Politics. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. [Ambrose Bierce]
The best politics is right action. [Mahatma Gandhi]
politics
if taking a positive stance on politics, every citizen should be a politician, i.e. somebody who cares about the society one lives in, about the space one shares with one's fellow beings. politics should be the arena, where we decide how to live with each other. in this sense each one of us should live up to his or her natura as homo politicus. that's what theory tells us. in reality politics is a dirty power game that most of us avoid like a nasty disease. I have put forward a few concepts on the subpage values that I believe to be important in politics. small is beautiful applies to politics like nothing else, therefore Leopold Kohr's The Breakdown of Nations should be every politician's first read.
Talking about small is beautiful ... Since a few months I support a new liberal political group in my native country Austria (small it is and will most likely stay like that forever). This seems to be an awkward thing to do, considering that I live abroad since quite some time. But having spent around 20 years of my life in Austria, the attachment to my originating society will always be strong, at least in the aspect that I work for an Austrian company here in China. Moreover, I think that there is no other society that I know as well as the Austrian, and since political participation is in China basically not possible for neither foreigners nor Chinese nationals, Austria remains the only place, where I can support the development of a society in more ways than paying my taxes.
Paying taxes anyway seemingly is a declining method of influencing a society. Voting has lost ground to consuming. Our political decisions are gradually substituted by consumer decisions. With everything we purchase, we also vote for a certain model of how we life together in our societies. As voting in a democracy decides about the stream of a considerable bit of money - the tax revenue - so does shopping. Thinking of an average income, money spent on consuming makes up a larger part than what we have to pay in taxes.
Paying taxes anyway seemingly is a declining method of influencing a society. Voting has lost ground to consuming. Our political decisions are gradually substituted by consumer decisions. With everything we purchase, we also vote for a certain model of how we life together in our societies. As voting in a democracy decides about the stream of a considerable bit of money - the tax revenue - so does shopping. Thinking of an average income, money spent on consuming makes up a larger part than what we have to pay in taxes.
They say that politics is the second oldest profession. I find that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. [Ronald Reagan]
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. [Groucho Marx]