One of the aspects of elections that I object to is that the rich and powerful have a financial impact that is out of all proportion to their number - smaller and more progressive parties struggle for money for advertising, people, and so forth.
In some cases, given the nature of some of those smaller, more hateful parties, I consider that a good thing, but, as a general principle, I favour public funding of elections so it is a less uneven contest of ideas.
Here in the continent known as Australia we already have some laws around funding and advertising in the context of elections, but I consider there is room for improvement.
Apart from the undue influence of the elites, I also consider that we, as a society need to think about the nature of corporations, which - in my deliberately provocative choice of words - have a legal fiction of personhood, much as this nation was subjected to the legal fiction or pretence of terra nullius (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) for so long (and still is, in the sense of the ongoing effects of white supremacism and colonialism - e.g., see here).
Now, in some circumstances, that concept enables protection that benefits the community - for instance, by protecting small community clubs, groups, and organisations which promote cophgesion, give people interests that benefit their wellbeing, and so forth.
But in some larger cases, the benefits are subject, in my opinion (IMO), to challenge - for instance, when corporations become so powerful that they can influence political decision making.
It is that specific aspect that I am concerned about, and would like to see curtailed.
Voting is for humans - for, in legal parlance, natural persons, and laws are mostly written that way. There are exceptions, e.g., business (i.e., commercial corporations) get votes on some business focused councils, such as, I understand, the CBD of Naarm (also known as Melbourne), but votes for Parliament are limited to human beings.
That is clearcut, but it is the indirect influence that I am concerned about. We have now had, for a couple of decades off the top of my head, laws governing the activities of paid lobbyists, which is one form of influence.
We have some laws about transparency and donations, but these are far too slow - the information is revealed AFTER elections, which makes it useless, rather than in real time.
If we do not move to publicly funded elections (and we won’t for many years, IMO, as too many parties benefit from the current system and will object using the pretence that public funded elections are more expensive [they’re not, when one considers the vast amounts provided privately and by corporations]), then, as an interim measure, I would like to see corporations banned from political donations or in-kind assistance.
This is not a simple, clear cut thing: media reporting on politics are corporations, and make their money by reporting - and, in fact, there has been major concern here over the undue influence of the conservative media (less so after the recent election result in my home state showed media commentary was very out of touch).
In addition, the reality is that corporations are comprised of people, and have the potential to be beneficial - as they used to be before the evils of neoliberalism, and as many are seeking to do in various ways (e.g., this, although some corporate social responsibility can be criticised for tokenism).
Nevertheless, in activities that should be human-based or human-focused, such as electoral voting, I consider we should be viewing corporations as things, rather than persons.
Why am I posting this here, rather than on my political blog?
Because there are other situations where personhood for other than homo sapiens sapiens needs to be considered, including:
- animals (or sentient animals, perhaps), which is an important ethical basis for animal rights and veganism;
- the life of plants, which experiments have shown respond to people - and the work of Peter Wohlleben and Suzanne Simard shows the intelligent activity of trees;
- inanimate objects such as crystals or rocks, the spirits of which people such as myself and shaman can attest to;
- but also the products of machine learning, which are developing the capacity for a completely and utterly soul-free mimicry of homo sapiens sapiens; and, finally ...
- just as humans evolved into existence (from primates - see here for some early thoughts of mine on this matter), so too there may come a day when we evolve into a different species, and the issues of the rights of the old species (i.e., us) and the new will need to be considered.
This is a complex topic, and one well worth considering carefully as part of one’s spiritual growth evolution.
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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
