Post Politics
From Zanecorpwiki
2010-03-14
Post-politics is about the source of policy. Policy is currently generated primarily by politics, and is (universally) biased not towards the benefit of the people, but towards re-election. The genius of democracy is that the people control the elections, so this channels the political dynamic--which has been at the heart of government since the dawn of civilization--and channels this political concern towards the benefit of the people.
In other words, you don't need to rely on selfless leaders to benefit the people, we simply make it in their self interest to benefit the people.
The problem is that the mechanism isn't perfect. In the modern era, at least, there has never been a golden age of democracy where it worked as a highly efficient channel for political ambition to benefit the governed. It may be argued that it "worked" in classical times, but even if that's true, there are insurmountable and legitimate obstacles for naively implementing classical democracy in a modern setting.
Which is to say, modern democracy may fail at the goal of creating policy that benefits the governed with efficiency, but it's no-doubt the best system we've seen to do so. The best way to think about this is in economic terms. How much of every tax dollar benefits the governed? In a perfect system we could expect $1 in to generate more than $1 of increase in standard of living. In other words, I should be better off paying taxes than not.[notes 1] Post-politics says that to make it better, we have to re-implement democracy in a way that we feel taxes are a good deal.
Furthermore, post politics says that the way to get here is to cut out or at least deminish the role of politics in deciding policy. To understand this, let's break down politics a little bit. Politics can mean pandering to the people. While the elites (like myself) may look down on this pandering, and I do think it is a legitimate problem, I actually don't think that pandering is a very big problem.
Pandering is tempered by pragmatism. Even if the mainstream is susceptible to manipulation (and we can reduce both the susceptibility and the manipulation itself) it's at least a lot harder to fool a lot of the people all the time than it is to fool a few people. Those who want to manipulate the system at least have a hard time about it, and it's only going to get harder.[notes 2] Also, the idea that "Grandma was right"[notes 3] says it's not such a bad thing that the hyper-rationalism of the elites is held in check by popular opinion.
The real political problem I refer to "politics as career".
Notes
- ↑ Incidentally, this view that one is better off for paying taxes may be widely held in Scandinavian and other European countries. While I'm not in-favor of high taxes, we should feel that we're getting a good deal on paying the taxes we do have to pay. My understanding of the Scandanavian situation is based on a number of news stories I've read lately that seem to imply this fact, though I have not seen the underlying studies myself.
- ↑ One of the problems of the modern era is that it got increasingly easier--primarily due to mass media--to create and manipulate cohorts on a grand scale. This trend will most likely naturally reverse itself as media continues to fragment, so I'm not concerned.
- ↑ TODO: tell the story "Grandma is right" refers to.
