1. The "media" got together and said to each other, "We better not cover this story at all, because it will give too many people dangerous ideas"
or
2. Media outlets individually (particularly in the US) decided not to cover the actions of the Icelandic government because they think most of their viewers don't care much about Iceland and/or because "check out what has slowly been happening in Iceland over the past 5 years" isn't much of a breaking news story.
This story has been covered, but just because it isn't to the extent that you wish it was covered does not mean a conspiracy must exist.
"2. Media outlets individually (particularly in the US) decided not to cover the actions of the Icelandic government because they think most of their viewers don't care much about Iceland and/or because "check out what has slowly been happening in Iceland over the past 5 years" isn't much of a breaking news story."
It's highly relevant because of the stark contrast in the manner in which Iceland prosecuted the bankers like the criminals they are, versus the crazy manner in which bankers are treated in the US and Europe.
One law for the corrupt, rich, and connected bankers, and much harsher laws for ordinary people who are not connected, wealthy and powerful (e.g. individuals targeted for illegal downloads versus bankers blowing up the global economy causing untold economic hardship). This sends out a strong message from a government to it's electorate: fuck you, you miserable peasant. Not only will you go along with these bailouts, you'll cheer loudly for your bought candidate when he's re-elected.
I'm from Ireland, and we should have copied Iceland to the letter. The difference is we're in the EU and our government is happy to be Angela Merkel's little bitch, and take the pain (sovereign debt burden) to maintain the illusion that everything is rosy in the garden.
Iceland even had the balls to crowd-source it's new constitution, giving real, tangible power to it's people (you couldn't even imagine this in most countries). Talk about real democracy compared to crony capitalism:
Icelandic here. What bankers did we prosecute? As far as I know, only two people of minor importance have been prosecuted.
And we didn't "crowd-source" our constitution (which hasn't been changed yet, btw). The committee of 25 people simply maintained a website where they could collect opinions. They had no significance other than being input to the work of that committee. But I suppose many Icelandic are happy to let this kind of misunderstanding propagate, rather than explaining how we messed up the election of those 25 people, how their suggestion for a new constitution is actually only "advice" for the parliament, and how nothing has happened yet as we still have the same old constitution.
We also don't like to mention that there is little wrong with our old constitution. It's pretty standard. The suggestions for the new one, as far as the banking crisis goes, are about more transparency in government. Other changes are about different things (such as ownership of natural resources, etc.)
There is a lot of misinformation and hype in the foreign media around how Iceland has handled the crisis. As an Icelander living abroad, talking about this topic mainly consists of telling people "actually, that's not what happened..".
Very interesting. Regarding ownership of natural resources, though, I think that's pretty relevant and related to the financial crisis. In other countries, that's exactly what's taken as collateral for loans. As I understand it, Iceland refused to give up the volcanic heat for debt -- a very wise decision.
Very interesting, indeed as an outsider it's hard to see what really happens there... no matter the media that reports on Iceland they will try to hype something.
Can you please write here a list of facts about what happened there after the crisis besides what you already wrote? I'm curious to learn
Yeah, I'm having a hard time buying the conspiracy theory here. Iceland's entire population is the equivalent of 2 or 3 larger neighborhoods in Chicago. Its just not pressing news. Its a small and unimportant country. I doubt most Americans could find it on an unlabeled map.
Not to mention, parliamentary style governments are always being torn down and rebuilt as different blocs of power emerge. Things can change fast, especially if that country also does direct democracy referendums. That's a feature, not a bug and very different to the more stable and conservative style of government the US was built on.
Also, a screen blocking "join us on facebook" dhtml pop-up? Wow. Another example of the hostile web here.
They took the exact opposite course during the financial crisis and experts from the IMF and other Nobel laureates have credited that for their remarkable recovery. As our economy continues to flounder, I don't buy that this is something everyone should not at least be aware of.
>"They took the exact opposite course during the financial crisis"
They are a tiny country who nationalized their banks, stiffed creditors, implemented unnecessary austerity measures and devalued their currency. I'm not sure they're a model for US economic policy.
Obviously the circumstances are different, you wouldn't use this as a one-to-one model, but that doesn't mean there aren't things we can learn, and it certainly doesn't justify the scant media coverage.
Creditors were left to deal with the mess that they were complicit in creating while ordinary people who just wanted a house to live in were freed from crushing debt. Some limited austerity measures were put in place that didn't cut into core social spending. The people were taken care of while financiers were told to take a hike, and just as all the experts didn't predict the crash, none of them predicted Iceland's recovery. Maybe the big lesson here is that economists don't know what the fuck they're talking about, and there are other factors in play than neoclassical theory. That is why this hasn't received coverage, because it would lead to self-reflection that would make those in power uncomfortable.
There are no examples of a bank crisis in a country of the size of the US economy other than the one in 1929, and I guess nobody want to repeat that receipt. That is probably what a purer capitalist/liberalist would prescribe still.
Of larger nation than Iceland Norway and Sweden handled the bank crisis around 1990 by nationalizing the banks and adding to their capital reserve. The shareholders lost their money, but the banks were able to recover in not too many years.
The worst thing that can be done is a bailout. In that case the people that took unnecessary risks for their own short-term gain are rewarded, and everyone else have to pay.
That actually sounds like a much better policy than what was implemented in the US. Bailing out foreign creditors to private banks was simply a huge waste of money.
There was plenty of coverage of Iceland during the financial crisis - despite its small population - because they had a disproportionate effect on the EU economy. It feels strange that such coverage should die off after real reform and recovery should take place.
There is a systematic method to deciding which stories are covered by MSM outlets and which aren't. It is not a coincidence that most outlets chose not to cover the Iceland story, regardless of it being a very small country.
Not everything is a "conspiracy", and failure to acknowledge that there are certain forces at play is a blatant misunderstanding of the role MSM plays in public brainwashing.
There isn't a single piece of substance in what you just said, just a bunch of vague proclamation and accusations about "public brainwashing" by the "MSM". Your post reads exactly like a hand-wavey paranoid conspiracy theorist except you're saying you're not a conspiracy theorist. Maybe you should be a bit more specific instead of this rambling nonsense about how you are enlightened and all the regular people are brainwashed.
Besides, the simplest answer is that "the media" is selfish, desperate, and cheap. Original coverage, coverage that requires remote HQs, deep coverage is not a priority and those departments were probably axed ten years ago.
Yes, exactly. As someone who knows the media world better than he'd like to, I cannot think of a more succinct or generally applicable characterization. You, sir, have nailed it.
I'd like to stress that this is by no means a fair characterization of all the people who work in media. There are a awful lot who push against this current every day. Some of them (on occasion) win. But it tends to be a fight, and the victories invariably seem like minor miracles.
When they're not winning (which is frequent), and thinking "what the fuck am I doing here?" (also frequent) chances are good that whoever or whatever they're getting snowed by can be fairly described just the way you did.
Wait, what? The criticism that the original comment had no meat was fair. But then, when you're linked to concrete examples of the hypothesized Propaganda Model at play, you invoke a generic argument about the FSM? Do you not see how you're making the same weightless arguments by invoking a straw man?
Again, this is easier explained by the MSM not being interested in enlightening its readers, watchers, and listeners versus advertorials, PR puff pieces, and infotainment. Does this make it easier to spout and circulate propaganda points? Certainly. Is the shallow, provincial coverage sign of a greater conspiracy? Not in context of the rest of the coverage being terrible, no. I wouldn't say you're "wrong", but the rest of their coverage is as incomplete and fact free as how they approach things that may not reflect their ideological bent :)
My point is that the forces at play likely have much more to do with what each outlet individually decides their audience is interested in and/or what would make a good story for them. Media institutions are much more interested in their own bottom line (and ratings/readership/etc) than anything else.
Are you suggesting the possibility that Rupert Murdoch might secretly be a liberal, just with a keen sense for business? While profit may always a motive, I suspect it's a very rare media entity that is objectively focused on profit.
How would the media know that their viewers don't care about Iceland if they never told their viewers about Iceland in the first place?
I don't understand why people insist on using the "shadowy figures gathering in smokey rooms" straw-man, Herman/Chomsky's propaganda model has been around for 25 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
Because as a general rule, Americans don't care about anything that happens in a foreign country, with four narrow exceptions:
1) we care about the pomp and circumstances surrounding the British royalty (weddings, deaths, etc)
2) we care about what happens in Israel
3) we care about events that make us feel morally superior (rapes in India)
4) we care about things that could affect us (terrorists in Afghanistan, EU's sovereign debt crisis, etc)
American media doesn't even cover what happens in major European countries like the U.K. or France or Germany, much less in minor ones. And it's not just among regular people. Even educated, well-informed people generally don't care about what happens abroad. It's just American exceptionalism at work. We feel we are so dramatically different from anyone else, either in other countries or in other times, that nothing that happens in those other places could possibly have any relevance to us. The idea that we would look to other countries for ideas on how to solve domestic problems is completely alien to us.
Your comment doesn't seem to address the idea that I was bringing up, that the media has a role in shaping what people care about rather than being an impartial conduit that is slave to peoples' desires. For example, how much of the attention that is paid to British royalty is because it is presented as something that should be paid attention to?
While I don't think we'd agree on whether or not this is a good thing, I really think you hit the nail on the head.
I know I personally view world news through the lens of "how will this affect me?". If I want to learn something about how things are going in Iceland, I'll read Wikipedia (which I do fairly often, but most people probably don't).
As for looking to other countries for a solution, I'd say that's part of what makes us Americans. The idea of "we rebelled against the European power for a reason, we don't want to be like them" is ingrained into our culture. I don't think that's a terrible thing, but rather one of the things that make us unique. Diversity is not a bad thing.
The other part of what defines American culture is our individualism. That's changing rapidly these days, as our population centers become more concentrated and a larger percentage of the population are more closely tied to a larger social community. I think you'll see a bit of a "whiplash" effect, as we quickly lose many parts of our "Americanism" and become more like Europe. When that happens, the media coverage will change to reflect that.
Not blindly imitating European countries is one thing, being ignorant of their policies and their effects is another. The latter is the case here, and it would take some pretty convoluted rationalization to spin that as "diversity".
Individualism has historically been correlated with urbanization. Just because people are living closer together does not a community make. In fact, urbanization has tracked with the breakdown of old communitarian social relations and its replacement with market relations. If anything is going to erode that, it will be new "solidarity economies" and things of that nature rather than the simple concentration of population.
My point is that TV news caters to the lowest common denominator of brains so they aren't going to tell everyone about a country they can't locate on a map. That is of course, unless, there are "terrorists" there, or Israel is involved.
3. Those behind large media conglomerates all happen to have the same rules, incentives and culture. Certain stories are collectively suppressed not just because "they wouldn't be interesting to US public" but because it would undermine certain assumptions and values that are held in the large corporate culture.
Read "Manufacturing Consent" book for a more thorough explanation on how the system works.
(It works on individual level -- journalists and corporate --- certain stories are suppressed by the owners).
Exactly. Most media feed from the same trough; and they'd do anything to maintain that status quo. Especially in these tough times, when newspapers are failing and the radio/TV business model is in dire straits thanks to alternative news sources like the Internet.
I think a bigger question is why didn't the US media cover the creation of the EU. I seem to remember that the day that that happened, it warranted all of a paragraph or two somewhere near the back of the NYT.
You should really read about Operation Mockingbird. I was just listening to WBAI on my way to lunch and they were talking about it along with MK Ultra and Operation Northwoods.
These are not conspiracy theories, these are facts.
So the government has mysterious shadow figures that communicate with tens of thousands of newspapers, TV and radio stations and major news web sites, telling them what not to cover, and somehow this has never gotten out?
(14) "All are free to have their opinions and convictions and shall have the right to express their thoughts. Censorship and other comparable impediments to the freedom of opinion must never be enacted into law. Limits on the expression of opinion may, however, be stipulated by law to protect children, security, health, the rights or reputation of others, as necessary in a democratic society."
(18) "All shall be free to pursue their religion, individually or in association with others, publicly or privately. The freedom to pursue religion or personal convictions shall only be limited by law as necessary in a democratic society."
(20) "No one may be obligated to be a member of an association. Such obligation may be imposed by law if it proves necessary for an association to perform its lawful role due to the public interest or the rights of others."
There isn't a nation on earth that doesn't have some workaround, be it martial law or these special clauses. Adding that it is only for things that are necessary in a democratic society is a good touch, because it makes it harder to make arbitrary restrictions because it's for the "general public good".
oh I agree but who defines what is "necessary" and looking at the nordic states (iclelands constitution is based on the danish constitution) they can be very communitarian and the down side of those systems sis they can be very unforgiving of outsiders and those that do not fit in.
I didn't do more than read the first page or two, but there appears to be a Supreme Court. Presumably, it's their job. That's generally how these things work.
It would not be possible to draft a law that did away with these natural tensions in an easy and robust way. The lines must be drawn piecemeal, with deference to but not bound by precedent. At least in this the tensions are made explicit in a way that even unsophisticated citizens can understand. (Not that any particular citizen will understand it, cf. the many Americans who completely elide "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times" from the Copyright Clause.) Eventually the nation will have the legal system the citizens demand (or is that deserve?), the laws on the books be damned. The rule of law is a tradition more than it is a text.
would be great if we actually get that far. These constitutional changes require that the majority vote in parliament is yes, then it's put to a referendum for the people, and has to be accepted by the next convened parliament.
And the parties that were once in power but were ousted by the people are vehemently against any constitutional changes and will fight it. And they will probably come back into power this spring and kill any hopes of this new constitution.
Actually, I do recall stories about revolution in Iceland. Which is why I was so surprised to see this article use the word "peaceful" revolution. I recall riots in Iceland making a big stir back in 2009. Indeed, after a quick Google search I found this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Icelandic_financial_crisis....
Snippet from the Wikipedia article:
"On 20 January 2009, the protests intensified into riots. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people clashed with riot police, who used pepper spray and batons, around the building of the parliament (Althing), with at least 20 people being arrested and 20 more needing medical attention for exposure to pepper spray.[3][11] Demonstrators banged pots and honked horns to disrupt the year's first meeting of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and the Althing. Some broke windows of the parliament house, threw skyr and snowballs at the building, and threw smoke bombs into its backyard.[2][3][12] The use of pots and pans saw the local press refer to the event as the 'Kitchenware Revolution'.[13]"
[2] ^ a b Gunnarsson, Valur (21 January 2009). "Icelandic lawmakers return to work amid protests". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 31 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[3] ^ a b c "Iceland protesters demand government step down". Reuters. 20 January 2009. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[12] ^ "Icelanders held over angry demo". BBC. 21 January 2009. Archived from the original on 24 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009
[13] ^ Ian Parker, Letter from Reykjavík, "Lost," The New Yorker, 9 March 2009, p. 39.
As far as "revolutions" go, I'd call tossing a few eggs and yogurt and maybe burning a tree or two rather peaceful. There was one night where everything went crazy (when we burned down the Norwegian Christmas tree... sorry about that, Norway) and threw rocks at Alþingi, but other than that, it was mostly just family people banging pots and pans.
In Iceland, it's known as the "Búsáhaldabylting" which basically means "kitchen appliance revolution", if that gives you any idea of what it was like. (edit: you already stated that in your post)
Edit:
To elaborate some more... most of the people who were arrested, or those who were pepper sprayed were nothing more than opportunistic (often young) people taking advantage of the situation. Some of them were self declared "anarchists" or had some kind of "fuck-the-system" attitude. Most of them probably had little stake in what was happening. this was in contrast to most of the peaceful protesters, they were family people protesting how the govt. handled the bank collapse.
These people had just lost their life savings, their house, their car and were left with insane debt. I went, and protested for my parent, whose debt have now doubled because of the inflation. I showed my anger, I threw rocks, I screamed, we were all pretty angry.
But only a very small group of people were actually violent, and you could literally point out who was there for a valid protest and who was just looking for an excuse to fight the police.
--
Addendum: What you may not understand is that loans in Iceland are "insured". That's good... if you're a bank, but if you're a n individual, it's bad... very bad.
It basically means that, in addition to interest, your loan principal increases by the amount of inflation. So if the inflation is 5%, voila, your loan is now 5% higher. Now realize that inflation went as high as 18.6%, which means your 4% interest loan just went up 18.6 + 4 = 22.6% in one year.
There are associations currently suing the banks and the govt. to try and make this form of loan illegal.
Not quite the same thing but a bad idea for the consumer nonetheless. Our loans are price-index fixed. There is a consumer index calculated by our benevolent government organization that calculates the index based on the sale value of common household goods and essential costs like the price of gasoline. This mean that if the government raises gas taxes (like they did here - twice) that in turn causes your loan interest to rise. Ingenious, right?
The media often misrepresents these things. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, they might simply want to make things more interesting than they are.
At least this was my experience with the recent student protests in Montreal. I attended a few of these protests and my roommate many more. They were mostly peaceful. The ones that weren't were in response to dubious police behavior such as locking protesters in a street and not letting anyone out for extended periods of time. This happened maybe once or twice over the course of a year. I felt safe moving about Montreal.
Now if I looked at the media, especially foreign media, it was another story. Had I not been in Montreal to see things first hand, I would have imagined a warzone. I would have been afraid to visit or live in Montreal. It was amazing to see the students portrayed as violent protesters when they went to incredible lengths to insure everything was done peacefully.
I experienced this same phenomenon, but not for protests, living in Toronto during the SARS epidemic. The city was running perfectly, no one was panicking (I think we had something like 22 potential cases). The only noticeable difference was that I saw a few face masks in the subway. If I listened to foreign media, everyone in Toronto was panicking, thousands were infected. Once again, it was represented as a warzone.
Having been there, I can say it wasn't in both cases. The media often misrepresents stories to make them more interesting. Having read the stories about Iceland (which are rather mild), if the trends I observed hold, it must have been really peaceful protest.
I don't know , but that sounds a lot like the decmocratic process and not revolution. In america we have done all of those thiogs over the years, with the one aside that we have always managed to pay our debts, and we haven't mothballed the _entire_ constitution all in one go.
Worth noting that my understanding is that the Icelandic government never insured these deposits into Icelandic banks by foreign entities. In the case of Great Britain, the British government decided to retroactively insure these deposits by British entities on behalf of the Icelandic banks. The issue at hand was whether the Icelandic government should retroactively insure the banks as well, and pay the British government off. The Icelandic government initially voted to do so, but the people said "hell, no!" in a referendum.
So in my opinion, the Icelanders didn't fail to pay a debt; they refused to incur one because the entire world has started feeling entitled to zero-risk bank deposits. Which is quite sensible: Iceland is a tiny country, 319,000 people, and Great Britain is quite large, 62 million people. Spreading billions of dollars of loss over Iceland's population is thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per capita. Spreading the same loss over Great Britain's population is tens or hundreds of dollars per capita. Iceland just can't afford to be insuring global banks, which is why the didn't and aren't.
But take a look at each of those cases. In every one it was _citizens_ who didn't get paid back. Each time they did it so that they could pay back the foreign investors.
The continental congress, the civil war, the Great Depression and this
The Momentary Default of 1979
The Treasury of the United States accidentally defaulted on a small number of bills during the 1979 debt-limit crisis. Due to administrative confusion, $120 million in bills coming due on April 26, May 3, and May 10 were not paid according to the stated terms. The Treasury eventually paid the face value of the bills, but nevertheless a class-action lawsuit, Claire G. Barton v. United States, was filed in the Federal court of the Central District of California over whether the treasury should pay additional interest for the delay.
The government decided to avoid any further publicity by giving the jilted investors what they wanted rather than ride the high horse of sovereign immunity. An economic study of the affair concluded that the net result was a tiny permanent increase in the interest rates of T-bills.
We seem to be selling a lot of treasuries at low return.
I think it's a revolution in the broader sense - radically changing the status quo. Considering the extremely few if any at all prosecutions of bankers all over the world, I'd say this is a revolution/radical change from status quo, along with them refusing to pay for the bailouts.
Iceland is a special case. It is tiny, with only 320,000 inhabitants. That is 1/1000th of the population of the US. And the population is also highly homogeneous. The fact that they can pull off a peaceful "revolution" like this doesn't mean anything for the majority of countries in the world.
True, Iceland is tiny. Barely a country one might say. But the argument of size needs more motivation, why does size matter?
Although I tend to agree with the sentiment. We always hear the same arguments: yes [solution for a big problem] works great in [scandinavian country] but it is so small and homogeneous, the same could never work in [larger european country or USA].
Surely measures that have been applied successfully elsewhere, even in a small country, are more likely to succeed here too?
The Icelandic political system is certainly helped by the fact that Iceland is small, because it means that politician are closer to their constituents and therefore more likely to act in their interest.
Furthermore, organizing effective social movements does not scale very well. Organizing 1000 truly active participants - by which I mean people who are willing to do more than just tweet and write blog posts - is as difficult in Iceland as it is in the US, but in Iceland that already gets you close to 1% of the population, whereas in the US it is basically nothing.
The same arguments don't really apply to topics like health care, because the limits of social organization are not as important there.
I don't understand this comment or the earlier ones saying Iceland is "unimportant". It's a modern democracy with a rich history. It's suffered one of the worst financial crashes and recovered more rapidly than the rest of us. It's got crime rates, happiness ratings, longevity and education rates that make other first world countries jealous. Are you saying democracy doesn't scale? Tax doesn't scale? That the lessons of one country are irrelevant to bigger but otherwise comparable countries?
I think there has been a decent amount of reporting in the Netherlands and the UK. Mostly because all of this is about their money.
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
From my understanding, this is not quite true. Icelandic banks defaulted on debts towards foreigners, the Icelandic government was being pressured into taking over those debts - even though there was no legal obligation to do so - and the Icelandic people revolted against this.
So: Private entities screwed up - both the banks and non-Icelandic bank customers who misplaced their trust in those banks - and so private entities were morally responsible for taking the losses. The Icelandic people simply did their part to ensure that capitalism works properly, even though it required going against their government.
> the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
Why should they be? It's supposedly common knowledge that no democratic government has the power to bind the hands of a future government.
It is important to the financial stability of the world that the financial industry understand the world as it is, and not how they would like it to be. Hopefully the Iceland incident has been an a sufficiently good example that the bad lessons the US is teaching will be ignored.
Do note that many of our compatriots put more money into IceSave than was covered by the bank guarantee system. Hence, they did not deserve to be made "whole" (they took a risk, willingly, for a higher return).
Also note that The Netherlands single-handedly increased the max. amount to 100k euros, then demanded that the Icelandic people repay them, which isn't really right either. Sure, there were major issues in terms of lack of oversight and irresponsible investments resulting in risk of insolvency in case of a "bank run", but the "greed" of the UK and NL consumers dropping their life savings for one extra percentage point should not have been rewarded.
Lastly, I seem to recall that Iceland has agreed to repay most of it in the long run (though I may be mistaken, that proposal has been voted out and reinstated several times, and I'm too lazy to find out the latest status)
I was born in Sri Lanka, where there were open conflicts in a civil war going back to 1984 (I was 2 years old) and riots back to the 70's. Did the West care? Nope... Again, nothing much the rest of the world is intersted in. And unlike the "peaceful revolution", a lot of people died :
In all the years I've spent in the U.S. I could find 1 or 2 mentions on CNN maybe, but that's about it.
I hate to put it in these terms, but unless there's actual interest to the rest of the world and resources at stake, no one really cares. It's the cold hard truth.
Same with the war in Darfur... Which incidentally has been going on as open conflict since 2003, but tensions and clashes go back to 1991. Did you hear about it back then?
The biggest journalistic failing of the BBC - who are like the rest of the UK TV media legally required to not editorialise the news - is that they go overboard, and will present two sides to every damn issue. This means they regularly air the views of absolute nut-jobs whose input on stories is batshit-insane, but are included just to try and be fair and balanced.
"This means they regularly air the views of absolute nut-jobs whose input on stories is batshit-insane, but are included just to try and be fair and balanced."
To be fair, that does cover both the Government and the Opposition these days.
When one of the sides is British, the BBC presents one side, or presents the other side in a completely jaundiced way that omits relevant but inconvenient facts.
The smaller the country, the easier it is to find common grounds, or to reach a compromise that satisfies all parties.
> An assembly is elected to write a new constitution [...]. The only qualifications for candidacy are adulthood and the support of 30 people.
This wouldn't work in a large country such as the USA. There are simply too many people with extreme views that would make such an election impossible.
Successful democracies are not characterized by allowing every fancy extremist undercurrent arbitrary veto power. In the USA, most controversial decisions are not blocked by extremists, but by representatives who confuse the dominating media presence of extremists with actual representation in the population.
If the republicans would not go to such extreme lengths to accommodate the feelings of every conceivable nut case, they would probably be better off in the long run, and even non-schizophrenics would be able to see some direction in their politics.
I've heard about it, but mostly it's just not as interesting story. Modern mainstream media loves a bit of chaos, some struggle and bloodshed, it sells well for them however people very calmly going about things the right way and being decent human beings. Well, not so much a seller.
However, it probably wouldn't work anywhere with a significantly larger population size. Too many people with their own ideas causes things to fracture along ideological lines, rather than aiming for a common cause.
If the media did report on what happened in Iceland, how many people in the US would lift an eyebrow?
I don't know about Europeans or Asians but sadly not many in the US will as I hope.
I know this is purely anecdotal due to the influences of my friends and family in reacting to news like this. Not many of my friends/family are voracious readers on what's happening around the world and want to see how things are done. Even after I would explain to them what happened in Iceland or what we have failed to do with our banking executives, many would simply shrug and say "not much I can do".
I am confident if there was a research done on the attitudes of Americans, we would be dismayed to learn that many don't really care.
So does it really matter if the 'media suppresses' these info when in actually a reader can actually find all sorts of news if he or she bothers to look?
I would argue that it's a feeling of 'what can be done?' more than literally not caring.
From what I've read, 1/3 or less of the colonists were in favor of the American revolution. The only reason it happened is because the representatives did not take a vote. Would anybody be surprised if a lot less than that percentage proactively care about their liberty today?
Of the people I know that do really care about what's happening in the US today, most seem to feel helpless to stop it.
By the same coin, only about ~1/3 of the colonists were "Loyalists". The remainder didn't necessarily want the revolution but would have aided it had it happened, or would have been OK with the status quo had it been left that way.
I feel the same kind of apathy is strong in the UK, at this point I think our situation is worse than the US but nobody seems to care. Even to the point there is social stigma attached to bringing the subject up with most people, but then maybe I need to meet more people...
It sounds like they had a nice outcome. But it's important to remember that the population of Iceland is about 320 thousand whereas the population of the US is about 320 million.
I often wonder whether many of the US's problems are simply scaling problems and I wonder how many political scientists see it that way?
I find it striking that Al-Jazeera (the Arab news network?) did cover it and show an awsome interview with the Icelandic President. "A too strong financial sector takes all the 21st century talent and that is bad"
Icelander here. There is nothing awesome about our president. He may seem like a cool guy, but for example he allowed himself to be a PR whore for the banks before the bust, tarnishing the presidency. Now he's all tough on banksters ... ?
The guy put MEDALS - ACTUAL MEDALS - on the corrupt bankers.
Here he is giving the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Cross Medal to the two highest-level execs of Kaupthing Bank: http://lydveldi.blog.is/img/tncache/250x250/ce/lydveldi/img/... [edit - no, this is the Iceland Commerce and Export Award 2005 he's giving to them - here's a picture of the falcon-cross medal ceremony in 2007: http://www.forseti.is/media/orginal/aeae7417f17892d.jpg - 4th from the right is Kaupthing head Sigurður Einarsson; Björgólfur Guðmundsson received the medal in 2005 (can't find a picture)]
Then he tells lies on behalf of the country in interviews, saying Iceland is doing this or will do that, stuff that just isn't true. He fabricates stuff. As president. Appearing in official capacity.
Even if all he did was to speak overly strongly outwards as effectively-powerless president, thus jeopardizing international relations that officially represented people in actual powers are handling - even if he did only that I would be outraged and would wish for him to resign. He's not just a loudmouth - he's a goddamn liar.
Fuck Ólafur.
I understand that people like him. He's charismatic. Thing is that as he is using his time as precident for self-serving PR, he's effectively on a taxpayer-funded campaign to clean up his image and make people like him. You're not aware of his background so he looks good. Please check the guy out before you support him; He hasn't earned any kind of respect yet.
It's interesting how he mentions that the IT- and high tech sectors blossomed after the collapse of the financial sector, as engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists no longer where working in banks.
It may or may not be a conspiracy but i have seen numerous examples where big name media outlets like CNN have made glaring inaccuracies in reporting stories. For example reports on the current situation in Congo(DRC) differ from what local reporters on the ground are reporting and are often merely used as tools in a wider international political game(Push a story to put pressure on a group) http://in2eastafrica.net/simplistic-narrative-used-to-distor....
Also sometimes shocking is the content their editors deem fit for news(Was once shocked to see L.Lohan going to court as a headline story on CNN International, not CNN USA)
Again there might not be a big media club deciding which stories to cover or which agenda to push but individual media houses are clearly biased in their coverage of selected news stories. You just have to watch them long enough to notice it.
One critical element that the story did not mention was the imposition of capital controls to enable effective structural reform. This is something that has not been done (at least not collectively) since the post-war period often known as the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-1971).
Ironically, in the same year the people of Iceland democratically elected to default on sovereign obligations, the IMF released a paper entitled, "Default in Today's Advanced Economies: Unnecessary, Undesirable, and Unlikely" ...
I don't know why, but it is a good example of how small states are still capable of acting in the interest of it's people, while large states are captured by corrupt interests of one sort or another.
because Iceland is smaller than hicksville, and basically has naturally provided almost free energy... what happens there cannot be duplicated anywhere else.
Better than democracy, where a majority can impose rules on a few, it would be better we had a strict laws that could be learned by 5 year old in under 5 minutes, like, "thou shall not impose your will or arm another".
And then have groups of people that just get together to grow and/or share on some ideals.
Impossible by definition. Any adult can find scores of loopholes in anything that is codified in a way so simple that a 5 year old can learn it in under 5 minutes. If your law is riddled with loopholes, then it can't be "strict" for any definition of the word.
Putting "thou" in the law isn't a good start. Aside from being faux biblical it implies the rule is written in older language which might no longer mean what it seems to mean today.
The big difference between Code Napoleon and Common Law legal systems is the system of precedent. In Sweden you can read and understand the rules, in the US what's important is how the laws have been interpreted by the courts in past "similar" cases.
Sounds cute, but imposing one's will is a necessary (defining?) component of living organisms. Rocks and minerals don't impose will.
Also, github is a commercial company. Can you elaborate on what you mean by ">"? The relation between a group of people sharing ideals and a republic vs. democracy is not clear to me.
What i mean is that democracy can be "hacked", e.g.:
1)First empoverish people, them give them presents (like a government job) and then just keep them at those (sheep) jobs voting for whatever your will, or else they lose their jobs. This is to what i see as the current trend.
Solutions:
1) 6 hours max work hours, instead of 8. More creativity, no unemployment and more happiness, health and society involment (e.g. making friends and "art").
2) Simple law, like the one i proposed before, and easy to learn. Test it with a 6 year old. When people start an ecosystem around crime it will only generate more crime, since the ecosystem wants to thrive.
3) a github like collaborative space for science, cities, etc. Goal, e.g. : to establish a moon colony, or to eliminate diseases or pain, or get to immortality. Btw dear rich people you will die someday and your statistical chances are to reincarnate in some baby in a poor country.
1. The "media" got together and said to each other, "We better not cover this story at all, because it will give too many people dangerous ideas"
or
2. Media outlets individually (particularly in the US) decided not to cover the actions of the Icelandic government because they think most of their viewers don't care much about Iceland and/or because "check out what has slowly been happening in Iceland over the past 5 years" isn't much of a breaking news story.
This story has been covered, but just because it isn't to the extent that you wish it was covered does not mean a conspiracy must exist.
NPR did a story on Iceland just two days ago: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/01/170867071/episode-...