The crisis of democracy - why your choices matter not

Let me begin today with a few questions.

Are you satisfied with contemporary politic?

Do you think politicians do enough in the best interest of citizens, are they doing enough to defend your rights?

Then, why don't we change your vote? Why won't we elect someone more effective, more honest, more in line with what we ask from our government?

Truth is that we already do that, many times. And yet, little actually changes. Why is it so? What is able to neutralize the impact of our choices and ultimately make them irrelevant?

We live in time of crisis and excess, each of them aliments the other. Our society is becoming more rigid, less liberal. We are suffocating ourselves with pervasive burocracy, oppressing taxation, misregulated welfare,  and so on. We are witnessing the transformation of our society, from a State serving its people to people serving their State. Now, the balance between the State's collective interests and the fundamental freedoms of each individual is seriously unhinged. When the State begins to value its interests above those of its citizens, the system becomes diseased. Democracy should be a powerful cure against this type of disease, a way to discriminate what is wrong in our governments and reliably remove it. 

Unfortunately, the system defends itself. 

The society has become inefficient and is resistant to change

The system's higher gears are the ones detaining power and influence, primarily in financial ways. Where money go, the rest follows. This extensively conditions the politic, which is far from independent. Our politicians have to answer to international organisms and committee, following rules and facing evaluation from people who do not get their position by popular vote. Structures and private organizations like rating agencies (for the West, mainly Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch) give economical evaluations with huge impacts even on governments stability. Banks are supposed to manage money and yet to obtain loans is becoming increasingly difficult, to the point where credit choke is a real problem in many instances and in different countries. And still there are credit institutes which can bankrupt so that investors, account holders and/or governments have to intervene. Lots of people's money are wasted. Again, individual rights are overlooked quite easily in favor of wider and more remunerative perspectives.

Politic and media in part cause the difficulties of the society

Everything stated above, and many other examples, should be more subject to political decisions under democratic control. They are not. Governments more often than not are entitled to ignore people's consensus when negotiating with international organisms, just like Europeans in relation to the European Union. In face of this, the politic answers are very limited. The ones holding power and money inevitably use them so that they can keep their advantage. This eventually translates an economical crisis into a social crisis, because it leads to the main problems being unanswered and unresolved.

This is the course of things, it has always been. Now we reflect on it because we are living through a crisis and we ask ourselves what we did wrong. This way can be seconded or not; people can go with the flow or protest or anything in between. Media are instrumental in manipulating consensus, even silencing or ridiculing specific parts of the public opinion. Most politicians do not oppose the system, even if it is a defective one. Again, when the system can employ money and influence, it is easy to make and undo careers. Politicians who are seriously against the system are mostly forced out of politic; they can be elected, but they will mostly prevented to change how the system works.

A corrupt and inefficient system perpetuates itself in politic and society

The system itself crafts our politic, forges our politicians. It eventually ensures that when we choose who shall govern us our choice would not matter because the viable candidates are all functional to the system's purposes and needs. It comes down to most politicians being apparently different, with their own ideas and programs and proposals, but in fact they are almost interchangeable. 

The Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror VII

They ultimately all answer to the same power, and not to the people who elect them. That is why your vote is not important, you can vote one or another and the results remain mostly the same. The dangerous variable of democratic choice is neutralized because people can't be allowed to decide for themselves while someone else has already invested so much money and influence to ensure a future that must be stabilized. That is why democracy must be tightly controlled under an illusionary veil of free choice.

As long as this system stands, as long as who has money and power will use them to influence politic and society - as it has more or less always been throughout History - as long as this fundament does not radically change, we will unsuccessfully try to live in a full democracy. And mostly we will be kept trapped in this illusions, because we shall see the reality that the media depict for us.

Our home is built on (likely not ours) money and lies. How many are happy about this?