How Capitalism Is Killing Democracy

Is capitalism really killing democracy? According to an article by Foreign Policy, “capitalism, long sold as the yin to democracy’s yang, is thriving, while democracy is struggling to keep up." There is an ever widening kink in the ideological link between capitalism and democracy. A number of governments have failed to institute necessary political reform, focusing instead on ways to achieve economic growth. For example, the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries, which are booming economically, are doing so without much political reform. Russia is seeing a boom in capital reserves from oil revenues, yet it has done nothing to address the looming problem of high-profile corruption and government insider-ship. Moreover, China is expected to become the third largest economy in 2007, but it has barely touched on its problems with censorship and political party monopoly. Will democracy have to catch up in order for capitalism to keep moving forward? Or is this the death of a once successful marriage? To read the full article, click here.

most of the people uses

Submitted by on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 1:30pm.

most of the people uses economic power and success into political chamr, to what expense?
at the expense of common people like us. is'nt it sad to know, that while democracy and capitalism are said to grow hand in hand,
that in countries with big businesses uses their power just to gain political influence and not for the people's sake.

Referendum For A New Democracy

Submitted by on Mon, 07/05/2010 - 2:16pm.

Do we need a Referendum For A New Democracy?

Are you concerned about the future of democracy? Do you feel democracy is under attack by extreme greed in countries around the world? Are you sick and tired of: living in fear, corporate greed, growing police state, government for the rich, working more but having less?

Can we use both elections and random selection (in the way we select government officials) to rid democracy of undue influence by extreme wealth and wealth-dominated mass media campaigns?

The world's first democracy (Athenian democracy, 600 B.C.) used both elections and random selection. Even Aristotle (the cofounder of Western thought) promoted the use random selection as the best way to protect democracy. The idea of randomly selecting (after screening) juries remains from Athenian democracy, but not randomly selecting (after screening) government officials. Why is it used only for individual justice and not also for social justice? Who wins from that? ...the extremely wealthy?

What is the best way to combine elections and random selection to protect democracy in today's world? Can we use elections as the way to screen candidates, and random selection as the way to do the final selection? Who wins from that? ...the people?