I grew up in the Labour Party, father was a Councillor, on election days the Labour Committee Rooms were in our house, I was out leafleting from age 14. This was the 1970s.
I loved the older working class guys who turned up in branch meetings and on election days. They understood the world in a simple way: before WW2 they were made to dig holes and fill them in again in order to get their dole money; after the war they got jobs building Council houses (literally on the same piece of land they dug/filled the holes) and then got to live in those secure homes. An older neighbour on my estate told me this about his own experience.
Later, they knew that the Tories wanted them to work more hours for less pay, while Labour wanted them to get more pay for less hours. So they stuck with Labour. There was not much theory to it. In fact, I don't think they knew any socialist theory, but they knew what politics could deliver for them and they could hold the people they elected to account for it.
I don't think that class-based politics exists any more. Society and culture (including the internet) is more complicated and seems to offer myriad routes through which individuals can independently (apparently at least) make a meaningful life. When so many people understand their lives, and what shapes those lives, in so many varied individualistic ways - what then are we holding politicians to account for?
Yes, all those individuals all still really need good public services, from health to education and social care, policing and justice, un-potholed roads etc. We all need an economy with enough jobs, inflation under control, sustainable energy etc. We really do have 'more in common' ...but when so many people see their lives in such individualistic frames they may just give up on politics, thinking wrongly that it has nothing to do with them.
I also think that even if there is a saint who understands all the technical things very well, they run into incentive problem in a different way— those within the system who are not saints may see them as threatening. After all, if “doing things well” isn’t a route to success, and “doing something else” is, someone who does things well is running against the tide of that incentive system.
One thing that may have made this worse is globalisation. You may recall the episode of Yes Prime Minister in which Sir Arnold is angling for various sinecures in exchange for supporting Humphrey Appleby as his successor. A couple of them were international (the chairmanship of the Anglo-Caribbean association - especially in the winter months - for example) but most were UK based. Thus, even the most venal politicians had some incentive to support British institutions. Nowadays UK politicians leave office and leave the UK, usually for the US or the gulf states. (Before Brexit it was often the EU, whose institutions we are least shared ownership of). Whether it is the lecture circuit, becoming lobbyists for companies such as Facebook or wealthy foreigners, British politicians increasingly have the incentive to sell out not just the public, but the country.
So the problem is that the voters are wrong? They should be voting for the people with sensible ideas and good intentions. But how can a voter know? Isn't this the classic case of a lack of information to make the choice? Buying vegetables is easy because most of us can recognize a rotten cabbage, or an over priced one, and there are plenty of suppliers. So 'markets' work well. In an election, choice is limited, and information is sparse. Instead of a cabbage, we get men in suits telling us what they think we want to hear. Unlike a cabbage, which is what it is, and we can all see it for what it is, politicians are practiced at dissembling, at being evasive, at saying one thing then doing another. Also, they are mostly cogs in a larger machine. They may not have much sway in what the party decides.
There is no way that a voter can know which candidate is the 'right' choice for them. They are all cabbages sealed inside a box with pictures on the outside of a perfect cabbage - varying in colour and shape, but all perfect. The box is covered in enticing photos of sumptous cabbage based meals. We only find out what is really inside when we open the box AFTER purchase. And the next time, it's the same sealed box routine. This time we may think, "not the red cabbage, that was a dud", I'll try the pointy bluey one". Ad infinitum.
Actually, its worse than that, because we never actually get to see the cabbage, someone else opens the box and we get served the various meals it is used in. We never really know if the cabbage was good, wholesome and matched the illustration and description. We just have to eat the dish it goes into. If we don't like the taste, is it because the cabbage was rotten, or the cook was poor, or the recipe not what we had been led to expect?
As well as incentives, one must consider disincentives.
The minority of MPs who lie, cheat, manipulate and bully not only get away with it, but use those attributes to rise to the top.
They are the least regulated not only of professions, but pretty much the entire workforce.
I suspect the electorate don't get the politicians they deserve, they've just given up hoping that any of them will take responsibility after decades of promises to behave.
My solution? Jail for lying (bill in parliament at the moment, tho it'll need tightening up). A total ban on government contractors hiring ex ministers (much easier to enforce than the reverse - just invoke the "conflicts" clause in the govt contracts and so paying them, and common in the private sector) and training or entrance exams for candidates. Maybe you don't have to pass, but the voter should at least be informed in advance on what a clueless flesh bag you are. For God's sake I know more about the ingredients in make up than I do about the politicians claiming they can represent me
I think I may have said this before – but wat one wonders about is why politics seemed to have better incentives, say, a hundred years ago. Yes, all the time up to about the 70s.
My theory is that the electorate was better organized then, and kept politicians in tighter reins. They had party machines that were more responsive to organized popular groups than the present filters, and perhaps also more articulated in ways the electorates understood. There was some kind of two-way communication that in happier cases even approached real discussion.
Of course I know best the Swedish example, but I also read Jonathan Rose: The intellectual life of the British working classes, where he, among other things, mentioned the 24h a day 365 days a year scientific seminar that took place in the coal-pits where Aneurin Bevan had his electoral base. Things like that simply don't exist any more. And I can't imagine it was unique.
Colin Crouch thought (Post-democracy, 2005; I think I said this before too) that before say 1975 trade unions were the guardians of popular power, but that they were scuttled by outsourcing. Now, of course, trade unions could be quite top-down too, but they were nevertheless closer to the electorate than politicians are, and got to know more from both worlds.
And I suspect there has been a comparable structure shift on the conservative side – away from countryside and small-town upper-middle-class people towards the wheeler-dealers of equity funds.
The most insightful point here is that good outcomes e.g. those of the mentioned labour governments lead to voters deciding to vote against their interests. I used to think that if governments did genuinely make improvements to the populace they'd be rewarded. But the opposite is true. We'll have to wait for the population to suffer for several more decades before they decide they want a change in the operationalisation of politics.
Long ago the Lords represented landowners and Commons merchants. With universal suffrage, labour outvoted capital in the Commons and now that factor of production needs to buy political representation--through lobbying, media, and outright corruption.
What would you think of a grand bargain: representing capitalists explicitly in the Lords (by corporate tax paid), in exchange for better worker representation inside companies?
I grew up in the Labour Party, father was a Councillor, on election days the Labour Committee Rooms were in our house, I was out leafleting from age 14. This was the 1970s.
I loved the older working class guys who turned up in branch meetings and on election days. They understood the world in a simple way: before WW2 they were made to dig holes and fill them in again in order to get their dole money; after the war they got jobs building Council houses (literally on the same piece of land they dug/filled the holes) and then got to live in those secure homes. An older neighbour on my estate told me this about his own experience.
Later, they knew that the Tories wanted them to work more hours for less pay, while Labour wanted them to get more pay for less hours. So they stuck with Labour. There was not much theory to it. In fact, I don't think they knew any socialist theory, but they knew what politics could deliver for them and they could hold the people they elected to account for it.
I don't think that class-based politics exists any more. Society and culture (including the internet) is more complicated and seems to offer myriad routes through which individuals can independently (apparently at least) make a meaningful life. When so many people understand their lives, and what shapes those lives, in so many varied individualistic ways - what then are we holding politicians to account for?
Yes, all those individuals all still really need good public services, from health to education and social care, policing and justice, un-potholed roads etc. We all need an economy with enough jobs, inflation under control, sustainable energy etc. We really do have 'more in common' ...but when so many people see their lives in such individualistic frames they may just give up on politics, thinking wrongly that it has nothing to do with them.
Sorry if I am stating the blindingly obvious!
I also think that even if there is a saint who understands all the technical things very well, they run into incentive problem in a different way— those within the system who are not saints may see them as threatening. After all, if “doing things well” isn’t a route to success, and “doing something else” is, someone who does things well is running against the tide of that incentive system.
One thing that may have made this worse is globalisation. You may recall the episode of Yes Prime Minister in which Sir Arnold is angling for various sinecures in exchange for supporting Humphrey Appleby as his successor. A couple of them were international (the chairmanship of the Anglo-Caribbean association - especially in the winter months - for example) but most were UK based. Thus, even the most venal politicians had some incentive to support British institutions. Nowadays UK politicians leave office and leave the UK, usually for the US or the gulf states. (Before Brexit it was often the EU, whose institutions we are least shared ownership of). Whether it is the lecture circuit, becoming lobbyists for companies such as Facebook or wealthy foreigners, British politicians increasingly have the incentive to sell out not just the public, but the country.
So the problem is that the voters are wrong? They should be voting for the people with sensible ideas and good intentions. But how can a voter know? Isn't this the classic case of a lack of information to make the choice? Buying vegetables is easy because most of us can recognize a rotten cabbage, or an over priced one, and there are plenty of suppliers. So 'markets' work well. In an election, choice is limited, and information is sparse. Instead of a cabbage, we get men in suits telling us what they think we want to hear. Unlike a cabbage, which is what it is, and we can all see it for what it is, politicians are practiced at dissembling, at being evasive, at saying one thing then doing another. Also, they are mostly cogs in a larger machine. They may not have much sway in what the party decides.
There is no way that a voter can know which candidate is the 'right' choice for them. They are all cabbages sealed inside a box with pictures on the outside of a perfect cabbage - varying in colour and shape, but all perfect. The box is covered in enticing photos of sumptous cabbage based meals. We only find out what is really inside when we open the box AFTER purchase. And the next time, it's the same sealed box routine. This time we may think, "not the red cabbage, that was a dud", I'll try the pointy bluey one". Ad infinitum.
Actually, its worse than that, because we never actually get to see the cabbage, someone else opens the box and we get served the various meals it is used in. We never really know if the cabbage was good, wholesome and matched the illustration and description. We just have to eat the dish it goes into. If we don't like the taste, is it because the cabbage was rotten, or the cook was poor, or the recipe not what we had been led to expect?
As well as incentives, one must consider disincentives.
The minority of MPs who lie, cheat, manipulate and bully not only get away with it, but use those attributes to rise to the top.
They are the least regulated not only of professions, but pretty much the entire workforce.
I suspect the electorate don't get the politicians they deserve, they've just given up hoping that any of them will take responsibility after decades of promises to behave.
My solution? Jail for lying (bill in parliament at the moment, tho it'll need tightening up). A total ban on government contractors hiring ex ministers (much easier to enforce than the reverse - just invoke the "conflicts" clause in the govt contracts and so paying them, and common in the private sector) and training or entrance exams for candidates. Maybe you don't have to pass, but the voter should at least be informed in advance on what a clueless flesh bag you are. For God's sake I know more about the ingredients in make up than I do about the politicians claiming they can represent me
I think I may have said this before – but wat one wonders about is why politics seemed to have better incentives, say, a hundred years ago. Yes, all the time up to about the 70s.
My theory is that the electorate was better organized then, and kept politicians in tighter reins. They had party machines that were more responsive to organized popular groups than the present filters, and perhaps also more articulated in ways the electorates understood. There was some kind of two-way communication that in happier cases even approached real discussion.
Of course I know best the Swedish example, but I also read Jonathan Rose: The intellectual life of the British working classes, where he, among other things, mentioned the 24h a day 365 days a year scientific seminar that took place in the coal-pits where Aneurin Bevan had his electoral base. Things like that simply don't exist any more. And I can't imagine it was unique.
Colin Crouch thought (Post-democracy, 2005; I think I said this before too) that before say 1975 trade unions were the guardians of popular power, but that they were scuttled by outsourcing. Now, of course, trade unions could be quite top-down too, but they were nevertheless closer to the electorate than politicians are, and got to know more from both worlds.
And I suspect there has been a comparable structure shift on the conservative side – away from countryside and small-town upper-middle-class people towards the wheeler-dealers of equity funds.
As Wittgenstein wrote in 1948, one thing we cannot say about Hitler is that he was in it for himself.
The most insightful point here is that good outcomes e.g. those of the mentioned labour governments lead to voters deciding to vote against their interests. I used to think that if governments did genuinely make improvements to the populace they'd be rewarded. But the opposite is true. We'll have to wait for the population to suffer for several more decades before they decide they want a change in the operationalisation of politics.
Long ago the Lords represented landowners and Commons merchants. With universal suffrage, labour outvoted capital in the Commons and now that factor of production needs to buy political representation--through lobbying, media, and outright corruption.
What would you think of a grand bargain: representing capitalists explicitly in the Lords (by corporate tax paid), in exchange for better worker representation inside companies?
Here is specific proposal for how to change incentives for politicians : https://www.jandehn.com/post/political-lying-is-spinning-out-of-control