roachboy, around here, and in the US today, this seems to be a description of the unsettled questions (issues?). They seem settled, in comparsion, in northern Europe, and even in Canada.
Quote:
.....The central contention of politics should be the distribution of power. That is where a political campaign should be first and foremost. The most important question that a candidate can ask the people during the campaign is, "Do you want to be more powerful as a voter, citizen, consumer, worker, taxpayer, and small saver-investor? Or do you want to continue to be rolled and dominated and manipulated by the concentration of power and wealth in too few hands who then establish the supremacy of the political economy over the majority of the people in this country?"
That is really the question. Because if the people in this country do not want to be more powerful as they interact in the workplace, the marketplace, the environment, their communities, their legislatures, their courts, their executive branch agencies, the corporations, through the various stakeholder rights that they should be given, then no political leaders, no political parties are going to be able to do anything more than promise what they cannot deliver. That is the fundamental point: That even if you look at political candidates around the country and say, I think these candidates are well-intentioned, I think that they are sincere in their promises. If they win without the people being mobilized, if they happen to beat their opponent in the usual parade election style, they will not be able to deliver whether as Governor, Senator, Representative or President.
That's the key message to convey to people: If they want to stop this disconnect between enormous economic growth, corporate profits and stock market prices on the one hand, and a stagnation or a decline in the state of workers and others in the economy as the disparities of wealth become so enormous; if they want to stop that, if they want a rising tide lifting all boats instead of a rising tide lifting all yachts, then they have to strengthen themselves in those five key roles that they play in our political economy: Voter-citizen, worker, consumer, taxpayer, and small saver-investor.....
- Ralph Nader on March 1, 2000
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I think that we "go nowhere", because, for some of us, the definition of politics is the reasoned or peaceful process by which a determination of how power (and, by extension....wealth) is distributed, and for others, the definition is much less settled.
Simply, if you object to what Nader describes politics to be about, maybe a second forum would be the best answer, or...you could stay here, and we could go there.
The convincing thing for me is that, when I ask those who do not accept that redistribution of wealth is a mechanism of the political process, just as redistribution of power is (from where it is now, to where a consensus decides it should be....) what they believe is an alternative solution to the problem of inequitable wealth distribution, they do not recognize that it is a problem, or that any increase in the extreme of the inequity would merit political intervention.
We have no agreement here that politics is the only alternative to resolution of stresses caused by imbalances of power and wealth by force. So, we don't agree on what it is to be "civilized".
If a dwelling was constructed of wood, and it was on fire, I think there would be universal agreement here that the obvious solution would be to put the fire out.
In my mind trends toward growing concentration of wealth and power into fewer hands, or into exclusively the hands now holding the most of it, is equivalent to the fire consuming the dwelling, because, left unchecked, the trend will consume the existing political accord, or "the peace".
I recently posted a description of what keeps political systems intact, from the standpoint of the losing side(s) accepting the outcome of elections. They view their chances of prevailing at the next election opportunity, to be promising enough to overcome the urge to refuse to accept the current election outcome, and bring the system down in a revolt that would result in an unpredictable and riskier outcome.
If the political landscape leaves a large enough group with the impression that they have less to lose by revolting against it, than by staying with it, "until next time", "the fire"consumes the dwelling.
Some may see this as a threat, coercion that they are free to dismiss or condemn. It isn't. It is what happens. Ignoring it as part of your politics, in a system trending the way ours is in the US, is to bring it about.
So, I think that we will, and that the concerns raised here are misplaced. Where would a discussion on firefighting be, if there was no common agreement that smothering the flames is the first step in putting the fire out?
We're still not in agreement that any fire exists, or is likely.