Other people have much more radical solutions- let's get rid of the corporation, let's do this, let's do that. I tend to be a very pragmatic thinker and I'm interested in what I can do tomorrow. So I'm very involved in my country and Canada with political parties. I am not out in the streets, but I am" I work with the progressive political party to try to get them elected and try to bring about these kinds of changes.
So my analysis might be quite radical. My solutions are, I think. We can take our existing democratic institutions and reclaim them and reorient them to do what they're supposed to do.
So, I would have arguments with the Occupy people and my basic argument was: it's not enough to Occupy the streets, we have to Occupy our government. That's what we're supposed to be doing in a democracy because they've been occupied by an alien force, namely the corporation. So we have to take them back.
R.K.: Yeah, well, that was my next question. Government has become more and more corporatized with more and more appointees coming from corporations with massive conflicts of interest. Do you still see government as the primary answer? It sounds like you do. And are there alternative solutions as well outside of government?
J.B.: I am a constitutional lawyer as well as a commercial lawyer and I have, you know" I studied my American constitutional law at Harvard. I am quite familiar with the US Constitution and, when I look at the US Constitution, I say this is a pretty good system. This is a pretty good system of checks and balances, both in terms of what happens within state and federal government and what happens between state and federal government- not a bad system.
If I were sitting down to draw up a system, this is" I could see myself coming up with this one. The problem is it's been hijacked as you point out. And so the question then becomes: what do we do about that? Do we try to get it back and make it work in accordance with the principles it was supposed to work with, or do we operate outside of it and try to create something different? And the problem with the latter approach, I guess, is that it leaves people without very much tangible in terms of a strategy to latch onto.
So yes, we can go into the streets and we can protest, but ultimately when we're doing that, we're doing that in order to try to get government to do something differently. You know, we can engage in" and I'm certainly not suggesting this, I don't think it's a good idea"armed struggle would be, you know" what do we do if we're not trying to make government work? Because basically the state is responsible for" I mean it's responsible for enforcing property rights, contract rights, for taxing. How can we just make it go away and come up with something else?
Or could we come from the bottom up and make it work the way it's supposed to work. And I'm not saying that's easy, but it strikes me as easier and more realistic than trying to work outside of it.
R.K.: So what kind of changes do you feel" given how corporatized government and the electoral process has become, what kind of changes do you feel are needed?
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