Having won the recent Greater Manchester Combined Authority mayoral election, securing a third term, Andy Burnham, the Labour and Cooperative Party candidate, said:
Sure lain, I like your analysis but what do you propose? How many iterations of the same car crash do we have to witness? How many articles, books, movies, etc do we have to continue absorbing to understand the same problem over and over again. We're simply spectators to the spectacle. Rousseau called representative democracy "Tyranny" over 200 years ago! What's the solution? Where's the real resistance? Hard to grab the neck of a 'system'. I'm sick of jerking myself off to death ... and eventually the substack police will come.
Just as I thought .. no real solutions forthcoming. Maybe all 4 of us commentators could get it going! Now what % of the world electorate would that be? As for "societies within societies" I suggest you find a copy of "Waco: rules of engagment" from 1997 (not the later Hollywood propaganda drivel) and watch it to see how states deal with "societies apart" (note: doesn't matter whether you agree with the basis of that society or not). Interesting quote from a Harvard Professor in that movie "I started thinking I would be analyzing the people inside the compound but soon realized I needed to analyze the people outside the compound". I tip my cap to you for your books .. I especially liked your breakdown of "inalienable rights vs human rights" .. but Skynet is nearing completion and the vice grip between crushing control and crushing ignorance is being painfully felt. Getting anybody on the same page to do anything, especially anything that involves risk, is near insurmountable. People in my neighborhood are still wearing masks (outside)!
Corporate structure is practically a feudal society. The workers produce value for the company, but are paid less than the value of that work so that the company makes a profit. This is equivalent to a stealth tax. Alternatively customers are charged more than the value of the services, taxing them instead.
People at lower levels must obey instructions from those above or face penalties including exile.
From this we can identify the creation of a company as the legal means by which any individual group can become rich and powerful.
Any political movement will require skills and resources, and those who have access to the most will thus control the direction of politics. They say an army marches on its stomach, and so does the public. Which is why revolutions often occur during economic depression.
It is impossible to ensure that everyone has equal skill and resources, and even if it were possible it would be tyrannical to enforce it. So the result is that throughout history, large merchant groups have developed due to the disparities in resources and skill, which then evolved into sovereign powers and afterwards gradually degenerated before being swallowed up by the next wave of sovereigns.
There's no way to protect everyone from this process forever, it is only possible to protect a select few for a limited time. Some groups will always be exploited by others, and so all that is left to us is to ensure that we are not a part of that group.
So then, the method is to gather intelligent, highly-skilled people into a tribe, accumulate resources over a long period of time, purchase land on a small island somewhere and fill it with your employees, take over control of state functions in that area by infiltration or bribery, and basically copy the modus operandi of every other multinational corporation in history.
Maybe the plan all along was to undermine our democratic system. Why? Well, perhaps to replace it with the sort of 'democracy' where we live in a digital prison and the powerful who govern it, will ask our opinion on a plethora of issues. So many that in the end, AI answers for us. That way they mine, exploit and control us. That is what Web 3 and blockchain is facilitating.
'It is possible, if not necessarily desirable, that future citizens might be able to vote on several policies each day, using smartphones or whatever replaces them, in an unending process of plebiscitary engagement'.
A great expansion of a brief but pertinent comment by Me or DUB SURGEON (I cant remember which, its been a long night) there Iain !
We seem to be a big inspiration for you recently. You used Dubs image comparisons for the Manchester Saunders & Lee finale , then another essay dilly dallying about 'the Occult' that we gave you the inspiration for, and some well deserved grief about as well !
Just look at all the grief we get helping you out, and how rabid & desperate some of your more insidious subscribers get about us on some censorship mania , the hypocrisy is hard to stomach.
So an immoral, irresponsible majority should rule over a moral, responsible minority?
Is there any legitimate authority for one person to rule over another?
Individual sovereignty, inalienable rights, moral integrity, personal autonomy, etcetera?
Why do we need government?
Law and order.
To protect what?
The welfare and freedom of all.
Or just the welfare and freedom of the rich and powerful?
There are some criminals, so we need to have a police force, to protect us all from crime.
That is the propaganda spiel.
There are a few criminals, so we (the rich) will create a police FORCE, with authority over EVERYONE, not just the criminals, so we can use the police if necessary, to protect us (the rich) from the people, if they object to our lying, stealing and killing - organised crime.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
There may be a few potential foreign enemies, which we (the rich) will propagandize into dangerous threats, so we (the rich) will create a military supposedly to protect us all from foreign enemies, but really just to protect us (the rich) from the people, if they rise up against our rule.
As an added bonus, we can use national armies to play our war games, to make more money and cull more of the unwanted masses.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
We will create government to allow us (the rich) the direct virtually everything in the direction we want it to go for our benefit, under the pretense of being for the common good.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
We will create courts to allow us (the rich) to evade justice for our crimes, under the pretext of providing justice for all.
How many rich people are in jail?
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
Governments and courts inevitably attract corruption - overt and covert.
I agree, and I think your piece exposes the need very well. It's funny, a few minutes ago a friend who would be one of the majority who would not, knowingly any way, vote for a globalist, was complaining about all the bad news. My friend uses that as justification for despair/surrender. My friend is not in a minority.
As I told my friend, news is like a coin, it has two sides. One side, say u & me, think it's bad news, but there are others who consider it good news. Isn't it wise to be aware of who they are and what they are doing?
The fact that Burnham is all in favour of the 'already decided' outcome of the case against Richard Hall says it all. And the 'you're not allowed to question what we say anymore' legislation.
This is the dystopian version of Burnham. I think I shall shame the motherfucker by portraying the parallel world good version.
I love the ironic fact that you've got so many more comments on this compared to your exceptional Manchester (not)bombing series. It is, indeed, totally ironic.
Well, if you want a proper democracy - hold on, because I'm going to describe it to you in the Liberal Socialism section of my site. Or rather, Katrina will.
This is dystopia. She will be describing what utopia looks like...
Regards Burnham, he is a knob-head, but to be fair he is doing a good job of "transitioning" Manchester into a real Smart City / 15-minute neighbourhood ,,, and the masses still do not see.
Something big going on in football and he is involved. Super league and the "the global sport" ?.
Sounds like U.S. elections with heavy WEF influence. We followed Europe’s lead & allowed migrants to take over. Your government made a mistake (by design, I suspect) and, by design, America followed.
I live in Greater Manchester. Transport for Greater Manchester, an arm of The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, i.e., Andy Burnham, are 'improving' many major road junctions, above and beyond the control of local highways dept's.
Improvements invariably include slowing the flow of traffic by reducing the number of lanes in exchange for segregated cycle lanes and changing the traffic filters to cause more congestion.
The only people who cycle in most of the outlying towns of GM are children, the unemployed and leisure cyclists. Virtually no one cycles to work because the weather is shite and it's very hilly. There are signs on the sides of major roads in my town advising motorists to get out of their cars and to walk or cycle instead. The GM Clean Air Plan is in abeyance but all the cameras are installed and ready to go.
Anyone could imagine TfGM are trying to damage the economy and inconvenience the motorist. Some could even imagine they are laying the foundations for future 15 minute cities!
As a West Coast American, I "follow" UK government without a clue of what's really going on. How can a man win an election when most people do not even vote? And the "news" never mentions the non-voters.
After listening to Graham Moore on Johnny Vedmores show recently, maybe the constitutionalists have a point. He was talking about the recent high court case where they won the legal argument meaning they can take private prosecution legal action against wrong-doing individual police officers, if they win (and he's sure they will) and the torts are applied, the individual officers will be personally liable for damages, possibly in the £100's of thousands.
I wonder if it would be possible with politicians, make them personally liable, maybe there wouldn't be so many public scoolboys and millionaires so keen to become career politicians! Be good if Midazolam Matt was first up!
The Graham Moore interview starts at about 19:30 here...
Graham also offers a solution to the voting issues you raise too Iain, I'm not sure how valid it is, certainly sounds valid, but is it a workable solution? Graham seems to think so with 30yrs studying constitutional law under his belt, and he did just wipe the floor with a bunch of CPS/Police Barristers.
Here's his little cartoon explaining his solution - I Do Not Consent:
I recently watched a very interesting video chat between Neil Oliver and William Keyte on the subject of the democratic deficit which is admirably exposed in Iain’s essay.
It led me to take a look at the website in the following link
The information provided clearly indicates that we have been duped by the concept of ‘representative democracy’ which is merely a process for enforcing a societal measure of control, because of the refusal to accept the requirement to undertake individual personal responsibility for acceptance or denial of the imposition of legislation.
Completely agree with this sad state of affairs. I'm one of the 82.3% disenfranchised who didn't vote for Sad IQ. I don't want to have a captured, compromised, corrupted cog of the C40 centralists able to chase vanity, virtue-signalling wastes of money rather than fixing the Met police, Transport for London and our capital city's provision for independent motorists which are all way below acceptable standard and getting worse.
Sure lain, I like your analysis but what do you propose? How many iterations of the same car crash do we have to witness? How many articles, books, movies, etc do we have to continue absorbing to understand the same problem over and over again. We're simply spectators to the spectacle. Rousseau called representative democracy "Tyranny" over 200 years ago! What's the solution? Where's the real resistance? Hard to grab the neck of a 'system'. I'm sick of jerking myself off to death ... and eventually the substack police will come.
I propose a voluntary society that could be based upon "real" democracy.
https://iaindavis.com/long-live-democracy/
Just as I thought .. no real solutions forthcoming. Maybe all 4 of us commentators could get it going! Now what % of the world electorate would that be? As for "societies within societies" I suggest you find a copy of "Waco: rules of engagment" from 1997 (not the later Hollywood propaganda drivel) and watch it to see how states deal with "societies apart" (note: doesn't matter whether you agree with the basis of that society or not). Interesting quote from a Harvard Professor in that movie "I started thinking I would be analyzing the people inside the compound but soon realized I needed to analyze the people outside the compound". I tip my cap to you for your books .. I especially liked your breakdown of "inalienable rights vs human rights" .. but Skynet is nearing completion and the vice grip between crushing control and crushing ignorance is being painfully felt. Getting anybody on the same page to do anything, especially anything that involves risk, is near insurmountable. People in my neighborhood are still wearing masks (outside)!
Corporate structure is practically a feudal society. The workers produce value for the company, but are paid less than the value of that work so that the company makes a profit. This is equivalent to a stealth tax. Alternatively customers are charged more than the value of the services, taxing them instead.
People at lower levels must obey instructions from those above or face penalties including exile.
From this we can identify the creation of a company as the legal means by which any individual group can become rich and powerful.
Any political movement will require skills and resources, and those who have access to the most will thus control the direction of politics. They say an army marches on its stomach, and so does the public. Which is why revolutions often occur during economic depression.
It is impossible to ensure that everyone has equal skill and resources, and even if it were possible it would be tyrannical to enforce it. So the result is that throughout history, large merchant groups have developed due to the disparities in resources and skill, which then evolved into sovereign powers and afterwards gradually degenerated before being swallowed up by the next wave of sovereigns.
There's no way to protect everyone from this process forever, it is only possible to protect a select few for a limited time. Some groups will always be exploited by others, and so all that is left to us is to ensure that we are not a part of that group.
So then, the method is to gather intelligent, highly-skilled people into a tribe, accumulate resources over a long period of time, purchase land on a small island somewhere and fill it with your employees, take over control of state functions in that area by infiltration or bribery, and basically copy the modus operandi of every other multinational corporation in history.
"Just as I thought .. no real solutions forthcoming."
So sorry, you don't propose a solution either however Iain did. Just simple tuttle like waffle which too is drivel.
Democracy should be the system to limit elitist power. They turned it into a system to protect elitist power.
Well put Iain. We need to change this broken system and fast.
Maybe the plan all along was to undermine our democratic system. Why? Well, perhaps to replace it with the sort of 'democracy' where we live in a digital prison and the powerful who govern it, will ask our opinion on a plethora of issues. So many that in the end, AI answers for us. That way they mine, exploit and control us. That is what Web 3 and blockchain is facilitating.
'It is possible, if not necessarily desirable, that future citizens might be able to vote on several policies each day, using smartphones or whatever replaces them, in an unending process of plebiscitary engagement'.
https://berggruen.org/news/digital-technology-and-government
A great expansion of a brief but pertinent comment by Me or DUB SURGEON (I cant remember which, its been a long night) there Iain !
We seem to be a big inspiration for you recently. You used Dubs image comparisons for the Manchester Saunders & Lee finale , then another essay dilly dallying about 'the Occult' that we gave you the inspiration for, and some well deserved grief about as well !
Just look at all the grief we get helping you out, and how rabid & desperate some of your more insidious subscribers get about us on some censorship mania , the hypocrisy is hard to stomach.
What is democracy?
Majority rule?
So an immoral, irresponsible majority should rule over a moral, responsible minority?
Is there any legitimate authority for one person to rule over another?
Individual sovereignty, inalienable rights, moral integrity, personal autonomy, etcetera?
Why do we need government?
Law and order.
To protect what?
The welfare and freedom of all.
Or just the welfare and freedom of the rich and powerful?
There are some criminals, so we need to have a police force, to protect us all from crime.
That is the propaganda spiel.
There are a few criminals, so we (the rich) will create a police FORCE, with authority over EVERYONE, not just the criminals, so we can use the police if necessary, to protect us (the rich) from the people, if they object to our lying, stealing and killing - organised crime.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
There may be a few potential foreign enemies, which we (the rich) will propagandize into dangerous threats, so we (the rich) will create a military supposedly to protect us all from foreign enemies, but really just to protect us (the rich) from the people, if they rise up against our rule.
As an added bonus, we can use national armies to play our war games, to make more money and cull more of the unwanted masses.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
We will create government to allow us (the rich) the direct virtually everything in the direction we want it to go for our benefit, under the pretense of being for the common good.
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
We will create courts to allow us (the rich) to evade justice for our crimes, under the pretext of providing justice for all.
How many rich people are in jail?
The people will buy this - they are dumb.
Governments and courts inevitably attract corruption - overt and covert.
Some call this democracy.
Some call this other things.
Some call this tyranny.
If they, aka we, are not willing to stop it, we will get what we deserve. Bitchin' don't cut it!
Agreed we need to do something. I propose a voluntary society that could be based upon "real" democracy.
https://iaindavis.com/long-live-democracy/
I agree, and I think your piece exposes the need very well. It's funny, a few minutes ago a friend who would be one of the majority who would not, knowingly any way, vote for a globalist, was complaining about all the bad news. My friend uses that as justification for despair/surrender. My friend is not in a minority.
As I told my friend, news is like a coin, it has two sides. One side, say u & me, think it's bad news, but there are others who consider it good news. Isn't it wise to be aware of who they are and what they are doing?
The fact that Burnham is all in favour of the 'already decided' outcome of the case against Richard Hall says it all. And the 'you're not allowed to question what we say anymore' legislation.
This is the dystopian version of Burnham. I think I shall shame the motherfucker by portraying the parallel world good version.
I love the ironic fact that you've got so many more comments on this compared to your exceptional Manchester (not)bombing series. It is, indeed, totally ironic.
Well, if you want a proper democracy - hold on, because I'm going to describe it to you in the Liberal Socialism section of my site. Or rather, Katrina will.
This is dystopia. She will be describing what utopia looks like...
Greek Democracy, think as you read it and imagine... democracy in the UK with the Londoners voting only ! = https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/democracy-ancient-greece/
Regards Burnham, he is a knob-head, but to be fair he is doing a good job of "transitioning" Manchester into a real Smart City / 15-minute neighbourhood ,,, and the masses still do not see.
Something big going on in football and he is involved. Super league and the "the global sport" ?.
Sounds like U.S. elections with heavy WEF influence. We followed Europe’s lead & allowed migrants to take over. Your government made a mistake (by design, I suspect) and, by design, America followed.
I live in Greater Manchester. Transport for Greater Manchester, an arm of The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, i.e., Andy Burnham, are 'improving' many major road junctions, above and beyond the control of local highways dept's.
Improvements invariably include slowing the flow of traffic by reducing the number of lanes in exchange for segregated cycle lanes and changing the traffic filters to cause more congestion.
The only people who cycle in most of the outlying towns of GM are children, the unemployed and leisure cyclists. Virtually no one cycles to work because the weather is shite and it's very hilly. There are signs on the sides of major roads in my town advising motorists to get out of their cars and to walk or cycle instead. The GM Clean Air Plan is in abeyance but all the cameras are installed and ready to go.
Anyone could imagine TfGM are trying to damage the economy and inconvenience the motorist. Some could even imagine they are laying the foundations for future 15 minute cities!
As a West Coast American, I "follow" UK government without a clue of what's really going on. How can a man win an election when most people do not even vote? And the "news" never mentions the non-voters.
After listening to Graham Moore on Johnny Vedmores show recently, maybe the constitutionalists have a point. He was talking about the recent high court case where they won the legal argument meaning they can take private prosecution legal action against wrong-doing individual police officers, if they win (and he's sure they will) and the torts are applied, the individual officers will be personally liable for damages, possibly in the £100's of thousands.
I wonder if it would be possible with politicians, make them personally liable, maybe there wouldn't be so many public scoolboys and millionaires so keen to become career politicians! Be good if Midazolam Matt was first up!
The Graham Moore interview starts at about 19:30 here...
https://tntvideo.podbean.com/e/graham-moore-on-the-johnny-vedmore-show-27-april-2024/
Graham also offers a solution to the voting issues you raise too Iain, I'm not sure how valid it is, certainly sounds valid, but is it a workable solution? Graham seems to think so with 30yrs studying constitutional law under his belt, and he did just wipe the floor with a bunch of CPS/Police Barristers.
Here's his little cartoon explaining his solution - I Do Not Consent:
https://rumble.com/v4lb2n6-i-do-not-consent-constitutional-law-part-one-and-two.html
I recently watched a very interesting video chat between Neil Oliver and William Keyte on the subject of the democratic deficit which is admirably exposed in Iain’s essay.
It led me to take a look at the website in the following link
https://www.commonlawconstitution.org
The information provided clearly indicates that we have been duped by the concept of ‘representative democracy’ which is merely a process for enforcing a societal measure of control, because of the refusal to accept the requirement to undertake individual personal responsibility for acceptance or denial of the imposition of legislation.
Completely agree with this sad state of affairs. I'm one of the 82.3% disenfranchised who didn't vote for Sad IQ. I don't want to have a captured, compromised, corrupted cog of the C40 centralists able to chase vanity, virtue-signalling wastes of money rather than fixing the Met police, Transport for London and our capital city's provision for independent motorists which are all way below acceptable standard and getting worse.