Vote Suppression is Systemic in Canada

So many people seem to be in a huff about the automated phone calls that were made during the last federal election in order to confuse voters as to the location of their polling station, thereby making it more difficult to cast their vote.

Scandalous. How could the Tories stoop so low? Canada’s democracy is in tatters!

Blah, blah, blah and more blah, blah, delivered with feigned indignation.

Let’s face the facts. Canada is not democratic. We are ruled by a professional political class. The way who will govern is determined is to play a winner-take-all electoral game in which the candidate who gets the most votes, even if it is less than 50% of the votes cast, is said to have won the electoral district.

Distortions of the popular vote you say? You bet! How do you think a majority government (sounds like the label came from the Ministry of Truth) can be formed with less than 40% of the popular vote?

If your candidate didn’t win, that’s too bad. Better luck next time. So your voice is not represented in Parliament? Don’t be glum. More than 50% of the electorate who even bother to vote can say the same.

If you are so concerned about the quality of democracy in Canada, change the fricken voting system!!!

Vote suppression occurs in every election that is held with the archaic first-past-the-post method.

Chances are that if you thought your preferred candidate had little chance of winning the electoral game in the last general election, you didn’t vote.

But that’s how politics works in Canada. The game is no longer about attracting voters to a political platform. It’s about trying to scare away as many voters from your opponents as possible while hanging onto the party faithful.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s always robocalls.

Canada's GDP Set to Take Off in 2012

"By the end of the year, we expect that we will see a record number of Big Ass Canadians showing up in our analysis of Canada's economic well being."

(Niles Crumbley, Annual Report on Canada's Gross Domestic Posterior)

A new report from the D.V.D. Howe Institute to be released later this year paints a rosy picture for Canada's economy in 2012 as researchers have come up with a new method to calculate the health of the economy by adjusting what is meant by GDP.

Spokesperson for the Institute, Niles Crumbley, stated that the old fashioned way of adding up all the commercial transactions regardless of their impact upon the society to obtain what is referred to as the Gross Domestic Product is no longer a suitable way to measure the economy.

According to Crumbley, "People have finally caught on to the fact that not all the boats rise on the same tide. In fact, there exists a rather large body of research that demonstrates that as the Gross Domestic Product grows, a disproportional percentage of the newly created wealth is skimmed off by the very rich of a society while leaving the vast majority of the population with little or no gain."

"Reluctantly, we have to let go of the traditional approach because people are starting to use GDP statistics to bolster their arguments that present economic policies are, in fact, making the problem of income inequality even worse. This presents a major problem for those who want the status quo to remain. Consequently, we thought the best way to get people to think differently about the economy is to change the way its key indicator is measured."

He went on to say, "We wanted an indicator that would conjure up an impression of a more equitable distribution of wealth, and that's when we hit upon the notion of the Gross Domestic Posterior. After all, having a big ass is a good indicator of material well being since having one means that the person doesn't perform enough physical work to burn off the excessive number of calories he or she has the luxury to consume. Moreover, because of our society's dietary habits, the incidence of having a big butt is distributed more evenly through the quintiles, thus giving the impression that the society is more equitable. In short, although not everybody can be financially rich, anyone can have a big ass in Canada, and as our statistics point out the number of Big Ass Canadians is reaching record proportions. Finally, this new way of measuring the economy has the advantage of not freaking everyone out when the GDP contracts. Who knows, there might actually come a time, when politicians will be evaluated for their capacity to shrink it."

The D.V.D. Howe report is scheduled to be released at the onset of the next economic recession.

Canada's Third Solitude

When I was a boy in elementary school, we would all stand up and sing at the end of the day when "God Save the Queen" was piped over the intercom. Later, as an adult, I moved to Quebec and mastered the French language. It would seem that I would be at home in either of Canada's two solitudes, but, in fact, I do not recognize myself in either one, and, as a result, find myself with a large number of other Canadians living in the third solitude.

In brief, those of us living in Canada's third solitude don't ponder over the significance of who won the battle on the plains of Abraham. We don't care. Abstracted from the historical propaganda that we are force fed in school, it was simply another skirmish fought between two imperial European nations that had been fighting each other off and on for a thousand years.

Yes, there were consequences. We still have a British monarch as our head of state, but at the heart of the matter was a struggle of two rapacious imperial powers that wanted to take control of a populated territory in the interests of a societal elite in each country.

In the words of Canada's cultural icon, William Shatner, otherwise known as Captain Kirk from the spaceship, Enterprise: "O Canada, our home ON native land."

In one of the other solitudes, people get warm and fuzzy feelings when they think that they are the descendants from the winning side. In the other, they get warm and fuzzy feelings thinking that they somehow survived despite being the descendants from the losing side.

In Canada's third solitude, we are profoundly indifferent to either historical narrative and find it oppressive that all the other historical narratives that have transpired here are tossed aside in favor of the means in which Canada's two charter groups proclaim the over riding importance of their respective ethnic origins.

Give me a break!

We are almost all immigrants to a settler state imposed upon an indigenous people against their will. Moreover, an occupied territory the size of a continent necessitates massive immigration if that territory's natural resources are to be exploited for the benefit of a privileged few. Consequently, given the dire conditions that the Industrial revolution brought on for the world's poor, massive migration was inevitable as millions dared to travel to a distant land in order to improve what was often a miserable lot in life.

This is hardly the manifest destiny of a glorious nation.

In the English Canadian version of the meta-narrative, economic gains are distributed on an individual basis and those at the top receive the lion's share. In the Quebec version, economic gain is more widely distributed in order to secure the continued survival of the French language and culture, which is dependent on the continued prosperity of a nation overwhelming comprised of those who share a common ethnic heritage.

In both solitudes, the monoculture of "it's all about the economy" pushes aside and marginalizes other ways of looking at and being in the world as alternative methods of organizing a society.

For example, attempts to transform Canada into a modern democratic state in which its citizens have meaningful participation in the process of self government fail repeatedly. Likewise, environmental concerns over the manner in which the exploitation of Canada's natural resources are exploited do not gain sufficient traction to bring about significant change. It is the received wisdom here that nothing can be done that would harm the economy.

It's important to remember that belonging to Canada's third solitude is not determined by one's ethnic heritage. There are a number of disenfranchised Canadians of Anglo-Saxon and old stock French origins that do not subscribe to the dictates of Canadian monoculture. However, they are not sufficient in number to alter the Canadian Zeitgeist. As well, there are a number of new Canadians who simply accept the prevailing order of things and unquestionably try to fit in by accepting the dominant values of their host country.

Consequently, the third solitude is peopled by Canadians who live their lives outside of the worldview that guides the lives of most Canadians. Some are simply trying to get by. Others manifest life narratives that are wholly divorced from seeking status by the display of conspicuous consumption. They live life by different rules. They create life narratives that fall outside of the mainstream.

My feeling is that at the beginning of the twenty-first century Canada's third solitude is a gathering force. Continued immigration and the inevitable decline of the political force of the baby boom generation will eventually weaken the grip that the two solitudes have in determining what master narratives are in play to guide Canadian society. By the middle of the century, the population of the two Charter groups will be insufficient to hold the country to the historical narratives now in place. Moreover, the rise of the Internet will create sufficient disruption in the prevailing patterns of communication so that the third solitude will gradually emerge to challenge and then subsequently displace the meta-narratives that are rooted in our colonial past.

Connecting the Dots from the Electoral System to Income Inequality

It warms my heart to see how the Occupy Wall Street has taken hold. At long last, people have realized that the politics of economic growth are conceived to enrich the top 1% of the population at the expense of the bottom 99%.

However, one huge question remains: how do you fix the system?

The answer is that you have to change the electoral system that enables a small minority to effectively buy the politicians that will do their bidding. To do this, we have to get rid of selecting our elected representatives by the single member plurality method more popularly known as first-past-the-post.

If ever there was a voting system designed to favor rent seeking, the economic term for buying favors, it is first-past-the-post. I love the name because the horse race allusion captures what happens in the stands at a race track: being able to pick the winner backed by a significant wager pays off handsomely.

Let us remember that there is no greater return on investment in countries that use first-past-the-post than making a financial contribution to a political party coupled with a post election lobbying campaign. In the market, competition is fierce and investments to increase market share or profitability are fraught with uncertainty as competitors try to gain advantage in a zero-sum game. So, instead of trying to tip the entire playing field in one's direction, it is much easier to increase profits by getting those who set the rules of the game to intercede on one's behalf with a government contract, favorable legislation, or fiscal policy.

This is how the top 1% reap the lion's share of the nation's wealth. They hedge their bets, so it doesn't matter who wins the election. Both parties that offer government options to the electorate are funded by or by those who owe their social standing to the one per centers. Consequently, electoral campaigns come and go, focusing on peripheral issues, leaving in place the cumulative gains that the constant lobbying piles up for those in the upper most echelons of the society.

Indeed, accumulating favors is relatively easy to do when polling data tells you where the political parties stand relative to one another and all that is required is to pick which candidate will garner the most votes in each single electoral district. No messy formulas that award seats on the basis of the popular vote. Few surprises with regard to which candidate from which party will get elected. As a result, it is not difficult to identify who needs to be influenced in order to obtain preferential treatment and a cosy symbiotic relationship between politicians and their financiers comes about.

No wonder the anachronistic first-past-the-post resists attempts to replace it with other electoral systems that give better representation of the popular vote. To change the voting system, especially for one that gives proportional representation, increases the uncertainty of the results and consequently increases the risk of getting a return from one's campaign contribution.

In fact, multiparty coalitions are much more difficult to influence since there is no one who can wield authority in a unilateral fashion. Moreover, when everything has to be negotiated, there are no guarantees that the negotiated agreement will deliver the goods. In the process of negotiation, one's preferred outcome may fall off the table in the process of reaching an agreement.

To change the political economy so that there is a more equitable distribution of a nation's wealth, the demos, in other words the 99% who are effectively under-represented, must ensure that the transfer of political power from the electorate to elected officials that occurs as a result of election is done in a truly democratic fashion.

This will not occur as long as the first-past-the-post system is in place. To change the distribution of wealth, people must disable the political institution that enables the concentration of wealth in the first place.

It's Now Up To The Supreme Court of Canada

Seven years later, two refusals to entertain the evidence, we finally arrive at the end point of our journey: applying for leave to appeal our case concerning the constitutionality of the first-past-the-post voting system to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Essentially, the question we are asking of the courts is whether the current voting system respects the equality guarantees laid out in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That the Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal did not grant our motion to have the articles of Quebec's Electoral Act that stipulate the use of the first-past-the-post method declared null and void did not come as any surprise. After all, Quebec still hasn't signed the the constitution circa 1982, which establishes the Charter.

Our expert testimony that provides both mathematical and empirical evidence demonstrating the systemic discrimination inherent to the system is barely mentioned in either decision. In the first instance, the judge wrongfully dismissed our case saying that the question was essentially political, and in the second instance the appellate court concluded that although our case was indeed judicable, such egregious democratic anomalies like a political party that received nearly a million votes but was denied representation and political parties that received less votes than another but still went on to form a majority government were not sufficient grounds to demonstrate that first-past-the-post impinged upon citizens's rights to effective representation.

Comments like that blow my mind.

In trying to wrap my mind around such outrageous statements, I can only come up with three explanations. The first is that the Quebec Appeal Court decided to evacuate any democratic norms from the notion of effective representation: being able to cast a vote, become a candidate, and being represented by a deputy is all that is required for representation to be effective. That the result of the electoral process is undemocratic does not matter. The second is that the since the Court didn't understand the nature of the question that was being asked, it consequently opted for the default option and denied the motion. The third is that judges acted upon the notion is that they are there to ensure the continuity of the state as it presently exists and will therefore not grant a motion that would effectively cause a significant rupture with the past.

All three scenarios give us grounds for an appeal.

In the first instance, the application of the Charter is guided by the values belonging to a free and democratic society and not a society that is free from the constraints that democracy imposes. In the second, it appears that it is only at the Supreme Court of Canada that we find the human resources and intellectual rigor to properly render an informed judgment on what is a fundamental question concerning Canada's system of governance. Finally, in the third, it is the primary role of the Court to uphold the rights protected by the Charter not to uphold a government's right to continue an electoral practice that contravenes each citizen's right to participate in a democratic election.

So we now arrive at a moment of truth, a moment that speaks volumes about how this nation-state is constituted.

For the Supreme Court to hear our appeal demonstrates a commitment to the values of a free and democratic society.

For the Supreme Court to decide not to hear our appeal would be an instance of dismissive silence that demonstrates that Canada has not yet evolved from its colonial past as an English settler state.

Our appeal will be filed before November 14, 2011.

There's Something Rotten in the Province of Quebec

This week was a remarkable week. On two levels, I witnessed now badly the situation has unfortunately deteriorated in la belle province.

I am of the opinion that under the guidance of Premier Jean Charest, Quebec has devolved into a kleptocracy and Charest has become a modern day despot exercising his control over the entire state including the judiciary.

Early in week, the report leaked to the press from the Quebec Government's anti collusion squad was damming. It went as far as to say that some functions of the state had been overtaken by a consortium of public servants working for the Ministry of Transportation, engineering firms, and the criminal element, supported by a clandestine financing of Quebec's major political parties in the way of kickbacks which arise from charging overinflated prices for construction projects and a portion of which eventually reach their way to the political party in power.

In other words, everybody in the consortium is taking a cut while the taxpayer is being ripped off for the replacement of the crumbling infrastructure at a cost that is 40% higher than the rest of Canada and is of lower quality. It goes as far as having the Ministry of Transport contracting out to the private sector to do the required inspection and supervision of the construction performed by the private sector firms. The report details how the consortium will arrange to charge the government for 1000 truckloads of contaminated earth to be removed when in reality it takes only 100 truckloads to perform the task.

No wonder the Quebec Government announced in the same week a 800 million reduction in budget expenditures, including funding for Health and Education. Faced with a mountain of debt, the Quebec Government has to find some way to keep the infernal money machine operating.

Incredibly, when Premier Charest faced the media, had the audacity to say that it was thanks to the determined efforts of his government that we have become aware at how corrupt it has become. He went as far as too say that he hadn't even read the report. Imagine going in front of the nation without having read the document leaked to the press and is available on the Internet that asserts that your government is the most corrupt in living memory.

Yet, Charest has something up his sleeve that most Quebecers are only vaguely aware of despite the recent public hearings of the Bastarache Commission that investigated irregularities in appointing judges to the bench.

During his press conference, Charest would keep coming back to the point that we live by the rule of law, evidence must be obtained, and that the government is determined to prosecute those who have engaged in illegal activities.

What is left unsaid is that Charest and his Liberal cronies effectively control the legal system. They decide where and how legal resources will be deployed concerning who is targeted for investigation and who will be charged. Moreover, they have put in place many of the judges who preside over the trials and more importantly the judges that decide which of their peers will hear which cases. In short, the fix is on as we should expect when candidates applying for positions on the bench have their resumes forwarded to Premier Charest with post-it notes that indicate whether they have supported the Quebec Liberal Party in the past.

At a personal level, I have first hand experience with how political power controls the judiciary. As any reader of my Taking On The System blog would know, we have filed a motion to have the first-past-the-post electoral system declared unconstitutional.

This week we received the decision from Quebec's Court of Appeal that I would liken to the insult to their intelligence that Quebecers felt when their Premier appeared before them to defend himself from the accusations from a report that he commissioned but couldn't be bothered to read.

Not surprisingly, the decision did not support our motion to have the electoral system declared unconstitutional. After all, for better or for worse, the first-past-the-post voting system distorts the popular vote to give dictatorial control of the government to the leader of the party that wins the most seats. The political power that the Premier enjoys results from a manipulation in the manner the votes cast are transformed into seats in the legislature and that power is used to appoint judges. Simply put, judges are human and they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them.

Intellectually, I understand the systemic bias that protects the status quo, but what I didn't expect is a decision that would make Kafka laugh in the way it was rendered.

In rendering his decision, Judge Dufresne did toss us a crumb in asserting that the lower court judge had erred when saying our case wasn't judicable. Wow! This question had already been addressed when Quebec's Attorney General tried and failed to have our case declared inadmissible at an earlier instance in the proceedings. Moreover, even a cursory reading of the jurisprudence would indicate that the Court is obliged to hear a case when reasonable doubt on the constitutionality of electoral practices has been produced.

However, when it came to the real question that was put forward, it was as if the three judges put their hands over their ears and started singing and uttering the phrase, "we can't hear you".

In our case, the judge accepted what was obvious, the first-past-the-post voting system distorts the popular vote, but declared that this in itself wasn't sufficient to grant our motion since all voting systems produce distortions.

Well then what about the scale of the distortions and the manner in which they are produced? We have provided expert testimony that demonstrates that the level of distortion is beyond that of the distortions caused by other electoral practices and were subsequently declared unconstitutional and that the manner in which it is done is unclear violation of the equality guarantees of the Charter.

No matter. We won't give that evidence proper consideration. In the lower court decision not a word was devoted to our most compelling evidence in the analysis and the Appeal Court Judges decided that this slight of hand did not constitute a judicial error.

Excuse my language but "What the Fuck!"

Again, I would accept the decision if it were demonstrated that we had erred in claiming that the fact that first-past-the-post denied representation to as many as a million voters that voted for the Greens in the 2008 federal election was an infringement of their democratic rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But this was not done. They simply dodged this inconvenient fact with dismissive silence concerning how such an electoral anomaly could be countenanced. To date, the contestable prejudice caused to those who have their votes discarded by an electoral system that is unique in that it doesn't possess a mechanism to aggregate votes or voting preferences has not been addressed and thus gives us grounds for an appeal.

Moreover, Judge Dufresne went on to make two outlandish statements that suggest that he doesn't understand or chooses not to understand the fundamental democratic principles upon which the case is founded.

The first was to suggest that the fact that the reversal of the democratic result of the Quebec 1966 and 1998 general elections (the party that won less votes than another went on to form a majority government) and the fact that almost a million voters who voted Green did not gain any representation in the 2008 federal election did not constitute a grave injustice. At the same time, Judge Dufresne uses a statistical outlier, a once-in-a-hundred year electoral result from the 2007 Quebec General Election (the three major parties gained more or less representation proportional to the popular vote) to demonstrate that the distortions inherent to first-past-the-post are not systemic yet ignored that two smaller parties that together garnered 7% of the vote were denied any representation at all.

He then suggests that the most recent federal election in which the Conservatives form a majority government with only 39% of the popular vote and in Quebec the Bloc is reduced only 4 out of 75 seats despite amassing 25% of the popular vote while the the NDP gains 70% of the seats with only approximately 40% of the vote is evidence to the contrary. In making such a claim, Judge Dufresne is suggesting that black is white for in no way do these electoral results conform to the principles of democracy, in particular that each and every vote carries equal weight.

One has to wonder what is the frame of reference being used to apply the concept of effective representation for each and every citizen. Do the egalitarian values inherent to democracy enter the equation? Apparently not in Quebec at this time.

Clearly, an appeal grounded on democratic principles would go nowhere in Charest's Quebec because to grant our appeal would upset the very power base that political parties rely upon to gain absolute control of the state and their subsequent ability to redirect a large portion of the collective wealth into private hands. Too many people profit handsomely from this dysfunctional form of governance to let it be replaced with a democratic electoral system.

In order to seek justice, we will need to have our case heard in a different political context, which we hope to find in having our appeal heard at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Epilogue: The Tao of Politics

Having taken a break from writing this blog over the summer, I have had the time to reflect over the texts that I have read and written over the last two years. I'd like to share those reflections with you.

At the heart of the Tao is the dynamic interaction between yin and yang represented by a symbolic circle divided into a black and a white half, each containing a smaller circle or dot of the opposite color. Effectively, this represents a perpetual motion in which yin gives way to yang, which in turn transforms back to yin and so on.

When I was reading John Dunn's brilliant book, Democracy: A History, I came across a reference to an essay written by Philippe Buonarroti shortly after the French Revolution in which Buonarroti asserted that at the base of any society is an intractable conflict or tension between the order of privilege and the order of equality and this conflict was the driver of the French Revolution.

In other words, at the heart of societal discord is a binary opposition. Sounds familiar.

While I was mulling this over, I picked up a copy of George Lakoff's, The Political Mind. In his book Lakoff puts forth the idea of the family as the central metaphor that controls American politics. He says that there are two competing visions of the family at play, the conservative family dominated by the authoritarian male and the progressive family in which more or less equal partners nurture the family.

What makes Lakoff's thesis particularly interesting is that he claims that these differences are to be found at the synaptic level in the brain. Those with conservative synaptic networks have much difficulty processing information associated with progressive perspectives and visa versa.

Pushing this binary opposition towards the Tao, a pattern begins to emerge in which we can associate the male energy of yang with the order of privilege and the conservative mindset while drawing parallels between the female energy of yin, the order of equality, and the progressive mindset. Importantly, this opposition or complementarity is grounded biologically in the structure of brain.

What really brought the notion home to me concerning the relevance of the Tao when looking at politics is primate expert, Robert Sapolsky's, finding that when looking at human sexual behavior and social patterns, we find that humans display characteristics associated with both tournament and pair-bonding species. According to Sapolsky, we have aspects of both species hard-wired into our DNA.

To paraphrase Sapolsky, "isn't that interesting? What's up with that?"

Well, in my opinion it goes a long way to explaining the historical ebb and flow of political conflict over the last two hundred years and perhaps longer. In short, this basic biological duality hard-wired into humanity is the root cause of the tension between the order of privilege and the order of equality, between conservative and progressive. Essentially, the order of privilege is the manifestation of an alpha male status hierarchy finding its way into conservative rhetoric while the equalitarian traits of a pair-bonding species is manifested into the social democratic beliefs of progressives. The interplay of these two opposing but complementary forces unfolds as the Tao of politics.

The incorporation of two radically mating patterns into the evolution of the human species begets an intractable conflict between the opposing sides. Nothing is stronger than the biological imperative to reproduce, so it should come as no surprise that each side is incapable of finding common ground with the other since to do so runs contrary to the genetic program each group possesses that is designed to increase their chances of passing on their genes to the next generation.

Simply put, alphas will be alphas and betas will be betas and never the twain shall meet.

Consequently, what we see at the society at large is a small group of alpha males trying to amass as much wealth and power as possible so they can engage in an ostentatious display of wealth in order to attract the most desirable females. If in doubt, take a look at the advertising for the sale of luxury items. This group is opposed by a much larger of beta males and females that push for a more equal distribution of the society's wealth.

Of course there is a variance in how this opposition plays out from one society to another. Path dependence is in play, so turning points in the evolution of a society, (wars, revolutions, changes in religious beliefs) can push a society in either direction so that we can identify societies as being predominantly supportive of either alpha or beta procreation patterns. This is not say that societies attain a permanent equilibrium that entrenches the rule of one over the other. In fact, over time each element can gain ascendency over the other in what could be described as the eternal motion of the Tao.

History repeats itself in an unmistaken pattern.

Regardless of the supporting ideology favored by the alphas, wealth is concentrated over time into their hands in order to support their mating habits at the expense of the betas. Eventually, the betas realize that the depletion of resources threatens the survival of their offspring so they organize and depose of the alphas that rule the society. Previously, this was done exclusively by armed conflict, but as societies develop they come to realize that it is advantageous to contain this perpetual conflict within their political institutions, hence the spread of democracy across the globe over the last two hundred years.

Each side possesses a competitive advantage that allows them to rule the roost periodically. In short, alphas are more motivated to organize so they can extract wealth from the betas, but betas have numbers on their side. Also, alphas are extremely sensitive to differences within a status hierarchy so they will be tenacious in their attempt to procure wealth since inequality of wealth distribution and subsequent ostentatious display of wealth is greatest at the very top of the hierarchy. Their steadfast refusal to share wealth is their undoing because eventually the sleeping giant awakes and addresses the situation. Betas, on the other hand, have difficulty organizing. Their propensity to share and cooperate makes them reticent to confront the forces of the alpha groups early on. It takes considerable time before their collective angst reaches a tipping point and they spring into action.

Looking back at the post war years, there is a definite oscillation between the order of privilege and the order of equality. Indeed, the conclusion of the Second World War ushered in a historical period in the English speaking countries in which there was great economic growth and the increased wealth was equitably divided throughout the societies. Thirty years later, marked by the election of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the order of privilege reestablished its control and material wealth over time became more concentrated in the upper echelons of the respective societies.

Today, we appear to be at the beginning of the end of the rule of the order of privilege. The global economy which the alphas so diligently worked to bring about is about to collapse. Mountains of debt have arisen as a result of the desire to increase economic growth so to enrich a privileged elite. To meet these debt obligations, the order of privilege is attempting to force austerity measures upon the betas. The question that remains to be answered is how long will it take the betas to respond and in what manner their response will take form.

Were the recent riots and looting in England an isolated event or are they the precursors to the type of change of regime that we have seen during the Arab spring? Certainly, the mettle of the West's political institutions are about to undergo a severe stress test. Perhaps, they will hold. Perhaps, they will buckle. One way or another, as we enter a period of crisis for the global political economy, there will be opportunities for significant societal change to come about.

This state of affairs reminds me of the lyrics from Bob Dylan's song, The Times Are A-Changing:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.