate Herman Cain Has Extensive Ties to Powerful Koch Group", Huffington Post, Ryan J. Foley, 2011-10-16.  I started playing around with Koch being the start of Kochaine and then thought, oh, Koch-Cain.

Well, I was late to the party again. I found about 16,800 results for "Koch-Cain" as a single phrase. The first two were "Billionaire puppeteers at it again? Exploring the connection between Koch brothers and Herman Cain", and "Does GOP Cocaine = Koch-Cain? Are Koch bros Buying GOP Pres Nomination by Supporting Herman Cain?"

I haven't seen anyone writing this yet, but I have a feeling that besides Cain being a puppet of the Koch brothers, he is cynically being used as their "black candidate" against Barack Obama.

If you don't like this cynicism and manipulation, if you would rather have democracy than plutocracy, be sure to vote in every election, especially in November 2012. Please put in VOTE in capital letters on your calendar for November 6, 2012. Please ask all your friends and relatives to do so. To avoid any manipulation, be sure you have registered well before and have a valid ID.

Is this why large corporations don't like Federal healthcare?

How many employees of large companies would like to move to smaller companies or start their own businesses?  How many don't because they don't want to lose their "benefits", that is, health care insurance?

What happens if more employees feel free to start their own companies.  Would they be competitors of their former employers, either directly or indirectly?  If indirectly, would that be doing something that outdates what their former employers did?

Maybe large corporations don't like Federal healthcare because of perceived tax costs or because of increased power of the Federal government, power which would compete with or restrict their ability to do damn well what they please.

In other words, anything that reduces corporate power reduces the power of the oligarchy, the oligarchy that Publius warned about in Federalist No. 57 (see "When did we go wrong").

When did we go wrong?

"THE THIRD charge against the House of Representatives is, that it will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few. Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary.  Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government. The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

- Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, Federalist No. 57, "The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation", New York Packet, 1788-02-19

"Public good" or "common good" appear 26 times in the Federalist Papers.  "Business" appears 26 times but almost always in the context of the business of government.  "Corporation" appears seven times, but only twice in the sense of business.  One is that the King of England has authority to establish corporations but the President of the United States does not.  The other is how laws have not become perfect, including the law of corporations.

Now we have for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue, the private good of corporations.

So much for following the intent of the "Founding Fathers".

Iranian history: lessons for now and then, for here and there

"The Coup against Mazdakite", Reza Akhlaghi, Tehran Bureau, 2009-08-18, is an interesting article drawn from the Iranian epic, Shahnameh by Ferdowsi.

Mazdak was a prime minister of Iran/Persia in the fifth and sixth century A.D. He instituted many reforms to curtail the excessive wealth of the aristrocracy, including access to harems!! Really, the rich had essentially cornered the "market" on women and many common men could not find wives.

Unfortunately, the rich and the clergy swayed the king to their side and many of Mazdak's followers were brutally slain.

Akhlaghi thinks that change against clerical dominance may be easier now than previously. The clerics are the custodians of oral culture; the people only received this knowledge and its interpretation from the clerics. As more and more culture becomes written and literacy spreads, the power of the clergy could become seriously diminished.

The lessons for now and for Iran and the U.S.?? Excessive wealth could be curtailed by a democracy of literate people.