Democracy increasingly undermined by corporate growth-agendas

Fri, 2011-09-02 12:37 by Bandicoot

With so many contradictory policies coming from our mainstream political parties, it indicates they are in a quandary about retaining "popularity" with voters, being seen to address overarching national and global issues, retaining their power, and at the same time appeasing their powerful corporate supporters and their growth-agendas.

The fact that our State and Federal government decided to create a Melbourne @ 5 million , and the "big Australia" policies, contrary to consultation and democratic principles is due to our governments' direction mainly coming from big businesses, global and national corporations, and very large and powerful lobby groups.

Voters and grass-roots interests are increasingly being ignored in favour of the elite, and those with economic and political power.

Plans are now about defining the details of how are communities are to accept the growth that's taken to be already decided, not whether it is in our interests.
Sham "consultations" are on how, not "yes" or "no" do we want them, or whether they in our best interests.

Family-hostile high rise apartments are not appropriate in Australia, and at a time we are often preached to about being sustainable. It's given lip-service in reality!

Melbourne's "activity centres" of high developments mean energy-guzzling lifestyles with little options for alternative living and self-sufficiency.
EnergyAustralia NSW and the Australian Conservation Foundation (download main findings report) have both come to the same conclusion that high-rise living, as more people are being forced to "choose" due to population growth, means much higher per capita greenhouse gas emissions that villas, townhouses or separate dwellings. The NSW Energy Australia study revealed that high-rise apartments use 30 per cent more power than a typical detached house. Much of this is in the common areas such as foyers and car parks where lights are often inefficient and are left on night and day. They are ineligible roof-top solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and water-tank harvesting, or the ability to enjoy the benefits of eaves, the shade of trees or the self-sufficiency of home gardens.

Capitalism is a great ideology and can achieve many wonderful things and open doors, but unchecked, it can undermine democracy and the will of a nation's citizens. Former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, by over-riding the concerns of the Australian people regarding population growth, saw his popularity plummet after he gave his unapologetic support to a “big Australia”. It was also his lack of action on climate change and the power of mining giants that undermined him too.

The groundswell against atrocities committed to Australian cattle sent to Indonesia was overlooked in favour of the power of the livestock industries and their well-financed lobby groups. Politicians are funded by big corporations and they will never “bite the hand that feeds them”.

Despite the overwhelming majority of Australians who don't want population growth, it is foisted upon us by compliant politicians pandering to the greed of big business, the banking sector and developers.

As a society we are succumbing to Stockholm syndrome - where victims start to comply with their prisoners - as we allow capitalist excesses to wreck our land, our cities, and clear bushland and wipe out the habitat of flora and fauna. All for greed and profits – even risking endangered species in the process,

Profits now come before people, profits before environmental sustainability, profits before community. It's money before life itself. The self-destructive human gene is being allowed a free reign to support “economic growth” at all costs, and allow us to collectively ignore the converging signs on our planet that should indicate our time of growth is OVER. Nothing living can keep growing without it becoming detrimental and destructive - to internal vital organs and infrastructures, and on a macro planetary level.

With so many contradictory policies coming from our mainstream political parties, it indicates they are in a quandary about retaining voter "popularity", being seen to address overarching national and global issues, retaining their power, and at the same time appeasing their powerful corporate supporters. Such contradictory forces are hard to reconcile.

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keep Melbourne ... (not verified)

Wed, 2011-08-31 13:28

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Melbourne named world's best city by Economist Intelligent Unit

MELBOURNE has been crowned the world's most liveable city, snaring the top spot from former number one Vancouver, in a survey ranking 140 cities around the world. Melbourne's status is a reflection on the rest of the world's cities. We have rising crime, congestion, developments, high-rises, land-clearing and urban expansion choking our access outwards and inwards. If we let these developers and planners have access to more of our suburbs and resources, we will lose the title like Vancouver did. What economists consider the "best" cities is not necessarily how the residents rate it. Economist Intelligence Unit survey editor Jon Copestake said in a media release that Australian cities were so well placed in the survey ranking due to the "low population density and relatively low crime rates''. Really - if these economists have their way, the remnant benefits of living in Melbourne will soon be used to see high population and high crime rates.

Anonymous (not verified)

Sat, 2011-09-03 15:11

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Collective narcissism and megalomania

Megalomania is a psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence. 'Megalomania is characterized by an inflated sense of self-esteem and overestimation by persons of their powers and beliefs'. It is also called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Grandiose plans etc could also indicate manic depression. Though it is considered healthy to care about your own well-being and have a healthy self-esteem, when someone loves himself to the exclusion of all else and others become objectified to be used only to serve the self, this is no longer considered healthy or normal. NPD is characterized by extremely low self-esteem, which is compensated for by delusions of grandeur and megalomania, a narcissistic neuroses. With our paradigm of free market capitalism, we must have an ever increasing, youthful workforce to replace and support the generation expecting to leave it with decades of life left to enjoy. This is exactly the problem that is being swept under the rug unfortunately. Immigration is seen as the "fix" for an ageing population. If we could avoid the issues of finite resources and limited space along with global climate change, increase disease due to larger population densities we could have higher populations and longer lives. Call it a collective delusion of grandeur if you will. It all keeps coming back to the adage of Einstein that you cannot fix anything with the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place. The collective narcissism of the human race means people want big populations, big power, massive growth and wealth, long lives and expect Nature and finite ecosystems and natural resources to adapt and increase according to demand. It's human megalomania and collective delusion of grandeur and power - but flawed and fatalistic.

Steven Earl Salmony (not verified)

Sun, 2011-09-11 05:43

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Taking a path toward sustainability while there is still time.

The family of humanity appears not to have much more time, perhaps a couple of decades if we are lucky, in which to make necessary changes in our conspicuous overconsumption/hoarding lifestyles, the endless expansion of overproduction by big-business enterprises, and its unbridled overpopulation activities. Humankind may not be able to protect life as we know it or preserve the integrity of Earth, even during the years many of us are alive. If we project the fully anticipated increase of unrestrained per-capita consumption/hoarding, rampant economic globalization and unrestricted propagation of 75 to 80 million newborns per annum for the foreseeable future, will someone please explain how the 'trajectory' of our civilization can be sustained much longer on a planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth? According to my admittedly simple estimations, if humankind keeps doing just as it is doing now, without beginning to do whatsoever is necessary to modify the business-as-usual course of our gigantic global economy, for example, then the Earth could not sustain life as we know it much longer. It appears that all the chatter in the mass media regarding an already accepted event, a "demographic transition" in the coming four decades, during which time humankind will pursue a path to the future marked by underdeveloped countries not following the path of the overdeveloped countries but instead “leap-frogging” traditional economic growth activities and automatically squeezing through a ‘bottleneck’ to population stabilization around 2050, is nothing more than wishful and magical thinking. Where is the science to support these ideas? Although it has not been sensibly and openly discussed, extant scientific evidence appears to directly contradict demographic transition theory in such a way that I am led to believe that this theory is a product of preternatural thinking and inadequate research. Please note that the demographic transition theory could be supported by unscientific evidence that is widely known to be ideologically based, politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerable and culturally prescribed. Unfortunately, in the face of all the elective mutism and willful denial of what the human population is doing on our watch, many too many top rank scientists have adopted a code of silence, apparently at the behest of super-rich and powerful greedmongers who rule the world in our time. Scientists have got to find adequate ways of communicating to humanity about what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of Earth’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species are primarily the result of the colossal current scale and fully expected growth of human consumption, production and propagation activities worldwide. When taken together, these global overgrowth activities of the human species appear to be occurring synergistically, proceeding at breakneck speed, and moving fast toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort unless, of course, the world’s huge, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to rush headlong toward the monolithic ‘Wall’ called UNSUSTAINABILITY, at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed. If this representation of the human-driven global predicament is somehow on the right track, then it seems that responsible and humane efforts made by a conscious human community to slow the world-engulfing overgrowth activities of the human population would be a step in the direction of sustainability. Either we will choose to take a "road less traveled by" toward sustainability while there is still time or else become one of many species to be victimized by of our soon to become, somehow patently unsustainable presence on Earth, I suppose.

Democracy increasingly undermined by corporate growth-agendas

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Melbourne named world's best city by Economist Intelligent Unit

Collective narcissism and megalomania

Taking a path toward sustainability while there is still time.

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