Richard D. Wolff

“Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy” Universal suffrage does not guarantee equality, justice or solutions (as you have stated in the past) if the people are uneducated, greedy or unreasonable / illogical. Affirmative action exercised for any group of people is illogical, privileging them simply for the group that they are a part of. All people require access to education, free education if they cannot afford it, and those who indulge in learning, work hard and prove to qualify should attain the positions. Those who do not will be provided other means which meet the necessary security required of humane beings. To all in need from all who can provide. You would not want to place a person in the pilot seat of a Boeing 777 to fly across the Atlantic simply because they had some political privilege despite a lower qualification if your family was riding passengers on that aircraft, or operating a nuclear facility etc. etc. On the other hand, on the subject of privilege, I just saw a report on how some transit workers / rail road, have increased their healthy 70k salaries to 300k with overtime effectively implementing a change in their lifetime pension. Over 90% of them also retire collecting disability! In a state that should be declared bankrupt. Overpowered Union? Who’s minding the store professor? This is why we now start falling behind other nations. We simply are not the land of opportunity anymore or the land of milk and honey, but the land of privileged idiots. Capitalist control of our government has found a way to circumvent Universal suffrage by a combination of simply ignoring the people to subdue the issues and to help pacifying them on the issues of control and injustice. They make us believe through manipulation, lack of education and just enough meat and potatoes at supper time that we are OK and everything is better here than over there. In short my findings are that it is not simply a matter of left or right, up or down, this or that. There are some old sayings that have more weight than others, for me one which holds more gravitas is " the devil is in the details",,, as are the solutions when they are finally studied by all. A 2 party system which is easily controlled (only 2 parties) yet provides just enough parties for gladiatorial entertainment and emotional unrest / division,,,,,,, that’s just one party more than those nasty dictatorships. Unfortunately at this point in history, people still need to be governed and government requires power and use of force if only by the oversight of an educated populous.