Rex Murphy: In Justin Trudeau's world, Christians need not apply

[binary solo]

SvennoJ said:

binary solo said:

 

The answer to that is don't have political parties, and don't vote for people based on policy. The people you want running a country are people who have certain attributes (honesty, trustworthiness, a well trained mind, loyalty (to the country), recognised ability, experience, an open mind, and the less self-serving ego the better), problem is democracy as it is currently constructed almost encourages the exact opposite of all these attributes. Probably the worst possible attribute is being deeply committed to a specific ideology or set of policies, and again the current framing of democracy pretty much encourages these things. Given laws are always established through a process of negotiation, people with entrenched views are the worst possible people to participate in a system of negotiated decision-making. 

So, I say the whole system needs to be fundamentally transformed if people actually want politics and government to improve. The whole "definition of insanity" thing applies here. people want politics and government to change, but they think they can change it by doing exactly the same thing.

It's in human nature to stand behind a strong charismatic decisive leader. I think Terry Pratchett joked about it in his books: As a leader it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, as long as you are certain, people will follow you. Yet indeed that kind of dogmatic certainty that people admire is not very practical in politics.

How to transform the system is the question. No longer voting for faces is a good first step. Vote for resumes without a picture. Although you also don't want a bunch of qualified yet socially akward people that can't convince eachother struggling to make policies. Voting for someone that can get their point accross does have its benefits.

Luckily elections are only a small part of the democratic process. Electing people that want to stay in power is more beneficial than having qualified people that simply do their job. The first group will listen to public opinion, petitions, strikes, etc. The second wouldn't neccesarily care about all that.

I disagree. People who want to be in power are exactly the wrong people who should be in power. They make decisions based on what will keep them in charge, not what is best for the situation. It is merely a matter of chance that sometimes the interest of the people and the interest of the power-hungry allign. I'm not interested taking those chances. A person who is well qualified but has no interest in power will be more likely to base decision on evidence and research, and they will take account of public mood when that is a relevant factor. Sometimes a policy that is very sound in theory fails in practice because the public does not buy into it. So any time you are putting in place a policy that requires public engagement, public sentiment and willingness to comply is a very important factor to take into account. The power hungery will only tend to listen to the people they think are likely to vote for them. Right-wing politicians are more likely to use strike action as a reason to disempower unions than to actually listen to the grievances of those who are striking. Because they know unionists aren't going to vote for them, and they know taking an anti-union stance will appeal more to the base of their support

If climate change policy was determined by evidence and scientific research and not populist power hungry politicians we'd be in a better situation.