Sunday, 7 February 2021
It has to be stupid
In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.
George Eliot - Middlemarch (1871-72)
In our world of tediously progressive government it is necessary for an endless stream of new political measures to be handed down from the elite. However there is an inevitable catch quite apart from the incessant meddling.
Almost everything handed down by government has to be imbued with a certain mystique, a certain aura of superior necessity informed by arcane knowledge, particularly the knowledge of elite experts. Otherwise the whole business could come across as something anyone could do. Even a real expert.
It is almost always necessary that there should be no choice involved either. This strengthens that sense of superior necessity – it is for your own good and we know best type necessity. Childish perhaps, but in an informed world that is all there is left.
In other words it is usually vital that everyone should not say “wow what a good idea” when a new initiative comes along, although not quite sane people may be persuaded to say it anyway. See the coronavirus debacle for example.
If everyone did say “wow what a good idea” then that would be populist – or popular as we used to call it. No mystique there - so a degree of pointless compulsion has to be mixed in to sour the thing and tone down the popularity. See the coronavirus debacle again.
In other words, government initiatives which are clearly stupid often have to be stupid simply to maintain the mystique of government, however tattered and faded that mystique actually is. The mechanics of government may go on behind the scenes, but the public façade cannot be conspicuously competent. The incompetence inevitably seeps into what goes on behind the façade anyway.
In modern times with our rigidly collective political ethos, government initiatives cannot usually be anything sane people would wish for. They have to be stupid or at the very least significantly pointless. It’s in the genes of the process.
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4 comments:
It's a paradox of paternalism. If policies are desired, then there's no need for governments to propose them as people would have got on with them anyway. They have to be both undesired and imposed in order to appeal to authoritarians.
Sam - one way to mitigate the problem would be to find some way of slowing down the overactive nature of government. More hoops to jump through for example.
Give the barstewards credit - they've got it down to a fine art . . .
Jannie - although they have lots of media assistance.
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