Democracy in a world of austerity

Right now I think most of us have this image when we think of democracy.

Years of classroom votes, everyone weighing in on where to eat, local and national elections, even workplace forums, have inculcated many of us with an idea that democracy and participation are both the unquestioned norm and impossible to imagine being without.

Yet we have news today (h/t Wolfgang Munchau in the FT) that the German government is asking Greece to postpone democratic elections until Germany is happy reforms are baked into Greece's constitution...something Germany's government couldn't vote to do for itself. This comes on top of Irish voters discovering other members of the Eurozone were debating their budget before they were even aware it was finished and ready for scrutiny...

We are witnessing the setting aside of democracy across populations numbering the tens of millions for the sake of a few vested interests. That sounds sinister and it is. Yet at the same time it isn't. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why does Germany ask Greece to consider not allowing its own people to have a say? Because Greece's people might choose, after having been bailed out, to stick two fingers up at the international community and not reform. Their government has done it before.

Yet, call me reactionary, but I'd rather Greece default that their democratic freedoms were stripped on the say so of another government.

This is startling and deeply worrying for me. I look at Anglo-Saxon countries with their comedic 'Occupy' movement and the only viable conclusion is that these well meaning protestors are just as deluded and dangerously wrong headed as Schauble (the main voice in Germany on the Greek postponement). Punishing banks is missing the point - and that's that our governments are just as keen to help maintain the status quo as any corporate power. I'm not getting all conspiratorial here. Nor am I advocating an end to capitalism - that's just one reason I think the Occupy movement is both inauthentic and pointless. When I use the phrase status quo I mean propping up a financial system so networked and integral to EVERY aspect of modern life that most of us cannot reasonably imagine what would happen should it fail.

Do I want it to fail? I'm not a believer in creative destruction on this sort of scale, so no. I don't want it to fail. Will it? Maybe, inevitably on the scale of geology, but probably not in our lifetimes. However, we could, and should, consider the default of Greece with cool heads.

I was at a conference where a leading economist from a global bank was giving a keynote. They made the statement that no country could leave the Euro. Obvious nonsense I heckled. They rejoindered that au contraire, the ECB had said it was illegal. Well the Legal Partner I was sat with and I just giggled. Illegal? What nonsense. Of course the ECB said the Greeks can't leave. The ECB would be eviscerated if they did. Talk about vested interest. However the Greeks can (and possibly should) leave the Eurozone. Or at least default. They could do that without leaving - probably. The real thing everyone's scared of is that we don't really know what would happen. However, if Lehman has taught us anything it's that the world keeps turning.

I think there are very compelling reasons for Greece (and Ireland) should default. I am also scared of the violence of such decisions and the impact they would have on all of us.

If it comes to it the choice now appears to be 'stability' or 'democracy'. The Greeks are being asked to surrender their right to choose their own lives in favour of years of grinding poverty (which they'd have anyway), control moving to Berlin and Brussels and no freedom to rebuild their economy. Greece has a lot of structural problems and a culture that is over reliant on absorbing rather than creating industries. However, should it surrender it's democratic freedoms on the promise of help and the certainty of pain?

Personally I'd say no. Yet their government says 'possibly, tell us more.'

In times like these democracy may start to look like this:

It's just hard to know if that's its death or its rebirth.

If you had to choose - pain and later but yours to choose vs pain now and later but dictated by someone else - would you actually fight for your right to choose the fate of your country?

I'm not sure many of us would. I hope I'd be wrong.