We had a lunch lecture where this environmental scientist gave a talk about critical materials and how big of a problem our reliance on these are. He links the whole thing up with politics pretty well, explaining how various political actors are involved and benefit from this or that.
At some point, he even mentions how in the netherlands, policy doesn’t get passed without a buy-in from industry. It means quite a lot, cause this guy is government hired in recommending policies.
Then he contradicts himself in the next paragraph by saying that this is the curse of democracy that people make stupid decisions.
I ask this guy about the contradiction. How you simultaneously harp about profits over needs, the evils of consultancy firms, and the inability of the Dutch government to do anything but pursue corporate interests, while also talking about the problems of “democracy”?
He just tells me “we are a democracy that’s why the Dutch government listens to industry”. Well not exactly that, but at least that’s the message I get when he talks about all the corporate controlled parties winning the elections and how that’s what the people chose.
Dude is this close to realising that the definition of liberal democracy is “legitimised rule by corporations” .
Of course, the lecture ends with a book recommendation for a book about the collapse of human civilisation. And a recommendation to go vote and participate in political parties.
Unlimited death upon elections.
Honestly regardless of your opinion on AES countries vis-a-vis sectarian knife fights, the one thing that AES countries like China and Vietnam are doing is proving out that the consequentialist model of people’s governance can deliver material gains from a position of weakness under direct threat from global capital compared to deontological VOTE Westoid ones.
Regardless of China’s future in respect to communism, it’s proved out a better governance model. If liberals had any fucking brains, they’d be creaming themselves over a country that can deliver that level of material gains to the poor and middle class and still have the most billionaires in the world. It’s the compromise they’ve been dreaming of, but they’re too stupid to realize that.
It’s a bit odd to frame voting as inherently deontological and the AES model as consequentialist. Independent of some involved philosophical argument, the choice of political system is prima facie orthogonal to the question of meta-ethical frameworks. A consequentialist, for example, could just as easily espouse voting.
The Western liberal model is taught and propagandized as the deonotological right to vote of an individual to vote forms the basis of “freedom” and trumps the outcomes of voting. Meanwhile for Whole Process People’s Democracy the right of the people change government policy to their needs trumps an individual right to vote. Whole Process People’s Democracy does not meet deontological frameworks that represent “free and fair elections” and it literally does not matter. It doesn’t matter because there’s a gulf in the outcomes for normal people between Western liberal voting systems and WPPD.
US has proven that the Western model for deontological voting and “free and fair elections” is essentially irrelevant to meeting the needs of a people because of it’s various failures. In that same time period China has proven the same but in the opposite direction because of WPPD’s successes.
If you look at typical liberal reactions to descriptions of WPPD, it’s always the same “YOU DIDN’T TELL US HOW TO VOTE!” bullshit. They need to be lulled by deontoloigcal individualist technicalities. After you give them those things they’ll buy whatever slop you sell them.
AES systems also have voting. It’s just that they vote for local elections rather than national elections (which are elected by representatives from below).
Basically, AES systems have multiple layers of the electoral college, but the “electors” aren’t just a formality like in America, and instead are your local reps. (This is assuming I didn’t misinterpret something).
The “deontological” vs “consequentialist” divide here is, kind of non-existent …
The real divide between AES states and capitalist states is the mode of production. The differences in electoral systems, while it exists, can be thought of as
Historical: Most AES systems are adapted from the soviet union where the local Soviets (councils) had formed the basis of the revolution.
Economic: liberal parliamentarianism of the type in europe is the political form most preferred by the bourgeoise. The bourgeoise only cohere as a class when they can assemble in sufficient numbers, aka at the national (or international) level. Direct elections at the national level allows the whole of the bourgeois class to easily dominate the country simply by manipulating elections (an art that has long since been turned into science).
I mean, some of them are creaming there pants. Despite what the Internet makes it seems, not all of them are rabid china haters. Even this lib I’m talking about said “China dominates all the supplies for renewable tech not because they are evil but because their government is smarter than ours”.
If they understand how the Chinese model and chinese democracy works, that just makes them not liberals anymore.