An intriguing look at society and the power of capitalism and the role of democracy delivered at Tedglobal in Geneva, December 2015.

There is a movement in democratic states and change of power, which Yanis Varoukis argues is having an increasing demise in benefits for all recipients of democracies.

The following excerpts are taken from the TED video and for a fuller understanding of the recent TEDglobal event see more here.

‘We see democracy as part of the furniture, capitalism begets democracy, but it doesn’t! Democracy is receding in Europe.

Chinese leaders and others have said that democracy would be banned if it ever threatened to change anything. They are wrong if they think we can dispense with democracy.

Without it our future would be bleak, our societies nastier, and our great new technologies wasted.

There is a green peaks paradox… a mountain of debt and now a mountain of idle cash. This belongs to rich savers and corporations frightened to invest in the areas which would dispense with the mountains of debt.

All those things that humanity desperately needs and societies would benefit from to enable enterprise and communities to thrive.

There is a low aggregate demand as so many people are out of work or on low paid jobs, which reinforces the worry for the investor to lend or reinvest the money.
Capitalism grows wastefulness, it encourages idle cash, it should be used to benefit and energise lives and develop human talents and engage with green technology.

Twin peaks which fail to cancel each other out…

“Democracy is when the free and the poor control government.” – Aristotle.
Our own liberal democracies have their roots in the Magna Carta.

There is a separation in the political and economic sphere and today the economic sphere is eating into the political sphere. One can be in government but not have the power, this has gone to the economic sphere which is consuming itself with the mountain of idle cash.’

This is definitely worth further discussion and if we continue to paper over the cracks we will never see the fault line until its rather too late!

Sue Martin

SmithMartin Partnership Working with communities