Oh, crap it was Tuesday yesterday.
For my defence, I had another news day at the university radio yesterday, so I was at the university for about nine hours, and all through that I planned how I'll write this the moment I get home. But then when I did get home I was hungry and had gotten a bunch of annoying e-mails over the day I had to answer first and then once I had the time to write, I had completely forgotten that it's a Tuesday.
Also for my defence, we've been doing this for almost two years, and this is my only missed post.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about yesterday was democracy for some more. Last week I talked about whether media is relevant to working democracy in today's world. Yesterday I want to talk about if democracy actually works at all. If its actually a good way to govern a country.
This thinking started when someone linked this article on facebook last week. (Ok, I've been thinking it about before too, but that's the reason I'm thinking about it right now.)
Basically the point in that article is, that you don't really get very good results and decisions with democracy, because people simply are not smart enough. The point is that people don't recognise better leadership skills than they have themselves, which means they vote for people who are not all that good at being a leader of a country, because they don't realise they're not, because they themselves are not.
I want to note right now that of course there are politicians who have excellent leadership skills and actually know what they're doing. The problem is not all of them do. And they still get through, because most people don't realise they actually have no idea what they're talking about.
Ok, let's take a moment to think about who we want making decisions in this country. Or any country.
We want them to be people, who think about the good of everyone, not just one group of people. Because when everyone's doing better everyone's doing better. Our tiny Finland isn't known for Nokia and Angry Birds because we force people to pay for school. It's because everyone can go an educate themselves and have brilliant ideas. More people doing well is good for the society, and economy, and science, and probably anything you look at.
You also want them (the decision-makers) to be people who actually know something about the thing they're making a decision about. Or, alternatively, that they're people who will find out things, the facts and the science behind what ever decision they're doing. It's ok not to know about the thing to start off with, but just find out everything you can before making a decision that affects five million people. In this country. A lot more in most other.
And I think this is the point that brings out the problem: the politicians don't actually have to know anything about anything in order to get elected. They just have to be convincing. (Ok, they probably do know anything about anything.)
But take examples:
They're thinking how to get the economy to rise. They are discussing whether to cut expenses or rise taxes, and who's taxes. The economists say (I'm not an expert on this, I might easily be wrong about what they actually say, because I don't know.) that cutting is a bad idea. It doesn't work. Don't do it. And then they do it.
Or another example, that I actually do know something about. The new law saying universities have have to have a lower limit for how many percent of freshmen are new applicants every year. And the one that I think didn't pass about not giving the student allowance for more than one bachelor's degree and one master's degree. Both of these are terrible ideas. I know what they're trying to do with them, get people fast in and fast out. But any university student, or anyone who's thinking of applying to a university can tell you what it actually does is that people stop applying to schools and stop graduating from schools, because as a result they're both bad business.
And I don't think this is at all what they're wanting to happen.
The point here was people who actually know about the thing that's being decided should make the decision. Or at least participate in the decision making and actually be heard. Because politicians simply don't necessarily know about anything other than politics. If even about that. When making a decision about nuclear power, you should take nuclear physicists, and you should take people who know something about the energy use in Finland, and ask them. And then do what they say. Because they know better.
When making a decision about how to let people into universities, you should ask the universities and the students, because they literally live in that world an know how it actually works.
When making a decision about health care reforms, you should ask the people who work in health care. Because they're the ones who know how it would work better. And then you listen to them.
Because people who spend literally their whole lives researching something or studying or working in the place that a decision is made about, they simply know better than the politician.
Politicians are not gods. They don't know everything about everything. They don't know everything about anything. They might be great at foreign relations, and that's good. They can take care of that. Meanwhile, let the people who know something real about today's health care systems or nuclear reactors make the decisions concerning them.
And of course there are a lot of things that make a difference as to what should be decided on a specific matter, but then you just need to take a bunch of experts from all the different fields that affect the thing, and you let them work it out. Because they know better.
I'm suddenly realising I sound like our dad...
What was I talking about...?
Oh, right. Democracy doesn't really work, because you don't get the best leaders with democracy. You get leaders some people think are the best leaders. And this close to an election it really seems like the only thing that's certain (aside from death and taxes, I suppose) is human stupidity.
Of course democracy stops completely crazy people from seizing power all to themselves, which is good, because that would suck worst, but I still think human kind could do better than choosing mediocre leaders from amongst themselves.
Or even if we had only mediocre leaders, those leaders would be smart enough to realise they don't know everything, and actually listen to people who know more than they do on a topic.
Because even though with democracy we do get rational, intelligent and reasonable representatives making our decisions, we all to often also get those who really are none of those things.
Also, as a last note, but this annoys me enough that I want to say it out loud. I get that keeping the promises that are made before elections is important, but politicians should be allowed to change their mind. If they realise mid-term that they've been simply wrong about something before, they should be allowed to change their mind and make better decisions based on the new facts. Because not admitting you're wrong simply because you promised to stick to the wrong or vague knowledge is ridiculous and does not help make the world better.
~matu
PS. A topic for you for today. Shoes.
PPS. Sorry I was late!
PPS. Are we going to do that whole story-thing over the summer and if yes, what will be our schedule for the posts and when do we want to start? Cause May is almost like summer. At least to someone in university. I mean, I only have like six days and a total of about 18 hours I have to spend at the university in the next couple of weeks and then that's it. Although I do have that one biology exam coming up (again) on the 21st. Anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment