Don’t Blame Politicians for the Eurozone Crisis – Blame Older Voters
7th January 2012
Of course politicians, like bankers, have the capacity to make the situation worse, and they’ve grabbed the opportunity.
Yet they are not the cause of the problem. They are a symptom. The real cause of the crisis and why leaders are forever advocating piecemeal policies lies beneath the speeches and posturing at summits. The tourniquet applied to the Brussels machine is held tight by voters and not politicians.
Whether it is Germans refusing to share with Greeks or rich Greeks with their fellow countrymen, the euro crisis is a case of democracy in action. The problem centres on the demographic development of recent decades that means many voters are over 55 and still retain much of the wealth they gained in the boom. Even those who have lost a large proportion of their pensions continue to vote for politicians who promise to do all in their power to protect what’s left of their other assets.
The economic crises hitting Europe (and America) are the result of the conjunction of two unhealthy trends.
The first is the tendency in the centralizing modern state to put every issue in the hands of the government, which necessarily makes every issue a political issue, decided by political means without regard to the reality of the situation.
The second is the maturation of democracy, where blocs of voters with a common interest have discovered that they can, with their votes, make their wishes come true in political questions, again regardless of the reality of the situation.
Want more money? Vote yourselves some out of the public purse. Public purse empty? Not our problem; we’re still voting for more money, because nobody can stop us.
Under democracy, the voters aren’t accountable to anybody for how they vote; if they vote for something manifestly stupid, selfish, and short-sighted, they still win. Technically, fundamental political principles such as those embedded in the United States Constitution serve as a limit on what democratic majorities can do, but history suggests that no document can forever withstand a majority (or a very focused minority) with the bit in its teeth and access to the political process.
In order to fix this process, that conjunction has to be broken at some point. Unfortunately, it may be that the only way to break it is for the political structure itself to collapse and be reformed, and reformed in such a way that either these questions are no longer political or democracy no longer determines how the issues are handled. I’m in favor of the first, but I’m very much afraid we’re going to wind up with the second.
January 7th, 2012 at 11:48
I see your point and I’m afraid you are right. “Afraid” in the sense of what the “collapse” will look like and how it will play out. It won’t be pretty and is bound to be an extremely painful return to reality (in either scenario).
The problem in rebuilding the system will be that we as a nation do not have a “common” moral foundation to start from like we did in the birthing of our nation. Washington (see below) testified to this in his Farewell Address, without a common moral reference a “new” government will not be easy, cheap or based on the original concept of American freedom. This is why I think educating Americans and persuading them of the wisdom of the original intent of the Founders would be a less painful way to go; in a sense, reforming the system to work like it was originally intended.
The collapse would also hand the Alinsky types via Cloward and Piven their victory.
The performance of the original system is arguably the best mankind has experienced to date. We have erred only in the last half century on our march toward socialism. It seems as if unrivaled prosperity brings with it challenges and temptations that are almost irresistible. One being a perceived obsolescence of work and the changes to one’s lot that it can achieve, which of course is a departure from reality.
To let this system fall without a clear articulation of the errors that caused it may open the door for the idea that men and women cannot govern themselves. The Christian moral framework we came from sowed and nurtured the seed of the idea that men should live free and COULD live free by an internal moral restraint (someone in early American history made the point it will either be the Bible or the bayonet that rules us). Chuck Colson recently made the comment, “Liberty cannot last where virtue is not exalted.”
In any case, if there is no revival of original American morality, it will change the definition of freedom around the world for the worse this time, opposed to the way we changed it for the better when we were emerged in the late eighteenth century.
Washington’s Quote:
“…But as it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth, as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”