- Andrew Coyne
I always get the feeling that if we were ever to chat one-on-one, Coyne and I would disagree on a lot of policy minutiae but agree on big-picture stuff about what makes a dynamic, participatory democracy great.
Coyne is a cynical idealist - he recognizes the system for what it is, but wishes it could be less. Less expenditure, less a focus on sales and marketing techniques and more a discussion about policy, with actively engaged citizens making informed choices between policy suites and personalities they feel best able to implement their visions. What matters is whether the policy is suited to the task, whether the change proposed is the change required.
The left-right political dichotomy frustrates him, especially in its arbitrariness. The centre is what lies in our line of sight, largely determined after the fact rather than during an electoral race. Always in motion, the centre is. More appropriately, it's Parties shooting at the wall with the winners being the ones who get to paint the target around the holes they shot.
Meanwhile, the cost of public service continues to escalate. It seems to me that, in Coyne's mind, it shouldn't - spending should remain as it was; the public service should remain stagnantly the same size as time moves on. It's the cost of services that really command his attention.
Me, I'm a rational optimist. I accept that, in politics as in all industries, more energy invariably gets focused on sales than on ideation. It's almost like we're hard-wired to judge books by their covered - can you blame political Parties for playing the game?
It's less that politics is a blood sport than it its a mating contest - the winner doesn't get a trophy, so much as the chance to sew policy ideas for four years. In this scenario, Political Parties are the bucks locking horns and the peacocks spreading their plumage while we, the voting public, are passive peahens.
Since Politics is such a game of sales and government is about service provision - not service evolution - there's precious little bandwidth for structural change. This was a great model to have when the world changed at a more, shall we say, incremental pace, but that's not the case any longer. Infrastructure is ancient, demographics are swelling and changing and technology, of course, evolves faster than institutions can keep up.
The model that kept government contained is now chafing against our need to adapt with the times. We're rubbing to the left and right, finding ourselves constrained and yearning for change, without knowing to what.
It's a Plato's Cave thing - we are limited in our ability to define what we want by the vocabulary we have.
This is where behavioural economics comes in - what is it truly that people need to succeed in the current social context? What are the challenges we can't avoid, the opportunities too good to miss up and the positions worth taking now so that we're well-adapted for changes two or three steps down the road?
It's hard to figure any of that out if you're not actively looking down the road, sussing out the nuance of the present in full and projecting out potential scenarios.
Winning coalitions isn't about looking at the big picture any more than delivering a static suite of services is.
I don't think we should be focusing on the cost of government and trying to reduce service expenses to what they were in some arbitrary position in the past. To me, that's like trying to feed an adult based on the diet they had when they were children. What we need to do - not just government, but society as a whole - is think through what it is we need to sustain ourselves individually and systematically.
Government services might cost more, but result in less out-of-pocket expenses for things like transit or healthcare. Government may cost less, but with more services being provided at lower cost by the private sector. Or people might take more ownership of their lives, businesses engage in greater corporate social responsibility with government serving more of an executive function/coordination role.
Of course, this sort of structural framing requires a radical change in how we perceive ourselves and the role of institutions in our lives. It's a vision less focused on sales and individual gain and more committed towards optimizing a system of individuals in collaborative fashion.
Parties don't win elections by focusing on why - they win by focusing on how. They win by narrowing their audience, picking fights and designing policy suites that appeal to targeted voter blocks. Parties are constrained by these rules of the road; when they cease to play the game as is, they either fall off the map or we cease to have a democracy.
Which is why I'd encourage Coyne to look outside the political box a bit, get away from the usual suspects and take a look at the emerging Open Community, this generations Acquarian Conspiracy. There are virtuous schemers out there looking not to change the system for change's sake, but to align what we have with where we are already headed.
Most of these folk don't hold positions of power, nor do they wield fancy titles or have massive bank accounts. They aren't catalyzing change because of what's in it for them, but because they are inspired by what we can be.
Leadership from the front - now how radical a vision is that? The best part is, Coyne doesn't need to wait for someone else to get the ball rolling - he can be part of the change himself.
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