Friday, September 30, 2011

the governance problem

The problem with contemporary governance is twofold:
  1. theory:  the perception that the primary purpose of government is to provide, rather than to enable, and
  2. practice: the self-serving, sanctimonious idiots who appear to hold sway and influence within the corridors of power.
I can't decide in this particular case of chicken and egg which needs to be addressed first because clearly, in this case, theory and practice are mutually re-enforcing.  (Also see here, here and here.) 

Whereas once governance was a balance between policy development and administration, today's entitlement paradigm is a nasty network of insidious insiders moralizing about their self-perceived assertion of values and the imposition of regulations on the "others" who require the direction and social engineering the ruling elite ascribe.

I was not born into the ruing class and a healthy streak of bloody mindedness and self-assertion has successfully removed me from any inclusion in the inner circles of the contemporary green bubble of environmental dogma and indoctrination.  Mostly I don't mind but when such foolishness becomes the very lifeblood of authoritarian control and paternalism, I am offended.  I am doubly so, when its proponents call it "governance".

So there is an opening.  Part Groucho Marx, part V for Vendetta and part Jonathon Swift, we have need of a contemporary leader to rescue us from our malaise, our coma of complacency and the corruption of political values that undermines the ability of the individual to ignore the paucity of good governance presented at the ballot box.  Only one thing is truly limited today: leadership.

Postscript:

Of course the most natural answer is education and most consider more education to be essential to achieving change.  But not if that education is purposely designed by the state to both oppress and minimize individual liberty in subservience to the state.


See this post on the role of the state in education (none) and this video on why.