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(NaturalNews) I've been blasted many times for daring to tell the truth about democracies, but now California's budget crisis is saying everything I already said, and adding an exclamation mark to it. So what "truth" about democracies am I talking about? That there is no such thing as a sustainable democracy because the voters will inevitably vote their nation (or their state, in this case) into outright bankruptcy.
California has seen it first-hand: Voters shot down tax increases while simultaneously passing new welfare programs and state-funded handouts to various groups. The result is unavoidable: A bankrupt state that can't pay its bills.
"Every democracy is doomed to bankruptcy," I said in 2004 (http://www.CounterThink.com/008892.html), well ahead of the financial meltdown we've all experienced since then. In that same article, I went on to explain concepts that seemed outlandish at the time, but have since turn out to be eerily accurate:
If you think about it, democracy is really a short-term experiment in the history of the world. The idea sounds great: that educated voters would think and act rationally in electing representatives who have the best interests of the nation at heart. Accordingly, such representatives would vote for legislation that balanced the public good with the long-term viability of the nation state. This is the underlying basis of democracy, but as we have all seen, it is not the actual practice. In practice, voters elect politicians who serve their short-term selfish interests.
In every democracy, people tend to vote for politicians who promise them financial benefits or payouts. These are often called "entitlements," as if the American people were in fact entitled to such money. From an honest perspective, these actions are nothing short of robbery: that is, one group robs money from another, or in present-day terms, the current generation of active voters steals money from the next generation of taxpayers. And because the politicians are involved, it is government-sanctioned robbery. Legalized financial theft.
Because voters tend to operate solely from short-term perspectives, and they only support politicians who give them new entitlements, every democracy will financially self-destruct over a period of time. The only way this can be reversed is if education standards and ethics are fundamentally reformed so that people vote for politicians who support the long-term interests of the nation state rather than their own selfish desires. But this has not happened in the United States of America, and as a result we are rapidly heading towards the collapse of our nation's financial viability.
So it deserves repeating: every democracy is doomed to financial failure. Because that's what the voters will vote for. There's a great misconception in this country that we can keep on spending forever with no real consequence. It's the same mindset that we see in personal households in this country, where credit card debt is at an all time high and most people own nothing -- they live paycheck to paycheck by delivering just-in-time payments to their mortgage companies, car loan companies, insurance companies and other corporations that hold the bulk of the hard assets in this country. People are just barely scraping by, and yet they are spending and consuming at record pace. They continue to buy new homes, new cars, and new consumer products at a pace that, frankly, they cannot afford.
This mindset, which is prevalent in US households, also drives federal financial policy -- it is a reflection of the population's appetite for consumption coupled with ignorance of fiscal repercussions.
Even well-meaning politicians, it turns out, can do very little about the situation, because if they don't give handouts to the electorate, they will be voted out of office. Thus, the people, through their voting decisions, continue to put politicians into office that drive our nation even deeper into debt, ultimately leading to a financial crisis unprecedented in the history of the modern world.
Voters can't do math (and don't want to pay anything back)"...You have to wonder if California's political paralysis foreshadows the future of the nation as a whole," said Paul Krugman in an op-ed column published in the NY Times. Well of course it foreshadows the nation as a whole! Or, perhaps I should say, as a "hole" -- a deep, back money pit hole where dollars disappear, never to be seen again.
Today, California is bankrupt. America is bankrupt. And most of America's individual families are bankrupt, too. The nation has lived under the illusion that "consumption" equals economic abundance. But if that consumption is based on debt, not wealth, it only creates long-term financial slavery to whoever is providing the loans (China and Japan, in this case).
And a huge part of our indebtedness is, of course, based on our disastrous health care system that's now responsible for nearly two-thirds of all household bankruptcies. Selling people toxic pharmaceuticals that only harm them -- while calling it "economic activity" -- is ludicrous. The numbers may look good on paper, but in the real world, people are being harmed, killed and thrust into their own household financial meltdowns... all due to conventional medicine's hunger for more profits at any cost.
Mark my words: America as we know it will not survive the coming financial meltdown. No nation can. Every democracy is doomed to a similar fate unless the People can somehow be taught to think seven generations ahead.
Interestingly, the native American Indians thought in exactly that way. They made decisions based on how such decisions might impact seven generations of their children. These Indians didn't have electricity, or computers, or combustion engines. They didn't even have a democracy. But they did have one thing that is utterly lacking in our modern world: Vision.
No nation can survive the short-term thinking of its own people. By definition, sustainable societies must be based on careful, long-term planning that puts the interests of future generations ahead of the interests of today's voters. America has proved that its people are incapable of engaging in such levels of mature decision making. And that, my friends, is why America will ultimately fail.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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