You are now leaving the democratic zone and entering Europe

George Bernard Shaw said that "democracy is a mechanism which guarantees that we won't be governed any better than we deserve". It wouldn't actually be so bad it that were true ...

Let's imagine for a second that free elections would be held at a planetary level, to host a global government. The democratic principle one-man/one vote would bring to power a Chinese-Indian coalition. The latter would find that the West is far richer than the East and in order to ensure its re-election - would initiate policies for redistributing that wealth. This exercise in imagination was proposed by Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hope, a self-appointed "social theorist of anarchic capitalism", who concluded that democracy is a mechanism for redistributing revenues and wealth, through which the poor majorities are trying to get rich on the back of the wealthy minorities.

In reality, the world is not that globalized, democracy only truly works in a few countries, and redistribution will only occur between countries whose standards aren't significantly different. But, most importantly, it is obvious that redistribution only occurs out of the interest, on the initiative and to the extent that the rich, i.e. the powerful, who expand their "club", because they understand that it is worth it to bear the cost of multiplying and strengthening their allies, in order to access more power and riches at the expense of the poorer clubs. In fact, reality only has apparently is only formally and to a very small extent related to democracy.

The European Union is a club which perfectly illustrates this thesis, and the Greek crisis has fully proven this, by letting the masks fall. How can you pretend you are a democracy, while at the same time oppose a referendum?!? The word democracy means the power of the people, and the referendum is the most direct way for the people to express their will; nothing could be more democratic than that!

And yet, Europe, through its most representative/rich, has vehemently opposed, and the political career of the initiator of the referendum is considered over. Why?

- because the financial markets have already lost their patience with the creditor banks, so there is not enough time to manipulate the vote of the Greeks through manipulation, because the European banks are at risk of default!

- because "the Greek rescue plan" is in fact the plan to save the banks, who have never shared their profits with anybody, but are covering their losses using public money, out of the taxes paid by the European taxpayers.

- because the European political leaders are so concerned with rescuing the banks, because they are not even bothered with at least keeping up the appearance of democracy; the heads of states and of governments are acting as if it's the bankers that placed them where they are, not their peoples and will do anything to postpone the collapse of the financial system, which is rotten due to the greed of its members.

Even though no crisis has ever been overcome before it was fully spent and it produced its effects, they are worsening its effects, because they are postponing the ending. Even though, in the history of the economy, no crisis was ever solved by printing money, they are continuously increasing the money supply. Even though they all accept that greed couldn't have pushed things so far if the markets had been regulated, they have yet to do that, three years after the onset of the crisis. Furthermore, they are pushing their poorer partners, like Romania, to repeat their mistakes.

On a European level, we are seeing a very dangerous phenomenon: democratic governance is increasingly replaced by the rule of the powerful/rich. Unfortunately, famous Russian opponent of Communism Vladimir Bukovski seems to have been right when he said, ten years ago, that the European Union is dangerously similar to the Soviet Union, as it is a structure where 1) huge bureaucracy can generate corruption, 2) the real decision makers aren't elected, but are appointed instead and 3) those who are elected are essentially powerless.

Europe's reaction to being "threatened" with a "referendum" by Greece, the cradle of democracy, reminds me of the time when Mănăştur had not yet become one of the neighborhoods of the city of Clujului, and its inhabitants had placed a panel on the line separating the two cities which said: "Democracy ends here! You are now entering Mănăştur!".