The Government planners otoh have been lousy at marketing their successes and even worse at dealing with their failures. They have created a new kind of class society where privileged civil servants can lord it over the rest of the populace who don't have the same security of tenure, pensions, unsackability, and unaccountability for their performance. The democracy of the marketplace is very unequal, but it is better than no democracy at all. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
I would phrase the question like this: How do we build more accountable governmental service systems, so that we as citizens can make sure they work for us and not lord it over us? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
To take a simple example, in most parts of Denmark it is literally impossible to buy food without financially supporting the wars in Vietraq and Afghanistan. I can vote against those wars in the ballot box. I cannot vote against them with my euros. Much the same can be said for textiles produced in SE Asian sweatshops. And cell phones containing copper from cyanide heap-leech mining.
Alright, you might argue that I can manage without a phone if heap-leech mining bothers me so much. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that I can do without clothes and food.
So the reality is that lamenting the lack of transparency in government bureaucracies (and thus tacitly implying that there is transparency in the "free market") is simply not an apples-to-apples comparison. And that is the first point we'll want to make, I think.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
