Power

"Information isn't power, power is power" - Sersi Lannister. 

(I must have started writing this before the final seasons of this aired as it seems wildly uncool in my reviewing of it!)

The concept of power fascinates me. It is ethereal, we intuitively know it when we see it but we struggle to accurately describe it. We seem to have left the analysis and study of power relatively well alone, the definitions remain imprecise and I put this down to a lack of need based on our ability to spot it when it is relevant as well as it being a purely contextual thing. There is hard and soft power but again, this is a contextual description of the interaction of states and governing bodies. You could certainly use hard and soft power to describe a situation between individuals, it might be less appropriate but generally you would be understood. Hard and soft power are still vague descriptions of power that require us to use our innate understanding of it to be able to appreciate what is going on. In physics power may be applied in many contexts however the building blocks that contribute to the power are the same, time and energy. I want to probe into the nature of social power to see if there are any building blocks so to speak. I want to reduce power down to its base components to see if that yields new insight or better understanding.

If I had to define power in a human context I would say it is the ability to impact the outcome of events to align with your desires. The more things you make happen that you wanted to make happen the more power you have. We can apply this to some very mundane situations. I want to drive to the shops because it is quicker and easier than other methods and I can do so because I have a car. My car gives me power. You could argue it was the money that bought the car which was the source of my power. What about when my car is at the garage? I still paid the money for it but I don't have access to the power it usually affords me. In my mind I am of diminished power when my car is at the garage.

Really I want to just teleport to the shops and back or imagine what I want and have it appear in front of me much like the people in Star Trek. These I cannot do and not because my transporter deck and replicator are at the garage or that I lack the funds to buy such things. I cannot do it because it isn't presently possible to do either of those fun fiction things regardless of the funds at your disposal. Money gives a lot of power but it is capped. With these simple pair of thought experiments we see that money cannot be a building block for power. A better analogy might be that of energy and electricity representing power and money respectively. Many of the things we use energy to power in our day to day lives runs on electricity. We convert other sources of energy into electricity so that it is easy to divide, distribute and transfer it. We use money rather than barter because it is a more efficient mechanism to distribute goods and services. Without this social agreement to respect the exchange value of money it would afford you no power at all in much the same way that a battery will afford you no energy without an appliance to use it in.

Although money is not a building block of power it is certainly a carrier of power, again going back to my analogy, much like electricity is a carrier of energy. This means that the things which generate you money within society are themselves some of the building blocks of power. Money is quite a good place to probe as it crosses all the various scales of power within society. Money is the same whether you are talking about nations, religions, large multinational companies, groups of activists, small local businesses, families or groups of friends. The quantities will differ but that is all. The higher up you go on the scale the more relevant money is, nations and businesses must consider it at all times but for fortunate families and groups of friends it should be almost irrelevant when considering the power dynamics at play.

The many possible scales at which power may be considered makes it further complicated. The power struggle between two individuals will be able to take on a variety of forms given the situation. Compare a mugging to a choosing of which particular pub to go to that evening. Both will be resolved in part based upon the power of the individuals in question but the methods and forms of power will be radically different. These one on one interactions are again wildly different from those between nations. Not only do you have the power interactions between entities at the same level but you have all the possible interactions between levels. Individuals against companies, nations against religions, families against nations. Finally, to make it all near impossible we have the reality of it all being one interlocking web of power interactions. All entities at all levels in relation to all others in an ongoing struggle to retain and gain power. A very similar mechanism to those at play in capitalism and evolution but general and universal. 

Maths is very easy when you have two things affecting each other. We can very accurately and simply describe the most basic atom with one proton and one electron interacting with each other. As soon as we try and throw more particles into the mix the maths becomes very hard and knowing what is likely to happen is much harder to predict. Even if we were able to map out the exact components of power we would not be able to use it predictively. The reasons are two fold, as with the three or more particle atoms, it is chaotic. Power also relies on using it, you can have loads of power and make bad choices and come out the worse for it. It is much like economics, you have to assume people do things in their own best interest which will work a lot of the time but not exclusively. As much of a science we might want to make of it the outcomes of power rely on human choice and so it can never be exact. The tides of power can be fickle like our stock markets and they can also be unpredictable and chaotic like our weather patterns. When talking about the expected results of a power dynamic they should be discussed in terms of probabilities and ranges at best.

We need to look at knowledge and information before moving on. Both are relevant to power and both are related to facts. I define information as time dependent facts such as Mr Bond is in Paris or the exchange rate is 0.71 £ on the $. These things are facts at the time but offer no assurance of remaining that way. Knowledge is immutable, it is facts that are not (or we generally believe to be at least) time dependent. The circumference of a circle is found by multiplying pi by its diameter or that aspirin is toxic to cats would count as knowledge rather than information. Both can be equally empowering but do nothing at all alone. You have to use to information or knowledge you have in order to gain power. The main distinction between the two is that you must use information before it expires which at least is a help in showing you how to use it! You also have to have either knowledge/information that your competition has not got or is unable to make use of.

Commonly it is stated that knowledge and information are power, this may hold more truth to it than any claims about money being power but it still isn't the whole story. A better way to look at them would be as a power multiplier. You have to already have some power in more tangible forms so that you can use your information and knowledge to increase that previous power. I play a lot of games, much of the ideas of power can be equated to games. Information is a great resource in games, it lets you make better plays but there are two common problems with it. Firstly, if you don't have sufficient other resources that the game revolves around then you can't do anything with that information. Alone it is useless. The second problem with information is the skill level, in a new game that I don't yet play well gaining information is of little value because I am clueless how to implement it even if I have the other resources to do so. The games I am best at are the ones in which I can best use information to gain advantage.

In game terms my power would roughly equate to my in game resources multiplied by my skill at the game and some number representing my level of information in the game. As such, with no skill or information my power is just my resources. A gain in information and no skill and my power is still my resources, I need to gain both skill and information together before I am able to increase my power level beyond that of just my resources with information and knowledge.

This leads to another property like information or knowledge that is ethereal yet relevant to power and that is intellect, skill, guile, willpower, confidence, or whatever you want to call it/them. It is another power modifier that can increase your power level but only does so if you have real sources of power to begin with. Essentially it a way to fudge the numbers so as to reflect the nature of human choice in power. All it is really saying is that if you want something more or are clever about how you obtain it you have better odds of getting it than the indifferent or thoughtless.

I have lumped these things in together because they feel mathematically similar to this problem. In practice willpower is often at odds with intelligence. You are confident in a situation which gives you power but your confidence comes from a lack of understanding the situation at hand properly, for example. This is not to say they are always at odds, you can be both stupid and pessimistic or smart and confident, although in the latter case less commonly in the face of poor odds of success! For a more comprehensive outline of power we should separate out willpower and intellect. Far more so than the separation of information and knowledge. This gives us three things of our own character that do not directly provide power but all of which scale with power. Those roughly being grouped into information, intellect, and willpower.

So knowing lots of things, being confident, and being smart will make you more powerful provided you have some tangible power. This is where we look back to money to show us what tangible power might be. In the board game analogy we are looking for the resources, the things you use to do the things with! I have found four broad groups which seem to contain all these resources. I have called these work, influence, might and material. Typically they are tangible and external unlike the three modifiers but they do not seem to fall within any strict parameters to help with definitions. Changing the scale of which we look at the power dynamic has a huge impact on the "resources" used to enact the desired changes.

While almost all decisions will be formed from some basis of knowledge, intellect and willpower not all actions require all of the four groups of tangible power. Some are entirely left out and others are pretty negligible when compared to others in other situations. This is where the context comes into play so heavily. 

Material power is the easiest to understand and relates most directly to the board game comparison. How long you can carry on driving without needing to stop to fill up is a power afforded to you by how much you have left in the tank. How much food you can prepare for dinner is contingent on your access to ingredients. How much of a sandbag wall you can build in a flood situation will at some point be capped by the quantity of sand. This is all again very context dependent. When events are time critical it may not be about how much sand you own but how much you have available at the location that will be useful within the time frame. For the less time critical elements you will find economics simply taking over. Money is a nice simple way to represent the acquisition of the required materials and their transportation to the place they are needed.

Work is the next easiest to grasp. It is simply the ability to do the thing. You have the ingredients for dinner, the knowledge of how to make it, the will power and intellect to do so but you still have to put in the work and actually make dinner. You cannot just will it into being sadly. You can pay others to make your dinner for you. That is an alternative but it still requires work and you still need to obtain that work in some way. Conventionally we use money to obtain work from chefs in restaurants! We also use money to buy machines that increase our own capacity to achieve work. Historically there was a lot of work obtained via duress. These days it is mostly mechanical work, hired work, or good old fashioned doing it yourself. Usually some combination of these things. The improvement to our tools has been one of the most significant factors in the increase of power our species has enjoyed. It has been continuous improvement to our pool of knowledge however that has facilitated our improving tools. 

Next up is might. This is typically the relevant power when the rule of law is not being followed. This ranges from the mugging in the street to the wars between nations. Often the motivations are to increase ones economic position but not always. Greater might can be obtained with an investment of work or the procurement of tools. Money can play a role in the lead up to a conflict but for any given conflict at any given moment finance is not relevant, it is just about who wins in a fight. This is why you tend to find people unafraid of a scrap having more clout in social dynamics. It is a big part of international diplomacy too. Countries dump vast swathes of their GDP into their military so that at any given moment they are looking reasonable when the question of who wins in a fight comes up. If they don't do this and just sit on the money and don't invest it into "might" then when the question comes up it is too late. It is a form of power society mitigates greatly and this is a good thing. The power of might usually results in destruction or people winding up forced into bad situations. In many ways society is simply a power allocation and distribution system. 

Lastly we have influence which is the most ethereal of the types of power. Usually it is bought with the other kinds of power. You have influence because you have might or the ability to control lots of resources and work.  Alternatively clever use of information can obtain influence. Simple charisma can do it too. Influence is at a bit of a peak presently with the internet being such a game changer. Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and YouTube have vast amounts of power although it is broadly in the spheres of information and influence. Celebrities have more power than ever before due to platforms like Twitter and their considerable influence over fans. Not only is the concept of influence tricky because it is intangible and often linked to other forms of power but also because it delves deeply into the realms of psychology, which itself it not a solved science! In this context I describe influence as the power by which one entity can entice action from others without any promise, exchange, or coercion. One entity simply wants something done and others follow, be that for love, or respect, or some other motivation. At the individual end of the spectrum this is commonly seen in people copying or following attractive or successful people. You could argue that this was a bit like an exchange but the attractive/successful people don't have to give any thing away. It is like potential energy that can be used to power things without being consumed in the process. 

In the larger scale pictures we call influence soft power. It is a funny one because it seems at once both a result of others interpretations of your other actual powers in a given context and a quality unto itself. Influence is a bias for others in your favour and it is obtained by being liked or admired or by being in an enviable position. This makes it more complicated than the others. If we were trying to map all this power out as if it were physics then the core three physical sources of power, might, work, and material, would be the base units. The modifiers such as information are more like the unitless values in equations that just change the scaling of the values with units. Influence however is a derivative power made up from a potential combination of all three of the other base units and then seemingly modified by it's own unique unitless value that we can consider to be charisma, charm, likeability, respectability, desire to emulate etc. That can then be further modified with the other conventional modifiers like information. 

So there we have it, the seven factors that contribute to human power. Four direct sources of power and three factors that help you scale up those four direct sources of power.  Of the direct sources of power there are three physical ones in material, might, and work and then the more elusive, or even resultant, force of influence. Those four are then affected by the context of the situation rendering them anywhere from the only consideration to irrelevant, and then modified as per the relevant information, willpower, and skill. It feels as if it is too hard to measure many of these factors in general and even if you could, each situation where a power dynamic comes into play is sufficiently contextually unique that each would need a model constructing for it. For now it seems as if our own intuition in regards power is far better than maths, science, computer modelling, and all that new age jazz! A rare novelty. I am not really sure of the benefits of having mapped out this concept which most of us seem to intuit naturally. I mostly did it as an exploratory exercise for myself. There is no real huge insight here, I am just getting my thoughts ordered. My hope is that it will help  me understand and evaluate events in the world more accurately, easily and quickly. I find it fascinating how it overlaps so directly into strategy games all the way to man made systems like capitalism and also natural forces like evolution. Power and logic seem somehow linked, both directly, but also in that they seem to underpin everything else while having this hard to pin down and define quality to them. 

Cultural Conquest

I write this essay in the wake of the assassination of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. I have some mixed opinions about the situation most of which are irrelevant as I am not privy to all the pertinent information. I cannot as yet say if it was a good call from anyone's perspective strategically or even morally. I have always believed that war should be targetted at those giving the orders. It puts the incentives in the right place and would presumably tend towards a reduction in casualties and waste, and most relevantly the choice to go to war in the first place. That is a general case belief that goes on the assumption that the hypothetical war was inevitable, ideally from the perspective of the just against some objective evil. If there is an alternative way to avoid a war that doesn't involve killing people there is a good chance it is a better line of action. I certainly cannot speak to any of this in the current case of Iran and if conflict was either inevitable or justified.

I am left in this odd limbo of knowing a bit about the specific context enough to have my ideologies confused and conflicted but not enough to work it through and come to any real conclusion. I find the provocations unsettling. Major assassinations are a great way to escalate things towards a war. Indeed if the sides were at all evenly matched this would be taken as a direct declaration of war. I find the subsequent threats by the United States about Iranian cultural sites should they retaliate to be abhorrent. That is not an attack on anything bar humanity itself and does everything to suggest that such actions are not taken by the side of the just. Targetting those at the top of military operations might be the optimal way to fight wars, destroying cultural sites is the certainly not.

Mostly what this recent event has made me realize is quite what a backwards idea conflict between nations and escalating it really is. It is actively counterproductive and incredibly short term. It smacks of much that is done wrong by capitalism and democracy in their haste and hedonism. This is most so the case for the United States who are in a fantastic position economically and culturally. Leading the world in both aspects means they do a better job of conquering allies than they do enemies. It is in their interests to have a world full of economically developed and stable allies. Such places trade with them, they use their products and make them richer and more powerful.

I would argue that the modern human in a western democracy has far far more in common with any other such person from any other such nation than they do with their grandparents and older generations. Indeed I would say that the western democratic nations 100 or so years ago have more in common with places like Iran now. We have changed and we have moved away from historic cultural elements. Not entirely and not evenly at all, I am talking on the large scale and in trends and averages. Democracy, capitalism, and especially the United States have become incredibly good at making things people want. From food, to gadgets to entertainment, giving people what they want is what the States is absolutely the best at. These commodities have shaped us and made those with access to them more homogeneous. The internet has sped this process up too. 

There are certainly subtle differences from place to place but broad strokes we humans like and dislike much the same stuff the world over. The more we mingle, trade, share and do anything at all with each other the more alike we become. It is not so much a case of American or British or where ever, it is a case of modernizing. We are leaving behind some older values and ideas. We should reasonably expect the people of the world to become more like one another as they mix and consume the same sorts of thing.

With this in mind it would make far more sense to remove trade sanctions with Iran. It would make even better sense to provide free wifi to the people. Free Netflix and BBC iplayer access. Low cost iphones. Get McDonalds and Starbucks out there. Much as I doubt it has a direct effect on the government it should have a more pronounced effect on the people which slowly indirectly affect the government in turn. People being much the same the world over are likely to embrace these things given the historic precedent set.

It is somewhat of a cultural conquest but it is a lot less arrogant than it sounds when you consider how quickly we have made the transition away from such things ourselves. It is not our culture we are attempting to replace theirs with in this cultural conquest. It is instead a new modern culture that is evolving. It is more like sharing than overwriting. The United States simply has a small head start.

Saudi Arabia is an example of a country where American influence is having a significant impact despite the different forms of government and ideological differences, mainly in the influence of religion on the governance.

This concept of cultural conquest also explains a lot about the tight controls on things like the internet places like Russia and China are attempting or enacting. I used to think it was an attempt to quell internal dissidents which seemed futile and ill conceived. As a means to prevent a cultural assimilation it makes rather more sense. Certain modern western values are not entirely compatible with how a number of governments like to act!

Now, I am not suggesting that a world full of consumerism and hedonism are a good thing. The idea of everywhere just being little America is pretty horrendous but it is vastly better than war or the persecutions of people by their own governments. A world full of Starbucks and McDonalds doesn't sound like the healthiest, physically or morally, but it sounds a lot more stable and peaceful than the one we have. It is at least a good way towards the global cooperation that is likely needed for humanity to take the next big steps in progressing the species.   

Certainly there would be plenty of kick back from governments on letting in external retail and media brands. You could encourage the companies in question negotiate with the foreign governments themselves. All the domestic governments need really do is offer subsidies and remove impediments for successful entries into the foreign markets and let natural forces do the rest. The BBC being what it is should just be free to anyone who wants it and who's government allows it. It should be better funded and more autonomous too but that is another matter! The US should be trying to get McDonalds and Starbucks into every nation, with appropriate twists to accommodate the culture at hand, be that certain kinds of meat off the menu or what ever. 

It just seems like such an all round win. No one wants to bomb retail outlets from their own companies. Why invest in missile defence systems that add little utility when you can just as effectively protect yourself with the companies of hostile nations. It works in all directions, would be aggressors gain compliance and alignment, and a bigger customer base. The potential targets gain a valuable defensive asset which in turn provides utility and employment to people. In even more simple terms it is applying resources in working together rather than working apart. 

In practice there are likely many reasons this is not common policy. For one it is only just becoming apparent how our use of companies and media align cultures. It is a slow process that operates over generations and as such is a little too slow to be an individuals goal or plan. Us humans like to see the fruits of our labours and so long term projects are less commonly found in societies, even less so in the policies of democratic governments with short term limits. I have witnessed the UK and the US becoming more alike over a couple of decades, accelerated with the advent of the internet, but they were closer than most to begin with. They are also still plenty different despite years of closer relations and exchange. There is every chance that such things would be a significantly slower process in more different cultures with a greater degree of rejection or required tweaking of products needed. Even so, we are not looking to make culture homogenous. That would be ghastly. Especially if it were a superficial consumerist US one! I am all about the freedom but I would like to see it used more nobly and productively. Ultimately I just think it is a good rule of thumb that countries should do their best to encourage homegrown industries to expand beyond their borders. We have a lot of protectionist subsidies and these would be far more productively used to incentivize global expansion rather than protect against international competition. 

The more ways we can interconnect and the quicker we can do so the better. We will be better positioned to tackle the problems of our age which are very much species wide issues not national ones as they have historically been. We need global responses to pandemics and to climate change. Anything that can help us see ourselves in the same boat as each other will really help us navigate that boat in the right direction. Things are clearly already going in that global community direction but there is a long long way to go and we can do more to help it along the way, or indeed in many cases stop resisting the change. 

The Failings of Modern Western Systems

 

Capitalism and democracy have brought us a very long way and been instrumental in rapid advances in technology and human rights and thus quality of life for many generations. They have brought us so far and yet I intent to argue that they are no longer fit for purpose. Society has outgrown and outpaced what they can do for us and we need better solutions for bigger problems now faced by people and humanity as a whole. 

Conceptually I am still big advocates of both capitalism and democracy and would seek to include strong components of both in any utopian design exercise. They are just not the be all and end all that society seems to treat them as being. We are blinkered by their historic success. We try and spread democracy like we did with religion in the middle ages as if it were doing people a huge favour, saving them from eternal damnation etc. That we presume our form of government so successful and fit for purpose is a little frightening. Capitalism and democracy are held in such esteem that making a case against them feels like it would be viewed in an almost treasonous light. 

What is needed is something more appropriate to handle a world were technological progress is extreme, a world where we are sufficient in numbers and power to affect the whole planet, and one where we are increasingly connected through trade, communication and the actions of others. These three significant factors  (our nominal power, rate of power gain, and interconnectedness) are the things that are putting strain on democracy and capitalism and exposing the weaknesses. As systems they demonstrably have flaws but there were no better alternatives and the flaws were minor in relation to the perks afforded. The perks of these systems are certainly still bigger overall from where I am sat but the flaws seem to be increasing in issue at an alarming rate. 

The only flaws in capitalism are that wealth has an aggregating tendency and that there is not direct alignment of the interests of people and that of profit. Luckily these are both easy fixes. We have taxes which are the perfect tool for wealth redistribution to counteract the aggregating properties of wealth. These taxes work double as they are also incentives to mitigate negative externalities from the pursuit of profit such as air pollution or unhealthy consumables. Sensible taxes on undesirable actions prevent a lot of them and can fund remedies for the remainder. Taxes can be directly applied in sustainable and fair means with the end of promoting the best advantage for society and should be the responsibility of the government to enact. A discussion about where society should be headed and what is the "best" are certainly important details to be clear on so that a suitable job can be done of things. Rather too big of a topic to branch into here though. 

The problems with democracy are more numerous and harder to fix. From them stems the lack of appropriate fixes to the ills of capitalism. If we were to simplify modern society and try and represent it as a board game then government are effectively the designers who right the rules. The aim of the game is ultimately up to the individual however capitalist society very much has money as the points system it uses to determine the winner. It is pretty obvious that a game is rigged when the writer of the rules is playing the game as well and changing the rules as the game is in progress! Big game producing companies don't let their employees enter into competitive events for this reason rather obviously but society lets it's leaders be very involved in the wealth game. This is a source of bias at best and corruption at worst and needs addressing much more than it already is if we want a government that is doing a proper job. 

The next issue with democracy is that it is very short term. Parties and individuals do things that get them re-elected rather than what is in the ultimate good of people and society. Mostly these things are aligned but not always. A lot of good things take a long time to take affect and thus confer little advantage to those in power at the time. Equally there are some bad things with long lasting negative effects that give short terms boosts that are all too common in democracies. The solutions to this issue have the effect of making it look less and less like democracy. They involve things like removing term limits and having the only options to remove people from positions of power as firings, resignations, or the old classic of death. You can also do it with fixing single terms with no re-election potential but then you also somewhat need to do away with party affiliation which seems like it might be a tricky extraction.

The final issue of democracy is the scope. You absolutely don't want just one governing body in charge of everything globally even if this would solve a lot of issues. It is for much the same reason you don't want monopolies operating in the economy. They stop working optimally and can stifle emerging competition that might force them back into serving people rather than themselves, or at least just being inefficient and stagnant. This means you want to have numerous governing bodies as we do in the modern world. This however concedes a lot of power, away from people and towards wealth. Governments have to bid for the wealth of the powerful, both companies and individuals, with favourable tax rates and business laws. Essentially this undermines the power we would like our governments to have and lets it reside more in companies than people, more in the few than the many. A large global wealth gap means wealth can exploit poorer nations, often in ways that ultimately come back to affect everyone, again such as polluting industrial practices. 

These three failings of democracy ensure that the flaws of capitalism are not properly tended to which in turn has the effect of making people subservient to profit. Modern society is a support network for companies more than it is for people. In a world with an ever shrinking need for workers this is a fairly scary prospect. There is a lot of anti establishment propaganda that suggests there are cabals of the wealthy sinisterly plotting against us. In practice it is just mis-built systems, the improper alignment of rules and the systems by which we write those rules that naturally makes it look that way. There is no big conspiracy, it can just appear like it from some angles because people are acting in accordance with the incentives. They are not in cahoots, they are just playing the same game. The system has always been imperfect but there is no impetus to change anything so long as things are improving, which they generally have been. There is especially no motive to change when there are no obvious alternatives that are better, nor when things are as good as they can be for those with the power to make real change. The issue is that there is little discussion about these problems. No real end game for people or nations in mind. Humanity is just sort of bumbling along fixated in the now which has historically been fine, if a little slow and meandering. Now it is more of a problem. Now our actions have significant impacts on the future not just socially or economically but on the whole planet. 

There are arguably some current social factors hastening the issues with democracy. These are far from self evident and more speculation on my part than anything else. We have information overload making things more about frequency and volume than they are about accuracy. You could also say that social media has promoted a purer kind of democracy where our political leaders are more representative of us as an averaged whole than they are the best of us, as you would want at the helm. There also seems to be an element of increasing political identity and tribalism. As religion declines in most democracies it feels as if politics is taking it's place in many ways. It is quite dangerous when ones identity is so heavily tied to anything ideological like that as it makes any attempts at compromise like personal attacks. None of these things really help democracy function. Ultimately you just want a really well educated society with a really boring governing body at the helm making informed, impartial choices to benefit the people and not those making the choices. 

Education is huge for a democracy to function well but it is also one of those really slow effects that doesn't do all that much to help those in power at the time. It seems as if we could really do with improving the utility of our education for modern life, certainly the education I was given aged 10-18 involved learning a lot of fairly useless stuff in time that could have been spent better preparing me for adult life and being a benefit to society. This is rather a topic for a different essay but it is an important point to note. Any nation touting for democracy should be supporting that argument with a top tier and up to date education program. Why do we have teenagers learning about Shakespeare, oxbow lakes and trigonometry? These are fairly niche specialized things that only those with interest should be learning. There are plenty more worldly useful topics we could use that time for that would help people in the real adult world that schools barely touch on such as mental health, political systems, efficient actions, critical thinking etc. Good education should be interesting and beneficial. Useful education needs to be at least one of those two things and yet there is time being wasted on teaching things that to many people are neither. 

Back to the main topic, this essay is just asking the question, what should an ideal form of government look like? We are assuming we can apply the simple fixes to capitalism if we can solve the governance problem so we only need to worry about that. It should have elements that ensure long term thinking is used. These come from removing biases from those making the choices. No need to worry about retention of power either so as to as tackle the potential issues with bias and short termism. Discretionary life appointments or fixed duration single terms are the obvious ways to do this (as I am talking about things like running the NHS, the chief of police etc rather than pure politicians we are largely already doing this). No financial gains to be made from choices made is the other big one. This mostly just means people in government shouldn't sit on company boards, have other jobs, have significant investments in any areas, and likely applied to immediate family too. This all gets rather sticky rather quickly. You cannot eliminate nepotism and so putting too much effort into doing so is foolish. Means by which you can help tone down nepotism without adverse costs seem good but not something to get overly hung up on.

I used to think implementing some kind of large jury style parliament backed up by a well run civil service and a referendum style democratic vote of approval system on new legislature was the way to improve things. A kind of purer democracy which took politicians and parties out of the mix. There are certainly some benefits to this idea but sadly I think it is likely more flawed than existing democracies. Experiences of the fall out of referendum politics and how they are quite divisive in society has made me wary of them. More than that it is the total lack of suitability of people to make informed choices. Politicians struggle and mostly seem to fail so what hope do less qualified people have? The world is incredibly complicated. To make good choices you need to be so well informed generally and be an experienced expert in the field relevant to the issues at hand. You then really want a bunch of people exactly like this to debate and discuss the issue and pool their opinions, all without personal bias on the subject. A consensus agreed by such a group has a reasonable chance of making good choices but only if it is an isolated matter, in reality nothing is isolated so you need to bring in more groups of experts to expand the discussion, make sure some fix isn't causing a bigger issue elsewhere. This is not what the public nor the government is, although at least the latter get to listen to such debates before they ignore the advice. What people want is absolutely one of the most important things to take into account when trying to run a country however handing over the reigns of power to the people is less than likely to result in that. We need a system that involves the people and removes bias, but it needs to also involve the best means to make optimal choices. We are probably out of luck even with Plato's philosopher kings as there is just too much to know and understand. They would mostly just have to be masters of delegation these days! 

I used to think that the wisdom of the crowd theory was enough justification for democracy to be the best solution. In practice it clearly can't be. In a guess the weight of a cow at the fair event your data would be meaningless if you had to submit your answer in an entirely unknown unit of weight. Wisdom of the crowd only works if people are informed and aware of the parameters. We know what a kilo is and can see the cow and can have a rough stab at how those things relate! That is far too simplistic of a comparison for it to apply to democracy. Rather than the average cancelling out noise as it should when people are making informed judgements you just get chaos as you do with the unknown unit of weight measure. For democracy to function in accordance with wisdom of the crowd you need very specific questions with expositions on expected outcomes for each possible vote. That or some other clever means of involving the people and giving them voice and power but not in a way that lets them steer you into a ditch or just running round in circles. Voting on preferred experts as executives is a good way to do this but it becomes more of a popularity contest than a proficiency one and moves you in the direction of party politics. 

What I now see as the best direction to go in as far as governance goes is a little bit more dissolved and certainly not at all mapped out. I think you ideally want to take certain elements as globally as possible while making other aspects small scale. Ripping the responsibility of governments in twain and sending them in opposite directions. Local councils would gain more power as would NGO style bodies. If you could have more and more nations on the one hand joining up to trade pacts, freedom of movement pacts, standards pacts, etc, and on the other hand dissolving power internally towards local governments it would allow for a transition towards a sensibly run world. Ultimately if we can create a kind of tax body which is independent of nations and governments then there is no place for companies to hide and exploit people. They cannot play regions off against each other and so profit can start to serve people again. This would need to be an opt in system which feels like it would then need to come with some significant incentives. 

To have any sort of system where you have independent bodies responsible for important areas of society you are going to need a checks and balances system with means of oversight. There needs to be a power cycle from people to local government to global bodies to courts and regulators. There would also seem the need for a funded news, facts, and information service that was a lot like that arm of the BBC. Much like education, you can't hope to usefully involve the people if they are not informed. With misinformation so rife there needs to be a reliable means of finding out facts. We have seed libraries, places where weights and measures and kept. It seems like we need one of these for truth. Sounds like a scary prospect trying to get a publicly funded truth department. Very dystopian in feel if not intent. It too would of course need to be overseen with checks and balances. 

We are doing most things correctly or nearly so. We have systems already like those that seem most suitable. The changes required are much more like bug fixes and updates than they are akin to revolution. While we are seemingly on track to eventually get there in terms of a utopian society that really does serve the people it is neither assured nor getting there fast enough for the problems at hand. We need global action as soon as possible as far as the environment goes. This could help kickstart a powerful NGO with a means to collate funds and redistribute them as a means to tackle climate change that could then morph into one capable of managing a (partial) global tax and wealth redistribution system. It wouldn't need to be the only system of taxation by any means, it would just need global reach. Local governments would likely still source most funding from their jurisdiction. Much as this is a bit tangential a route from where we are to where we want to be is essential. You can make plenty of utopian systems to rule over society but without a means to get there they are either outright failing or at best causing severe disruption, setbacks and tumult. Or we could just let it go to ruin and rebuild with the benefit of hindsight and the convenience of significantly reduced numbers to rebuild for... That would be an easier thing to do but it is going to be an unpleasant journey to the starting point. Really the task is simply to smooth out and coordinate power while reducing conflict. These are all quite tricky as people never wish to relinquish power and people naturally have tribal biases. This is a fight not just against systems of power but also human nature embedded within our ambivalent selfish genes. When put in those terms it does feel as if we have done pretty well to come as far as we have. 

The Case of Shamima Begum

I am no legal expert and cannot comment on any aspect of the case of Shamima Begum on that front. What I can do is comment from a moral perspective, or that of what it says about the state of our society. Shamima is not easy to like and I cannot say that I do. I have only seen a few clips of her being interviewed but she comes across poorly, as I am sure would most teenage girls, especially ones in her position. The thought of an interview of a teenage me being how I was judged is a pretty chilling prospect. Shamima has also made some very poor life choices. Being dislikeable and having allied herself with public enemy number one she has made herself quite easy to villainize. That being said, our governments attempts to wash their hands of her is utterly disgraceful and wrong on multiple levels. I don't think she should be given a free pass, I don't know the specifics of her actions, and thus a fitting punishment if required, but I do know she deserves a fair trail and that is our responsibility. She is our mess and if you make a mess you clear it up, that is pretty basic stuff. 

Now, lets us consider that she was 15, a minor, when she left the UK. We failed to protect a minor being groomed by a terrorist organization. We failed to stop them stealing our children and putting them to use in their quite awful cause. Then we had the gall to blame her and make her the bad guy. We are trying to punish a child victim as an adult perpetrator. We are doing so despite that not being how the law works by not letting her have her trail or become repatriated. We have failed this girl every step of the way and neither admitting this failing nor trying to make amends. We are likely going to continue to fail her simply in an attempt to avoid having to admit that we ever did in the first place.

While this is bad on a personal level for her and her family it is more concerning on a societal level. Imagine her name was Emily Watts and she was pretty, eloquent, and white. Would she have her citizenship revoked? Much as those responsible for this debacle would argue that they would but you know they wouldn't have. This hypothetical Emily could have dual nationality with somewhere else like Australia or Canada or other "people like us" countries and that wouldn't change things either. Sure, we would try Emily when we brought her back and she would do some jail time if deemed that she had acted criminally but we would never discard her. What we are essentially promoting here as a nation is a pretty clear racial bias where by people who look like like Shamima are not regarded as British regardless of the fact that she is 100% British. She has never visited Bangladesh. She speaks with a London accent. I don't care what you look like or what your name is, your accent betrays "where you are from". Shamima is a Londoner. All you do by trying to claim she isn't somehow is to disenfranchise all those British people who also look like her and reinforce an "us and them" bias in white British people who are predisposed to such things. 

Revoking Shamima's citizenship is a huge betrayal of individual justice while also being a massive betrayal of the British people as a whole, particularly those that have dark skin. It is a terrible example to set and really diminishes our ability as a nation to try and take the high moral ground. Not that anyone which much of an interest in history would be fooled into thinking we had that in the first place... What I find most distasteful about this whole thing is that there is relatively little in the way of outrage. This is the kind of thing that has long term implications and fall out. It is like when you drop bombs with too much disregard for civilians and then wonder why a generation later there are loads of easily radicalised young adults. These choices are imposing a rift on society that is of no merit and to no ones advantage. Rifts that can last for generations. The public seem like they either don't care all that much or actively support this choice and this re-enforces this rift. Obviously ours, and most other governments do loads of shady and immoral stuff, plenty of which results in loss or life or other injustices. What stands out about this act is that it is a very symbolic one with little in the way of benefits. It looks like a political stunt. Like, selling arms to even shadier nations is bad but you have to pay the bills somehow. You can see why arm deals happen and appreciate there are some perks involved. This case however has nothing but drawbacks and would be so easy to just not do. I guess at least it does showcase that governments act a lot more like they have your interests at heart than the reality. Even the favoured people are still third in line behind self interest and those with power and money.