Venizelos vs Samaras – Taxis, DoubleThink, Populism

I have written before about Venizelos taking Newspeak to new levels. Today he is quote with this absolute peach Our weakness is our…… can you guess what’s next?

….strength! To give the full quote Our weakness is our strength. Honestly, I am not making this stuff up. Click here for the article where you will find the quote. Venizelos is completely lost in my opinion. His lack of qualifications for the job he is being asked to carry out is more than obvious. I have said before I believe Papandreou is a danger to the country of Greece with his socialist/fascist beliefs but Venizelos is rapidly being sucked into the same hole.

Talking about Papandreou, I am not sure how he can square the circle regarding his politicial philosophies. On the one hand he is the leader of Socialist International yet he is putting forward measures to the IMIF,EU World Bank which involves the massive theft of state assets in the name of privitisations.

Like Venizelos, Papandreou consistently says one thing and does the exact opposite. So as “Socialist” which means it’s economic philosophy is that the means of production should be government owned. To quote Wikipedia Socialism (ˈsoʊ̯ʃəɫɪzm̩) is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system.

So without wanting to sound redundant. Papandreou is advocating mass privitisations of state owned companies (actually theft, if we are talking about the type of privatisation outlined by politicians) on one hand. And yet he also claims to be a socialist. Which is it Panadreou? What exactly have you said to yourself which allows you to believe in two contradictory statements at the same time.

If you take a simpletons view of Papandreou, as I do, then you could say he has simply sold out his beliefs in order to obey the orders he is being given by his controllers.

And as if Venizelos didn’t have enough problems on his hands, he continues to attack Samaras the ND oppostion leader. (I am not sure where he finds the time given the studying that he obvioulsy needs to do re history and economics).

He is quoted in Athens News of saying He also accused Samaras of presenting the private sector (International Banking Cartel) involvement in the long-term debt sustainability programme as being Greece’s proposal of* choice.

Samaras is one hundred percent correct, the international banking cartel got Greece into this mess through their fraudlent accounting methods. They should be expected to pay for that fraud, if not criminally then at least financially.

And in another flagrant demonstration of PASOK’s totaliterian tendencies they are quoted as saying Meanwhile, the ministry of infrastructures, transport and networks accused the main opposition New Democracy (ND) party of rank “populism” in response to statements made by the ND spokesman on the taxi owners’ strike action.

In a written statement, the ministry accused ND leader Samaras of opting for irresponsible populism by fighting to prevent the taxi sector deregulation measure from being implemented.

PASOK refers to populism as if it is a bad thing. As if doing and saying something that is popular is a bad thing. Since when had popularity been a dirty word in a democratic system? Populism was the best friend of PASOK leading up to the last elections!

And if I can wade in with my own opinions regarding taxi deregulation in Greece. It is not something that can be rushed. There is a huge market for taxi licenses, for the PASOK government to say overnight that this market is no longer worth anything is completely immoral, especially seeing as it was the government that implemented the policy of restricting licenses in the first place.

In the long term I believe in the deregulation of all industries but in the fairest possible manner. There should be at least by 5 years notice that the industry will be deregulated. This will allow recently bought licenses to in some way pay for themsleves and at the same time it will allow the market for licenses to adjust with the value of licenses decreasing gradually towards the deadline date.

And going on to the article specifcally related to the taxi strike Athens News says Athens chief prosecutor Eleni Raikou has ordered case files to be drawn up immediately for taxi drivers for offences that are prosecutable ex officio, such as obstructing traffic.

Personally I think there should be a vote. Do the people agree with the actions of the taxi drivers or not? Here is a definition of a public prosecuters job Simply put, the public prosecutor is the government’s lawyer when prosecuting crimes committed against the “people.”

So assuming the people agree with the actions of the taxi drivers (which I think the majority do) the prosecution have no case. If, and I mean if, Raikou bring charges, the taxi drivers should definitely plead “not guilty”. I think it will be impossible to get a unanimous decision of guilt.

Seriously , Greek taxi drivers need to show some back bone in the face of these threats. Stick to their beliefs, stick together and the person in the right will be justified.

So going back to PASOK’s totalitarian tendencies. The most obvious thing for the state to do when confronted by people who are unhappy is to prosecute them! What happened to democracy? What happened to politicians saying to themselves “maybe we should attempt to understand the grievances of these people and see if we can come to some sort of agreement”. Especially seeing that the state is at the heart of the taxi problem anyway. They brought the regulations in and now they want to take them away. And instead of thinking again about their decision the want to imprison the people who they are stealing thousands of euros from!

The taxi license situation is yet another example of how governments do not act in the best interests of the population and another example of why the power of the government should be extremely limited.

It is always bandied about in the media in Greece and internationally that tax evasion in Greece is massive. The people do not want to pay taxes. It is also said that the Greek do not know how to collect taxes and that the tax officials themselves are corrupt.

In a normal free market situation businesses would be asking why their customers do not want to pay for the services they are given. Why do the customers want to screw the business out of money? Why do the customers not care about the business?

Fortunately for government they don’t have to ask themselves these searching questions. Why? Because they have the power by the use of physical force to compel their customers to pay them regardless of the wishes of their customers. The government departments can treat their customers as badly as they want because they know they can always fall back to the postion of forcing people to pay against their will, using physical force if necessary.

If government were acting in a free market they would be compelled to offer a good service or they would not recevie revenue. The Greek people by and large seem to resent paying taxes to the Greek government which tells me that the Greek people think the service offered by the government sucks.

Given that the Greek people have limited appreciation for the services the Greek state provides then the Greek people should be given the choice. If you do not pay taxes then you do not get the services the state provides.

This is a very simple solution to a very simple and big problem. The Greeks clearly do not believe that they get good value for their taxes so they should have the choice not to pay taxes. This would take a massive burden off the state as they would have to provide massively less services for it’s citizens (because tax evasion is apparently so rife), the government could slash jobs in tax offices because less people will be paying taxes and the people would benefit as they could fully withdraw from funding an institution they believe/know is corrupt.

A business who can compel it’s customers to pay with the threat of force is a racket. In the case of governments it is a protection racket, protection against life.

Human nature being what it is. When one group of people have this much power over another group of people you know there is going to be abuse of power.

In short, if the Greek people do not want to pay taxes they should be given the choice of not paying taxes with the condtion that if they do not pay taxes then they cannot expect to receive any benefits from the government.

A simple choice which could transform the economic situation in Greece.

Note: *article says “or” I believe it is supposed to be “of”

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