Parts of the diaspora still approach Greek politics with the same tolerance that once enabled dysfunction at home. Many approach politicians from Greece with sentiment instead of scrutiny.
By Steve Bakalis
As recent political tensions in France show, the public debate over taxation, social benefits, and fiscal discipline is once again reigniting the very questions Frédéric Bastiat posed two centuries ago — about how much the state can give, and who ultimately pays for it.
Everyone wants more support from the state — cheaper services, more benefits, fewer taxes. But as the French economist warned nearly two centuries ago, “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”
That simple truth cuts through the noise of modern politics. From Paris to Athens, the illusion of “free” public goods remains one of the great political fictions of our time. Governments promise generosity, citizens expect protection, but the bill always lands somewhere — usually on the same taxpayers who believed they were being spared.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell made a related point: “Power lies with those who control finance, not with those who understand how to use it.” The danger, he warned, is that those in charge of spending often lack both understanding and restraint. Between Bastiat’s realism and Russell’s cynicism lies a common truth — political power, when detached from economic responsibility, breeds ignorance and moral fatigue.
Greece’s experience with the diaspora
Greece’s experience is a vivid example. For years, political elites spent recklessly, turning the state into a system of mutual dependency. When the reckoning came in 2010, the result was not just financial collapse but a deeper loss of civic trust. As Bastiat also wrote, “The surest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” In Greece, laws too often became tools of convenience rather than pillars of fairness.
Against this background, the recent visit of Ioannis Loverdos to Australia offered a revealing snapshot of how this dynamic extends beyond Greece’s borders — even into its diaspora. Loverdos, serving as Deputy Minister for Greeks Abroad, arrived with the message that “the vote is power,” urging expatriates to participate more actively in Greek elections. He framed voting as both a civic right and a way of reinforcing their importance to the Greek state: “If you vote, you become more important to Greece — the state needs you more.”
The statement, though politically polished, carried a quiet irony. Within the first pillar of the Greek-Australian diaspora — the network of official community bodies and ecclesiastical hierarchies that often speak for the diaspora but rarely from within it — the response was courteous but uncritical. It was a familiar script: polite receptions, ceremonial speeches, and public expressions of unity. Yet beneath the surface, there was little debate about what the visit truly meant for representation, accountability, or the broader health of Greek democracy abroad.
Sentiment replaces scrutiny
This quiet deference to officialdom contrasts sharply with the political culture that many Greek-Australians embody in their daily lives. In Australia, public trust is sustained by scrutiny; leaders are respected only when they are accountable. Yet when the same citizens engage with Greek institutions, the standards often shift. Sentiment replaces scrutiny, nostalgia tempers criticism, and deference to authority persists — a paradox that Bastiat would have recognized as the soft form of dependency that sustains the illusion of the benevolent state.
The Loverdos visit, then, was not just a diplomatic exercise but a mirror. It reflected how parts of the diaspora — despite their civic maturity within Australia — still approach Greek politics with the same tolerance that once enabled dysfunction at home. It also exposed the limited representativeness of those “official pillars” of diaspora life that claim to speak for all Greek-Australians, yet too often serve as extensions of Athens’ political theatre.
This contrast — between civic vigilance in one country and deference in another — exposes a deeper cultural paradox. In societies like Australia, public trust depends on transparency and the testing of ideas; in Greek political life, it too often depends on ceremony, symbols, and sentiment.
Bastiat’s message is not an argument against the state but a call for honesty — to remember that every right entails a duty, every benefit a cost. The state doesn’t exist above society; it lives through it, and off it. When citizens forget that, politics becomes theatre, and fiscal irresponsibility a shared delusion.
As Russell observed, power that acts without reflection or accountability endangers not only those who wield it but the society that tolerates it.
Dr. Steve Bakalis is an economist and has worked with La Trobe University, The University of Melbourne, Victoria University, and universities across the Asia-Pacific and Gulf Region.
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