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Plutocracy SucksSeptember 24, 2008 I've been screaming about this for years: in an economic system where value is measured in dollars and everything is up for sale, how can you keep public offices off the "open" market? Answer is that you can't. Many people make a fetish out of voting and "free elections": if we elect our representatives, we've got a democracy, right? Sorry, no -- and it's impossible to understand why without considering the economic dimension. To get elected to high (and even not-so-high) office these days you have to suck up to Big Money whether you're wealthy or not; no matter how many popular votes you get, if elected you'll be representing Big Money as well as your constituents -- and guess whose interests trump whose when they come into conflict? The U.S. of A. is still drunk on Cold War rhetoric. We like to think that if there's no law against free speech or freedom of the press, then we've actually got free speech and freedom of the press. We don't. Only the cruder forms of dictatorship need laws and decrees to censor speech. Our much more sophisticated system does it economically: Sure, you can say whatever you want, but if you don't have access to the media, who's going to hear you? And if you stand to lose your job by opening your mouth, you'd have to be a hero to say anything -- which is pretty much the case in places like Burma or China or the old USSR. The framers of the U.S. Constitution created a marvel with their system of checks and balances. If they hadn't, it wouldn't have lasted this long. What's destroying the system now is the unchecked power of Big Money. It's corrupted the executive branch, it's corrupted the legislative branch, and through them it's corrupted the judicial branch. It's dragging the whole system down and taking the planet with it. It's time to check the power of Big Money, as FDR's administration did. While we're at it, let's revisit FDR's Four Freedoms, with an emphasis on freedom from want and freedom from fear.
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