Politics is the way of making planned decisions. To make sure decisions fit the majority, decision makers are elected by majority (democracy) not forgetting rights of minority that are granted by institutions.
Plenty of interesting things are going on here – planning decisions (strategizing and decision making), fairness of majority (who is majority and who is represented by majority?), institutions and how they work. If one is having serious doubts about fairness and how strategies and decisions are made, doubts so serious that politics becomes an object of disgust, it is fair to say that he is an apolitical person.
Apolitical or not, election day is nearing. It is parliamentary elections and campaigns are at their highest. Messages like:
“Come out and vote”,
“We know how, they had their chance and blew it”,
“Make a change for the better”,
“We are fair, we don’t lie, and we don’t steal”,
“We are young, green, prosperous and smart” (just as our voters should be),
or simply “Vote for us” are popping everywhere making an apolitical person’s life a living hell.
Trying to figure my way out of that hell, rethinking whether I ought to become prosperous and smart (and do I have enough time at all to become such a desirable person) a thought struck me, and I cannot get rid of it. The idea is to quantify the potential of a change, of a transformation to a better state. I was wondering what my life would have looked like now, had the opposite party won every election during the last 30 or so years (the country I live in is that young!). Opposite party being the sum of ideas that hadn’t been elected. Just to eliminate obvious extremities, we can forget about programs of parties with the least votes won, as they present anomalies, common sense challenges or, simply, unlikely to ever happen ideas and are perceived by majority as such.
It is correct to say that only a finite count of valid (positive) and possible (economic) transformations exist. Given the infinite time, all transformations will be achieved, sooner or later. Choosing political option is just modifying the sooner or later part – what is impossible remains impossible no matter what party is holding the power. After all, there are external conditions that must be met for certain actions to be able to happen.
So, what are we electing? Whatever media and power strongholds are suggesting. If you are at least informed, you know the pulse of the time. In specific, we are choosing a trendy worldview and are evaluating the likelihood that politicians will be virtuous and fair.
Now, I’ll naively say that every political option that is not fair, every politician that is not virtuous, should not ever come near position of power (of decision making). Also, any political program that is negative – hindering, in a long run, freedoms, knowledge, prosperity… is just extremity, anomality. We are way past the first constitutions and first human rights definitions. We have established common ground rules essentially stating everybody is free to seek happiness and success, not disturbing other people’s freedom to do the same. Extra care is to be taken for the weakest of us. The ultimate goal is to make prosperity available to all with as little effort as possible, right?
Surely, domain of valid and possible political programs must contain actions with measurable effects. If that is not possible, does it even matter what option is chosen, do we even care how fast a desired state is going to be achieved? If you think that each party has its own experts on specific matters and are suggesting different solutions to the same problems, I’m asking how it is possible that experts in different parties think differently, measure results differently? Are strategies based on statistics, measurable science, and common goal of prosperity or on ideology and selective prosperity of few eligible? Sure, it is possible to have different solutions to a problem. Obviously, different prices must be paid for different solutions. Again, are we, in that case, just choosing the price we are ok to pay for the promised change? In the long run, if changes are perceived by the majority as good, the price paid will not be scrutinized. Does the vote really matter if we are moving toward our ideal ultimate goal?
So, domain of possible solutions contains measurable actions with defined cost. But who should invent possible solutions?
As for economics and other complex questions considering various professions, can anybody outside of that profession make an expert proposal or decision on the topic? I know the idea is to make professional explanations easy to understand for common folks, but this is just plain manipulation. All simplifications can easily be used as manipulation. If politicians are just presenters of complex expertise, how are they different from, let’s say, journalists?
If experts are creating optimal solutions, why are elections needed? To transfer risks to demos, people? Meaning, experts are not sure what they are proposing, solutions are not optimal. They don’t want to be responsible for the consequences. Not exactly an expert behavior! People are persuaded to elect strategic solutions defined by pseudo scientists and choose politicians that should execute those solutions. (Politicians are mostly not experts either. If they were experts, problems of conflict of interest are easily (and usually) created.)
Strategies must be created by the best independent experts in their fields and must call for the collaboration of all involved parties. Expert strategies span far longer than one party mandate. These strategies must be exact, with steps that need to be taken to achieve them. Bring science, measure the results, tweak steps, optimize… Create an environment that enables everybody to have better, greater, chances of achieving happiness, security, self-actualization. And most importantly, make everybody know their offsprings will have even greater chances for personal growth, happiness, and security.
If an apolitical person feels strong unbelief and disgust for politic, if he is seeking science backed strategies, cooperation, and competences on all levels, if he treats all people equals, no matter their ideologies and believes… Does his voice really matter? Does an apolitical person even have moral right to give his voice in elections that are guessing game, manipulation of masses, input for governments to check loyalty and calmness of people? And who are those that don’t consider themselves apolitical?!
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