Whether or not that is true, that is some of the worst sentiment to be spreading. If you feel strongly, call you congressman, organize a group, do something. Posting that no one can do anything doesn't help anyone.
It seems to me like an accurate reflection of reality though. When governments and corporations propose legislation in secret it is never going to be in citizen's best interests. On the national and international scale democracy almost doesn't exist. We are being governed by the rich elite and being able to vote is just a sideshow.
Democracy as it is currently implemented is fundamentally flawed because it puts politicians and political parties in power. I mean, it fundamentally is about giving other's power. That is a freaking crude proxy to furthering citizen's interests. It's a blunt instrument. People in power can be influenced/corrupted/manipulated disproportionately by corporations and others with power. Citizens are disenfranchised and mostly powerless.
IMHO the ultimate expression of democracy would not to vote others into office, but to propose and collectively edit new legislation and vote on that. Skip the politician middlemen, go straight to the issues that matter. I imagine that citizens would be allocated a number of non-transferable expiring vote-credits that they can use to spend on pushing legislation.
In summary: until the very nature of democracy evolves we are destined to inhabit a dystopian world that serves only the interests of the elite.
The basic idea of how we do democracy is more-or-less sound. Democracy is pretty robust to different implementations e.g. federal democracy, parliamentary democracy, etc.
If democracy has an Achilles's heel it is probably concentration of power. Democracy works better when power is diffuse, and you even see this expressed in the American constitution somewhat. However, although the framers of the US constitution implemented diffusion of power pretty well within government itself, they did nothing to secure diffusion of power across society more broadly[1], and as it happens that is kicking the shit out of many Western democracies now as wealth inequality (and imbalance of power, by proxy) approaches levels that have not been seen in many generations.
[1] Possibly they even did this, by restricting the vote to land owners initially (although I don't think that was their motivation to do so). There is no question limited suffrage sucks of course, but I suspect participants in American democracy early on were on a much more level playing field than what we have now. It would have been a good idea to try to preserve that diffusion of power in society somewhat, along the way to universal suffrage. We didn't, and now may be paying the price.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.
It seems to me like an accurate reflection of reality though.
The treaty hasn't passed yet; that reality doesn't exist. We don't yet know what the future will produce and who will have what effects on how it turns out. At any rate, pessimism is probably not the most helpful contribution to the process.
Yes, powerlessness is self-fulfilling. If we believe we can effect decentralized change, we will succeed at some scale, at least within our immediate social circles. History is full of stories with small beginnings, outside of institutions that were subject to regulatory capture. At a minimum, we can create new business models that have not yet been forbidden, and undermine the economics of the desperate companies that have resorted to shameless manipulation of law and enforcement.
"When I was younger, I always imagined dictatorships as surviving whenever the dictator had a majority of power in the country. If the percentage of people x weapons controlled by the dictator's supporters was greater than the percentage of people x weapons controlled the dictator's opponents, the dictator won; once the rebels got more power, the dictator got overthrown.
That was, of course, wildly simplistic. Rebellion is first and foremost a coordination problem. (...)
The real-world upshot of this problem seems to be that even when everyone knows a dictator is unpopular, people won't protest unless they think everyone else will protest. This ends up getting bogged down in self-reference: lots of people will protest if and only if they think lots of people will protest."
Democracy as it is currently implemented is fundamentally flawed because it puts politicians and political parties in power. I mean, it fundamentally is about giving other's power. That is a freaking crude proxy to furthering citizen's interests. It's a blunt instrument. People in power can be influenced/corrupted/manipulated disproportionately by corporations and others with power. Citizens are disenfranchised and mostly powerless.
IMHO the ultimate expression of democracy would not to vote others into office, but to propose and collectively edit new legislation and vote on that. Skip the politician middlemen, go straight to the issues that matter. I imagine that citizens would be allocated a number of non-transferable expiring vote-credits that they can use to spend on pushing legislation.
In summary: until the very nature of democracy evolves we are destined to inhabit a dystopian world that serves only the interests of the elite.