Democracy or Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop?
By Prithvi Sharma
The parable tells of two crocodiles hunting for food who happen to seize the same fish. Each wants it. Unable to settle they approach the wise monkey perched on a shore side tree. The monkey is more than happy to help. “Here,” it divides the fish in to two halves, “one piece each for you.” Except, of course, the pieces are not equal. Each croc wants the bigger one. “No problem, I will make them equal,” and the monkey takes a bite of the larger one leaving them, unsurprisingly, still unequal. And so on, until it has swallowed the entire fish.
According to the January 17, 2022 report by Oxfam, during the two years of Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion — growing by $1.3 billion a day. We could rejoice that our planet is blessed with such exceptional human beings except, of course, for the fact that the same planet has 660 million people living on less than $2 a day and 385 million living on $1 a day. In fact, more than 80% of those on this earth live on less than $10 a day! And during the same two years when a billionaire was being minted every 26 hours, more than 160 million people were forced into poverty. This isn’t merely absurd but immoral since every 4 seconds that these 10 earned $60,000, at least one person died as a result of this inequality.
How did this come about? During the pandemic, the government policies regarding lockdown disproportionately impacted small businesses while the big businesses particularly in the tech sector flourished at their expense. The Fed pumping money into specific enterprises also swelled the coffers of big corporations while most working people lost wages and livelihoods. But this is always how it works; the rich are always able to manipulate policy making. Not just money, but massive amounts of natural resources, from land and minerals to electromagnetic spectrum, are routinely handed over to large corporations at a pittance. As a result of all this, ‘cartel’ is no longer a word applied to an organization of sinister oil sheikhs. In the area of food production for example, mere four corporations (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus) control more than 75 percent of the global grain trade and six (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer and BASF) control 75 percent of the world pesticides market while four corporations (Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and Limagrain) control more than 50% of the world's seeds. Staggering monopolies also dominate global finance, trade, media and culture and it is they who, in one way or the other, control all the world’s policy making mechanisms resulting in policies that are made by the rich for the rich, policies in which the majority have no role and just like those made by the monkey, policies that are made in the name of helping the people!
The parable is a bit hazy about its end. Most likely the crocodiles went back to hunting, still hungry but feeling grateful since the monkey was only trying to help. The fox that guards the chicken coop too guards it for the benefit of the chicken. At least that is what the chickens believe. It is time they did a rethink.