Glad you see it, Monica. But I have to give you the same answer I have been giving you all along: To change the setup (in this case of money), then we have to change the way we express our power.
It is very important to understand the manipulation you describe well. And this is where I have to talk about voting systems again, even when this is about money.
When we have winner-take-all, we actually do not have a bottom to democracy: the entire system hangs in the air.
In the center, we have competition-for-competition's sake.
This is very easy to see in our democracy because the number of losers among the voters is quite substantial, all going home empty-handed, and therefore creating a demand next time for the win. Losing is so painful. We are willing to put in some of our own money to have ‘our guy’ win next time around — even when ‘our guy’ is not close to who we really wanted. As long as the ‘other guy’ doesn’t win.
In 2006, I learned that our US Senators were voted into place with on average 60% of the voters picking them.
That means that 30% of the voters got their Democratic Senator, 30% of the voters got their Republican Senator, and 40% of the voters went home empty-handed.
Do you see it?
The voters are competing with the voters for representation. The democratic system in the USA is turned inside out. You don't get representation, you get the chance for representation.
The demand is created by this inferior voting system. We are willing to bruise ourselves just to get that win; move if we have to lick our wounds. The setup is such that most of us voters end up not-winning. It takes 30% of all voters to direct our nation, so 70% is not-involved with actively choosing that direction.
In our minds, we may block that truth.
The ones in control do not need to listen to the majority of all voters; they just need to listen to half of the majority of all voters. That is, if they are listening at all, because we do not have much competition among the representatives: we have two parties only with their internal competition that we cannot control well at all. Plus, we have outside special interests influencing the candidates (‘buying’ them). Just 30% of the voters are needed to control the direction of this nation, including how we deal with and organize money.
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I hate to sound like a repetition machine, but the only route the Founding Fathers provided us is a small door.
We can take baby steps to get the economic form of capitalism that they have in Scandinavia, and fortunately some here are finally taking that route for ourselves. But it is baby steps, and the change may take a long time particularly if most of us keep sitting on our hands and wait for the few to do the hard work.
The good news is that the Local Revolutions grassroots movement is making headway, and many folks are putting in Step 1 of the plan (which is the easy step).
Come join us, Monica. I know you are ready for change, but the point is that we cannot over-ask in this system; we can only get there via baby steps, and nevertheless we must take the baby steps to even get there, futile as the baby steps may seem. We need to get our country back to a much healthier spot.
Thank you for a good article. My pleasure reading it.
