Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The skull and crossbones over Berlin
Do you think that voting for new and untried parties like this one is a good way to fight against old (and corrupt?) political practices? Does the pirate party have good ideas in terms of making democracy more direct and transparent? Should stuff be free on line, or do you agree with the recent crackdowns on file-sharing sites? Would you vote for the pirates?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is an article that is dealing with a few topics and I am finding it difficult to answer certain questions in the article descriptions, since the answers are a bit mixed up. First of all I can say for sure that the Pirate party does have good ideas. I myself have been thinking about a similar system that would give more people the opportunity to make their voice count in the governing of the state. I came across this problem on History last year when we were supposed to write a detailed description of what we would consider a perfect state. This system was a part of my answer.
ReplyDeleteIf I am not very much mistaken, some of the time which the parliament spends making decisions that affect everyone in the state is strictly kept secret. No recording, no press, nothing. Nobody can no what is going on inside the small concrete room and all the politicians in it can basically do whatever they want and nobody will ever know.
I disagree. Everyone should know what is going on inside that room. The first forms of democracy worked differently. All people living in an ancient town gathered on the main square and voted. Every decision was voted on by everyone (in some older forms, the people standing on the square either screamed yes or no and the winning side was chosen according to which voice was stronger). All right, this is impossible when an entire state is democratic. Political parties are already a tough blow to democracy, yet no alternative was found yet so we have to accept it. But cutting all the people off and not even give them a chance to watch what the parties are doing, that is just ridiculous. If it was up to me, all parliament meetings should be recorder and accessible on the internet to watch. If the political parties are only doing good, they have nothing to be worried about. Yet they are worried now. What does that tell us?
I think the Pirates are doing a partially right thing, but for the wrong reason. The spark, as the article says, was the closing of the internet site Megaupload. Should everything be freely accessible on the internet? No, it should not. I completely agree with them being closed down for a simple reason. It was stealing from the producers of whatever was being shared. That is the whole point of copyrights, to make sure no one steals. I must admit that yes, it would also make my life simpler if I could access everything online, but also I know how I would feel if I was the one that was trying to make a living out of it.
It all comes down to one thing, both the Pirates trying to fight the old and corrupt political parties and the file sharing sites. Tell me one thing. Lets say you want to start watching a five series television sitcom that is available online and also in a store. If you had the spare money that you cond afford wasting on the DVDs, would you not? Most people search for things online simply because they do not have enough money. In Slovakia it is common knowledge that we have the smallest wages and highest prices, and who is to blame? I believe it would be the political parties that spent the last decades stealing from us. And why do they steal? Well. Because we are stupid enough to let them, and only fight back when they close down the sites that help us waste time on the internet.