Critics of democracy are often pushed into a certain intellectual corner. Anti-democratic, radical, dubious. To name just the most harmless.

This is a modern way of influencing opinions and steering them in the desired direction. The general suspicion here is that the masses are being kept lethargic and uncritical so that they can exploit the weaknesses of the system to their own advantage.

But anyone who criticizes the existing form of democracy and makes fundamental proposals for reform towards a better functioning democracy and society is in reality a democrat who stands out positively from the Pharisees of the current political establishment.

Democracy per se is not good or bad, it is the way it is shaped and how it is intertwined with society that can make a democracy dysfunctional.

There are enough signs of a disintegrating, dysfunctional Berlin Republic. Here is just a small selection:

• Reform backlog
• Lobbying and economic integration
• Clientele policy
• Loss of reality in daily politics
• Failure due to acute problems
• Consensus policy instead of solution policy

But the problems of the Berlin Republic go deeper and evoke the image of the Augean stables. These topics will have to be addressed in further articles in order to shed more light on Germany’s self-inflicted disaster.

First of all, however, it should be emphasized that a democratic reform, whatever form it may take, must always lead to a different form of democracy and not to a change in the system of rule!

In times of hysteria and panic, when people fear for life and limb, irrationality runs rampant.

The corona virus is just one danger to human life, like many others: traffic accidents, cancer, AIDS, malaria, Ebola, poisonous snake bites, wild animals or, as in earlier times, the plague. For the fearful, the world is always full of deadly dangers.

Two things are often forgotten. Firstly, man is man’s worst enemy and secondly, life has never been without risks, dangers, wrong decisions and death as the ultimate consequence.

And the repression of the fact that death is part of life sometimes leads to striking absurdities:

• The assessment of the Covid19 virus as relevant to humanity
• The exaggerated and sometimes pointless measures to contain a dangerous virus that is by no means relevant to humanity
• The misjudgment of the effectiveness of the measures taken
• The hubris of being able to control the environment / nature as desired and have it under control

Death awaits at the end of every life. The only question is how and when the end will come. And this was individual and mostly unpredictable before Covid19 and will remain so after Covid19.

So basically nothing changes with Covid19. Only the irrationality of human actions, driven by fear, increases dramatically.

In many practical fields of research, the focus is not on stability, safety and foresight, but on feasibility, hoped-for future opportunities and financial viability.

This applies in particular, but not only, to the paradigms of program development. However, these can be taken pars pro toto

• Security? Too expensive and time-consuming!
• Stability? The customer / user informs us if something is not working!
• Future-proof? In times when only the new counts, the old can no longer be supported
• New functions? Of course. As fast as the Internet lines transmit the data.

Decisions on the global implementation or introduction of new technologies/research findings are not madeon the basis of risk-conservative standards of systemic equilibrium, but on the basis of the pursuit of short-term advantage.

The list of disasters is not limited to those triggers that underlie the above principle, but also includes those that do.

Financial feasibility and actual feasibility are sometimes mutually exclusive. More on this later in this blog.