What's with Government Anyway?

With the election campaign here in Canada in full swing, and the current American style free-for-all of criticisms, witticisms, copy and paste talking points and general tit-for-tat between the various supporters of our three leading parties, I find myself getting a little tired of arguing minutia.

There is a major problem with democracy as we practice it right now. The skills needed to get elected, are largely different from those required to provide good government once elected. On the one hand, you need to appeal to a broad base of people who are willing to make the effort to vote, which means: careful messaging (both content and timing), avoiding pissing people off (thus mobilizing votes for the competition) and spending a lot of money on catchy, easy-to-remember advertising so that when the voter gets out, they can make an "easy decision" to pick you.

Does any of that have anything to do with good government? After all, governing often involves making a lot of choices, many of them which will be unpopular. Many of which would cost you votes if you said you were going to do such a thing during an election campaign. It has been said (at great electoral cost to the sitting Prime Minister who said it)

"This is not the time, I don’t think, to get involved in a debate on very serious issues"

She was right, but saying it during an election, to a reporter was, in hindsight foolish. (When asked why, she stated:

"Because it takes longer than forty-seven days to tackle an issue that’s that serious"

As we can see, an election is a terrible time to try and find a solution to a problem - because what everyone is really chasing is votes to get elected! Thus our problem democracy. We need to tackle hard problems - and the time to pick the people to help lead us to the solutions is the worst possible time for them to open up and say what they really think!

I believe that a lot of people get caught up in the minutia of elections - 1 or 2 % tax increases (or cuts), deficit or surplus, what about the exchange rate, immigration quotes, funding for health care. Are you surprised that I refer to this as minutia? Well these are all the levers and dials that control our big Ship-Of-State, but no one ever seems to talk about where we are going? How fast should we get there? What's on the menu for dinner is very immediate (and hopefully quite yummy), but shouldn't there be someone in the crows nest keeping watch? Just because we haven't hit an iceberg doesn't mean there isn't one out there. So do we pick our Captain based on his cooking? Or on his Leadership and Seamanship?

Why not? Why wouldn't you want to discuss serious issues during an election? Well for one thing, most of the issues we deal with in modern times are complex and difficult. They involve making trade offs, and compromise. It takes time to develop a good policy (as PM Campbell pointed out) and of course, no one wants to hear they won't get their own way. And there will always be another politician out there waiting to pounce on any ambiguity in your message to mobilize their own base and alienate you from swing voters.

This brings me to the two subjects I want to tackle in the next little while. First, what is it we really want out of government? Why do we have it at all? What is it supposed to do? How do we select leaders and representatives who will be able to tackle problems on behalf of our society? How do we forsee the problems they will have to face? What qualifications are (or aren't) appropriate? How do we address the fact that different people in our society

So I pose the question, what is a government for? Why do we even bother?

If you're reading this you probably know I am an engineer, and we love to look at Boundary Conditions. So let's apply that model here.

There have been a few governments which are very controlling, mandating economic five year plans from a very high level, and reaching down to individual lives. I won't name them, there are several well known examples (I'm not trying to polarize anyone, I'm just looking at the extremes). They haven't been very successful. The 20th Century examples either collapsed, or have migrated towards a less centralized approach, or in some cases tried to expand and were defeated by less centralized (although somewhat centralized) democracies. Why did they fail? Well historians are still working that out, but it is observable that their economies were uncompetitive compared to more liberal societies.

What about the other extreme? No government at all? Anarchy. Well that's kind of difficult. The moment there is no government, there will always be someone who wants to "take advantage". To do so often requires working in groups. Other groups then form to protect themselves (or implement their own advantage). What you get is what is usually called a civil war or a failed state. It ends only when one group gains sufficiently to put down the others, becoming the government. Recent examples include Somali, Libya, Syria, and the parts of the Levant currently struggling with Daesh (ISIL/ISIS).

So from the boundary conditions (especially the lower bound, Anarchy) it seems that we need a government of some sort...but for what?

The answer to that question is pretty key. If you are planning to vote, I strongly believe that you should figure that out before you pick a party or a candidate. Because if you don't know the answer to that question, you are voting blind. And voting blind is letting yourself and your fellow citizens down.