AEIOUM

[Ornetto]

Governments are meant to serve the people, and they do to a certain extent. But it's easy to corrupt a government if you have the means, and therefore that's what eventually ends up happening. Powerful individuals create lobbies, political committees, and utilize inventive ways of moving influence through covert channels. Officials get compromised, deals are pushed through under the cover of distractions, and in the midst of this smoky mirrored chaos, promises fade and hopes evaporate. The system conveniently allows a venting of relief by providing a way of evicting this gross mismanagement, as new heroes line up to make their convictions known to a frustrated and angered public demanding their fix. Blame is channeled condemningly toward the outgoing administration, while easy-to-digest solutions are offered by the opposition. The elaborate performance is a spectacular theater played out by those invested in its predetermined outcomes; a charade and a ploy to make it seem as if the ability to remove and replace interim rulers somehow allows a clearing up of the corruption. Organized criminals however prefer to operate behind the scenes, while the fronts are meant to take the attention away from unwanted scrutiny. So why would it be any different for the biggest monopoly on violence in existence?

Stating that all front entities are only governmental institutions would be a significant mischaracterization of the entire operation however. Organized crime is by nature a collection of networks. In this instance, it comprises a network of organizations each with their specific purpose, many of which are structured in such a way so as to exempt them from taxation and public meddling. Being protected from taxes by calling an organization a charity, a philanthropic foundation, or a non-governmental altruistic bastion of peace and goodness does not change the fact that it essentially operates as - rules for thee and none for me - gang affiliate. Accepting donations from private individuals, limited liability frameworks, governments, and whoever else takes fancy is a type of money laundering operation and a clandestine method of pooling resources in a manner bypassing regulatory limits. It's also a subtle funnel of opportunities used to pursue interests beyond governmental controls, and which works hand in glove with their representatives sitting in public office; those cozy moles on the inside who just happen to overlook every offence so as to allow their friends to continue jolly rogering well off into the sunset. Plausibly deniable, deftly deflecting responsibility, creating partnerships and collaborations of convenience to cheat every guardrail meant to stop illegal activity is how the system is deliberately structured to work in favor of the network. The people - as in those who are robbed blind for being decent honest human beings - have no say in this special insider club membership. Because if they did, no one would play ball and the racket would be busted in a heartbeat.

Are such pseudo-private-public-don't-ask-too-many-inconvenient-questions organizations truly necessary for the public good? Are we meant to believe that governments are supposed to be so inept that they need to be circumvented through superior forms of organizations to get anything meaningfully done? No accountability or any price of real consequence can exist if you're operating above the law. You know, the law that's meant to be equally applied, making sure we're all kept in check. So what can this type of setup be called, if not organized crime? The untouchables, the above governables, the vetted assets, the protected members who run these systems are not subject to public scrutiny, and hence can effectively run programs going well beyond the election cycles of governmental fronts. The people just get the bill at the end of the day and are expected to pay, with threats of penalties dire using extorsive goon tactics, regardless of whether those programs are of measurable benefit or whether they were even desired in the first place. The store fronts with their smiling faces can only do so much, and for the most part do what they can, but always ultimately end up doing what they're told. The action then in the meanwhile happens in the back, behind closed doors, out of mind and out of sight. Seein' nuttin, hearin' nuttin, speakin' nuttin. Business as usual. Keepin' us real busy doin' nuttin', fo sho.

[Croixsaint]

The public have no idea as to how the real world works and how complex it actually is. They act only in terms of their locale and whatever happens to make sense in their little minds splashing about sitting comfortably in the safety of their kiddy pools, always demanding more, never lifting a finger, complaining incessantly. What the average person takes completely for granted is in reality a messy collection of self-interests held together by fragile agreements, requiring plenty of dirty work behind the scenes to keep them all moving together smoothly for just a single day. None of these critical steps happen by chance though, least of all by bureaucrats tagging in and out of rotating seats and doing what they believe is right for their constituency. The competency and the skill level required for the job is simply not there to oversee the intricacies of projects spanning multiple borders and generations. Allowing these clueless short term occupants playing musical chairs and making incompatible decisions that go against the strategized details of planned decades is counter productive and harmful to say the least. The real value of a political leadership then is in their ability to keep the public focused on them, whether to placate or to enrage or just to keep them entertained, while facilitating and cooperating with the proper functioning of important long term strategies of careful design.

Uncooperative political elements are best kept preoccupied and out of the way from getting in the way of progress. Allowing the power of regulation, mandate, decree, policy, legislation, or any other similar type of governmental authority to be open and randomly seized by a brazen popular figure fresh off the farm is a tremendously dangerous and reckless gamble. The ideologues have no ability to adequately think through and formulate the negative repercussions of their narrowly defined viewpoints, and either end up disastrously overspending public resources on wasteful and useless endeavors, or even worse, overregulate and choke every bit of innovation and improvement based on their mindwarped opinions. That is, if they don't simply sit around and become part of the furniture, collecting paychecks by participating in useless committees and meetings that go absolutely nowhere on purpose. Businesses fail, jobs are lost, lives are destroyed, and for what? So that the farm can be free-range and the sheep can go off and play bingo with the sheep dogs out on the prairies? Deploy the golden parachute and blame everything and everyone but themselves on their way out the door, once the oopsie-daisy dawns in the dim minds and it becomes impossible to hide the mountainous pile of wreckage in their wake? No, let the foolhardy dissipate their energy on inconsequential matters in an easily forgettable corner of the political discourse. All candidates of actual utility on the other hand must be vetted and controlled, placed under close watch and managed meticulously.

Thinking through and planning long term therefore is not the forte of governmental officials. Instead they are the specialty of dedicated think tank groups and policy formulation organizations operating beyond the confines of regional controls, and which have the necessary connections across multiple domains to allow for in-depth analysis to happen at a much grander scale. These advise and propose solutions requiring multilateral cooperation between various types of institutions; the deployment of which are complex and non-linear, and which are often achieved in stages with milestones built upon one another. The coordination is to minimize conflicts between contending forces and to ensure the continuity of the system and civilization as a whole. Governments, whether national or supranational by themselves are not able to achieve this on their own, nor can multinational corporations or businesses striving for shareholder value have the means to bring together the disparate groups. The fact is, the world as it functions is heavily interconnected and multifaceted, and it requires a high degree of cooperation for it to work. It's best to let the experts handle the reigns and for the rest to follow the prescribed program.

[Lvnevic]

However these far reaching forward looking people in non-governmental organizations just so happen to be the same who hold or have held high positions in government, corporations, and other influential centers of finance and prestige. The funding flows from these sources without any oversight from the general public. Governments collect taxes from the people to fill up the common pot, some of which are then siphoned out to these and other suspicious arrangements, and which have nothing to do with the public good, nor would they ever have any hope of gaining majority support from those who are asked to contribute. Corporations, or more precisely, the practice of incorporating bundles of assets into opaque abstractions are used by the wealthy and their wealth managers to defer and circumvent taxation, and which are deftly maneuvered into their own preferred tax-exempt organizations, protected by multiple layers of accounting trickery. In other words, these institutions are blatant workarounds for circumventing the limitations imposed by the public, a means of avoiding taxation in the name of philanthropy, and a way to project power from behind the scenes through covert operations.

Speaking of which, agencies engaging in secretive actions in the name of safety and security, and which are protected and never held to account by any oversight or audits are essentially private mercenary forces of the powerful, pretending to be benign institutions. That which governments and their affiliates cannot carry out in public are achieved through covert means by such, who have the necessary connections in the underground criminal networks, and who are generously fueled by well oiled and many willingly enabling mechanisms. It's a beneficial arrangement for those who rely on such services and a convenient method of collectively operating under the proverbial radar. But it does little to nothing to improve the lives of those who are coerced to support the setup and who are expected to simply follow along with their mouths shut. If this is what is necessary for a government to guarantee the safety and security of itself, and by extension the people, by being intricately interwoven with the criminal elements such that delineation between them is no longer possible, then it's hardly an institution that works for the people, but rather an institution used to exploit, to achieve private aims, and for the self-preservation of deeply entrenched pseudo-governmental officials and their ilk.

As for funding, by having everyone and everything be taxable by a government and then making a select few be exempt from this obligation, an unequal arrangement of privilege is created, allowing a class operating above the system to garner power over the public and to effectively purchase its way into all important decision making centers. If taxation is a means of punishment designed to inhibit certain activity, and relief from it is a reward for engaging in desirably activity, then the setup here is actually backwards in its implementation, at least from the viewpoint of the majority who desire a functioning public service. Taxation as a source of revenue for government is a self-perpetuating machine however, and therefore of course it makes perfect sense for a parasitic government to increase it so that it can keep feeding off of it, and for the general public tax base to always foot the bill. A better and more intuitive way to organize between equals would be for the public services to be rewarded for their usefulness and for undesirable systems to be disincentivized through penalties. The entire notion of depending on an organized gang to control a territory in the name of government is an outdated modality rooted in private ambition, and it stems from the fear of the majority in taking responsibility for themselves, despite all protestations to the contrary. Specialized advisory institutions who likewise consider themselves to be above the rut are themselves non-impartial accomplices in the overall operation, aiding and abetting from beyond the spotlight, while playing chameleon and pleading ignorance behind gated walls. Neither can be considered legitimate, who supposedly derive their powers from the people and from a higher sense of altruistic duty to humanity, if they cannot be held to account. As the maxim goes, crime does not pay. Well, evidently there appears to be much interest due in the subject.