Bang on Rafe

We live in an age of deceit and corruption, where the wealthy elite have so perverted the rules and laws we live by, that they have enriched themselves greatly, while paupering the middle class.

The end game is to acquire wealth and status; the wealthier one gets, the more power he acquires - the more power one acquires the higher the status. It is a fools paradise which we live under and the fools running the show are too foolish to realize the many dangers that awaits our current society.

When about one third of the population feel disenfranchised, the door opens for revolution and the degree of violence associated with revolution is dependent on the reluctance for change.

In Canada and the USA, the ruling elites do not want to change, thus the fuse has been lit to a massive powder keg of anger and despair and when it blows god help us all.

wealth vs poverty

Wealth is created for a few insiders that support Governments,they create a climate for the top earners to pay little or no taxes. The $200 million tax break for big banks the HST is a prime example of giving wealth to Corporations that do not need nor do I believe they asked for it. If the PST was so unfair why was it not dealth with long before 2009? There are so many things the Governments do for the rich to detriment of the rest of the population. With fair taxation on the rich and Corporations we would have the best services of any province, health, education, solving homelessness and many more. Yet we still vote for these Governments that do not serve anyone but the rich and powerfull and we believe all the BS that they spread. We the electorate have to wake up and study the issues and who contributes to the politians, HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE.

Its collusion

The problem with our modern governments is that they have forgotten their duty to the country. They govern like they are big business themselves when the job of governing is actually the opposite of business, they must be the buffer for the citizenry not the agent for big business. We constantly see our leaders visiting foreign countries to drum up business, is that not the job of businesses?? If you are a salesman for business then you are in bed with them and they control you. They constantly tell us that what is good for big business is good for the worker, well tell that to a sawmill worker in BC. The forest industry is a good example of the failure of this kind of governing, the big forest companies have been given everything they asked for to rebuild the industry. What they didn't tell us was the rebuilding was not going to take place in BC. So we end up with low employment numbers, exporting raw resources, depressed revenues for the government coffers, the gutting of the unions and therefore lower wages and worse working conditions.
Our governments need to get back to their jobs of overseeing the proper functioning of our society, not controlling it but making sure our best interests for now and the future are looked after. Allow business to function and allow workers to work but favour neither. Both work very hard and the taxes they pay need to be spent properly and efficiently without waste. A fair and equitable tax system is not too much to ask for. We desperately need leaders who can think in generations not four year terms.

Sorry Rafe, you're wrong

Sorry Rafe, you're wrong when you say ":...technology drives out jobs for cheaper products", because those products are not "cheaper", but more expensive, with the real prices paid by poverty, cancer and other epidemics, environmental destruction and riots.'

Our economic accounting system has no liability columns, only GDP fraud.

There's no such thing as "cheaper", the purpose of ideologies and economic theories is to transfer real costs on others, the environment and the future.

This is a simple physical fact, not a theory.

The richest are not the Mexican Helu or Gates,with their piddling billions, but the Rotschild family with $110. trillion and the Rockefellers with 10% of that at with $11. trillion

The total wealth of the Canadian public is estimated at $54. trillion, and the US debt is not $14. but around $70 trillion, carefully covered up.

The main problem is not "jobs", but no trades, no knowledge, not being able to do and make things, incompetence and no purpose in life.

When I was a kid, there were exhibitions every year of the "masterpieces" by apprentices, with the most fantastic products by 16-18 year olds, literally unimaginable today.

It was killed by monetary deregulation, enslaving the world with imaginary, non existent capital, causing overcapitalization, poverty and destruction to keep the value of that funny money.

The Fraser Inst is not a " prestigious economic think tank", but a PR agency with hundreds of others incl. university economics departments, to sell the enslavement of the human race with the biggest fraud in history, called neoclassical market economics, capitalism, the idiot twin of communism

Ed Deak.

Nail the bastards!

We are now in a situation where practically every country has big financial problems.
So it is no longer one country that simply dominantes the rest, but a handfull of individuals, who may live anywhere, that now create the conditions that strap us all.

The only solution is for a world-wide government to be given the powers to go after these parasites, no matter which tax-heaven they hide in.

Yes, society would be wise to look at the causes ...

When it comes to social unrest and riots, discipline, the pill, drugs, the economy, the increasing divide between rich and poor, and misguided politicians aren’t causes, they are symptoms.

The “lofty principles” ascribed to past “watershed moments” didn’t happen because folks were happy and satisfied with their living conditions, they happened because they, like today’s rioters, were angry and their lives were governed by an undercurrent of pain.

The failure to understand how anger influences our thinking and behaviour is the underlying cause of riots, past and present. In truth, we simply don’t understand why we think the way we do and no one seems the least bit interested in getting past reasoning that claims it’s all driven by human nature and greed.

It’s easy to claim that “greed” and the fact that the distribution of wealth is out of whack lies at the heart of our problems. Indeed, if we took the fortunes of some of the wealthiest and redistributed it among Tyee readers few would object. In a world that makes a simple connection between wealth and pleasure and the quality of life, understanding “why?” no longer matters.

Taxation

The badly-bochted implemention of the HST is yet another example of the power elite trying to maintain their tax advantage. On that issue, I recently surmised the best thing to do now (after voting, in a convoluted manner, "YES", to throw out the HST) is to throw the entire taxation issue back to the politicos, in order to come up with a fair and equitable taxation system, whererin we can pay for essential social services such as health, education, transportation and all the other usual suspects.
On a related issue, it appears the new political modus operandi is to dazzle the masses (that's us!) with mega projects, such as the Olympics, trade and convention centres, new roofs on the stadiums, etc., in order to gain favour and get re-elected: it appears to have worked! Better, lets dump mega projects and instead re-implement rational spending on essential social services. And let's do this via a fair and equitable tax system. Dump lottery-mania and tax loopholes. Lets get back to basics. I don't care which group of politicos do it, just do it!

Do you have any proof?

It saddens me that opinion writers have a lot of theories on what causes different riots, but very rarely back those theories with proof. I'm afraid that most of this article is just one more unfounded rant.

In London, there have been some great studies mapping riot locations onto charts of local quality of life. From this, we can indeed conclude that classism (and likely racism) were a factor.... in London.

But this article has no proof to back up its claims that the riots were caused by (1) latch-key kids, (2) sexual promiscuity, (3) recreational drugs and (4) class-driven un(der)employment.

And the first three claims are ridiculous.

(1) Lax parenting: Mr. Mair, you claim a lack of parental discipline is at fault. If you look through newspaper opinion columns for as long as there have been newspapers, you'll see writers blaming riots on the new wave of lax discipline. What causes it? Maybe television. Or motor-cars. Or, according to this article... working mothers. And working mothers only seem new if one presumes that all families have money, two present/living parents, and a mother who wants to stay at home.

(2) Promiscuity: I stopped and re-read this article to double check that this article actually blamed The Pill and promiscuity. There are two problems with this.

First, "The Pill" generation was not heavily represented among the rioters - likely because they were too busy planning for retirement. Were the rioters of a promiscuous generation? I don't know, but pretty much everyone under the age of 35 hit puberty during or after the AIDS crisis. As a consequence, most of us are far more cautious and disciplined around sex than our (grand)parents ever were. As for “The Pill?” For the hetero-mating among us, "The Pill" comes after using blood tests, condoms and/or using one's mouth.

Second, if we are more promiscuous (which, as far as I can tell, just means "knowing your own sexuality through experience,") what would that have to do with riots? Unless riots are a sign of the Wrath of God.

(3) Recreational Drugs: Do you think people on MDMA/ecstasy or cannabis are going to riot? No, they are going to dance and snack.

(4) Class and unemployment? Maybe. But where's the proof linking this to the riots? Espescially in Vancouver? Have you interviewed rioters? Do you have proof that they were impoverished? How much does a Canuck's jersey cost anyway?

Here's my question: do we believe that riots are a social evil? A sign thereof? Or are they free entertainment? If they're entertainment, let us speculate all we want as to the lax moral character that has overtaken our youth since the passing of His Majesty King George IV. But if they're a sign of social problems, then we need hard data to plan a fix. This means testing our hypotheses (or at least giving them some critical thought) before we expound on them in public.

Explanation good, Solution not so good

It's true that the real reason the riots happened is because there aren't any jobs, or hope, for the young. It's also true that human labour is becoming obsolete, the way ass labour did a few hundred years ago. The problem is that Americans (and Canadians) are sitting around waiting for their jobs to come back, for their government to do something. This isn't going to happen. The jobs aren't going to come back. We live in a global corporatocracy, which means that profit is the main decider in any decision. Governments have been taken over by corporations. At this point I hope I don't sound paranoid when I say that. Look at poor president Obama, or better listen to his speech a week before the famous August 2 deadline. The man cared but he's a politician, and politicians can't do shit these days. Only corporations can. So, not only is taxation as a solution moot (because as if the corporations would ever agree to that), it's also wholly inadequate because it won't bring the jobs back. The sooner we accept that the system is totally f*cked, the sooner we can start to invent a new one.

The first task of any new

The first task of any new system should be the finding of the real, physical, not the imaginary monetary, costs of products.

The main purpose of globalization is the disenfranchisement of local, democratic decision making powers, the "creation" of survival incompetence e.g. with forced urbanization, and the total colonization and enslavement of the world with the use of imaginary capital as weapons, by the international corporate mafia.

Helped, justified and legalized by the priesthood of our university economics departments, the same way other priesthoods in history have always legalized conquests, colonizations, ethnic cleansing and mass murders, but never on the present scale.

Ed Deak.

thanks, Amy Fox

Always good to read the words of somebody who lives in the real world. And who has the patience to respond to such drivel as lax parenting, promiscuity, etc. Cheers.

Tax the Financial Casinos out of Existence.

The stock exchanges are not markets in the sense that Adam Smith & economists use the term - irrespective of what the speculators call them. Markets require many independent buyers and sellers, thus each transaction makes only a small contribution to the total activity. Today's financial 'markets' are driven by trades made by huge pools of capital; either explicitly via the giant banks' own "propietary" traders or via hedge funds using massive bank loans for leverage. This is NOT 'free enterprise' but that phrase makes a nice smokescreen to hide behind. None of this activity provides any legitimate function in the real economy, so Rafe is right: bring in the Tobin tax now on financial speculation but at 50% of the profit gained, not 1/2 of 100th of 1 percent that Tobin dared to suggest. This is one goose that needs to be cooked.

Rafe & Ed

I think you are both right. It's just that Ed thinks 20 minutes into the future, whereas Rafe's comment has to do with the present.

I've said it once (and there is nothing "out there" to contradict me) we no longer live in a pick-and-shovel world. The reason most people around the world do not have security of income is because they no longer have the education and training to do 21st century work. Heck, unemployment is even striking China (where once upon a time dams, etc. used to be built by hand).

Ed is right, in that we need to be thinking long term in what a world of billions of people are going to do.

And Rafe is right in that lack of work equals lack of income -- in a world that runs on income.

Jobs are a large issue behind virtually any unrest in the world. But automation will soon enough be putting the ax to even such skills as surgery, so it's not just "any old education" that will do.

VivianLea & Amy Fox

Did you by chance listen to CBC's Cross Country Checkup on Sunday, 21 August?
The topic was: What effect is technology having on children's lives?

I caught part of it, and the part that I caught had to do with a survey taken in Britain, where it was revealed that many parents thought personal time spent with their kids was "boring".

So perhaps you should re-examine your notions of "lax parenting".

Vox.Pop

But who is going to bell that cat? Surely you don't think the politicians will, as their retirement sinecures are tied to the people behind such ersatz profits........

I'm with

Ed Deak. That probably won't surprise many people, I almost invariably agree with Ed. The whole "stock market" is b.s., and anybody who thinks they can make money playing in that sandbox is going to learn the hard way that the game is rigged.

I come from workie background. Not for us the opportunity to graduate from law school, we knew our "place" was in the bush, on the tugs, or on gill netters and purse seiners. We knew our hands would look like our grandparents hands did; gnarled, calloused, even twisted by unremitting hard work. And there was work for us. We didn't expect to get rich quick, but we did expect to save up a down payment,move into a "handyman's special", and fix it up so it was comfortable for our family. Young people today do not expect to own their own home, and too many of them don't expect any kind of permanent job, either.

I have grandchildren entering the work force, they can't even find rental accomodation for a reasonable price. for a lot of young people welfare and food bank line ups are the norm.

There's an article in this Tyee about worker death on a "vacation" home and the one pictured is beyond merely "posh" and is a sad indication of the huge gap between the ones who have more than is reasonable and the ones who have less than makes sense.

Anybody who isn't angry about the absolute frikken mess the "upper crust" has made of finance and economics is someone who just isn't aware of what's going on.

We're absolutely silly if we equate that hockey riot with what happened in London. Or in Greece. Or...any young person who can afford a team shirt and the price of a ticket to an NHL final game is one of the precious Entitled generation. That crowd would have rioted if Vancouver had won. They wanted to get in on a trend without yet having any real reason to riot. But the groundwork has been laid and there will be riots in future for the same reasons as the ones in London and other cities in Jolly Olde.

Because the rot is spreading and the gap is wider and deeper than it has been in the past. And those without will get sick and tired of having nothing and will move to take it from those who have too much.

Enjoyed your comment, Ed Deak. Have you written a book? I'd like to read more of your writing.

Read the full text of the article and ...

...Rafe in bang on. I'm surprised that someone would take umbrage at a reference to poor parenting missing the real meat of the article. Somebody ask, you need proof. Just observe the way they conduct themselves on the street in the evenings.

Anne....I'm not into writing

Anne....I'm not into writing books, too much trouble. I'm too busy with making and building thongs and with my artwork .

But I've written about 274 columns in the small Gold River Record. Jerry West editor. Probably the only one in BC who'd dare to publish my writings.

Ed Deak.

alive, not a world government please

alive, I agree that we need much stronger international and enforceable laws to deal with scam artists, both individual and more-so, corporate based, transnationals. But not a world government.

Several problems arise, the first being that nation states are unwilling to give up their own powers to some extra-national organization. The idea of a global government, on its surface, is too simplistic. No powerful nation, especially Russia, China or the U.S.A., will agree to it.

Just look south of the border to see the struggle between federal and state disagreements, (or for that matter, our own similar situations, as in Newfoundland's transfer payment issue or Quebec vs. Alberta energy policies).

What's best for one region or country may not be appropriate for another. The "one size fits all" approach has long been shown to be both inefficient and much resented.

Decentralization and localization is a growing trend, to the chagrin of centralized governments and those multinationals that are unable to take advantage of it.

The next problem, somewhat associated with the above, is enforcement of global rules. Who will supply and finance it on a global scale? NATO? Sovereign territory plays into this one. Note the Pakistan or Burmese situations.

Most important is the nature of such a global government as you propose.

Please remember that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

In a manner acceptable to all nations, how would such members of this multi-national government be selected and by who? How would their powers be distributed and limited? How to incorporate a higher level of corruption prevention is crucial. The U.N., INTERPOL and the IMF have all had their share of corruption. After all, this would be a highly centralized and all powerful organization.

The E.U. is an organization that does not determine national laws of its members, but promotes free exchange of many items and concepts between them. Even so, a number of European nations have refused to join, while others, more willing, have been rejected.

Lets have stronger, well developed, international financial and criminal laws that most nations can agree on, to catch and prosecute the scum(money)bags, but a world government just isn't in the cards.

I second "thank you, Amy Fox"

I somehow missed who the article was written by until my curiosity turned to disgust & I realized I was reading the usual rant by Rafe M. I will never understand how anyone can go through life with that kind of attitude. Had the article not been by R.M. I would have written a comment, but seriously, what's the point? It's his modus operandi & something he clings to as if it were a life-preserver. Come to think of it, he's made a living out of it so maybe it IS his life-preserver. Food for thought.

Then I came upon Amy's beautifully written post & I just wanted to thank you. I hope you write for a living. I know you do not write for this paper.

Ed Deak

"Ed Deak. That probably won't surprise many people, I almost invariably agree with Ed."

Indeed, *that won't surprise many people,* because Ed Deak is a spammer of every single Tyee article, and is a very boring one-note Left-ist. Left-ism is well past its sell-buy date, but that doesn't stop the spamming Mr. Deak from adding not one comment per article, not two, but three or four comments per Tyee article. It doesn't help his cause to spam the Forums, it's just very obvious & boring.

As to the person who *invariably* agrees with Ed Deak, don't you think it's time to try some thinking on your own?

Where the blame lies.

Rafe I read the entire article and agree with most of what you say. The rich get richer, the poor get screwed and the politicians watch their pockets.

But... who elects the politicians.

The recent Canadian election is a classic case.

Those most interested in the outcome are those who are most aware of the issues. The wealthy take the time to learn what the effects of policies will be and so ensure they vote for the people will server their purposes.

Those who are fully aware of the outcome take the time to vote.

The economically challenged do not do this (in general) and therefore do not see the purpose in voting. The result, they do not vote. The result of this, the election goes to the party who can motivate most of their supporters to vote.

The result is no surprise. But to complain about the victors when they are only delivering what they promised is misplaced. This is what the general population deserves. Even if they do not understand what is happening.

And then finally, when the frustration sets in among the economically deprived, they rise up (briefly) and create chaos. But chaos for whom. The wealthy? Not likely! Just their neighbours who then spend from their meagre resources to repair the damage done for reasons that are beyond their control.

Just look at Egypt. The famous 'Arab spring'. Now the military is back in control and the revolutionaries have fractured or sold out. But has anything really changed? Not much.

I am much saddened by this state of affairs. I have spent much of my life trying to encourage all groups of society to get involved in the election process. But it seems to have been of little use. Worldwide the deterioration of the process can be seen.

I begin to believe a little bit of what Krugman says - our redemption may lie in an invasion of aliens.

Bucking the Trend

Ah Rafe, you old socialist, or should I say, a strange blend of old social conservative and fiscal, quasi-liberal, modern socialist.

You buck the trend. Many left wingers, as they age, become more conservative.

You know that a tax of 90% over a $2 million income would become media pounded on front pages and news reports as "government theft on those hard working investors and executives who sustain our jobs and economy".

Such is the argument against the Tobin tax. You suggested that this notion was introduced at the wrong time, but I don't believe that there is any right time for this elite bunch.

Law Lass, I think that as oil and gas become more unavailable or difficult to access, and thus more expensive, global outsourcing and "just in time" product ordering will be much reduced, due to transportation costs. Human labour will become more valued for many projects in decades to come as other energy sources become more expensive.

Perhaps new technologies might supplement the fading fossil fuel based enterprises (despite their current explosion to extract ever more quickly), but here in North America, we sure ain't trying hard to make that possible, despite some really good, but small and mostly unsupported projects.

In Canada, we haven't seen full bore protests and rioting in a very long time. Think the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike or the 1935 On to Ottawa trek. Grumpy got it with "When about one third of the population feel disenfranchised... the degree of violence associated with revolution is dependent on the reluctance for change."

So is that what those new super prisons will be for?

Ed, I mostly agree with your smart, ongoing analysis, but I'm curious to know who wears those "thongs" that you are "too busy with making and building." ; -)

OwlRol

You are right of course, we are all a bit different, and somehow we are being foisted into these nationalistic / patriotic sentiments!
Guess who benefits?
The super rich do not care about national pride or local cultural customs, they keep us docile by making us fight each other instead!
Maybe it is too much to ask, but try to see the big picture!
As long as people think that wars are justified or that we have anything to "defend" from people similar to us, that is how long we will be used and abused.
Hell, even the religions that preach brotherly love still encourage conflicts!
Do you get it?
it is called : "divide and conquer"!

alive, not a world government please

alive, I agree that we need much stronger international and enforceable laws to deal with scam artists, both individual and more-so, corporate based, transnationals. But not a world government.

Several problems arise, the first being that nation states are unwilling to give up their own powers to some extra-national organization. The idea of a global government, on its surface, is too simplistic. No powerful nation, especially Russia, China or the U.S.A., will agree to it.

Just look south of the border to see the struggle between federal and state disagreements, (or for that matter, our own similar situations, as in Newfoundland's transfer payment issue or Quebec vs. Alberta energy policies).

What's best for one region or country may not be appropriate for another. The "one size fits all" approach has long been shown to be both inefficient and much resented.

Decentralization and localization is a growing trend, to the chagrin of centralized governments and those multinationals that are unable to take advantage of it.

The next problem, somewhat associated with the above, is enforcement of global rules. Who will supply and finance it on a global scale? NATO? Sovereign territory plays into this one. Note the Pakistan or Burmese situations.

Most important is the nature of such a global government as you propose.

Please remember that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

In a manner acceptable to all nations, how would such members of this multi-national government be selected and by who? How would their powers be distributed and limited? How to incorporate a higher level of corruption prevention is crucial. The U.N., INTERPOL and the IMF have all had their share of corruption. After all, this would be a highly centralized and all powerful organization.

The E.U. is an organization that does not determine national laws of its members, but promotes free exchange of many items and concepts between them. Even so, a number of European nations have refused to join, while others, more willing, have been rejected.

Lets have stronger, well developed, international financial and criminal laws that most nations can agree on, to catch and prosecute the scum(money)bags, but a world government just isn't in the cards.

Owl....as you must have

Owl....as you must have noticed, apart from building "thongs", I also bore the faithful with a half dozen stupid comments on every article that appears in the Tyee and sometimes I forget to proofread my silly offerings for misused neighbouring letters.

I haven't built many thongs today, but, for some reason the blade on my tablesaw went out of line and I had to take the whole damn thing apart to line it up again.

I'm also laying a new floor in the dining room of our 3 level house I built, installed the plumbing and electricity and made all the furniture, having been a custom furniture maker most of my life. When I get bored I build machinery and farm equipment with dozens of articles on how to build things in various magazines.

For fun I raise many hundreds of bucks for various charities and organizations with my quick portraits and my wife and I are planning an exhibition for next year Sept in the Williams Lake Station House Gallery, when all our paintings will be donated to the gallery for fund raising, probably well over $10- 15,000 worth, and to the Williams Lake Museum who already have a permanent exhibit of my Quesnel Forks series.

We blind leftwingers must do something worthwhile some times.

Now I have to go to lock up the chickens. Getting dark, no time to proofread.

Ed Deak.

World government dangerous

Alive, I'm well aware of "tribalistic" divisions of "us and them" used to justify many atrocities in the name of race, class, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation and notably here, nationality. If you read some of my previous comments, you will know that I pointed out how the elite manipulated these, for example as in Dunsmuir's Cumberland coal operations, provoking white minors against blacks and Asians.

But my comment was more about the risks of who runs the big show, how and what happens with corruption at that level.

Baron Montesque wrote that democracy required checks and balances in sharing power, something that many so called, current democratic governments have tried to reduce or work around to increase their own powers.

It is good to have contrasting examples of both better and worse, be they the U.S., Canadian, Chinese, Venezuelan, Swedish, etc. systems. Global rules by global government would create one homogenous and unimaginative system.

If a global government is infiltrated by representatives of the elite, then there is virtually no shining example of alternatives and no recourse to their ultimately overpowering will.

Hey Ed

We are both "blind leftwingers" as evidenced by both of us accidentally submitting our recent comments on this topic twice. Oops. I guess we both "bore the faithful" at times.

Good to hear about all the crafts and caring work you do. Creative and giving activities make it all worthwhile and most often joyful. I'm sure Jack would agree.

OwlRol

So, we agree, except that you do not dare to change things because maybe corruption may infiltrate in the new system as well?

Why not agree that it can not get much worse than it is already?

With good will from all parties there are means of checks and balances on a world scale as well.

I am not proposing it will be easy or that some nations will not object, but we need to have a goal, a solution that once and for all stops the super rich from just shifting their allegiance to a new country, every time the law catches up to them.

As I see it, nothing short of an effective world government would have such powers, and do not mention UN please.

What Ed Deak Said

Like Rafe, Ed Deak's concerns are shared by millions of real people. The ruling elite are not. Therein lies the problem.

Real democracies broadly reflect the policies which the majority of citizens want. In Canada and the US, this no longer occurs. We are no longer a functioning democracy except perhaps in name only.

The elite however persist in lying about our so called democracy, so as to pretend we still have a choice.

Great article Rafe!

Alive

The debate about a world government has been going on for at least 4 decades, or, if you look at Trotsky and Marx, much longer.

"So, we agree, except that you do not dare to change things..." Ha Ha, those who know me, frequently quip that I'm too eager to make changes, especially those that might threaten the status quo, family, community or state.

I am optimistic for the long term, likely long after I'm gone, but I am also a realist, and I know that, given human nature, the concept that you promote will require many small steps toward accomplishing that goal. Let's move foreword, but very carefully, because this is a huge and dangerous task; one misstep and humanity is toast for a very long time. But we can struggle toward a better end.

(Have you noticed how long it has taken the elite to convince so much of the populace that government works against its citizens, with a growing kernel of truth, and that the free market benefits all of us? At least 40 years.)

In poker terms, you've got to have an amazingly good hand to go all in. You can't bluff the players who have 1000 times more chips than you do.

I used to consider a world government as a best solution to modern problems since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

But the devil is always in the details. On closer investigation and research, I changed my mind on this issue.

The post WWI, 1919 world meetings in Paris, just prior to the Versailles and associated treaties, or the 1945 Declaration of Human Rights and the creation of the U.N. in its original spirit, were potential turning points in human progress toward a fairer, compassionate, just and even sustainable world. Despite considerable advances, look how these were twisted and reduced.

Likewise the Bretton Woods agreements, the Rio environmental and Cairo population conferences. The World Trade Organization (WTO) can't get any sort of fair and just consensus (quite understandable, given the special interests and power inequalities) after numerous controversial meetings.

Just for starters, we can't even get our act together on the most urgent issue of climate change. Our Canadian (Harper) government did its best to undermine that one in Copenhagen.

Some of the best progressive moves in the direction of honest global cooperation have been coming from some nations in Europe, and even more, South America, (such as Cochabamba, Bolivia). But like that poker game...

Global/international rules/laws to curb multinational corruption will be difficult and take time, but need to be our first goal on the road to egalitarian sustainability.

We are not ready for a world government, just maybe after 2100 and, or when there are more intense global crisis to deal with.

re: Where the blame lies.

It's not really fair to blame the general public for how the elections turn out.

The wealthy have the time, the education and the knowledge to fully understand the issues -- and the resources to actively, effectively support the policies and politicians of their preference.

The rest (including the much celebrated "middle class" that our society supposedly depends on) are too busy keeping the bills paid, the kids cared for, etc, -- and too tired.

The failure of attempts to bring about an electoral system designed to represent the general population rather than some victorious subset has also led to discrediting of the system.

But more importantly, even those that attempt to exercise civic attention and responsible participation, are uninformed and misinformed and distracted by mass media that is supposed to keep the citizenry cognizant of what they need to know, in order to make good political choices. This is partly a natural consequence of concentration of the media over the past forty years or more (it's been roughly that long since we stopped having -- and subsequently disregarding -- Royal Commissions on the topic) into ever larger corporate conglomerates that purvey "infotainment" in the guise of news, and partly a result of a deliberate and explicit, decades-long campaign to capture the mass media and transform them into "right wing" soapboxes.

Jefferson once remarked that a vigorous and independent media was more essential to democracy than the ballot box -- and he is now being proved correct.

At times like this...

At times like this I turn to see what Zizek has to say:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite