I've been thinking about Democracies, Republics, and other forms of Representative Governments for the past day or two. When looking at many of the problems around the world I believe there is ONE thing that is likely a large factor in the creation and sustenance of these problems. That is accountability. If you think about many of the things that have occurred, and are occurring there is often a lack of accountability that seems to be driving them.
One example that comes to my mind and is one that was covered by the news is Wells Fargo creating fake accounts under customer names and then basically spending 5.6 billions dollars from those accounts. They were caught at it. No one that I know of went to jail. Instead they were given a fine which basically amounted to 3% of the amount of fraud and profit they had already generated. Of that 3% you'll see the payoff if you look closely. $5 million went to those impacted by the stealing of their identities intentionally by Wells Fargo. The other $185 Million went to the government.
When you go into business with a store to sell your product. The store will usually charge a percentage of the sale. This is normal. They shelve it, process it, get it to the customer, etc. For the worst deals on this their percentage is usually around 20% or even 30%. So if an item sells for $10 then the store keeps $2-$3 for that sale and the person/company that produced the product they sold was paid $7-$8. This more applies to digital products. Physical products the store will usually buy the product for a fixed amount and then mark it up however much they believe they can sell it for to attain the best profit, and they've learned that highest price does not always mean best profit. They have to find that sweet spot where quantity of sales is highest. You can sell something for a very high price and make maybe one or two sales. Your profit would be less than if you sold it for a lower price and had many sales.
Anyway, the main reason I brought that up and perhaps spent more time than necessary is this. A 3% fine for making $5.6 billion dollars seems more like a very inexpensive cost of doing business. They are making better returns on investment than a store owner selling an actual product. So is this accountability? Was that fine supposed to convince them not to do it again? That is an incredibly lucrative return on investment and NO ONE went to jail. I wrote about this around the time it happened last year. I expected them to do it again. Guess what? They did. Why wouldn't they? That fine was actually no fine. It was simply the cost of doing business and a payoff to the government.
So was this Wells Fargo's fault? No. They were not held accountable by those that had the power/authority to hold them accountable. Why? Because, those in power have no accountability. They do a song and dance to get elected to represent people that they end up spending very little time with, and people that they are nowhere near in proximity when they are making these decisions. They have a decent salary but overall all of these representatives come out of that position far more wealthy than that salary would have made them. A lot of that in the form of insider trading which is not illegal for them, payoffs such as this $185 million, and other things.
So now let's get to WHY I wrote this post.
We have the technological means where we could have a more accountable form of representative government if that is what people wish to have.
It would involve NOT having a centralized meeting place that is somewhere other than among those they represent. It would involve requiring the representative to live and be present most of the year except for vacations in the same area as those they represent. In other words, they would need to be held to the same conditions as those they represent.
So how would we do this?
The technology is present to show that everything they are currently doing could easily be done remotely. We have examples like Skype, Discord, etc. They could do everything from their home or an office in the area they represent.
Why would this matter? The things they elect to do would have consequences on them where they live just like those they live among. They would need to interact with those they represent, and they couldn't really hide from them and forget about them. In fact, I believe it should be a public office in the area of those they represent so they couldn't simply stay at home and not have to walk among those they represent.
Accountability requires some element of risk for misrepresentation and fraud. We see that we have been going in the opposite direction from this.
There are examples of this all over the world. Most of mine are from the United States as that is where I live.
Yet, we can look at Brexit. That hasn't occurred and there are strong indicators of stalling and attempting to stop it completely even though that was what was voted for. How can they do this? They are not truly accountable to those they represent.
We can look at things like the Investigation by a Special Investigator against Trump Russia Collusion that has cost a lot and gone on for close to a year with no such evidence, but investigating beyond the scope of that. How many people know that the Bill/Law/Measure that allowed the creation of that Special Investigator position expired in 1999? So this investigation panel was created without any LAW/BILL/ETC to empower it, or hold it accountable. If you look into the people on this investigation today the issues of no accountability I believe are becoming more and more apparent if they are paying attention and not just watching filtered/censored news.
How often do we see people that should be convicted, and would be if they were an ordinary person simply walk away from it? Very often. No accountability.
Why does a bad person keep doing bad things? They get something out of it, and they believe the risk of them being held accountable is worth it. So if accountability decreases in likelihood I think it only obvious that bad people and bad actions would increase.
For those in the European Union. Who is being held responsible/accountable for the actions of immigrants that countries are being FORCED to admit? I haven't seen any. The results are about what I'd expect. I also think people should be wary as the unwillingness of the migrants to integrate into the cultures and ways of the place they immigrate to makes it look a lot more like an invasion than immigration.
I can see a big example in the past for when accountability was given a big shove off the cliff. That was when the U.S. Government started referring to ANYTHING as "Too Big To Fail". That was a strong message to such entities that they would not be held responsible for poor management, fraud, or mistakes. The government would bail them out. Is it any surprise that Well's Fargo keeps getting caught doing these things and in truth NOTHING is done to them. Let's face it. That 3% fine was NOTHING in the grand scheme of things. Especially 97% of that fine was a payoff to the government. So Well's Fargo got hit with a 3% fine. The victims were paid 3% of that fine.
This is what we need to stop. We could make steps towards stopping it by making representatives have to be where the people they represent are at. If they do not represent those they are supposed to then accountability needs to be swift. Not drawn out and potentially ignored while the representative gets rich on corruption.