It's been 2 years since the Crisis has emerged in the world, hitting merciless Europe and especially Greece and the south... We have been the bad, lazy, tax-avoiding, irresponsible citizens since then, the ones that have to pay for their royal lifes till that point. Well let me tell you what royalty means in my country at least...
In 2004 long before the crisis that meant a net salary of 1200 euros/month for a mechanical engineer after 35 years of work the public sector (example taken from my family). It meant 3.5 euros per hour for a non-specialised worker in any sector(personal experience). It meant a net retirement salary of 500 euros for a 80 years old lady(again example taken from my family). It meant, 10% of unemployment, increasing prices for all goods(that have been doubled and tripled just few months after the adaption of Euro as Greece's currency) and a non-stop struggle to live and progress for mid and low class citizens, paying more taxes than they should in a socially equal country, and recieving a lot less that they deserved according to their extremely high education and specialties. Yes, as everywhere and always, there were a lot of things going bad, and as everywhere and always, the rich were protected by the political system and thus getting even richer by not paying taxes and supressing the working class. And yes, most of the people were able to live and survive, being happy for having their secure jobs even with that low salaries and struggling to win more of what they deserved. As I have said again in other posts, it is not money that leads to happiness and as the mentality of the people of the south was always and everywhere in the world similar, we knew how to judge happiness correctly and enjoy our lifes to the maximum. This does NOT mean that we were not working or that we were in paradise. We were working more than the European average hours, producing less though due to the corrupted system (http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/21/labor-market-workforce-lead-citizen-cx_po_0521countries.html).
So what happened??? Why things turned that bad and out of nothing we are on the first page of the world's media ???
Well, I don't want to cancel the responsibility of the people, as they are voters and should change things earlier. But it is obvious that the huge debt was not created by the people but from the governors! And more importantly, the debt of Greece was small regarding other huge economies in Europe and the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt). The biggest problem of our country that was 100% fault of the politicians was and still is that we had a deficit due to their inability or on purpose plan, to create infrustructures for development based on social criteria and on rules to protect the citizens from the big interests. And here we meet Europe and its Union.
Noone would ever argue that European Union was a bad thought. Unifying people should always be our goal but the way to get people come together is what matters. And its quite obvious again that this Union was more like a European Union of companies and not of the people. If only, we had a clear view of the european parliament and the treaties that have been signed there, we would all be sure about that. Total free market policies, no rules to protect the countries and the people from speculators, bankers and private enterprises, suppresion and fear-opposing dilemmas. What was the result?? Countries, like Greece, being dominated by huge international companies that could come and sell their products freely and with low taxes, leading to the destruction of the local production, the closure of all the small entrepreneurs who can not compete the huge ones, the give-away of all the national resources to private companies that seek PROFIT, which finally are moving freely to countries where the man-power costs almost nothing, leaving behind them unemployment and goverments that reduce even more the taxes of these companies in a utmost effort to prevent them from migrating. And here we go to my favourite word... Profit!
Do you really understand what profit is for the entrepreneurs?? Let me give you an example... Let's say I have a small store that makes shoes. Two squares away, you open another store that makes also the same type of shoes. We are starting making and selling our shoes, making Profit out of the overpriced (due to the man-hours of working to produce these shoes), and business goes pretty good for both. You sell a pair of shoes for 20 euros and me for 19.99 euros having a net profit of let's say 10 euros. So far, so good... Now, me, I decide that the profit that I have from my store is not enough cause I want to buy a new car or my children have to go the college or whatever. I have 3 choices :
1. I try to produce better shoes. Better quality, better looking, more comfortable. I do this and so people prefer my shoes so I make more profit and you less.
2. I try to lower the price of my product. Again people will prefer me so in the end even with this low-priced products I will have more profit than before and you less.
3. I try to bring you in public disrepute, send the police to find illegal procedures, prevent your next loan from the local bank, do whatever I can to take you down and hopefully make you CLOSE your store so that I will get all your customers and raise my profits.
Choose whatever the results is the same... When you are searching for PROFIT, in a free market society where bad competition is legal, someone always has to go down!!! And the way you will go down depends on the criticity of the situation. If you shoe-maker, are struggling to survive, you can reach crazy decisions and do stuff that are 100% unhuman to win in this fake competition that the system is putting us in. And that's exactly what's happening. Watch out! It never stops.. when you are dealing with huge companies the only search for profit! More and more! It's never enough so they will and they are doing everything to raise this profit! From exploiting poor countries by giving ridiculous salaries to their employees, polluting the enviroment so that they will reduce their production cost, by-passing courts and international laws behind closed doors, to goverment selection, goverment control or being part of the goverment itself (a small example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Siemens_scandal).
So you get it?? There lies the problem!!! It's the system, stupid!!! Call it capitalism, neo-liberalism, old-communism, dictatorship in the end is the whole system that is above words and theories that have been written 100 and more years ago! It is the rule of the companies on people. The have legalised and put profit and bad competition into our lifes, so we think that it is the most normal thing !!!! It is NOT our nature!!! Please think about it!!! Competition can be good, basically it is beautiful when it's pure and does not have MONEY or PROFIT as it's goal! It is what the ancient greeks were calling 'ευγενής άμιλλα' or the sportsmanship (the closest translation I can get). It is the beautiful feeling you get when you are playing a chess or basketball with your friends, and push you on, give you power to fight and win! It is the same feeling that in a society of solidarity, would make me and you produce better and more beautiful shoes because we love shoes (or whatever!!) and we want to make the best out of it!!! But, I would never steal, kill etc to win a basketball game neither harm you in any way, to make better shoes! All these, if profit as we know it, DISAPPEARS of our vocabulary and lifes.
And that's what happens in Greece and all over the world. We are just the experiment, so that the system can check its limits of imposing their power over people just in 2 years letting the people shocked from the austerity measures. And they did succeed pretty well we can say...
Sometimes though, we can change things... We have the power, not because we are a lot but because if we had the correct education we would and could throw this system away and create a new one. I believe, that the time is not far. We have to educate the masses and ourselves first of all, so that we all refuse to bow down and refuse that this is our nature!!!
We draw the lines here, We choose which nature to follow, We can change everything if we know what we want and if we are united!
As for my dear greeks, there is one thing I can say. The path to tranquillity and pride has always been paved with nails. Me, I am ready to walk this path not for Greece but for the people of the world! Think well before you vote, if you want to live a life of fear inside their system of lies or a life of pride and respect inside a world of truth and solidarity.
C.K.
