Managed Democracy with Weak Leaders and People of Wealth

Most of my observations are based on Finnish and US politics being a citizen of both countries, but I believe that much of the same is taking place in other Western countries as well.

One of the key pillars of democracy is openness. Government laws, decisions, and treaties are expected to be part of the public record so that the people can know how their interests are being managed and to make informed decisions in elections. The people need to know how they were represented during the previous election season so they can decide if they can trust their representatives again with their vote - or if something needs to change.

Instead governments seem to have adopted a new, more efficient way of handling things: they refuse to comment on matters that are "not yet ready" or have "not yet been decided on", and once the work is complete the public is merely notified that this just happened. No need to discuss about the matter as the decision has been made, treaties have been signed and it's all good.

This is not how a democratic society is expected to work.

A case in point is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The negotiations have been on-going for quite some time now but almost no information about it was shared with the public until WikiLeaks provided some insight about it. Many might have missed these negotiations altogether and many of those who did know about the negotiations probably thought it was about removing customs bureaucracy and expenses and getting rid off import/export taxes on some products, which would be a good thing. Unfortunately the treaty is also likely to contain controversial practices that the informed public within EU would probably oppose strongly, so in order to enable matters to progress smoothly it was decided to keep the public uninformed.

Managed Democracy

It seems that there is a drive to convert representative democracies into managed democracies. The political elite neither wants or needs the public to be informed; it just needs the public to vote. By keeping public uninformed it is easier to rule the country and guide the public to vote correctly every few years. The country continues to be run by legitimized government, but the government no longer serves the people. At best decisions are based on what the political elite actually believes is best for the people (regardless of what the public might think about it), and at worst the government only serves the political elite's interests.

For example, the last time Finland had a referendum was in 1994 about EU membership. It is worth noting that the vote was not binding and if the people had voted "wrong" the political leadership had the option to ignore the referendum. In the end 56,9% of the voters supported the membership and on 1st of January, 1995 Finland joined EU.

It has been 20 years since the last time political elite wanted to hear what the people think about matters that significantly affect their lives. For example, the decision to join Euro currency was not up for debate in the form of binding or even non-binding referendum.

Many politicians are career politicians; being a politician is their work, their career and their life for which they have been preparing ever since they became young adults, and some even longer. Some are raised to be politicians in order to continue their family legacy. This is especially true for the political elite so it must be difficult for them to allow strangers to decide every few years whether or not they are allowed to continue doing what they are meant to do. It would be so much easier if they could just tell the people how things are going to be or even better, to ignore the people completely.

Sometimes democracy sucks.

So the model of managed democracy begins to look like an ideal solution: maintain the facade of democracy while encouraging people to focus on more important matters like sports, TV-shows and their daily lives while leaving the tedious and boring politics for their humble civil servants. Don't worry about anything, everything is going to be alright. Just remember to vote the name you know in the next elections.

Weak Leaders

So here's the thing: weak leaders can appear stronger and maintain their position of socio-economic power by making the people weaker.

Political strength is the power to influence people and ability to guide the flow of events to desirable directions. This power is measured in wealth, which should be fairly obvious: the poor have no wealth so consequently they have very little influence over people and events. As one gains wealth one also gains power so it is the rich who have the most power to influence people and events.

The strong rule over the weak. Weak leadership may gain relative power by making the people weaker, for example

- by limiting access to higher education one can limit the number of people who are informed, independent thinkers and likely to question authorities and challenge the political elite on socio-economic matters.

- by limiting access to healthcare and applying high and wide ranging taxes one can make the people struggle a bit more in their daily lives as people who are worried about basic necessities of life such as work, health, family and being able to pay bills are less likely to pay attention to matters of politics and problems of other people.

In fact, by taxing wealth, allowing for high inflation and keeping prices artificially high the government can effectively reduce the power of the middle class people not to mention the poor.

People of Wealth

The strong rule over the weak and weak leaders tend to be ruled by the people of wealth - not by the people  in general who supposedly granted them their positions for the purpose of serving the people. The people of wealth can provide weak leaders what they truly want: not to promote and nurture the wellbeing of the people and the society but to enable the political elite to accumulate more personal wealth and gain stronger positions of power.

In the elections people may vote, but the people of wealth pay for the campaigns. In the political decision making all interest groups may try to influence the decision makers, but it is the people of wealth who can afford to field more and better lobbyists to guide the decision making. And once a politician loses or quits his/her office they are often hired by the people of wealth - assuming that they are still deemed useful because of their contacts, knowledge or due some other valuable trait.

The people, and by extention, democracy suffer while the few prosper.

The Futility of Internet Censorship

Background
Starting today the customers of two Finnish Internet operators, Elisa and Saunalahti are no longer allowed to access The Pirate Bay website. This is because the District Court of Helsinki ruled in favour of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, IFPI Finland in October 2011 and ordered Elisa and Saunalahti to block access. However the court ruling did not address the other two major Internet service providers in Finland, TeliaSonera and DNA whose customers are still free to access The Pirate Bay for the time being.

The reason why Elisa was targeted by IFPI was because IFPI's statistics claim that more than a third of Elisa's customers were using The Pirate Bay. Although the court ruling compelled Elisa to block access, it has appealed the decision.

The reaction to this was what you might guess: some Elisa and Saunalahti users will change their ISP to one that does not censor their Internet usage while IFPI website and the website of Finland's Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre apparently faced a denial of service attack and/or were hacked. Meanwhile most people simply won't care, although personally I think they should as this issue relates closely to Freedom of Expression.

YLE has a news article about the case: Pirate Bay block comes into force in Finland.

Personally I think the whole situation is completely and utterly stupid.

Why Internet Censorship Won't Help
The first obvious point is that blocking a static list of domain names and IP-addresses simply can't keep up with content providers. Within a day or so there will be a new domain that is not in the court's list of forbidden domains which will allow Elisa and Saunalahti customers to access The Pirate Bay content again. In the meanwhile, they can still access The Pirate Bay via the Estonian mirror site, thepiratebay.ee which for some reason or other was not blocked among the other Pirate Bay domains.

And then there are the anonymity networks such as The Onion Router (Tor). It takes only a moment to download the ready-to-use browser bundle and voilá, The Pirate Bay is available once more for Elisa and Saunalahti customers as Tor prevents ISPs from seeing what the target website is. Even if the operators would attempt to block access to the public Tor network, users can usually get around this by using Tor bridge relays. Well, I suppose the operator could cut the users completely off the Internet. Not that it would make much difference if the user is determined enough.

So the point is that attempts to force Internet censorship simply won't work in any practical sense. Even the Great Firewall of China leaks well enough and attempts to limit Internet communications during the Arab Spring were not all that successful. While failing all serious attempts to block determined users from accessing forbidden content, it is the common users and legal businesses that end up suffering for it.

So why not try to work with the people instead of against the people?

Appeal to Reason (free tip, no charge)
At least in Western countries there is no intrinsic value in listening to pirated music, watching pirated movies or playing pirated games. It is an effort to gain access and download the pirated content, there are many quality and security related issues and if there are any problems the user can't expect any help from customer support. So why do people do it then? One common reason probably is that they have no other access to the content they want (e.g. a TV series that isn't available in their own country) or the purchase price is simply too steep (60 € for a PC game?!).

Online piracy would become less common if the media producers were a little less greedy, while becoming a little more consumer friendly. Lower the prices a bit while making the content more widely available and more convenient to access it. Sure, the price per unit would be less but if more units are sold instead of being distributed illegally that should end up making a nice extra profit.

For example, I could download pirated copies of my favourite games but I actually prefer to pay for them in the Steam Store and Origin Store because it is much more convenient. Steam allows me to reinstall my games as many times as I want (because limiting the number of installations is just petty and unbelievably greedy); I can install them to as many computers as I want but that's ok because Steam only allows me to play on one computer at a time; my games have access to Steam Cloud that stores save games and settings while also accessing the Steam community so I can keep in touch and play with my friends easily. On top of that there are good discount offers, and I can donate extra copies to my friends for free. It is safe, easy and most of all, convenient and that is why I willingly buy my games from Steam instead of wasting my life with pirate copies.

Another good example comes from Manning Publications. I often buy books through their Manning Early Access Program, which allows me to buy a book for a discount fee while it is still being written. This enables the community to cooperate with the author, which in turn results in higher quality when the book is eventually finished. During the MEAP peried Manning sends me PDF work-in-progress copies of the book and when the book is completed I get the final version as a PDF. If I paid little extra I will also get the print copy in mail. When the eBook formats become available (.epub and .mobi) Manning sends me a friendly email with instructions how to download them for no extra charge.

So there are good examples how to provide good customer service with an open attitude, and still do good business. There are many ways to make media access more convenient for the consumers and here's the age old truth: people will give their money away and feel good about it if they can also feel that they are getting their money's worth in exchange.

So IFPI and the like around the world, instead of thinking that it is your God given right to strip people of their money whenever half an opportunity presents itself, why not think about how to give better value for money? A happy customer is a steady customer. Why not try to find ways to provide better services to the consumers, so that instead of running after free pirated copies they would choose convenience over effort for a modest fee? Let's just be sensible about it, alright?

And if you don't know how, just contact me, and for a reasonable fee I can solve your problems and make you feel good about the result ;-)