Spalpeen

I’m at the 2nd Hull Peace Conference (Warning: PDF link) where Aurelien Tobie from International Alert just finished his talk on the training and skills required for “Peacebuilding”. An interesting anecdote came when I asked him about lobbying, and how the organisation would like to influence Governments and policy makers.

International Alert works with a variety of Non-Governmental Organisations and corporations across the world’s hotspots, including, quite controversially, Shell. Shell apparently want to go back to Iraq, which is an extremely dangerous area to get involved in. Inevitably a corporate presence there would result in deaths, due to the grave security risk out there.

Instead of telling Shell that it’s wrong to engage there because your presence will result in killings because of the security they’d have to employ, they tell them that it would cost them a lot of money if their presence did result in killings. They often cite cases where corporations have been successfully sued in similar scenarios, which has far more impact on the corporations than mere threats that human beings might die.

Business ethics? Pah!

I support Obama for President (the opponent would be a disaster for America and the world), but this video the campaign aired recently is essentially propagandist drivel. Who would in their right mind sit through a 30 minute commercial?! I expect that it’ll come off cheesy for uncertain voters, and probably patronising for most supporters of Obama. The only group I can see actually sitting through it are hardcore fanatics of Obama, but they would have watched this if it had been published solely online. Seems like a waste of money to broadcast this on the networks. Then again, most of this $1 Billion “race” to the White House comes off as a waste sitting from all the way over in the U.K.

I’ve always hated it when politicians refer to “evil”. It sends shivers up my spine when the people that have/could potentially have a degree of influence over the actions of the state use the word evil to justify their beliefs or actions. The reason for my trepediation whenever a politician brings up evil can be traced back to when I attended a lecture by the shadow home secretary, David Davis. He referred to the detainees at Guantanamo as “evil” individuals. David Davis certainly isn’t the first person to say this: Blair has said it, and Bush has said it repeatedly. In fact, I blame Bush entirely for the increase in popularity of this simplistic word. Search any of his speeches, and you’ll find multiple mentions of “evil” this, “axis of evil” that. Frankly, I think it’s probably one of the most worrying linguistic trends in politics for a while. Rejecting the concept of right to a fair trial and using some arbitrary idea of “evil” to justify your stance is dead wrong.

Anyway, this rant was inspired by Randall.

This is one of the primary reasons that I believe representative-based politics isn’t the right system to run Governments by. Why should $500 million need to be spent to find the next president, why should any money be spent finding a leader? That money could and should be used on actually improving the lives of people in America. OK, so some will argue that the money will improve America by supporting a worthy candidate, although I’d be willing to argue that the majority of that money is about garnering influence over the representative. Each presidential candidate will be hosting events where you’re expected to pay money to attend, and the pay off is an audience with the candidate, and therefore the potential to influence policy.

It’s the same situation with lobby groups. The same group of rich people have an unfair influence over the process of running a Government. Why should money be the yardstick by which a country’s agenda (via powerful and well funded lobby groups) is set, and the barrier to entry to a politician hearing what you need to say (via rich donors)? The answer is that it shouldn’t.

Strict deliberative democracy doesn’t have representatives. Even a mild form of deliberative democracy that exists within a representative liberal democracy could have the effect of reducing the influence of money over the process of Government.