PANAMA, PARADISE (AND FUTURE) PAPERS: IF THE SYSTEM IS THE PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION CAN ONLY BE A SYSTEM CHANGE.
As much as I appreciate the work of the investigators who exposed the Paradise Papers: Does anyone seriously believe that this is going to change things fundamentally? Exactly. A few heads will roll, at best a few laws will be tightened, but by and large everything will remain the same. Because it is a system. Andas long as the system remains untouched, it will cause the same symptoms over and over again. THE SYSTEM IS THE PROBLEM, the real problem.
To illustrate the difference with a current example: If the sexual assaults of powerful men were „only“ individual derailments of people without a moral compass, this would be bad enough. Even if this were a quite common misconduct (as there are others, somewhere between „legal“ and jail), these would be isolated cases. Prosecuted, punished, and that‘s it. But the real problem is the system that puts men in such a position of power that they can do about anything to weaker ones – especially to women, and especially sexually (see Weinstein). The system consists in the accumulation of power and the exercise of power in politics, economy, culture…, i. e. in the whole society.
It consists in the fact that the powerful people in this world (men in particular) can influence the rules of the game, if they don‘t even write their own rules that should actually be the guidelines of their behaviour. That is the real problem. In Liberty, Equality, Fraternity [LEF] I have analysed it in detail (and showed solutions). Just a few remarks:
Our political and economic system leads not only to the accumulation and abuse of money and power (in LEF I call it MoneyPower) because of individual weaknesses in character: The system is designed that way. By men with money and power. To protect and increase their MoneyPower. Which – again: not because of personal weaknesses, but systemically – leads to a spoils system of economy (money) and politics (power), i.e. in the end to real corruption. Sometimes this comes to light, as with the Panama and Paradise Papers (other papers will follow inevitably), mostly it doesn‘t. Everyone who wants knows about all of this. But you don’t really want to know – the facts are so frustrating, and the feeling of powerlessness towards this system is so devastating.
But you can change it if you see through it and don’t shy away from applying the lever where it really has an effect. For this to happen, it is first and foremost necessary to stop being satisfied with symptomatic solutions. Symptomatic solutions are like giving drugs to an addict or borrowing money to pay one‘s debts: they eliminate the symptom but do not contribute to the healing process; in fact they even aggravate the problem because they help to avoid the necessary measures. Fundamental solutions are needed, i. e. solutions that change the system that causes the symptoms again and again.
A fundamental solution lies not in cheap polemic against the elites that in the end is only aimed at taking their place. The populists do not want to change the system, they want to profit from it themselves, as could be seen during the conservative/right government (Schüssel/Haider) in Austria. It is the same wherever the former critics of the system have taken the posts of those who they criticized before. Regardless of whether it is left or right: The system is the problem. And the system must be fundamentally changed. It is impossible just as long as we esteem it impossible. And as long as we do not join forces – beyond the old ideologies and party dogmas – to change it. So let’s go.
[Translation based on DeepL, the best translating machine worldwide.]
