Ed,
OK, here goes.
I am totally persuaded from a mass of anthropological evidence that humans
live, work and make decisions best in groups of no more than about ten or
adult individuals. For various ergonomic and environmental reasons this is
how we had to spend at least 100,000 years of our existence on fairly open
savannahs and our genes have shaped our behaviours accordingly. This is the
size of football teams, terrorist cells, army platoons and special squads.
Boards of directors, inner cabinets, royal commissions, special committees
(as in our House of Commons), are rarely larger. And it is this size of
opinion-making, decision-taking body that I am pretty sure takes place at
the top of governments when important decisions have to be taken on this or
that.
However, there can be several groups of this size at any one time,
depending on the number of particular problems and issues that happen to
have landed on the government plate. Undoubtedly a smaller number of
individuals immediately around the leader -- one or two key civil servants,
one or two influential public individuals, one or two personal friends
perhaps -- form a pivotal group that, in turn, creates the other more
specialized groups and remains key decision-making members of them.
Whatever the constitutional complexion of the government -- whether a
dictatorship, a bureaucracy or a so-called democracy -- I'm sure that a
similar pattern exists in all of them. It's a moving feast with only a
passing resemblance to what might be expected if you were to draw an
organizational chart of the government or describe it formally in a text book.
If you like, it's hunter-gathering all over again -- but then I don't think
we've ever left them. They're always there -- sycophants or independants --
at the very top in all organisations immediately around the leader.
Keith
At 10:18 29/10/2009 -0400, you wrote:
I posted the following a few days ago and got no response. I'm posting
again because I think the question I raise at the end of the original
posting is an important one.
Ed
We tend to see societies like Canada and the US as liberal and democratic
and responsive to the general public. But is that how they really operate?
Are political parties really open and responsive to the public at large or
are they corporate entities doing what they have to in order to promote
themselves in seeking and maintaining power? Do they really hold the
interests of the public as primary or do they largely behave in their
self-interest? When they show themselves to the public, are they showing
their true and honest selves, or are they behaving like soap adds on TV?
Hey, look, there's Harper playing piano and singing a Beatles' song at the
NAC. Gee, he's a nice open guy after all, not someone who's closeted away
from scrutiny at the PMO. IMHO, it's no better than selling soap.
And one also has to think about the complex linkages that exist between the
political and corporate sectors. Lobbying, getting the political sector to
do what the corporate sector wants, has become a major industry -- invisible
to the public but enormously powerful. Consider health care reform in the
US, beneficial to the general public but potentially very harmful to the
health insurance industry. So send in the lobbyists to make sure it doesn't
emerge as something that threatens corporate power and profitability and
doesn't do much for the public either.
Who really governs us? And what really is ethical behaviour when it comes
to government and the corporate sector?
I think the question is particularly relevant in light of the recent
invasion of the House of Commons by young people who were very concerned
about the lack of a firm government stance on what to do about climate
change. Given that the December conference on this issue and the
government doing little more than politely trading insults with the
opposition during question period, were the kids right in invading the
sacred space of the politicians? I tend to think they were. How else
could they get their point across? While the politicians regard the House
of Commons as sacredly theirs, who really does it belong to? Might not
arrangements be made to let members of the public in to make their case
directly instead of making them have to shout from the gallery and be
dragged out?
And I know the committee system exists, but it too tends to slow,
cumbersome and exclusive, used most often to shed darkness instead of light.
Ed encore
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
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