US Democracy has failed, all for the reasons you specified below and its on a slow and steady decline that will likely cause massive discontent and social uprising before this dog is finally put down. Government has polluted and contaminated everything. All the problems you have specified below are a direct result of the very structure of Central Government in my opinion particularly over the last 100 years, including the reason why people are so apathetic. The veneer of Democracy is a puppet show to entice the tax cattle to make them believe they have some kind of control/say in the way things are run. A 2 party system is only 1 party away from Totalitarianism, I don't see how you can have a healthy democracy when only 2/3 parties dominate everything and then expect everything to turn out to be OK. I think we have all been sold a lie in order to benefit a few at the expensive of the rest of society.

For every CISPA, SOPA or PIPA that is put down, 5 more alphabet soup acronyms are in the pipeline to be launched straight afterwards. This is a constructed war against the freedom of the internet. Government will not allow the Internet to be/remain free. It threatens the monopolies that have seduced Government to operate to their bidding for so long now. This will continue on wards until they have control of the Internet, then they can thwart those "pesky activists".

It's the goal of business to operate in a market place in order to meet the demands of market participants for a profit. Therefore why would a business need to go to Government? Or to get a voice to protect its self from the Government ....unless of course the government itself is influencing the market place for its own agenda. Maybe if the Government was separated out from the economy all together, there would be no need for lobby groups to exist.

You have highlighted all the symptoms of a corrupt state that has corrupted its society. Maybe the answer lies in not looking to the state to change everything for the better.








22.08.2013, 06:17, "Caleb James DeLisle" <cjd@???>:

>    For those who are not cjdns users or have not seen my blog which is
>    exclusively available in the cjdns network, I thought I'd repaste this as
>    it might be of some interest:
>
>    Originally posted March 2, 2013
>    -----------------------------------------------
>
>    Is this the best we can do?
>
>    Not one month after the tragic death of Aaron Swartz, there's another bill on
>    the table to "strengthen internet security" as if the CFAA under which he was
>    viciously prosecuted wasn't enough. The same well moneyed groups are supporting
>    it and the same largely volunteer organizations are heroically opposing it.
>    I've seen this before. CISPA, SOPA, PIPA, PatriotAct, these come immediately to
>    mind. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose but it's the same story every single
>    time.
>
>    Why?
>
>    For me, 5 years ago, the answer would have been "it's the Illuminati, they
>    always win, there's nothing you can do". Now I realize that no conspiracy,
>    however powerful it may be, could ever gain enough willing participants to
>    really control government. Even if the richest people in the world are truly
>    malignant (which I doubt), the only way such a system can sustain itself is if
>    most people see no other alternative than to ``play the game''.
>
>    The system sucks. I doubt anyone went to business school so they could start a
>    company which buys off politicians and crams stupid laws down everybody's
>    throat. I doubt that anyone got into politics because they wanted to sell out
>    the heart of America (ok maybe there are a few). I can't imagine someone
>    telling their third grade teacher "when I grow up, I'm going to be a lobbyist
>    so I can thwart grass roots attempts to bring about real change". Nobody ever
>    wanted to walk away from the process of electing government, god knows the
>    people aren't *satisfied* with government, but voting turnout is abysmal and as
>    a non-voter I am to blame as well. I've never met someone who really *liked*
>    the system we have but everybody seems to assume that somebody else does. They
>    are, after all, participating.
>
>    Lets imagine for a moment that *nobody* likes the system. The politicians don't
>    like their dreams being held hostage to lobbyists and companies, the companies
>    don't like forking over mountains of cash to lobbyists just to keep government
>    from ruining their business, the lobbyists don't like being the posterboy of
>    corruption. Suppose just suppose that the only reason why the system exists is
>    because nobody can think of a better one.
>
>    There have been efforts to reform campaign finance before but they inevitably
>    fail to bring about the promised change. Is it really being blocked by a
>    powerful and shadowy group which prefers the status quo or could it simply be a
>    technical failing? The human mind loves a story of intrigue. Secret oaths,
>    secret rituals and old money are the stuff of legend. Technical failures are
>    just plain boring. If you propose to ban corporate lobbying, corporations are
>    going to lobby against it. It has nothing to do with the status quo or the
>    secret knights of the round table, it's just that by making such a proposal
>    you've alienated a huge group of powerful people who, most importantly, are not
>    bent on destroying the country. What's more, even if there *is* a shadowy group
>    of evil industrialists conspiring to restrain human progress, if an Idea is
>    pure then the force of regular people, rich and poor, who are unhappy with the
>    system will overcome whatever effort they may make to sabotage it.
>
>    Is this the best we can do? Are we doomed to forever be paddling upstream to
>    block stupid law after stupid law which Washington mills out? Must we sit idly
>    by as our neighbors, our friends, are family and we are tried, convicted and
>    trucked off to prison camp while the federal prosecutor behind it all cowers in
>    terror at the sight of a Wall Street banker who is the very reason why the
>    prosecutor has such godlike powers. Should businesses have no alternative but
>    to bribe politicians through the morally reprehensible "campaign finance"?
>
>    Some will say "businesses have no place in policy making" and whether or not
>    that is true misses the point. Businesses *need* their political voices to be
>    heard just as people need to consume fossil fuels. Attempting to block
>    businesses from political activism is no more logical than banning automobiles.
>    If however, we can offer a cleaner, safer, more regulated approach for
>    businesses to communicate their needs to government then we can have an impact
>    just as do automobile emissions and efficiency standards.
>
>    Can we really make a difference? If we could solve only the apathy and cynicism
>    among the (non) voting populous, we could singlehandedly overturn every bad
>    idea which has ever been introduced in government. Everybody knows how they
>    feel about the PatriotAct or the war on drugs or SOPA. But they don't ask these
>    questions on a ballot, they ask "would you rather John Smith or Bill
>    Robertson?" and nobody has a clue which one of these people is more likely to
>    vote for things they want. Public services like OpenSecrets do a tremendous
>    amount of good by making information about campaign finance available in a
>    readable way. Unfortunately when one looks at campaign finance and voting
>    records, the information is extensive and difficult to wade through and a
>    likely conclusion is "they're all corrupt". While this conclusion might be
>    true, we can only make progress by asking "who is *less* corrupt?". Like
>    panning for gold, after enough iterations even this most simple approach will
>    eventually bear fruit.
>
>    Suppose then that we can give people the information they need. Suppose we
>    could link unpopular laws with the politicians who voted for them, the
>    companies who financed them and the currently running candidates who are
>    financed by those companies. Suppose we could get people excited about their
>    election for county commissioner by showing them what their vote means in the
>    context of the issues they care about. Suppose we could use risk algorithms as
>    perfected by insurance and credit rating industries to calculate the likelihood
>    that any given candidate would have voted for the PatriotAct, had they been in
>    2001's congress. It would be only a matter of time before no politician wanted
>    to take money from those who lobby for unpopular laws, before lobbyists call
>    the politicians they donated to, urging them not to vote for a war, lest the
>    lobbyists and their customers have their reputation stained as the war grows
>    increasingly unpopular. Everything would change, wouldn't it?
>
>    What about the electric company who can only power our lights by burning coal
>    and gas? If they are locked out of the political process then the people's
>    reasonable thirst for energy will come head to head with their valid desire for
>    clean air. Without giving industry a seat at the table, we force them to foil
>    our efforts. We sign the death warrant for our own greatest hopes when we sign
>    the check for our power bill. Is there a better way?
>
>    And this is where I got stuck. The path to making government accountable to the
>    people is, in theory, no more complex than the technology of a search engine.
>    Getting people excited about politics won't happen overnight but the basic
>    approach is laid out. How then can we give the well meaning people in industry
>    a voice to express their needs without resorting to practices one would expect
>    of a criminal racket? While the technical details still elude me, the word
>    which comes to mind is compromise. We cannot have clean air *and* cheap
>    electricity but the choice need not be binary. These decisions are made every
>    day by politicians who want to do great things but see no way into government
>    without lobbyist money and the strings attached to it. If we can make these
>    compromises in the open then we can negotiate in unison rather than forcing our
>    representatives to make these uncomfortable decisions in private.
>
>    Imagine the day when power companies help bring an end to the war on drugs in a
>    bill which redefines clean air rules. How, you may ask, can clean air rules
>    become any less strict? They probably can't but if an active voting populous
>    believes the current laws were thrust upon them, everything is up for rewrite.
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