Curiouser and Curiouser! on democracy

Is it time to can unrepresentative democracy?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:21:34 +0000

Just been reading a story from Ed Fosters Gripe Log about a proposed new act in the US (H.R. 4127, the Data Accountability and Trust Act) that is intended to override state laws on disclosure of privacy violations (e.g. ChoicePoint, CardSystems, and the newly brewing scandal). The key attribute of the US DATA law:

Rather than emulating California's privacy law, the DATA act would preempt SB 1386 and similar privacy laws enacted in other states. It would also essentially leave it up to the company that suffers the data breach to decide if the risk is great enough to warrant disclosure to the public.

Leave it up to the company. Right... I guess it's fitting that, a year ago today, I wrote about the ChoicePoint scandal. How likely is it that we would have heard anything about that if US DATA had been on the books. How can any responsible person think this is a good idea? I don't think they can. I think the only way this could happen is because government is corrupt and politicians collude with business to further their own political and/or financial ambitions.

In the short-term it is cheaper for companies to ~~bribe~~ lobby those few policians who can bend the laws to their advantage than it is to put their houses in order. And the short term is all most CEO's care about these days. Who cares about the long term?

This is yet another inditement of the system of representative democracy. A system whose heyday is long past and, if it ever was representative, is no longer so today. Indeed I find the very idea of representative democracy ridicuolous. How can one person even attempt to represent thousands of others on a range of issues? And, criticially, why should it be necessary?

I can imagine how in days past, where education was rare and communications slow and unreliable, our system of government may have seemed viable. But I wonder whether representative democracy was seen as the best way forward, or whether those conditions simply made it easier for the better educated, richer, men to grab power and create a system of patronage to keep themselves and their friends wealthy and powerful,

Whatever the true origin people need not be uneducated today and communications have reached the point where nobody should lack for information on any subject. What is required today is discernment, judgement, and a willingness to question.

Yet we continue elect representatives to take part in a corrupt system of government, divesting ourselves of our own power and with it, seemingly, our responsibility for what these people do in our name. Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran? We didn't do it, our politicians did. But we conspire to make them what they are.

This is the terrorists message "There are no innocents." We may not have personally gone to Iraq and shot people but we conspired to make it possible. We just don't learn. "Hey, next time let's time let's vote for the guy on the left!"

I don't know what the answer is. I tend towards the idea that our democracy really should be "one man, one vote." That we should represent ourselves and our own interests. A pessimist might wonder about just how horrible such a world could be: mob rule writ large. But could we really live with it?

Exposure to the consequences of such a system would surely teach us sorely needed wisdom, wouldn't it? If we could survive the first years wouldn't we necessarily learn to take responsibility for our decisions? Wouldn't we gradually become a better and more enlightened people? Isn't this the kind of path we must follow if we are to have a future?

Or would you rather continue to be ruled?

Escape from Baghdad

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:54:51 +0100

No Kurt Russell isn't being wheeled out again... rather I have been listening to Condoleezza "Condi" Rice delivering a lecture today in Blackburn about Liberal Democracy. What an interesting experience that is! When listening to what she had to say it is useful to remember that, as a Professor of Political Science, she has been trained to manipulate events in history to make her own point. She's very good at it.

She makes reference to Jefferson & Madison as architects of liberal democracy in the US. But Jefferson had no blind love of democracy and with the other framers of the constitution made it clear that America was a Republic. The Bill of Rights is specifically intended to protect the individual from the mob.

Rice and her fellow neo-cons have accelerated the accretion of powers by the US state, where they are being abused. The government is awash in National Security Orders and petty bureaucrats who are enjoying all the extra secrecy so loved by this executive. I'm not sure even Thomas Hobbes, whom she understandably claims to admire, would have approved.

She has been mentioned as a future president of the USA. Is she qualified? Well she seems happy to preside over mass murder and to wield power and twist meaning to suit her current purpose. She may be over qualified!

She did make two good points in her speech, however. First she said that we in the West take for granted our Democratic cultures and I think voter apathy probably supports that viewpoint. I don't think that problem can be addressed without breaking down the power structures we already have and moving decision making power - on all fronts - away from central government. I'm not sure Condi and her neo-con friends would be with me on that one.

The second point she made was her concluding remark:

Advancing the cause of freedom is the greatest hope for peace in our time.

I completely agree with that. It's just a shame that she, apparently, doesn't. Or she has some kind of "freedom at the point of a gun" concept in mind.

Douglas Hurd, former UK foreign secretary, made some following remarks the most enjoyable of which was when he said that killing others was unacceptable even if you are a foreign invader with a good cause. You have to admire his use of coded diplomatic language.

By the way is there anybody in UK policis more smug and supercilious than Jack Straw?

I may have issues with parliament but...

Sat, 13 May 2006 17:13:56 +0100

The Legislative and Regulatory Refom Bill is getting close to parliament. I think everyone who enjoys the way the government acts now will be looking forward to a bill that gives ministers even more arbitrary power to make it up as they go along.

Here is the text of the letter I just sent to the MP for Maidenhead, Theresa May:

Dear Theresa May,

I am writing again with regard to the Legislative and Regulatory Refom Bill which is due before Parliament next week.

Despite the government having made some concessions I am still very concerned that this bill gives the government of the day far too much latitude in it's ability to change the law to suit itself.

Specifically I am concerned that, even with the ammendments, the bill would not, for example, prevent a minister from removing the right to trial by jury because it was 'a burden to the police'. We should not deliberately enact bad laws as we have far too many of them already.

I think this bill strays verges on rendering law-making arbitrary and it devalues parliament. I may have issues with our parliamentary system but if it's a choice between you lot and the whim of government ministers I know which side I stand on.

If the government wants to reduce bureacracy and streamline government it could start by reducing its own size and interfering less.

I hope you will consider my concerns when this bill comes before you.

Yours sincerely,

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