China Lecturing the West

The most amazing thing over the last few months in the European debt saga story is not the actions of politicians/bankers or the demostrations from the citizens in these countries. It is the silence of any commentator, newspaper or thinktank to make clear to the public WHY Europe and to a certain extend the US have fallen to the low moral and economic point they are at the moment. The answer is simple.

We sacrificed the soul of our society to the altar of profit for big business. We thought that it is ok to let rich people to become richer as long as societies we can borrow for schoosl hospitals roads etc.
Clearly rich people are are not happy any more just to be rich, they have used their wealth to corrupt the democracies that allowed them to become rich in the first place. So instead of our governments taxing cheap Chinese products for as long China is an undemocratic regime that does not offer any social security or health security to its citizes, we prefer to export jobs and destroy the hard won standards in our societies.All for the profit of the shareholdres (see rich people).

The irony is now that China patronizes the Europeans telling them to "put their houses in order". So instead of helping the world raise its human rights standards and protecting jobs in our coutries we have chosen to own cheap gadgets in unemployement.

Thanks media and TV for informing the average citizen of the biggest con in human history (judging from the number of people affected).

Individual vs State Debate I

The debate is raging on. On newspapers, blogs and parliaments, nationally internationally. Nobody seems to be able to agree with anybody else. It is astonishing to observe how the good will, optimism, energy and social spirit flooding in the western societies after the WWII has evaporated in about 60 years. I will just mention three well known facts to highlight the dire straits our world is going through.

1) America's debt and lack of meaningful social cohesion. The US government cannot legislate or plan for the future due an archaic constitution (not fit for the 21st century) infested by big government lobbyists and thinktanks.
2) Similar outlook in Europe for different reasons. Week european leaders (including the UK) are dithering and cannot take any decisive action for anything. Even worse they do not want to give away the power of unelected elites to the ordinary european citizen by strengthening the european parliament. Last but not least
3) The moral argument that a person's wealth is due to the existence of a functioning society and that taxing this wealth is a natural and welcome fact of life has been lost. For some strange reason even middle or lower (incomewise) class people seem to be loosing faith to their governments and their leaders.

These three observation together with a host of other circumstaces (problems in Japan, China's political system, no lessons learned from the 2008 crisis etc) make another world crisis (lets hope it will be only of an economic nature) almost inevitable.

The key question is WHY?? How our democratic institutions in the west especially got corrupted so easily? What were the seeds of this downlhill trend?

Virtual Country - The future of Greece

I dedicate this first blogg of mine to my country of birth. Greece has been in the news over the last two years for all the wrong reasons. After the successfull Olympic Games in 2004 the inability of my compatriotes back home to keep the country running has been astonishing even for someone like me who grew up, studied, did military service and even worked for a while in Greece before leaving to study further abroad.

In the past (i.e. the last 180 years) Greece despite problems and deep seated political system deficiences has managed to survive one or way or the other. Unfortunately the last few years a combination of internal and external factors have made the model of life in Greece unsustainable. In other words the removal of barriers in international competition has unmasked the plain fact that Grece does not produce much other nations like to buy. It is rather sad to listen to North European commentators referring to "laziness" etc. Greeks are not lazy, they just do not care to work for anybody else but themselves and their close family. Not their country (through taxation), not their company etc.

The current govenrment when elected two years ago should have blamed everything on the undisputed lies of the previous conservative government, put the ex prime minister in jail and declare default. Now the country bleeds slowly to death with its reputation in tatters.

So its clear that the only way forward for the Greeks in Greece and abroad is to offer a new paradigm of citizenship in the 21st century. I would recommend we outsource the administration of our country to the EU. Lets create the first virtual nation on earth preferably on Facebook or even as a virtual new world like the world of Warcraft. Democracy is anyway dead in the EU. Unelected officials are already issuing orders and making plans. So lets all Greeks create a virtual Greece on the Web. There we can all live our ideal lives we can argue politics, smoke, admire our ancestors, play backgammon, ignore all ideas of authority, at last not restricted by silly inventions like the deficit or laws. Please can someone put some servers up, I promise I will be the first to pay my monthly subscription from my Paypal account.