Sumo Lounge
Have a look at the rampant corruption in governments across the globe. It will be strikingly clear that the level of corruption in any government is directly proportional to authority and control it enjoys over it citizens. The reason we were able to build a relatively honest government are constitutional balance of powers, freedom of speech, small size and very limited authority and control exercised by government. Since all these great principles were started to be compromised, beginning in early 1900s, the level of corruption in government is at sharp rise. We are rapidly losing the constitutional balance of power between three branches of government, big media is being increasingly controlled by corporations, and current size of government was not even remotely imaginable at the inception of our country and government control on almost every aspect of our lives in continuously on rise, especially since 9/11.
These are the signs of our fall from grace. Out of 178 countries ranked, China is ranked 137th (52.5), India 120th (55.7), Russia 140th (51.9), Iran 173rd (40.3), Cuba 177th (25.7), and North Korea 178th (1.0) on Heritage foundation’s 2014 index of economic freedom while we are being ranked at number 12 (score 75.5), trailing behind countries like number one Hong Kong (90.1), number two Singapore (89.4), number four Switzerland (81.6), number six Canada (80.2), number seven Chile (78.4), and number 11 Estonia (15.9).
How shameful is that the country which was founded on principles of individual liberties, property rights, Democracy and Capitalism, is now at number 12 on the list of national economic freedom? One should have no doubt that the economic freedom provides strong bases for all other individual, inalienable rights. It is the economic freedom which empowers us to stand strong against status quo, and fight and preserve our rights. When you do not have the rights to earn and empower yourself, only special interest can flourish and grow, and can easily keep you chained. This is what Fascist, feudal and Communist governments have always done to keep masses enslaved.
This is how the restrictive and controlled economy works under authoritarian governments. They do not make a law stating that only their favorites and allies are allowed to have economic success and make money. You can never find such a law even under the most repressive and suppressive regimes in human history. What they do is that they make laws, especially the business and employment related laws so complicated, and processes so prolonged and expensive that in extreme cases it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to comply with. In the midst of all those complications and expense, required, the favorite and bribing people are given a free pass.
So, Mr. Xyz cannot even start a business while Mr. and Mrs. Favorite can easily start, run and grow their businesses, mostly with full subsidy from tax payers’ money. This makes playing field very uneven. The net result is that the favorite people are able to build big corporation having monopolies and controlling their markets while small guy is just pushed to work for one of those favorites regardless of the fact, how much entrepreneurial he himself may be. Since, all the economic power is now in the hands of few favorite corporations, families and individuals, it is very easy for the governments to have a very strong control on economy and the lives of their citizens.
If you look at the trends in our economy during last century with your eyes and minds open, it should not be very difficult for you to figure out that we have rapidly heading into the same direction. A few examples of tools used by the governments to guarantee monopolies for their favorites are licensing, taxes, regulatory authorities, minimum wage, media power and lobbying. If you carefully analyze these and all other such tools used by governments to keep you out of the loop there is one common factor working behind the dirty tactics.
The business and economic repression tools used by governments always focus on increasing the cost of starting and running a business, in order to making it impossible to compete with favored enterprise. In simple words the goal here is to make playing field as uneven as possible. This is why, contrary to what liberals preach, big corporations love regulations and moderately high taxes. They know that these are the tools which guarantee limited competition. This is why corporations, and their lobbies and super packs keep proving billions to the campaigns of both so called major political parties, and this is why corporate media cannot stop loving those.
A major but insignificant difference between countries like China and us is that the media over there is state controlled while in our country it is controlled by corporations which ultimately control the government and politicians. The basic goal is same. It is to keep us enslaved under the rule of cartel made by aristocracy and bureaucracy. You can easily add theocracy to this equation in non-communist countries. The top echelon of government and corporations cannot do anything wrong, in either case.
A very good sign of rising corruption in government is that the status quo which is corporations, media and government in our case starts hating whistle blowers and dissenting groups. They are conveniently labeled as traitors and conspiracy theorists. The notion behind these tactics is that only official version is always right and anyone saying anything contrary is simply stupid. If you do not buy the official version being trumpeted by big media than you are supposedly not patriotic. Blindly and immediately not falling for official versions is always projected to cause serious harm to safety and security of the country, nation, people and the way of living.
Increasingly across the world, awareness of this devilish trap is on rise, rapidly. China, Russia, North Korea, Egypt, Syria and Iran wherever they can, and as much as they can, people are dissenting against official theories. In some cases, it may be too late or not enough. I wish and hope that it is not too late in our case. Currently, our official theory is that the whole world is trying to destroy our freedoms including Russia, China, Muslims and virtually everyone else. To me, this theory sounds more like conspiracy than anything else echoing around.
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