At 15:37 26/07/2012, Darryl wrote:
Keith that is precisely why voting on public matters should be a
vote by the public. If there is not a clear majority that have
voted, the item must be brought back to the table and information
given out, then resubmitted for another vote - to the public.
See below
(D&N) Your comment would be much the same for Canada - grad's from
poli-sci, law and maybe from some economics area although a few are
involved with some corporate endeavour that may or may not have
been a "family business" - like shipping. Government is a place for
the "elite" and they are now using their position to maintain their
position (so to speak).
Your points are precisely those I was making in my original post. The
present system has now reached its sell-by date. Whenever the
socio-economic environment changes significantly then new skills and
methods are selected preferentially -- along with a new associated
class. For example, the Black Plague brought about the rise of a new
cash-paid rural proletariat arose out of the hitherto powerless rural
serfs (not far off slavery in its fullest sense) who hardly saw a
coin from one month to another. When early iron and steel-making was
first invented, the new class then span another new yoeman farmer
class with his more effective agricultural equipment. And so on -- as
new specializations grew.
The point is that when the present voting system finally emerged
about a century ago, there was only a handful of classes with their
own agendas. But government was sufficiently powerful to control
them. Today, and particularly since WWII, we have had an explosion of
new specializations -- all of which are necessary in a modern
economy. Each of them has a great deal of economic power but
governments can't control all these at any one time and almost any
one of them is liable to cause trouble and to capture too many
resources. In our lifetime we've seen three of these: 1. the military
complex (which Eisenhower was afraid of when he was president); 2.
the transnational corporations setting up in cheap labour countries
so as to import the goods they used to make at home; 3. investment
banking making hay with governments' printed money (by inventing a
slew of other printed documents taking the place of money) and the
subsequent wrecking of normal retail banks.
The first of the above has probably subsided for good (the latest
armaments being unaffordable); the second is now beginning to
stabilize because, with increasing use of automation, the TNCs can
start to bring production back home; the third is probably going to
be brought to heel with legislation (20 years too late). But there
are several more powerful groupings (e.g. the media, the medical
profession) which might become as dangerous) and there may be one or
two more that are quite new (e.g. hedge funds, phone networks,
genetics) and we aren't able to assess them sufficiently. Undoubtedly
there'll be more to come.
But we don't have the type of voting and governmental systems which
can keep a close observation on all these on our behalf. The public
need to have access to a variety of "governmental sub-systems" (for
want of a better description).
[D&N] But, again, that is only a "symptom" of a much deeper problem
- from the values of the individual which then accumulates to a
major problem within the society as a whole. We cannot, as the
medical system is wont to do, treat the symptoms and expect to
change the political scene. It is the values that the children are
learning that is creating the problems. These are then acted upon in
their adult lives.
Agreed.
Keith
On 25/07/2012 11:53 PM, Keith Hudson wrote:
Ed,
Two other points about the present political system that might be
mentioned is that: (a) the active membership of local political
parties is only a small fraction (10%?) of what they used to be
50/100 years ago; (b) politicians have become less and less
representative of the real economic world around them. A
significant, and rising, proportion of our new MPs are individuals
who've graduated with non-scientific or non-technical degrees and
have spent their time as "research assistant" interns within
Westminster without ever having experience as an employer or
employee in the world that actually generates the money that pays
for their keep.
Keith
At 13:51 25/07/2012, you wrote:
In some agreement with Keith, I don't see the increase of
opportunities for the young as being a matter of political
ideology or politics or even a matter of what the modern human
sciences are telling us. The thing that has generated
opportunities that enable young people to get ahead and transcend
the barriers that prevented their parents from doing so are
massive changes in the socio-economic world. I was a depression
baby, born in western Canada to immigrant parents in the early
1930's. I remember adults talking about how gloomy things
were. One of my cousins, ten years older than me, wanted to go to
university or at least get some form of higher education. He was
told to forget about it, that's for rich kids.
Then came the war and the postwar years. There was an explosion
of opportunities, even a kid like me, born poor and without much
hope, wound up at university with ever so many kids from similar
backgrounds. My major regret at the time was that the wide open
world I was now in came at the cost of the lives of some six
million Jews and millions of other people. There is another, a
more pervasive regret that has dogged me and I'm sure many other
depression babies. The fact that my earliest growing up took
place in a word of almost zero hope has made me a rather gloomy
person -- expect the worst; there is no best.
I would disagree with Keith on his view that the plight of the
African child in the diamond or gold mine is a product of bad
luck. I'd argue that his or her plight is a product of centuries
of colonialism and capitalist repression which at some point has
to be, and hopefully will, be swept into the dust bin of history,
though right now I can't say how that might happen. I would,
however, totally agree that political parties, whether right or
left wing, will have very little to with it. I see political
parties as corporate entities looking after their own interests
and not those of the public, though there are large
exceptions. It will likely take some major conflagration, a major
war perhaps, to enable the African child to walk out of the gold
or diamond mine, get an education, and become something other than
a socio-political causality. If we can do it, he or she can do
it, though I have to admit it will be much harder for them.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK,
INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 11:22 PM
Subject: [Futurework] A Plague on Both Houses
The rapidly accumulating evidence of the modern human sciences is
now telling us with increasing clarity that the fundamental
assumptions of both left- and right-politics are fallacious. Even
the wonders of a "mixed economy" or a "third way" -- as
individually promoted by both Labour and Conservative prime
ministers in this country in the last 20 years -- have proved to
be risible. Differences of poverty, opportunity and political
power remain much the same as always in any advanced country
whatever type of government, sometimes slightly reducing when
great effort and spending is made under a socialist government,
more usually expanding when eyes are taken off the ball in
so-called free-enterprise government..
The whole debate can be reduced to a simple example in which the
observations, large-scale surveys and lab researches of
educationalists, psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists,
geneticists and evolutionary biologists are all in almost total
agreement. It is that, at the time of puberty, the adolescent is
the recipient of his or her personality and potential skills. He
or she is hardly at all the creator of those specifications. The
individual has had very little to do with laying down those
specifications nor, apart from luck, the way that those
specifications subsequently play themselves out and largely
determine the experiences and happiness in the remainder of his or
her lifetime.
Excluding the luck of a lottery draw or inheriting a million from
an unknown relative, there are three main lucks in life. They're
all interlinked but are sufficiently different in their effects
that they can be discussed separately. The first is the emotional,
informational and cultural environments mainly imparted by parents
but also influenced by school-teachers in the early years of
childhood. By the age of puberty, any social or intellectual
skills not laid down by then will never be fully recoverable in
later life, no matter how hard one tries.
The second luck is the nature and abilities of one's post-puberty
peer group to whom the individual now devotes much more attention
as, together, they approach adulthood. It is in this period that
the individual can now develop and enhance the comparative
advantage of his or her best skills, testing them against others
in the peer group and finding a role within it. As the prospect of
adult life draws closer, friends made in this period are usually
friends for life.
The third luck is the nature and abilities of, usually, just one
or two patrons (often one's parents) who have a sufficient span of
like social contacts which enable a young adult to finally find an
initial lodgement in an adult group which, to a greater or lesser
extent, is normally protective of entry by any young hopeful. This
third luck also includes the size of the income made available in
a particular group, or the intrinsic interest of a job, and also
whether that particular specialization continues to be favoured by
the changing economic environment.
To summarize:
1. Unless a socialist government interferes in the intimate family
life of every child from his or her earliest months and years in
the hope of equalizing opportunities then inequalities of
personalities and abilities are broadly set by the age of puberty.
No amount of good intent by governments can change this.
2. A right-wing government cannot make claims of virtue for its
apparent heroes. Those individuals are the product of good luck
just as an African child working and dying in a diamond or gold
mine is the product of bad luck.
Politics is already in a bad way. It's not likely to get any
better in the coming years as we try to work off the immense
private, corporate and governmental debts that the policies of
both left-wing and right-wing governments have lumbered us with.
The modern human sciences are telling us quite radical things
about what we really are like. The new politics will probably be
concerned with how power can be confined within groups -- where it
is more accessible to be pulled down if necessary -- rather than
between groups as now. I can take this no further. For now, until
the findings of the human sciences spread around for a generation
or two, I would join the refrain of an increasing number of the
young. It's not very constructive, I'm afraid: A Plague on Both Houses!
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
----------
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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