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Right wing 'Women are a mental disorder'

7 (4.8%)

Left wing 'For mother [insert nation]!

69 (47.3%)

Centrist 'Ummm...Arr.....Emmmmm im not sure'

22 (15.1%)

Liberatarian 'Government is darth vader'

21 (14.4%)

Anarchist 'Somalia doesnt look sooo bad to me....'

8 (5.5%)

Don't give a monkeys!

19 (13%)

Total Members Voted: 145

[UltraValican]

Whateverside has the most greenskins.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mostly Liberal, but I've been accused of being a misongyst in real life.

[Frumple]

You sound like a Technocrat to me frumps.

Social sciences are still an incredibly young field, so I'd value genuine expertise (i.e. demonstrably beneficial experience) over theoretical (i.e. academic) expertise, at least for another few hundred years. Not to mention that functional and effective social organization is pretty obviously not a single answer question; there's several forms that seem to work fairly well, when someone involved isn't screwing everything into the ground. I also wouldn't argue that technical expertise is the only important aspect of effective government, just that it needs to be involved (and authentically, no number-twisting bullshit) a lot more than it currently is.

Techno/meritocracy is one of the better conceptual systems, though. Putting people that actually know what the hell they're talking about and have demonstrated they can back it up in charge is pretty hard (albeit not impossible) to argue against.

But currently technocracy pings the anti-hypocrisy thing, too, so not really.

[Zrk2]

Oh no, not this thread again.

[Frumple]

Oh no, not this thread again.

Has to happen occasionally.

Out of curiosity, did the last one get locked?

[Deadmeat1471]

You sound like a Technocrat to me frumps.

I'd value genuine expertise (i.e. demonstrably beneficial experience) over theoretical (i.e. academic) expertise, at least for another few hundred years.

If no one is allowed to become a politician without already having experience to prove theyre capable, how would they ever get experience and prove theyre capable?
Paradox is paradox!

[Urist Imiknorris]

It would be just another catch-22 of our society.

[Frumple]

... why exactly are government positions the only way to demonstrate the ability for effective social organization and leadership? We have businesses and charity for a reason, after all, along with plenty of local interest type stuff. There's also no reason intern/probationary-type systems couldn't be set up.

[Deadmeat1471]

... why exactly are government positions the only way to demonstrate the ability for effective social organization and leadership? We have businesses and charity for a reason, after all, along with plenty of local interest type stuff. There's also no reason intern/probationary-type systems couldn't be set up.

One could argue an intern is an 'Academic'(Learns the theory) at whatever he is interning as with no responsibility/autonomy.
*Thus cannot prove he has the stuff until he actually does the job.

[Frumple]

That, uh. That's exactly what interns aren't, usually. They already know the theory, or significant amounts of it, they're brought in for practical experience and/or applied theory. There usually is certain degrees of responsibility and autonomy, just, yanno', no or little pay. Most of the point to internship is to prove you're capable of (not just knowledgeable about) doing the job, at least from what I've picked up from the interns I've known.

But barring that, probationary and/or low impact work, then working way up. Would just have to figure out a good way to prevent the whole rising-to-level-of-incompetence thing.

[Deadmeat1471]

But presidents work for say 30 years as governors etc before they're president.
This isn't enough experience? Or enough to judge their ability on?

I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't understand your position 

[MorleyDev]

Politics is the art of keeping everyone happy by trying to give them what they want, and then being far enough from the resulting mess for everyone to have forgotten you caused it. Most of the time what the general population want isn't good for them in the long run. Politics is rather incompatible with long term success, whilst unelected academics would be less indoctrinated into the "keep everyone happy short-term" mentality and instead actually have long term success.

[Hiiri]

Er... I know they're meant as a joke, but what does left-wing have to do with nationalism?

[Deadmeat1471]

Er... I know they're meant as a joke, but what does left-wing have to do with nationalism?

You kidding me right?

[MorleyDev]

Here's a little thing I wrote on another forum (bored, want to ruffle feathers, found chain of thought interesting):
If a government tries to be successful in the long-term, it becomes oppressive. Allow me to present my argument for this:

To succeed in the long term, you'd have to ignore the immediate wants of people to focus on the important needs. This naturally makes people unhappy, as they feel ignored and people are largely too ego-centric and stupid to see past their own noses.

If this goes on too long, the unhappy majority will eventually attempt to rebel against government, either via electing a new party or bloody civil war. Either way, the only way to stop this is to be oppressive and crack down on such rebellion. Unfortunately, this removes the one thing keeping politicians in line. Without fear of punishment, they do what people who don't think they can get or have to worry about getting caught naturally do and exploit their power at the expense of the people who aren't a threat to them. This halts the long-term success.

In order to stop this, you have to give people power to fight back which brings us right back to the original problem. This causes parties to focus mostly on short-term solutions, which cause long-term problems that cause unhappiness causing rebellion causing a change in government that will focus on the short term problems to stay in power and it continues ad infinitum.

[Frumple]

You've basically stated why the actual interest of people seeking long-term success is initiating and spreading a major public awareness and appreciation of long term issues; which is quite difficult, because humans are incredibly well wired for short-term thinking and not very well wired for long term thinking at all. Actual governmental shifts are of secondary interest (and a natural consequence) to doing so.

In environmental philosophy, this is basically the difference between shallow (within system, short term activism) and deep (outside or changing system, long term) ecology. If it doesn't go from the bottom up, it naturally collapses. That's fairly basic construction, be it physical or conceptual.