In a Bushian world, democracy isn't the only victim

Boy do we love democracy. We love it. It is in our bones. It is the fundamental principle undergirding our relationship with everything: our environment, our schools, our organizations, and even our families. We are principally a democratic people.

And the axe that I am used to grinding is that the United States of America is not a “true” democracy—we are a republic that abides by ‘democratic principles’. But I don’t plan on grinding that axe today. Instead, it is what is essential for democracy—and its cousin, capitalism—to exist: liberty.

A pure democracy, based solely on its institutional self, inevitably leads to a mob mentality. Might makes right. The will of the majority will always destroy the minority. In effect, a democracy functioning at the height of its potential will eventually destroy the minority, creating a principle of not majority, but unilateral opinion. Instead of serving as a hotbed of diversity and independence, it will naturally devolve into the same result of other social systems such as socialism and fascism: uniformity.

The principle that the Founding Fathers added to our democratic republic was what we might call liberty: a principle of individual and collective freedom. Libertarians take this as only an individual descriptor, but the collective freedom is just as essential. Our system checks the power of the majority by giving unrepresentative power to the minority—forcing the system to not only respect the minority, but live in a dynamic tension between the majority and minority. In this environment, consensus is more a product of obvious points of mutual interest—not the decimation of opposing opinions. The central piece, however, is that tension.

All of this is obvious to us about our government, but less so with regard to our economic system, capitalism. Capitalism, in its “freest” form will move in the same direction as democracy: suppression of divergent opinions and universalism. Similarly, checking the economic system so as to benefit minorities and individuals can form the basis for both balance and true symbiosis with the democratic ideals that are most important to us.

What does this look like? It is preferring the opportunities of that one group that Pres. Bush likes to talk about supporting while attempting to utterly eradicate: entrepreneurs. The idea is this: a capitalist system is made up by industrious individuals that have an idea. The individual works hard, uses whatever sources of revenue s/he can muster, and produces something. The consumer may or may not choose to buy it, but if s/he does, then the capitalist can be rewarded for his/her work with revenue. If the consumer doesn’t buy it, then the capitalist fails and is broke. The principles that freemarketeers love about this is that sense of liberty that we think they embrace. They quote Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and we think that they must be right.

But the solution to capitalism run amok is in that tension between equals. It is the encouragement of individuals to maintain themselves alongside the fully-functioning democratic social system.

A ‘free’ market only suggests freedom for a corporation (not a capitalist or collection of capitalists, but a quasi-governmental organization) to purchase other corporations, reducing both the freedom of choice within the marketplace (a hallmark of Smithian capitalism) and the risk that justifies the reward (placing the cost of doing business on the government—primarily cities, but also states and the federal government).

The current system, of cities eliminating taxes for corporations for the small compensation of jobs for workers is not only a system of inevitable failure, but a system that generates abject poverty throughout the social system. This directly affects the health of each member of the system—even the ones getting rich off the arrangements. This also encourages a funneling of capital away from the local economy (money traded between capitalists), but from a local consumer to a corporation that has no real ties to the community, including financial obligation. Think about it this way. If I made wrenches and sold them to my friends under a small business I called “Drew’s Wrenches”, I would pay the city of Lansing, the state of Michigan, and the federal government a tax for my business. If I paid myself a wage, I would also pay income tax. If my small business becomes a corporation (because I make damn fine wrenches), I can tell Gov. Granholm and Mayor Bernaro that they better pony up or I’m gone. They then eliminate my business tax and further subsidize my operation by chipping in property tax cuts. Even though I am now employing a few more workers at minimum wage and a couple of white collar managers, the state gains zero financial profit from this investment. All of the money will either go into my pocket (which means I will live in Boston or Seattle, helping those economies, not Lansing) and into investor pockets (similarly out of state). Now imagine tax breaks for Wal-Mart stores where none of the money will stay in the city or state. This arrangement is like spending $5,000 for a computer only to find out the computer costs $150 to make, retails at $1,000, and you were paying $4,000 for Geek Squad to plug it into your wall.

To fix the severe economic problems we are facing today requires the same approach to our semi-capitalist economic system that we use to our semi-democratic social system: the injection of individual and collective liberty. The needs of individuals within the system (consumers and capitalists) must supercede the needs of any corporation. The needs of individuals collected in community must be more important than one individual’s right to become rich (through a system that directly undermines everyone around them). The pursuit of the American Dream is happiness, not wealth.

Lastly, the system must be cleansed of corruption—seen in the unhealthy relationship between politicians and multi-national corporations. The influence of these quasi-governmental monstrosities has hijacked the rule of law and led to a tax code, legal system (including Supreme Court), the FCC and SEC, international trade agreements, and a Federal Reserve that give not only a preference for corporations and corporate interests, but continue to re-form the system so that corporations benefit because of our individual pain. It is a vampiric or parasitic relationship because they are not paying for their own investments (we are) or for their failures (we do), but they are able to keep their rewards.

The more freemarketeers make our economy “free,” the more I am left feeling like a slave, willfully supporting Pharaoh.