Governments are temporary, States are more or less permanent.
That said, every current Government is the entity responsible for present day State action and behaviour.
Therefore for every past behaviour that has caused avoidable harm by not avoiding causing that harm, when the State could have avoided it, it is the responsibility of the current Government to address and correct that shituation, including holding the State accountable, making reparations and changing behaviour in the present and into the future so that action causing harms are always avoided, prevented from being done again.
The same applies to every Institution that holds some power - News Papers, Corporations, Religions, Armies and so forth.
With this in mind...
Someone who represents or controls vast wealth should NEVER have private or semi-public lobbying meetings with Legislators, without the meeting being fully minuted, recorded and included in Legislative Records, where the electorate can read them.
Then fact that they can and do have this facility in private means that they have more influence upon elected officials than the people who elected them.
The straight up undermines very principle of Healthy Democratic Governance.
If the owners and representatives of Wealth want to advise Legislators it should be fully public, with its aims and objectives fully exposed to the electorate, with the electorate empowered to voice back on the suggestions of Wealth and to take a central role in the deliberations on policy.
It is not democracy to vote for an elected official and leave it at that.
That's a popularity contest, and one that is all too easily exploited and manipulated.
21st Century Governance has to dismantle the 18th Century systems still operating because it is those systems that have led us directly into Genocides and Climate Disruption as Business Models. We need a re-boot, informed by evidence and the unmet needs of the people.
Genocides and Climate Disruption are Business Models.
They are not merely bad behaviour by a few bad humans - they are an intrinsic part of the Wealth-as-Power Business Model.
Cults as a business model - Wealth-as-Power and The State.
This is true of almost every Western Democracy. This is true of almost every State. This is true of almost every current Power structure predicated on Wealth-as-Power.
The Cult of The Flag, the Cult of the Military, the Cult of the innate superiority of the Wealthy above the impoverished.
Wealth-as-Power, as a political force requires that a minority have the leverage to exploit a majority in ways that allow the minority to extract wealth from the majority and then deploy it as a weapon to maintain the systems of extraction, no matter the costs to the majority. It requires that that minority internalises a sense of entitlement to their dominating position. That is a cult belief operating system.
Wealth-as-Power is a cult.
A belief system rooted in a Power Disparity that enables the minority to exploit the majority.
Every person who waves the flag of National Identity, be it pride or rage, has internalised an identity crafted by external Power, to bind them to the State as a Power, and by inference, to the purpose of those who wield that Power, at an emotional and irrationally secure level within their psyche.
I was attending an anti-racism rally this weekend and one speaker cried out 'Yes to Race, no to Racism!'
Race does not exist in reality, it is a concept crafted in the British Colonies as a means to weaponise European Workers, freed and indentured, against non-European workers, freed and indentured.
The acceptance of Race as a reality is the very root of Racism.
The acceptance of National Identity is the very root of Xenophobia.
The acceptance of Genderism is the very root of Misogyny.
We are persons, first and foremost.
We are all persons within the Human species, and the visible differences in skin tone, height, body build, sex are merely the expression of our natural variations, none of which change the fact of personhood. Those visible differences are biologically irrelevant, precisely because our brains are persons, fluid persons that adapt to local conditions, as a fundamental evolutionary attribute that allows us to live anywhere, with creativity, intelligence, solidarity and success.
That I speak English and this other person might speak Farsi, and another Chinese does not change the fact of our shared personhood one iota.
Our livers, lungs, kidneys might be suitable for a transplant, and would not hold our national identity or our language, our gender or our height, as a barrier.
Egalitarian cultures understood the nature of healthy, autonomous connected personhood as the floor of a healthy family, community or society.
Hierarchy cultures always undermine the person, and elevate the instrumentalised body as the defining characteristic. Men have men roles, women have women roles, children should be obedient, and follow suit.
Wealth-as-Power from War Lords to Kings, Emperors to Popes, Great Leaders to Presidents are pretty much all we know because Wealth-as-Power has slaughtered almost every egalitarian society as it has expanded.
Solidarity is egalitarian at its best.
If we humans are to have a long term future, that solidarity is what we will need to build, within our psyches and as our societal infrastructure.
Corneilius
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