Reports that Reform Uk and Nigel Farage are receiving vast donations have stirred news media and elected politicians into a fever of disapproval. Most of it is hypocritical.
News media is owned by Wealth-as-Power and operates in its interest. Every major political party accepts donations from Wealth-as-Power and every major political party actively enables influence and lobbying by Wealth-as-Power which inherently disenfranchises ordinary voters, at scale. There is practically zero accountability and almost total impunity on this matter of donations and influence.
The donations to the Labour Party front bench from Wealth supporting the Zionist State of Israel, as the UK enables a Genocide of the Palestinians, is well documented. The Fossil Fuel industry, the Military Weapons Industry and so many others engaged in the same behaviour is also well documented.
"A problem correctly understood is halfway towards a solution. A problem incorrectly understood is insoluble."
Solve problems rather than adhere to models. Models can impose limitations on admitting evidence, designing solutions.
The discipline required to understand a given problem correctly, in all its dimensions, matters.
Example : Poverty - Structural Poverty has a purpose. It is not accidental.
In examine this issue, we must start with the impoverished, understand their situation, and seek out how to eradicate their poverty.
We must ask the impoverished what "was it like living in poverty?” and ask then “What do you think led to your impoverishment?" and have that exploration and learning as we go.
Once we remove blame from the equation, as one must when dealing with a vast population level dynamic of poverty, we quickly come to understand that there are influences that reside above and beyond the power of the impoverished individual or family that enable impoverishment of such large groups of people.
Eventually, as we explore that influence system, the answer emerges - poverty is a deemed a necessity to drive people into low paid work, and low paid work is the most efficient way to extract wealth from the workforce, be it Democratic Capitalism, Monarchy, or a Dictatorship.
The next most efficient method of wealth extraction is through rent workers pay, and any debts they incur.
This leads to the understanding that the problem is wealth extraction and is driven by capital investments that do not pay to avoid avoidable harms, in order to maximise extraction efficiency. This is clearly unjust. Why should any entity take a profit whilst causing avoidable harm?
Causing harm makes sense as a wealth extraction practice if you can get away with it, and extract more wealth as a result. That is malign.
This brings us to Wealth as a political weapon deployed to ensure Wealth can continue to extract to Wealth and act with impunity.
Clearly this too is injustice.
How do we solve these problems?
Here is an example of problem solving based on the evidence.
Money is in some hands Power. Wealth gives some people and organisations more political power than is safe for a healthy democracy.
The Power Inquiry of 2006 (UK) had a lot to say about political party funding and lobbying.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03948/ - full Pdf of The Power Inquiry report can be downloaded. It is worth reading and studying.
What they had to say was what most ordinary people outside of political party memberships thought on the matter, 20 years ago, in 2004-6.
Their concern was to eradicate avenues of corruption and malign influence on elected officials at every level of Government, local and national.
It is relevant today precisely because it was relevant then, and warned of what was to come if either matter was neglected.
1. Parties should only be funded by membership fees, and open fundraising that us subject to robust auditing.
2. Election participation should be funded by a set budget for each constituency, split amongst candidates, with a filter of each candidate presenting 1000 verified signatures supporting their candidate, below which no funding would be available. There should be no outside funding, other than what the local constituency party memberships raise internally, within set limits, and that fundraising should be available for audit.
3. Private lobbying should be eradicated. A public official is working for the public and everything they do in that role must be available for full public scrutiny at every stage. Privacy is one thing. Secrecy quite another.
4. All lobbying should be public, in full view of constituents, minuted, archived. If a corporation wants to lobby, let it do so on equal footing with the least empowered voters. There are no valid reasons why individuals or organisations possessed of wealth should hold more political power than the least of us.
5. There should be no donations for elected officials once elected. Their wage should be set to be sufficient. Providing for office expenses is a matter of public service.
6. There should be no revolving door system of moving into/from employment in sectors any elected official has been working on. A firewall must be erected to guarantee independence and probity of elected officials.
7. Making democracy work for the least empowered among us has the benefit of regulating the propensity of the most powerful to exert undue influence.
8, Making democracy work must involve robust accountability processes at every level.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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