Not capitalism but the control of capitalism is the real issue. And it sounds like we agree there is not enough control of capitalism at the moment, for sure not in Portugal.
I hope you will give me feedback on the state of democracy in Portugal. I am looking up election results and I mainly see two major parties and a bunch of little ones. Do I see that right? Just one party (SP) has the majority? That is always bad news. One party in full control is always bad because there is no second coalition party to help establish smarter decisions. Have the same (two large) parties been in control too long, becoming entrenched in the powers that be? How often does Portugal have coalition governments, and do they last?
I never like it when a nation has a president because the political elite can influence that single president too easily. That said, does Portugal have a much empowered president, or is the president more like they have in Germany, nothing more than a paper president with not much power (at all)? The more power is concentrated in the hands of the few, the worse outcomes we see with capitalism.
I also see that Portugal voters are not coming out to vote all that much in local elections. I was really surprised by that.
https://www.ssb.no/en/valg/artikler-og-publikasjoner/lower-voter-turnout-than-sweden-and-denmark
In Figure 2 of this article, you can see that voters in Portugal are almost at the bottom of Europe to come out in local elections. Why is there no animo for voters to come out in local elections? Are voters not empowered much? Is it a winner-take-all system at the local level or do the local authorities have nothing much to say and do the 18 Districts instead have all the power?
And when voting in multi-seat district elections, are then then three seats in total per district (bad), ten seats per district (better), or twenty seats per district (best). The more seats, the better democracy functions. Still, multi-seat elections tend to favor a single large party (and is almost always a bad system unless the number of seats per district is really large).
It is hard for me to tell what is going on, but it appears your democracy is not functioning in any good way to deal with capitalism. There appears to be too much power in the hands of one party/one person/one elite.
The happiest people in the world are the Scandinavians. They still have capitalism, but they also have a good control over their own government.
They vote proportionally, but they have one House only. No President, No Senate. It is almost impossible to get a more pure system than what they have. That means the power is truly in their hands and that is also why they are the happiest people.
I am curious what you can tell me about Portugal. Do you suspect there are still fascist aspects to Portuguese electoral systems, meaning a warping in the voting system that benefits the concentrated political elite and the wealthy?
