Myths Of Our Economy: You Live In A Democracy

Trump gets elected in the U.S. In Europe the political parties with the greatest success are found on either the far right or the far left of the spectrum: there's no room for any middle ground it seems these days. In America this was seen in the battle between Trump and Bernie Sanders... Oh wait... Sanders didn't make it and instead Hillary got pushed forward as the Democratic candidate...

I'll stick with Trump right now and say right off the bat that his election was nothing less than the people saying they are tired of what "democracy" has done for them the past 5 or 6 decades. People have lost faith in politics, in almost the entire "free world", with some notable exceptions like the Scandinavian countries. But even there democracy as we know it will fail.

This is because we don't live in a democracy, not really. Let me try explain this in a simple way: the average citizen works 8 hours a day for 5 of the 7 weekdays, and needs 8 hours sleep. So, a week has 168 hours of which we sleep 56 hours, and that leaves 112 waking hours. And of those we spend 40 at the workplace. That means we can live in a democracy for less than half of the week, because as soon as you enter the workplace, you leave the democracy.

_{source: YouTube}

Capitalism and democracy can not co-exist, it's just not possible. Karl Marx knew this and warned about the ultimate consequences of that system: it's the world we live in now, where the infamous 1% rule all our lives because they have all the real power that comes with owning the means of production. Just think about how this works; they operate their own kind of "democracy", where all the voting-power resides with the shareholders.

Not the little shareholders, but the 1% of them that own the majority of the stocks. That 1% elects, or should I say appoints the board of directors that works not for the employees, but whose sole job is making sure the price of the shares keeps rising. They decide everything with that goal in mind: what to produce, how to produce, how much to produce, where to produce and what to do with the profits.

Sure, the employees get a yearly thank-you-note for all the hard work they have done, but the CEO can two moths later decide to move the factory elsewhere or lay off large percentages of the workforce. There's no democracy to be found in more than half of our lives, but we still claim we live in a democracy. Well, we don't and Trump's election is a sure sign of that fact.

There's lots of people still who believe that capitalism can be fixed; they point to history and the northern European countries where the system seems to work just fine. But it doesn't: they also have a gap between rich and poor. They cover it up better by having an extensive wealth redistribution system with higher taxes and heavily subsidized healthcare and schooling; but that's only covering up the sharpest edges of capitalism.

_{source: PinterestMichael de Cerro - Peasants for Plutocracy}

At it's core the system is broken, it's unstable and that makes it impossible to make future plans for the long term. Economists know this and even if you just read a newspaper now and then, you know of terms like "business-cycle" or "boom-bust cycles"; the inherent instability is no secret, yet we fool ourselves time and time again that we can "tame the beast", even if centuries of experience with the system prove we can't.

Recently many economists warn about the next downturn in the business cycle; they know we're due one since the last one was in 2008 and typically these cycles take approximately 7 years, I'm sure you've heard about that too. The problem is no one knows for sure when it comes, what will cause it or how to prevent it. The last one no one saw coming and we have learned nothing since then: years of low interest rates have made sure the next crisis can only be much bigger.

Governments and private citizens alike have been borrowing more than ever before in history and when the bust comes, none of them will be able to pay their debts. At this point many of you will point at the broken monetary system we have with Fiat money: it's not capitalism, but the unfair monetary system that's broken. Sure, that's true, but you forget that this system is made by and for the 1% that decides everything; any system that leads to the existence of a small group of extraordinary rich people will result in a plutocracy, where it doesn't matter who's elected president or which political party provides that president.

_{source: Flickr Jeff Bezos}

Just so you understand how criminal the plutocracy has become, let's look at the owner of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos; he is "the richest person in history", worth around 130 billion dollar, what we know of at least. This one person could solve all America's problems: he could provide free schooling, end poverty and hunger, end homelessness and end hunger on the continent of Africa with half his net worth. That is beyond decadent, not even the Romans or Egyptians knew this kind of inequality and injustice.

But that's just half the story. Of all the workers at his largest company, Amazon.com, a large part doesn't earn enough to stay alive and are dependent on some form of welfare or food-stamps. Think about that. This means that the American taxpayer subsidizes the wages for the people Jeff Bezos refuses to pay a living wage... And mister Bezos is not the exception among the 1%, he represents "business as usual" in the capitalist free market economy.

If you have payed attention, you will have noticed there's one very simple solution to this. Just make sure we do live in a democracy for all 168 hours of the week. If not the board of directors, but the employees democratically decided what to produce, how to produce, how much to produce, where to produce and what to do with the profits, I doubt there will ever be the gigantic gap between rich and poor. We, the people, would feel empowered again because we would suddenly have real voting power and a sense of fairness. Workers won't vote to move the factory to China, they won't reward their managers with the ridiculous bonuses they give themselves now, and they won't vote for a way of producing that would pollute the environment they will raise their children in.

The problem is, most of us see democracy as a political system, a duty to be performed once every 4 years by casting 1 or 2 votes... This is enforced by focusing on that one moment, spreading buttons with the text "I voted!" and spreading lies like: "if you don't vote, you don't count" or "if you don't vote you can't complain", in short you lose tour right to be heard if you don't vote. In short they equate voting with "your voice being heard".

I would turn that around and say that the first thing you do when you cast your vote, is to acknowledge that you live in a democracy when you really don't. The second thing you do is give your power, provide a platform for the winning party that will serve the elite anyway. So, don't believe the lies and don't vote, but make your voice be heard by claiming your right to free speech as long as we still have it; this should be music to the ears of all Steemians.

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