Friday 13 November 2020

"The normative incompetence of governments"

 I don't recall linking to you-tube clips before but I came across this six minute extract of an interview with Jordan Peterson, of whom I’m a fan, and I thought I could make use of it in a blog post.

In it he is being interviewed shortly after Trump won his first term and points out, correctly IMO, that Trump didn’t so much win as Hilary lost due to some major campaign errors. Incidentally I believe the same will be said this time round where Trump lost rather than Biden won.

Anyway four minutes on in this clip, but listen to the whole thing, Peterson points out how he is hoping for a return to “normative incompetence” amongst politicians and accepting an underlay of “irradical corruption” which I think does also fairly accurately describe much of our governance in this country.

That being the case raises the question whether the decisions and conduct of a sovereign people would be much worse than those made by our governments and for me the answer is that they would not be.

Our fourth demand ‘The People’s Consent’ is the one that empowers the ‘People’ and while they will of course make mistakes they will be theirs and hopefully they will learn from them unlike our politicians who regularly repeat the mistakes of the past.

Our governance needs to be based more on the principles of Sortition than Epistocracy, as it is now.

Enjoy the clip and ponder whether we should continue to accept the “normative incompetence of politicians” with their underlay of “irradical corruption’.  

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EaCVnw5n4

6 comments:

  1. Sound quality poor here. I am wondering how a sovereign people could manage the Covid situation. Decisions are being made from day to day for good or ill. What are epistocracy and irradical corruption?

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    1. 1) If you're vulnerable take precautions.
      2) If you know vulnerable people, take precautions.
      3) If you develop symptoms, self isolate.
      4) If you get worse, go to hospital.
      5) If you're not vulnerable, carry on with life.

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  2. Sampson1945 - The people could more readily hold their own MP to account and organise a vote on the lockdown policy. You really should look the two words up but Epistocracy is the rule by an elite who get more votes per person than the non elite an the urban dictionary meaning of irradical s 'lame' so lame corruption or perhaps a mild level of corruption.

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  3. "sortition is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates." Wikip.

    Is there any such thing as a random sample? I believe that decisions by any "sample" will be open to manipulation. You just have to look at the discussions around the formation of any 'citizen group' to see the problems.

    The Agenda's demands 2 and 4 seem much better approaches, to me. Of course, the objective "to recover power" needs an implementation strategy. As I keep saying, that is the current weakness of THA. There is no implementation strategy, just balloon flying.

    (Great video though. I was in the USA for this election. The choice for many was either no vote and risk getting Clinton or vote for the politics of the lesser of the two evils.

    (2. Real local democracy
    4. The people’s consent)

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  4. Glad you are thinking about the issues in and around our agenda.

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    1. Been thinking about the agenda for a long time.

      "People travelled from all over England, from Dorset and Somerset to Carlisle and beyond, to a sunny day in Harrogate, where we decided to make our own history instead of letting others do it for us. The event was masterminded by Niall Warry, who kept the whole event running like clockwork. Richard North 15/07/2012"

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