Take the Money Out of Politics!
We’ve been watching our leaders sell out to corporate, extractive interests for so long, it’s almost numbingly normal to us. For example, last year, in the U.S., we saw what appears to be one of the last nails in our socio-economic and environmental coffin, that being the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned laws restricting corporate influence over politics, thereby granting corporations the right to give unlimited funding to the media campaigns of political candidates. This frees big business to 1) ensure their favourite political horse gets the kind of exposure that only multi-billion dollar bank accounts can bring, and/or 2) to use aforesaid billions to vilify any candidate perceived to be any kind of threat to their competitive dominance in the market place.
And what did Joe Citizen do about it? There were some protests, to be sure, but then people settled back in front of their televisions, and life went on. Apparently even Obama wasn’t pleased with the decision, or was that display just to make us feel like something would be done about it? Has anything changed?
Some things should never be bought and sold. Some things are sacred. Principles. Ideals. Clean food and water. The right to retain a vestige of self-resilient dignity. Freedom. The right not to be scared of your own government. The right to see representative government working as servants to the people. These things should be non-negotiable. Taking the money out of politics would be an excellent first step towards regaining what we, in our apathy, have so frivolously let slip. As such, it’s refreshing to hear someone tell it like it is, especially when we’d already given up on the mainstream media doing so…:
Consider the possibility of Greece purposefully defaulting, and returning to social order (maybe even an increase in happiness?) reduction of endless credit card use? more home gardens? less energy available so less energy dependence? more community self reliance? less control by big business? Less consurmerism? more self reliance? We could actually see a positive transformation, collapse to transformation? What happens if there emerges a sustainable alternative to the present paradigm, and we gain a model of the future of the west after ‘collapse’. (see the economy of happiness) Let’s see what happens next. Paul Taylor
Argentina effectively defaulted on its loans in 2001 and many collective initiatives sprang up such as using parks etc for community food growing and collective approaches to continue what had been commercial building/housing projects that had fallen over due to the loss of finance. I’m not sure exactly to what extent this has been sustained but given that Argentina has seen increasing levels of inequality since then (as have nearly all developing and developed countries) it would appear that corporate interests and the status-quo have returned. This suggests that there is something more fundamental that needs to change in the current capitalist political economic model. The state is obliged to protect the institution of private property – and has a monopoly on the use of force to do so – and the owners of the largest share of capital have an obvious vested interest in maintaining their position. The exciting thing about permaculture is the potential to consciously undermine corporate power by being less reliant on consumption for the sake of corporate profits as the basis for our existence.
Cameron Griffiths.