Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
Ugh.  What about democratic accountablity?  I don't buy the presentation by the FT here that the public trusts businesses more than government.  And even if I did I think its a leap to indicate that the absence of faith in government which is at least nominally bound by democratic means indicates that they favor the wholesale turnover of public insitutions and services to the private sector.  And that would seem to be the implication.

Privatize eveything, and that way services will be conducted more efficiently, and service will be more responsive.  That this may mean that the people in Cochabomba won't have access to clean water, and can be forbidden to collect water in cisterns is glossed over.

The convergence of the private ownership of property and political power (the control of public services grants the holder a great deal of control over the public) looks very similiar to the feudal structures that existed in Europe.  He who owns determines the rules of the game.  Profit driven corporations colonize the lifesphere so that individuals are bound by the rules of the owner of the public space.  And that policy is determined by a shareholder meeting in which those who own more are granted a greater share of the votes than those who vote.  

Thus, the basis of suffrage is not humanity, but property. And the FT seems to think that this is just fine.

Bastards.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 04:59:29 AM EST
Thus, the basis of suffrage is not humanity, but property.

Three years ago I decided to teach myself economics, so I grabbed a copy of Samuelson's textbook which, I am told, is the introduction to economics that pretty much everyone on the planet first sees.

The textbook's discussion of the way the market mechanism helps determine how resources should be allocated is to talk about "dollar votes".

Insidiously, the textbook uses the reader's attachment to democracy and "votes" to present market decisions as "dollar votes", and so legitimising the idea that, the more money you havem the more decision-making power you legitimately have.

It didn't take much longer before I decided the textbook was crap and abandoned it, but what did you expect to find in the FT? 3100 "top earners" are probably close to a plurality of "dollar votes".

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:04:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Come on Mig, don't you know that the marketplace is the perfect democracy because people are able vote with their money.

And those people who don't have money, well, this provides a useful way to marginalize their role in public life without resorting to discredited theories of race or appealing to elitism.

By presenting a game in which 90% of the votes are held by perhaps 5% of the players, the ugly anti-democratic face of unconstrained captalism is able to avoid being called out for it devaluing of the value of equality.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Mon Jan 22nd, 2007 at 05:14:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series