Greek elections over the weekend produced the usual suspects as ‘winners’: out of the frying pan into yet another frying pan. It is easy to see that management doesn’t have a clue and neither do citizens who are continually bombarded by lies and false promises. Consequently, they are unable to make good decisions.

Here is something different by way of Mish’s “reader Andrea who is from Italy but now resides in France …”:

Hello Mish.

As I told you some days ago (sez Andrea), in Italy something quite new and disruptive is happening in the political landscape. As expected, the “Movimento Cinque Stelle” (5 Stars Movement) had been the real winner of the recent round of regional elections a couple of weeks ago, and in my opinion it is worth to keep an eye on them especially in the light of the recent elections outcome in many European countries.

The founder of the movement is Beppe Grillo, a comic showman, very popular in the 70s and 80s. …

The movement is quite different from the other parties. It does not not a clear, hierarchic and defined organization. It is more a mixture of a method, a guideline and a set of rules to select candidates and programs and obtain its logo be part of the network.

Main Rules for the Five Star Movement

– Not be an elected politician prior to 5 Stelle

– Commit to stay in charge for no longer than 2 terms

– Commit to take a minimum salary and give the rest back to the community

– Post a public platform on the internet

– Be willing to hold a public debate on the platform

– Get out of the Euro and default on debt

In the latest elections, Five Star Movement candidates have been able to get almost everywhere between 10 and 20% of votes, sometimes even more, all without a single minute of TV advertising or a single advertising page on newspapers.

The movement has simply spread via the Internet, social networks and public meetings around the country. The message sent by their success is clearly: “we are fed up with this corrupted, inefficient and incompetent political class.”

Of course, Austrian Mish zeros in on the “get out of the euro and default”. It is hard to say which group is more didactic, Marxists or iron-fisted Austrians. Best bet right now is on the von Mises faction. Today’s Marxists have learned to ‘lighten up’, Austrians want the grandmothers to hurl their own grandchildren into the fire.

Non-Austrian Economic Undertow zeros in on a couple of things. First, default on the debt is popular, but done without care means total collapse of the interconnected economy. ‘Proper management of the debt’ is less popular but more responsible.

More important is the, “Movement candidates have been able to get almost everywhere between 10 and 20% of votes, sometimes even more, all without a single minute of TV advertising or a single advertising page on newspapers.”

Politics is reduced to winning elections at all costs and little more. Vast sums are required to market candidates on television who then become the property of the funds-providers. Votes are captured by marketing strategies that are identical to those used to market soap and automobiles. The choices are ‘Ford – Chevy’, ‘Coke – Pepsi’, Democrat – Republican. A successful political effort that does not require television marketing and high-priced ‘campaign professionals’ would be the shortest route to the end of such influences.

More Mish:

The only way the “Occupy Movement” is ever going to work is the way it just worked in Italy: vote the bums out, not in favor of more bums, but rather in favor of candidates with principles.

Here is the NY Times:

Mr. Grillo pointed to the row of fresh-faced Italians — candidates of his Five Star Movement — on the stage behind him. “These kids, they may be inexperienced — they still haven’t learned how to rig a budget, or give contracts to their friends,” he paused, his gravely voice drowned out by laughter and applause.

What they are, he said, is the product of the “hyper-democracy” that he has been promoting through his blog and the plethora of Web sites that have aggregated like-minded Italians bent on proselytizing for a new form of political activism.

It is through a deft mixture of mordant humor, righteous anger and grass-roots organization that Mr. Grillo’s movement is proving to others that it is no joke.

Committed to changing Italy’s entrenched political system by offering an Internet-driven, consensus-based alternative, the three-year-old Five Star Movement has quickly become a force to contend with in Italy’s fractious and fractured political arena.

In a first round of local elections earlier this month, candidates from the movement ran in 101 of 941 cities and captured nearly 200,000 votes — a national average of 9 percent — enough to become the second or third political force in some municipalities. In runoff elections this week the movement won mayoralties in one major city — Parma — and three smaller towns. The average age of the four mayors elected with the movement was 31 years, about half the average age of Parliament members.

Talk about grassroots: that has to throw the fear of God into the establishment: a political force that cannot be easily hammered into mediocratic subservience to business interests. What is interesting is how closely the ‘Five Star (Hotel)’ political movement parallels what was bruited about recently @ Economic Undertow:

– The idea is to form a real party not a vanity effort for a presidential candidate. The goal is to have candidates running for national, statewide and local/municipal elections … in every election.

– End corruption and drive money from government!

– No more ‘business as usual’.

– An American party, not one of multinational corporations or overseas interests.

– ‘Reality Based Policy’.

– No more bailouts, Ponzi schemes or free-lunches.

– No millionaire candidates or funders.

The problem with an organization such as Beppo’s is that it isn’t really an organization. There is a vague sense of what to do but no apparent grasp of the non-linear ‘phase-shift underway around the world. There is idealism but no petroleum. This gears with a conflicted public which demands entitlements even as they despise the manners of those who manage them. While people struggle to sort out the inner- conflict, events are solving the entitlements by taking them away. Our issue is the need to live within means … something none of us knows how to do!

Reader Sandor mentioned the Kubler-Ross’ five States of grieving terminal illness:

Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance

Reports from Greece: turning off the nat gas flow. They are running out of some medicine for the sick. Cash or nothing. Greece state is now in the Anger/Bargaining phase, although I imagine much of the population has already migrated to Depression. The USA is still in the Denial stage. Soon, once it becomes clear there is no ‘growth’ possible when the marginal utility of debt hits zero and there aren’t enough ‘free’ drugs to go around, we will see Anger. I imagine Germany and France will hit this phase soon as well. We are years away from a full-fledged Depression, but it seems necessary at this point. The interesting social dynamic is what happens when the religion of endless growth dies on the vine? It could conceivably lead to a conservation revolution. Humans are adaptable, especially the youngest.

Our immediate necessity is to shift from denial to acceptance without stopping at the anger state. We have to make this jump now, our tools are too destructive to allow for anger to take roots. Once underway there will be no other planet to escape to.

The decision-making has been marginalized. What a government in Spain or even China does right now doesn’t matter very much. The reason is because the process protects the elites from the consequences of their own actions. There is no credibility. Another related problem is the economic nature of the crisis unlike others that have been reactions to aggression and the prosecution of wars. Economics of the industrial past are not useful, there are inadequate conceptual foundations upon which effective policies can be built.

Consequently, there are unintended harsh outcomes that make things worse.

More on Grillo, here …