We've Lost All Sense of the Common Good by Charles Hugh Smith

As I explain in my books Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform and Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change, this is the corrupting fruit of centralization: when lobbying a few hundred politicos and a handful of top bureaucrats can result in billions in additional public spending sluicing into the coffers of special interests, there is no need to persuade the populace of the benefits to the Common Good of the proposed spending: you just spend a few tens of millions in our pay-to-play "democracy" and then reap billions as the payoff.

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