Recommended Reading: The Quiet Coup

[elfs]

Simon Johnson's The Quiet Coup is the sort of thing that ought to depress the hell out of you. He follows the current financial logic to its logical conclusion: we are not a representative democracy. We are an oligarchy; the election process is a farce to put people into chairs who, regardless of party affiliation, find themselves embedded in an economic machine that empowers them only to act in the interests of the oligarchs, where those in bureaucratic political power (rather than elected) come from the financial world, and return to it, regularly, and find themselves rewarded at both ends.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Dude. Don't need to read the book; alreddie figured out that's what is going on, and am trying to avoid the need to further involve the evil that is Big Pharma in my life.

Perhaps the book is useful to sic on those who haven't been paying attention so closely. But from what you've described, for me, this would be hellfire and brimstone directed at Reverend Dexter (http://midwinter.com/lurk/synops/064.html) his own self.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Eisenhower even pointed it out when he was president.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Ike was a pretty smart guy. You kinda have to be to get a million men going all in one general direction more or less at the same time. Especially if two of the major (well, Field Marshal and General, respectively) egos you have to deal with are Monty and Patton.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Then why are all the politicians Lawyers?

[maellenkleth]

this is nothing new; it has been the American (and British) situation since at least the 1880s. Perhaps a little more obvious, now, given increased connectivity of thinkers.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Um. Yea. Didn't Heinlein point that out years ago?

[woggie.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I don't read stuff like this. You've now read an example of the why of it.