“Democracy” does seem the most plausible, but is that due to cognitive bias? There are about as many interpretations of “democracy” nowadays as there are of “freedom”, which is why we have to be fairly specific which freedom and which democracy we’re talking about. I’m talking about “small scale democracy”, wherein each individual has a direct say in all matters pertaining to his own wellbeing, but acknowledgement is made to the fact that without the society around us each of us is weak.

“Democracy” as it has been done for hundreds of years is more “krateia” and less “demos” - more about the power than the people. Looking at the way electoral votes are cast and the way districts are zoned you can see fairly quickly that there are a number of things that are built into a representative democratic system that minimize the actual power the individual has. The voting process is placatory.

Nice to see that you’ve now begun posting again after a long hiatus.

I’ve been regularly checking for updates on your blog particularly since the financial crisis hit Iceland seemingly more mercilessly than anywhere else. I’ve been eager to hear your particular perspective on events that are unfolding in your country. I knew that Iceland would be exposed to the downturn in the markets because of its dependance on world trade to meet its most basic needs, but had never expected to witness the severity of the current crisis.

I find it interesting that the coverage of Iceland’s woes always fail to show that in April, Iceland’s markets, banks, and currency were faced by speculative attacks by foreign hedge funds after the unwinding of the subprime market in the U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/5ngv6m

I personally think this economic crisis was engineered for a threefold purpose. a) to use it as a justification to push through trade negotiations via the WTO. b)to force relactriant BRIC nations to pull down their remaining “trade” barriers to the Western Nations so that as during the 1980s US and European multinationals will be able to buy the and resources of vulnerable nations at pennies on the pound , and c) to regulate the world’s banking system in the interests of a more consolidated industry and a cartel of nations rather than just the United States and Great Britain.

If your keeping abreast of international news you would know all of these things are being negotiated in various political and economic forums.

I believe it to be engineered as the current crisis mirrors the last last economic crisis in the 1970-1980s almost perfectly save its unfolded so much faster.

The Council on Foreign Relations wrote a detailed economic and political analysis during the mid 1970s as part of their “1980s project” that aired the notion of introducing a global credit/currency system based on relations hyperregional currencies a la the US Dollar and a European currency and advocated the abolishment of national currencies through undermining national sovereignty through “controlled disintegration” of the world economy. Heres a telling excerpt here.

“In a tiered system the tasks for American statecraft will be great. What is being requested is that a form of collective leadership be developed in the management of the interanational economy to replace the individualistic leadership of the United States that has prevailed since World War II.”
-Edward L. Morse

“The obvious danger in such a regime resides in its potential instability. Some limited loosening is by no means unequivocally undesirable. It can be seen as a rational response to the earlier tendency, which was most manifest in the 1960s, for economic integration to run far ahead of both actual and desired political integration, thereby forcing countries into suboptimal policy choices. A degree of controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s and may be the most realistic one for a moderate international economic order. A central normative problem for the international economic order in the years ahead is how to ensure that the dis-integration indeed occurs in a controlled way and does not rather spiral into damaging restrictionism.”

-Fred Hirsch and Michael Doyle

Chomsky is of course brilliant, but a lot of his conclusions are things Marx already illuminated - specifically Marx’s concept of the “ruling ideas” which Chomsky largely copies whole, especially in his book on American hegemony. (Wait, that is all his books isn’t it? :^) )

It sounds like your solution to representative democracy is to remove the representation and the democracy. Historically that bodes ill. Humans are social animals and need a way to communicate needs and desires, democracy seems the most plausible and efficacious but I assume you have another path?

First off, everybody misundarstands Marxism, partially because it’s a self-contradictory concept. And it seems that everybody west of Iceland, even the enlightened folks, think that Scandinavia as a whole is a socialist paradise, which of course is wrong.

But regardless of titles and names, Naomi not only appears to know her stuff amazingly well, but writes fantastically well researched books. The Shock Doctrine has many flaws, but lack of evidence is not one of them. Every statement is fairly well backed up to the point where I start to think she’s the bastard offspring of Noam Chomsky and Bertrand Russell raised by a swarm of angry women in a neocon prison camp.

But no, voting more often does not make a democracy more representative. It makes a democracy a democracy. Representation is based on many people one opinion, above all, and there’s no one-to-one mapping between the representatives and those represented in most parliamentary governments.

I disagree with anything you might call “representative” government because it assumes our inability to self-govern. Voting at every opportunity - or rather, voting on every issue - is what it means when we say “democracy”, and the idea of representation was an elitist way of subverting that.

Also, because one votes more often makes a democracy more representative? How is that? Representation is based on one person, one vote. Not that you vote at every opportunity.