Wasted Effort

We are wasting our effort, dissipating our effectiveness, peeing against the wind and farting at thunder.  We are ensuring our failure.  I refer to our various  campaigns.  Save the flowers, save the bees, save the snails, save the trees.

 I could go on and on with:

  

*mitigating climate change, 

*re-wilding, 

*stopping all sorts of pollution, 

*getting control of trade agreements that shaft us, 

*stopping subsidies to fossil fuel companies, 

*adopting EVs, 

*saving our corals, 

*preserving our fisheries resources, 

*fixing the excessive and ever increasing costs of electricity

*slashing the egregious levels of corruption in politics, especially on the 'right'

*stopping getting into war after war that 'the west' looses.

*remaking the GOP into an effective, rational party that has the good of the American people as its primary purpose.

There is one ring that controls them all.

Nowhere is that old adage "Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune" more true than in politics.  We, the peasants,  think we are gaining some advantage by others paying for the election campaigns of our elected officials and then, we wonder why the elected officials do the bidding of the vested interests.  What a great investment for them.

They pay pennies and get back dollars, pay millions and get back billions.  For big business and the uber rich, this has to be one of the best investments they will ever make.  Businesses and rich individuals support politicians, often on both sides, just to hedge their bets and the politicians make sure that the legislation favors these big business and uber rich individuals and ensure that besides favorable legislation, they get tax breaks and subsidies.  Do you realize how many countries still give financial concessions to coal companies!!! not to mention oil companies.

Because of the system, many countries and especially America and Australia have socialism for big business and the rich and capitalism* for the poor.

*Incidentally there is nothing wrong in theory with Capitalism, Communism or any other 'ism'.  The problem is with uncontrolled capitalism;  what used to be called Laisse faire and now is called the New(neo) Liberalism.  As an individual, I am not allowed to kill by commission or omission, throw my garbage on the commons or the property of my neighbor, bear false witness, lie to the authorities and so forth and so on.  There are consequences for any of these transgressions.  Big business and the uber rich get away with all of these in both overt and covert ways.  We espouse everyone being equal before the law but it is just lip service.  It is similar to the way that various regimes have used religion to keep the peasants under control. 

Incidentally (once again) the only place I have seen true Communism is in the Kibutz system in Israel.  Kibutzim (plural of Kibutz) operated as a commune and hence was commune-ism.  The difference between this and the Russian or Chinese system or for that matter the Kibutz and various religious sects that operate as  communes was that the Kibutzim were fiercely   democratic.  No charismatic leader was tolerated,  leaders were changed often and democratically and all decisions  were discussed by the whole community. It was a beautiful system.  It has now collapsed for reasons that had little to do with the basic system. That's a story for a separate blog.

The politicians don't do the bidding of their financiers because they were supported in the last election.  They do their bidding because they know if they don't, they won't be supported in the next election.  They are also pretty well assured of a cushy job when they leave politics - often as a ""consultant"" or as a lobbyist.  Also, when you compare their wealth when they enter politics with their wealth when they leave politics, you can pretty well guarantee that there something else at going on here*.  Could it be insider trading tips.  They certainly don't get rich from their salaries.

*Here is the explanation.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-bipartisan-stock-trading-ban

The ultimate argument of politicians to explain their failure to fulfill their election promises is that, "if they aren't in office they can't do anything".  Nonsense.  Far better a one term MP that does what is necessary, sets an example and begins to steer the ship of state in the necessary direction than a 5 term MP that continually compromises to the point of total betrayal of the people who elected him.

This is costing us hugely in our day to day life and it is now clear that this system could bring down our civilization.

 

Clearly we can all, individually, do things to improve our world situation but our political representatives have to do the heavy lifting by setting the rules of the game so that positive actions are taken by us.  Politics at it's best doesn't actually do anything but rather sets the playing field so that we do things.  Look at how, for instance, Norway encouraged the public to take up electric cars.

Instead politicians are ensuring that we don't take effective action against climate change.  This feeds into the pockets of various vested interests and especially the fossil fuel industry.  Even if some of the milder scenarios from the scientists are correct with respect to the effects of climate change, we could  knock ourselves back into the dark ages or even the stone age.  The fringe scientists suggest we could trigger a run away green house effect that would turn us into a new Venus.  

 

 

And this is not some change that will occur in the far future.  Just look at Australia.  As of the beginning of 2020 it is disappearing in a cloud of smoke, and the ning nong of a PM* still denies climate change is real and promotes the massive sale of coal** 

* Scott, the stupid, also mocked the Hornsdale mega battery that has been installed by Elon Musk in a wind farm in Southern Australia.  He compared it to the mega banana and the mega peach that some towns display.  Well Scott, baby, this mega battery is making money hand over fist for the wind farm while reducing the cost of electricity to the people of the area and as an added benefit, stabilizing the frequency and voltage of the grid it is part of.  Oh and by the way, it acts as a peaker plant.

**Australia exports three times as much coal as she uses in Australia and in Australia, coal is the main source of electricity; this, in a country with, arguably the greatest renewable energy sources of wind and solar in the world***.   Fortunately the people and businesses of Australia are getting on with it and ignoring the government.  Oh...just the other day, the state of Victoria imposed an extra tax on electric vehicles.  What a bunch of losers.

 

***(June, 2021).  Here is a fun one for you.  It would appear that coal ash from some sources is rich in Rare Earth Metals which can be extracted.  Perhaps Australia sits on a great resource of these metals that are essential for building solar panels, wind turbines and batteries.

 


If some of the predicted tipping points are reached, climate will change faster than our very precariously balanced agriculture can cope with.  Even a single year of crop failure in the grain belts of the Northern Hemisphere and Australia will be disastrous.  This grain is shipped to countries all over the world.  Imagine a decade of such crop failure until we work out how to grow crops  under the new climate regime.

 

Note(April 2022).  We may see this in a reduced form.  With the war in the Ukraine, Ukrainian wheat production is unlikely to be significant this year and Russia has sanctions against her economic activity plus huge losses of soldiers, some of whom may have been part of the wheat producing system before they were drafted.  It will be interesting to see if there is a problem with world wheat production this year and what this results in. I just read an article that suggests that the Ukraine war will reduce world wheat production by 30%.

Or even more disastrous, it is a real possibility that our climate will flick-flack back and forth between the existing and the new climate regime before it settles down in the new regime.  This would be even more serious than a sudden change to a new climate. You would have no idea what crops would succeed from year to year.

At least by the end of the process, the world population would probably be down to the Lovelock Number*

*James Lovelock, the man who articulated the Gaia Hypothesis, suggested that within this century the population of the earth will have fallen to 1b (it is at present at 7b and predicted to go to 9b)

We have seen, in the 1930's and again, even more so, in 2008, how interconnected the world  is.  Back many centuries ago, if Europe crashed, America didn't even know Europe existed.  Now one country going down economically brings all down.  How much more disastrous would it be if our food supply suddenly crashed.  America, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and Australia provide most of the grain to a wide range of third world countries.

And consider this.  The higher you are the harder you fall. Many predictions say that the poor will suffer most under climate change and this could well be so.  But most cities in the so called civilized world have only enough food to feed their residents for three days.  Most large cities would take far longer than that to evacuate (and where would they go).  At some point in the future we may see internal migration in the so called first world to their rural areas with really nasty consequences.

Some commentators suggest that the Arab Spring was triggered (not caused)  by the rise in food prices caused by a poor grain harvest in Russia.  If so, that was just a wee warning shot across our bow.  A taste if things to come.

Consider, as well, the 2018 refugee problem, mainly in Europe.  It is just a tiny fore-taste of what will face us when climate change begins to get really serious.  Consider the social disruption this mini migration caused in many European countries.  Then multiply it by 10 and 10 again.

So what is the bottom line.  If we want politicians to do what is best for "we, the people", we must be the ones that pay for their election campaigns from the exchequer, and the first order of business after this is achieved is to pass legislation that anyone who pays money to any politicians for any reason what-so-ever gets mandatory jail time.  This, of course, also includes any non monetary bribes.  Note that it also includes paper jobs given to politicians when they leave office as a reward for their actions when they were in office. 

Campaign money must come from the exchequer.

And......It doesn't have to cost the ridiculous amounts that it costs now.  Politicians can be given a legislated amount of money and a legislated time on national radio and television.  They would get a legislated space on news papers.  Venues would be rented for them to hold town meetings where each candidate answers questions from each other, from the moderator and from the audience.  These meetings would be put in their entirety on Youtube and shown on Television channels.

We should also set up a standard web site for each of them
On their individual, standardized web site, they can express themselves as they please.   But there will also be a section, inaccessible to them, in which past promises are compared with their voting record and a second section comparing their voting record with any other politician one is interested in.    Of course, they can use the Internet to their hearts content.  It costs nothing.

If we want to call the tune, we have to pay the piper.  We should stop all our campaigns for various causes and concentrate a huge ground swell on this one alone.  Then, after we have succeeded,  we can return to our other extremely critical campaigns with a much better chance of success.  We are so smart individually but so dumb in the collective.  How hard is it to understand.

            Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

 

Postscripts:

1/  Jan 12, 2021 - In this kerfuffle regarding activating the 25th amendment or impeaching Donald J Trump for inciting insurrection,  a number of large corporations have announced that they will suspend any financing of the elections of any senators that oppose impeachment when it is sent from the House of Representatives to the Senate.  This will be interesting to watch.  If a bunch of GOP senators switch their allegiance to the cause and vote to impeach Trump it will prove the premise of this blog in spades.  Namely that maintaining their financing is the main motivation of Senators (and of course congressmen) ahead of all other considerations.  We'll see how this plays out.

 

2/  July 17, 2021  A major complaint will be 'Where is this money coming from'.  I'll give you just one example.  You can find your own.  Once the link between vested interests and politicians has been severed, all sorts of legislation will be possible.  One example is removing the tax breaks, subsidies, amortization allowances and so forth from fossil fuel companies.  I bet that this move alone would generate enough money for federal elections.    And remember, elections don't have to cost the obscene amounts that they cost at present.  Of course, this will also go some way toward saving us from our sorry selves with respect to our carbon emissions.  

June 2022

Just one final thought.  We might wonder where the money would come from to support the election campaign of the politicians.  It would have to come from the exchequer, of course and it would be a huge saving of money.  Let me run this by you. 

 

In order to get the contributions from rich individuals and companies with vested interests, the politicians have to give them all sorts of concessions which cost money.  These include such things as tax breaks, tariff barriers, sweet contracts from the government and so forth.  All these cost money which goes out or doesn't even come in to the government coffers in the first place.  And remember, the vested interests want a return on their contributions/investment.  Therefor, the cost to the governments will be greater than the amount the vested interests contribute.

  

In other words, if we the tax payer, supported the election campaigns of the politicians, it would actually save money.