I believe in popularly elected government. Although it would be nice to not have government looking over our shoulders, there is no way the U.S. will achieve an adequate distribution of wealth and income without government oversight. Government is the only mechanism through which the powerless can peacefully exercise power. Private markets left to their own machinations will result in greater poverty, and greater wealth and income disparity.
The term “democracy” was avoided above because it is unclear how much democracy exists in the U.S. Democracy denotes a relatively equal distribution of power among a nation’s residents. Due to wealth and income inequality, and the power that money buys, power is not equally distributed in the U.S. Consequently, the term democracy poorly describes the U.S. political system.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC (Federal Election Commission) along with the subsequent Federal Appeals Court ruling in Speechnow.org v. FEC, unleashed unlimited contributions to, and expenditures from, Super Pacs. This cemented the power of the wealthy elite over the U.S. political process and ended much of what remained of U.S. democracy. I’ll stick to the phrase “popularly elected government”.
Without a popularly elected government, rest assured, we would still be governed. We would be governed by corporate hierarchies with their own security apparatus which would patrol technical-industrial complexes and perhaps charge a toll everytime we crossed their borders, while having us live in tent encampments along the edge of such borders. Not necessarily because corporate actors are evil, but because such are the structural demands of competitive private capital markets.
Without government controls, competitive pressures will force U.S.’ workers’ wage rates to increasingly resemble the wage rates found in developing nations. This would continue a trend which has developed in the U.S. over the past 40 years. Not that this is a wrong thing: “fair is fair”: workers everywhere need jobs. But U.S. workers would have to accept much lower living standards, which they apparently are unwilling to do as reflected by the radicalization of U.S.’ politics.
Government enables the broad populace to exercise control of otherwise unrestrainable and powerful forces. The problem, of course, is that it has worked the other way around. The powerful, the wealthy, have captured government to control the broader population. Through control of government and the media, the ruling establishment controls the message; it shapes our ideology. How else can one explain working class people marching into battle in order to settle turf wars between national ruling elites? It might be more complicated than this, but maybe not.
All things can be used for good or evil. In the final analysis, the government is as good or evil as its people; government both shapes and reflects the ideology of the people. Government does not work well when it is manipulated to serve individual desires without a corresponding concern for the broad national community. When operated in a manner without communal concerns, broad patterns of wealth and income disparity inherently follow. If a moral belief were to develop–an ideology, which emphasized broad national and international communal concerns, then government would work fine.
The anti-government types will argue that if this level of morality were to prevail, the private sector would do the job just fine. That would be nice except the private sector operates within a competitive arena which limits cooperation to within firms, but not between firms. This competitive environment necessarily promotes self-interest, as a matter of survival, over cooperative-communal efforts: efforts more easily achieved through government, given a higher level of moral attainment.
To be clear, this is not an argument for more trade protection. Although there are legitimate reasons to oppose unbridled trade, current protectionist sentiment is leading the world towards international conflict. Rather, this is an argument for a better distribution of the National income which will only be achieved through a popularly elected government. It is the pathway back to democracy.
I do not want this post to inspire class hatred. It is healthier to view our current class problems as an ideological creation manifested in a competitive system which inherently creates wealth and income disparity. Rather than attack people, we would be better served by attacking the ideas which have brought us to this place.
With this in mind, comments are welcomed, civility is requested, please no partisan politics.