Why American Democracy is Dead
It’s the economy, stupid.
Statistically speaking, you’re probably one of the 162,810,000 American adults who currently lives under an authoritarian regime. You serve a president who can legally curtail your free speech, revoke your free expression and punish you for assembling with your fellow citizens. You don’t vote for your legislature. You don’t vote for your lower-level leaders. The meager semblance of a judiciary, if you have one, directly serves your president — oh, and you personally cannot vote him out either (statistically speaking, it’s a him).
If you’re lucky, by contrast, you’re among the measly 6,734 American adults who don’t. If you’re lucky, you’re employed in a democratic workplace.
Democracy is dead in our politics because it is dead in our economy. It’s not just astronomical wealth inequities and unchecked corporate political spending we’re talking about here. All that was an inevitable outcome of the structure itself, because our economy is comprised of dictatorships.
These dictatorships might have some regulations curtailing the worst abuses, but they have no intrinsic checks and balances on power within them. The vast majority of companies are not governed by or for the people who work for them. The interests of any company are the financial interests of its shareholders, not…
