Obstacles to Democracy
In technologically developed countries, in which the technology of generating consent is also advanced, it seems that the most hostile obstacle to democracy is deep within one of its sponsors: the media. Major parts of the mainstream media's support and even tolerance of ethical democracy has had unethical economical and political limits. They may support democracy merely based on their benefits of developing good fame and hunting more ears and eyes. The support ends here, leaving the society in starvation for freedom, as those parts of the media are not committed to democracy anymore when the benefit equations dictate otherwise. For example, when they are supporting a huge source of money which will bring in facilities to develop the media's influence and power. Competition for people's attention does not help as much as needed to resolve the problems of the huge money/power bias in the media. Flow of highly intelligent and ethical people to key media roles is strictly limited, as they won't be considered to be suitable game players. Also, there are made stereotypes, prejudice and bias regarding some minorities, e.g. religious Muslims, who despite merits, are very unlikely to access high roles. The media outlets are the new soft dictators who impose a hidden type of soft dictatorship ruled by greed of those who are suitable to access high media roles. Any solutions? The "media - money" relation should not be left democratically uncontrolled, as the the "political party - money" relations should not. The power of the media should be democratized by direct power-sharing elections such that people can directly cast their votes in support of the truly suitable and ethical media leaders, to claim their (people's) share of the broadcasting right. Personal broadcasting via internet should be free from the rules of money, while ensuring a free economy. This is a challenging problem to solve. The definition of "personal broadcasting rights" is important. The money should not rule broadcasting, people should, according to Ethics. The holes of fair broadcasting ship should be taken care of. Creating countless "personal!" sites will not be assumed quite personal anymore. Non-democratic money corrupts the media and military industries to an extent they may need to be fed only by democratically controlled national money, despite the drawbacks. The supervision of people should be done more directly to be enough! It is not still clear that the 9/11 tragedy has not been a real conspiracy of the militarist stakeholders with strong media support. The media elections is not less important than presidency. Another part of the solution is probably e-Democracy including verifiable e-Voting and online verifiable popular decision making portals, which can help with providing crystal clear elections and also fast direct political decision making power for citizens in ultra-important ethical cases like going to war.
Nowadays, the second most dangerous obstacle to democracy is in charge of the most technologically advanced (thus powerful) country. Democracy's most
aggressive claimant: the warmonger and criminal part of the US government. The political choice of US citizens is in practice limited to two parties which preach democracy in an accepted way locally and in a nasty way internationally. The international one is a huge obstacle for human kind's progress. Fuelled by media propaganda, US lead a kind of holocaust against Muslims in Iraq, as reported by Washington Post: "A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died [been killed] in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. ... Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence [resulted directly from the criminals' so called war on terror! Criminals tried to lead the world against crime!] and the rest [died] from disease and other causes, according to the [an almost pro war media member's] study." source: Washington Post . A short record of the US government's anti-democratic crimes could be found in this film. One is really tempted to the appeal of an international democracy which will be controlled based on the direct e-vote of everybody, free from things such as UN Veto, resource wasting in warfare, non-free border-controlled trade, immigration problems and bully of the powerful parties and people.