The Problem with Modern Politics
The Problem with Modern Politics
‘Malcolm at times didn’t see the politically smart thing to do – he saw what he thought was right’
This quote from today’s Australian Financial Review encapsulates the problem with modern politics. I don’t agree with everything Malcolm Turnbull did and said, but we could do with more people in Canberra prepared to do what they think is right.
Today’s successful politician is grounded in factional politics as a teenager. Rising through the ranks of youth and university party politics, he or she knows how to stack a meeting, undermine a colleague and align themselves with a rising star before they are 20 years old. (My younger brother was once dragged along to the Central West meeting of Young Labor by a now prominent state politician. His role in this, apparently common place, branch stacking exercise was to register on the day, vote for someone he had never heard of and disappear back into the wilderness. He was 14 years old.)
If he or she makes it to the big league, the path to the top is clear: don’t ever, ever do anything without thinking about what impact it’s going to have on your career. Professional politics has always been part and parcel of democracy. But the Howard government showed how effective it could be when institutionalised. And the Rudd government has taken it to a whole new level.
There was once a time when people went into politics because they wanted to do something good. Or so I’m told.
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it is the price we pay for living in paradise..a truly honest and incorruptible person would continually have all the forces of darkness arrayed against them and just could not survive.. its the same in business and most workplaces..thankfully we can vote politicians out..i wish we could do the same with businesses and at work..
When you say, "there was once a time", did you have a partiular era or country in mind?
You can safely drop the word "modern" and everything still holds.
As Churchill once said “democracy the worst system of all, but it’s better than all the others.”
A lot of the problems with politics stem from the system of electoral seats or non-proportional representation. In the US, senators representing less than 11% of the American population can block the progress of a bill through the senate. When you combine this with the fact that only about 40-55% of Americans actually vote, it essentially means that about 4-6% of the population has the power to determine the fate of the country. This has in turn caused huge problems on a global scale as politicians representing voters in carbon-intensive rural locations like Montana have essentially killed America's political willingness to tackle global-warming. It is interesting that the decisions made by the founding fathers of the USA would result in polar bears drowning and Bangladeshi's losing their homes more than two centuries later.
The same sort of thing happens in Australia on a less egregious scale, with political distortions resulting in permanent subsidies being paid from the cities to the country and from safe seats to marginal ones, as anyone who has been for a drive on Tassie's wonderful roads can attest.
I was grounded in factional politics from a very early age ( parents were involved in politics) and I remained a party member for nearly 30 years. However, I must say the best thing about it was I learned a lot about how to manage people. The worst thing about it was that, at some point, my ethics and values were sorely challenged and at that point I jumped off. This doesn't say much for our current crop of politicians who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing! Cynical? you bet!
Steve,
I like what you wrote. It is a real shame that the principles of liberty, individual rights, property rights - the ideals that are the cause of our great modern material lives - are being slowly eroded away and no one is doing or saying anything about it.
For anyone interested in the ideals of liberty and freedom, look no further then www.mises.org
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