Government Irrelevance

Politicians have the power to make key decisions about how countries are run - From the economy, to education, to healthcare, farming, industry and law. But are they sufficiently knowledgeable of these topics? They generally have no technical background in the things that they are managing, and therefore do not understand where the problems are and what the immediate needs are. They supposedly rely on advisors for this, but I question whether these individuals should have the final word across the board on what amounts to technical questions being answered by non-technical people.

The person in charge of education should be an experienced and celebrated teacher - Someone who is able to communicate with students in such a way that they are excited and inspired. They should have a track record for achieving excellent academic results. The person in charge of agriculture should have years of farming experience, and knowledge about all the latest technological and scientific innovations that will help farms to work at maximum yeald efficiency and remove hurdles that get in the way. The person who looks after the economy should have a history of running a successful business and be an expert in accountancy, markets and trade. You would think these things are obvious, and yet our governments are entirely occupied with non-technical people who have little or no background in anything useful. In modern government, the skills you would seem to require most, amount to being able to lie, to tollerate the abusive comments hurled at you from disatisfied members of society, to manipulate situations as to bring about the best financial outcome for you personally, even if it is at the expense of everything else.

For years I have not bothered to vote. This is because I have no confidence in any of the parties. It doesn't matter whether you are a conservative, labour, liberal democrat or republican - I have not yet seen a single politician who is fit for purpose. The right people won't survive in the current political system. The whole system is seriously flawed and broken. Scandals are commonplace and nobody seems to have any integrity, honesty or even common sense. Somehow the country seems to bumble along. The public and private sectors struggle along, trying to work around all the bad policies that have been put in place.

But what is the alternative? We should be putting people in charge of departments that are properly suited to the task. People that will work in the interest of those they manage, rather than their own personal interests. They should not be able to be swayed by bribes or personal incentives. They need to be accountable. Also it's not helpful to keep swapping out one person from another every few years. Some things take years to sort out, so we need to make a plan and stick with it - see it through rather than getting part way into the plan and then cancelling it due to a change of leadership.

New advances in AI technology can allow us to gain greater insights into the root causes of problems and be able to offer solutions that humans cannot come up with. They can sift through mountains of data, finding trends and patterns that are not obvious to us. They can help us solve medical or other technical problems, but also help in governance and policy making as well.

Jacque Fresco touches on these ideas and more in this short interview: