The recent supreme court decision sure riled up a lot of people, but answer me this. Presuming that voters rationally make up their mind, does it not stand to reason that…


  • If you do not like that corporations now contribute to the advertising campaigns of politicians, are you not free to not vote for the politicians in question?

  • If you do not like that the two political parties agree on practically everything save stem cells, abortion, and gay marriage, are you not free to vote for a third party?

  • If you do not like corporations that only look out for their shareholders or their CEOs are you not free to stop buying their products and no longer give them your money?

  • If you do not like that people are killed to gain access to natural resources, are you not free not to use the resulting products? (We are talking cell phones, DVD players, gaming consoles, cars, central heating, … )

  • If you do not like cheap products that push the cost of pollution into the future and the cost of labor to sweat shops, are you not free to buy better products and reduce your impact by maintaining them?

If your answer is no and you believe that people are in fact not capable of making decisions that are aligned with their interest, then why do you support democracy?

Maybe the real problem is that the balance between policy wonks and corporations just shifted a bit, but what does their talking matter anyway?

In my opinion talk is cheap. Action matters. It is hard to take someone serious if I see an “No war for oil” sticker on their car, someone discussing health care over a burger, complaining about TARP while holding a adjustable rate mortgage, discussing all the bad things in the world while on the cell phone, flying to a environmental summit on a jet plane, and so on.

The problem, if you have one that is, is not too many laws or too few laws or corporations or politicians.

The problem is you or rather millions of you contributing your own little part to the problem every time you go to work, every time you buy some product, every time you consume something, …

You know who you are.

Originally posted 2010-01-22 12:17:54.