Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Democracy

I just saw that George Bush had nominated Robert Zoellick as the next president of the World Bank. Wait a minute, whats wrong with that picture? A single man who represents only one country nominating a man in the governing post of a world institution and it is taken for given that this man will become the next holder of the post! Yeah, thats how things are done in world politics, this is the way it has been and will always be it seems. But this got me thinking about democracy and playing along with it. Inside nations than we often democratically elect our leaders to do the governing job for us. And they decide to do something like have free dental care for children, or free daycare for low payed employees or better medical care for all etc etc, something social that affects many of us but not all. Then the strongest of us often cry out and say they wont take part in this (ok, usually it is not something obvious like the points I talked about earlier, usually something obscure like welfare for drug addicts or other social outcasts that could make their own living) and if the rulers intend to carry on with this then they will take their business elsewhere and leave the rest in the dirt forcing the government to retract their plans. This is what I tend to see with global politics also, and I think it is rotten. This is specially clear with USA, they do this often and the other countries can hardly do anything since USA is such a strong economical power. I have no doubts that other countries would do the same if they could, but just don't have the economical power behind them to do so. I do think that EU has the power but just hasn't used it in a highly public matter or then at all.

But I don't know, when I am forced to pay license for the internet connection here in Denmark that I don't use to watch TV (the reason the danish government is making all of its citizens pay license for its internet connection is that they have started sending out the public TV for free from the homepage of DR and it is viewable only to computers that have a danish address) then I would comply if I thought it was just for a student to pay this license, even though I did not enjoy the benefits from it, just because it is an (almost) democratic consensus to do this and I have to play along since I am a member of this nation at the moment. USA does not see it with the same eyes and I doubt that the rest of the world does either.

2 comments:

Bjarni said...

Blessaður Óli

I believe that it has been a tradition that the US nominates a world bank president, and in exchange europeans get to nominate the president of the IMF.

B.t.w. did you know that a new universal healthcare law is being discussed seriously here in California. It really looks like it will pass! ...unless the governator vetos it.

Cheers
Bjarni

Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson said...

Ahaa .. so the EU and USA exchange the IMF and the World Bank between themselves, nice.

Not really democratic I would say :-)

What about the rest of the earth nations?

Nahh, this is rotten politics. Perhaps necessary, but still rotten.

Nice this news about health care, hope it will get through.