Democracy as Scam

Come the Postliminium

The following was written in response to this news report,  http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india

By John Taylor; 2010 March 23, Ala' 03, 166 BE

In his peace plan, John Amos Comenius suggested that the time after a world government forms should be proclaimed the "Great Postlimininum." A postliminium is the time when a knight returns home after long years fighting military campaigns in foreign parts. Relieved of the military life, he takes over his farms, lands and estates from their stewards. Described in the parable of the talents, the Postliminium is a time of reckoning, when lower management gives account of their stewardship and the new boss rectifies past wrongs.

Among the worst of these wrongs are being committed by the world's large democracies, including the world's largest, India. Activist Arundhati Roy describes democracy as little more than a scam, a way for the elites to bilk the majority of their wealth. In a recent broadcast she describes how she became an eyewitness to the wholesale murder and uprooting of hundreds of thousands of "tribals" throughout central India. This genocide is committed by the national government on behalf of what she calls "corporates," mining companies who have bought mineral rights directly under the feet of thousands of villages.

Come the Postliminium, all this greed and injustice must stop. The natural wealth of our planet will come under the ownership and purview of the entire human race. The exploitation of mineral resources will no doubt continue, and may even increase, but only after the entire wheel of human governance is rolling smoothly. That is, the tread of the wheel, local people, must have a say and gain a share in ownership of the project. The hub of the wheel, the world government, must also have a veto and a controlling share in every such project.

In the meantime, we need an Einstein of ownership, a legal genius to work out standard, universal formulas for distributing wealth, for encouraging enterprise without trampling on anybody's rights. Once such a revised proprietary order is established, a world government will arrive at decisions without conflict, and locals will have a stake in whatever is going on nearby.

Roy describes the agony of these hapless villagers, who are forced to either leave or starve. Come the postliminium, the increased mobility of hillside housing will enable large populations to move to where the action is without dislocation -- the very word "dislocation" implies the hurt of being uprooted, but if entire homes and estates can be moved smoothely and easily anywhere in the world, suddenly the trauma of mobility will be removed. Suddenly, one of the most fundamental democratic rights, freedom to roam, will be a reality for everybody.

 

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