El Rey está desnudo

Perfectopia: the perfect “democratic” system?

I am not a “democrat” (in the sense of person who likes democracy). I know that this is politically not correct to say, but it is the truth, and I would lie if I were saying something different. Unfortunately when you say something like this “narrow minded” people tend to think that automatically you are a supporter of dictatorships or totalitarian regimes. As libertarian, nothing farthest from reality.

The problem is that I believe (and events prove that I am right), as many others also do (even if they don´t say it loudly) that democracy is just another form of dictatorship: the dictatorship of the majority. Lighter, of course, but a dictatorship. When your liberties and rights depend on what the majority decides, that cannot be called a “good” system, not even a “fair” system, and you only need to look at Venezuela, Hitler or the Prop 8 in California to realize it.

Some weeks ago I published in my twitter 9 tweets that were somehow successful (I am not a tweetstar, so that for me means 4-5 RT and 1-2 favs ^^). They were in Spanish but considering that many people liked them, I decided to write the ideas behind them here again, extending them and in English, to reach a broader audience. The tweets were saying more or less the following:

In order to be coherent, we should live in a system where the political adscription and party who everyone votes is not private, but completely public. Actually everyone should carry an identification which identifies you as “supporter and voter” of this or that political party. This should not be a problem and everybody should carry it proudly (why not?).

Then, your relationship with the State, the system itself and the society would be regulated by such political election which is done, I assume, freely. Then the following would apply (this is not exhaustive, just giving some traces of information of the ideas behind):

1. Supporters and voters of Communists parties (or derivatives) would be allowed to work only for the State. They would not get any kind of income (that is, they would pay a 100% of their salary as income tax) but everything (services and goods needed for surviving) would be provided by the state. Of course they would always have a job, or a pension if the State cannot obtain one for them. But they would not be allowed to collect private properties more than the ones provided by the State (State owned ones), e.g. no private car, just public transportation, etc.

2. Supporters and voters of Socialists parties (or derivatives) could work for the State or for private companies, but everything in their labor relationship would be ruled and decided by the State (or the Labor Unions). Besides, they should pay 70% of their salary as income tax, and they would be subject to a 50% of VAT tax on any product they would acquire. Of course they would benefit of the services provided by the State: health system, education and public transportation. They would not be allowed to contract them privately but they could access also to an unemployed benefit or to own a car (manufactures by the state).

3. Supporters of Conservative parties (or similar) could work for the State or for private companies, they would be able to negotiate some of their labor contract clauses, and their salary would be subject to a 50% income TAX (as now we have in Spain with the new Conservative party) but a reduced VAT of 25% on any product. They could use the State services but they would be allowed also to receive these services from private providers (health system, education, transportation and unemployment benefit). They would be authorized of course to own private properties such as private car, house, etc., but paying taxes for them.

4. Finally, libertarians and classical liberals would not be allowed to work for the State. They could only work for private companies (or for their own ones), they would have total freedom in the negotiation of their labor contract clauses and their salary would be subject to a minimum income tax (or economic activity tax for their companies) of 5% (to maintain the minimum common services as justice, main infrastructures used or so) and no VAT tax in the goods they would acquire. However they would not be allowed to receive any service from the State (education, health system, public transportation, security, etc.) and they should contract everything privately. 

5. And any other intermediate ones…

Of course, everything in the relationship among individuals would be regulated also by their political adscription: liberties, rights, etc. Libertarians, on one side, would not suffer any kind of censorship. Their privacy would be totally respected and their communications would be inviolable. Communists on the other side would be subject to a permanent surveillance by the State, who would rule what, how and when can be said, thought or expressed. The other options would be something in the middle of this. For instance also, gay and lesbian couples under Conservative adscription would not be allowed to get married. For libertarians this would not be a problem because this would be a private contract and for Communists and Socialists, they could have only a civil marriage, by the State. Libertarians would have free and unrestricted access to drugs, and for the other parties’ supporters they would be forbidden (for communists even alcohol or tobacco)

Every 4 years, at the time of the elections, every citizen would have the possibility to change their political adscription, moving from one group to the other, as they do with the votes. Whichever is the resulting ruling party or coalition, their relationship with the State and the society would be the one described above. 

I don´t know if this political system would be the “perfect” one, but of course it would be pretty close to it. Everyone would be coherent and would live in the system they prefer, and what is more important: in the system that with their votes they want for the others. 

Which political adscription do you think would collect more “supporters” with the time? Well, I have my own idea, but I am sure that the first ones would not be the winners. Why? Very easy: because communism and socialism only work if they are able to impose their ideas to the people, steal the money from the people and wash the brains of the people. Otherwise they don´t work. As simple as that. You only need to see the natural evolution of former communist countries when they leave the people to choose freely. 

And now the question: which one would you chose?  ;-) 

Chronicle of the infamy

Finally the Spanish Libertarian Party – Partido de la Libertad Individual (P-Lib) – has been banned and will not be allowed to participate in the next general elections. P-Lib is not the only party that has suffered the antidemocratic attack of the new regulation (Pirate Party also, for instance), but it has been the only one that has been arbitrarily banned after fulfilling all the conditions to participate. Here is the sequence of events, that we would like to share with the entire world to show which kind of “democracy” we have in Spain, and also how Spain is getting closer and closer to pseudo-democratic regimes like Venezuela and Argentina, where basic freedoms and rights are being violated everyday.

On 29 January 2011, Saturday, a new regulation of the Spanish General Electoral Law (LOREG) was published. Nobody made any noise on it, neither the Spanish media, totally submissive to the politic power, nor the political parties in the Parliament (of course). In this new regulation, the political parties that were not already in the Parliament, needed to present before they could participate in any electoral process, a number of endorsements (i.e. signatures) equivalent to the 0,1% of the population of any of the areas in which the country is split electorally speaking. This implies that, for instance, in the case of the province of Madrid, almost 5000 signatures were needed to be collected. The conditions were more challenging that only the collection of the signatures, because the political parties that were not already in the parliament had only 20 days to do it, and with an additional difficulty: the signatures had to be unique per each political party. Hence, the 20 small political parties that usually were participating in Madrid, for instance, needed to obtain for the signatures of at least 100.000 citizens to be able to be present in the electoral process. In 20 days.

But it was not only the difficulty of such conditions. It is also what in a democratic country that implies: citizens were requested to disclose, with name, Id number and signature, their electoral preference. Totally antidemocratic. Logically many, many of them rejected to sign, as vote is, in accordance with the Spanish Constitution, secret.

The reason for this modification in the law was clear: day after day the Spanish citizens are getting more and more pissed off with the Spanish politicians that only rule in their own benefit, far from the real needs of the people and that consider politics as a way to live comfortably without effort and just living from the result of the work of the citizens. Hence, new political parties were appearing with great success that were threatening their comfortable status-quo. They needed to stop it. And they did it.

However, the P-Lib succeeded. People belonging to the party, together with friends and other supporters spent the ruled 20 days in the streets (I did it also a couple of days) collecting (or trying to) the requested signatures. I can not describe with words the personal effort that it implied and how difficult it was, you need to live it in order to know it. But the people had a lot of hopes and wished and they/we considered that it was worthy. 

Monday 17th of October, the last day to present the signatures, the P-Lib presented 5540 (the minimum were around 4600) in Madrid, and around 1000 in Zaragoza (the minimum were around 700) in the Electoral Council Offices of each city. Therefore, in Madrid, the P-Lib presented almost 1000 signatures more than the minimum requested. It was done…

… or not.

On Wednesday 19th of October, the Electoral Council of Madrid communicated officially to the P-Lib that they had discarded more than 900 signatures because they were supposed to be erroneous. However no evidence of this was provided (no evidence could be provided because they never checked the 5540 signatures, but only some and made an extrapolation). Nevertheless the P-Lib was officially given an additional period of 48 hours to collect the 94 additional signatures needed to reach the minimum limit.  P-Lib activated again the people and in 24 hours was able to collect more than 550 signatures. 

But in the evening of the Thursday 20th of October, when al the new signatures had been already collected ready to be presented on Friday 21st of October, the Electoral Council of Madrid communicated (again) to the P-Lib that, contradicting what they had said the day before, no additional signatures were allowed to be presented to solve the problem. 

Therefore, from that moment on, the P-Lib was de-facto out of the electoral process. Considering that the Electoral Council never justified exactly which of the 5540 were wrong, the party had not possibility to solve this issue. And in case that they were really wrong (the 900 they stated), the signatures were collected in the street so it was not possible to find the people who signed. The Electoral Council new that it was materially impossible.

On Friday 21st however the P-Lib presented the additional 560 signatures together with a petition to consider the additional signatures as it was stated by the same Council on 19th of October. However the P-Lib was officially communicated that they were out of the elections. 

And this is how we are today. For first time in the democratic history of Spain, legal political parties will be prevented of participating in democratic elections. But not only that. What happened to the P-Lib shows the arbitrariness that you need to face in order to make use of your democratic rights. Improper of a (self-called) civilized country belonging to the “first world”.

Now the only exit that the P-Lib will try is the legal one: P-Lib will go to the Spanish Justice to present their case and, if possible, to try to impugn the whole electoral process. However, considering that in Spain the judges are elected by the same political parties that are present in the Parliament (yes, this is the way the justice works in Spain), there is no hope on the success of this solution.

It is possible that the candidature of Zaragoza will be accepted (no problems have been communicated), but until Monday we will not know this. In any case, considering the population of both cities, deactivating the candidature of Madrid, the Electoral Council has killed effectively any possibility for the party to obtain representation in the parliament.

All the efforts of so many people will have been useless. All the hopes and wishes of dozens of people that worked hard will have been despised. And thousands of Spaniards will not be allowed to vote to the political option they wanted. 

¿Spanish democracy? 

Update (25/10/11): the infamy is confirmed.

I don’t know, so I’m an atheist libertarian

I don’t believe the majority always knows what’s best for everyone. The fact that the majority thinks they have a way to get something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don’t want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, I don’t believe you really know jack. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It’s just ganging up against the weird kid, and I’m always the weird kid.

Please, read it completely. Via Sam Bowman (@S8mB) 

Democracy in Spain is dead, but not precisely for the reasons you might think

This is a summary in English of this previous post in Spanish, targeted to my international followers. Basically what has happened is that the main political parties in the Spanish Parliament have performed a “kind of” Coup d’Etat against the Spanish democracy, act performed with the collaborative silence of the Spanish Media and other political parties that could obtain some benefit of the new regulation. So successful has been such silence, that very few Spaniards have heard about this.

In January of the current year, the Spanish Parliament approved a modification of the law that rules the access to the electoral processes for the different political parties. The change basically makes practically impossible to a small party that has never been present in a previous electoral process to present candidates and lists to the elections. Actually they can, but undergoing such a difficult and costly process that in practical terms makes it impossible. The consequence is that for the next general elections (20th November), only the already present big parties will be allowed to concur, and no new political party will be able to. This has been made basically because of the fear of the Spanish “big parties” (socialists - PSOE, conservative party - PP and two big nationalist parties from Catalonia and Basque Country - CiU and PNV) to lose power/votes due to the presence of new political parties, as happened with the new ones appeared in the national scene in the recent years (UPyD and Ciutadans).  

This is specially serious in a so considered “modern country” like Spain. But what is really painful is that this (under my point of view) criminal act has been accomplished with the collaborative silence of the entire Spanish media (servil with the main political parties) and the newly appeared “citizens movements” that are supposed to claim for “real democracy” and that what they really look for is to refrain the voters of voting the conservative party, when unhappy with the socialist party.

And this really (sorry for the expression) piss me off, because one of this “new” political party that is being blocked from the next general elections, is the recently created Spanish Libertarian Party (P-Lib), leaving a quite important part of the Spanish voters without a libertarian political option.   

After this, what do you think? Is Spain still a modern democratic country?