Friends are Electric

I have never made direct mention of them before, yet I constantly have been discussing the foolishness of their ideology.  And of the many undesirable direct consequences of their ideology. And now a direct attack by those who seek to destroy what for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, citizens of the world have fought for.

The right to self determination.

This is sparked by an exceptionally ignorant editorial in this week’s issue of Imprint, the University of Waterloo student newspaper.   The editorial was titled No government is good.

What, exactly, is so wrong headed about this argument?  The first and most important problem is the argument that a non-functioning government is the best form of government, as though the people we elected to govern our nation are not up to the task  of it.

This idea has its source in a couple of deeply flawed ideas.

The first is the confusion between self interest and disinterest.   The former being what modern economics demands we operate solely by.  The later which democracy functions by.  Certainly economics is an interesting field of the social sciences, as important as any other, but it alone does not have the rights and responsibilities to run government, or any type of government policy.  Human beings are not solely self-interested beings, they are an irreconcilable combination of self-interest and group-interest.

Irreconcilable.  Combination.  Digest what that means for a moment.

Both factors are important for a functional human being.  Leave self interest for where it is best, and leave government to disinterest.  Society functions not based on the wild swings of the market but rather on the interactions of the human beings that make it up.  Interactions which do involve the buyer-seller relations described by economics but also the family, friends, neighbour, etc. relations.   When determining government policy, we must not enter with the thought “How can I get the best deal for myself,” but rather “What policies and practices are going to benefit society as a whole most.”

Ethics.  Operating for the greater good rather than the personal good or the private good.  When I am done school, self interest says that I should no longer care about education (unless I have children).  Group interest tells me this is the highest level of foolishness.  For social reasons as well as economic.  Certianly the old adage that the youth are the future does hold true and influences this, as employees and future employers as an economic argument but, more importantly for the fabric of society, education is the process by whch we train the next generation of citizens to act in the ethical fashion.

The second source of this ignorant argument is the corporatist.  The cult of the professional.

The ideology, which I am unsure if the writer even knows he subscribes to, is the principle that any task should be left to professionals and that the untrained cannot have an opinion, or an opinion which has an effect on the final outcome, about any topic which they themselves have no professional training or knowledge in.  Corporatism has its place, having an MBA decide the direction of pure scientific research would be foolish, since the MBA has no skills to help them.  Where corporatism is most dangerous is in government.

In government, corporatism has two important outcomes.  The first is that government must be run by professionals.  The environment ministry must be run by environmental scientists, since science is unbiased and impartial.  But are the scientists themselves biased?  And since they are scientists, they have no right to discuss policy with the natural resource departments, since environmental science is not the same as earth science.  And neither are the same as human resources, or finance or transportation.  Never mind the fact that all of these departments can be horribly interrelated to such a degree that any single specialist would never be able to see the big picture, the possible outcomes for other departments.  No, if you are not a professional in the field then your opinion has no validity.

Of course, the parliament itself is dominated by nonprofessionals.  The people elect it, and the people are not professionals in the art of government.   This is either solved by having professionals select government or by having the people select from a list of certified professionals.

Either case, our right to self determination goes out the window.   Which is the second important outcome.  We lose our right to govern ourselves.

Which is what the article is all about.  We have no right to determine how we want our society to be governed.  We are to be reduced to a passive role where the only vote of any consequence is which brand of toothpaste we purchase and from which store.   A mere mockery of democracy where societies interest is confused with the interest of large companies.