Take another look at Labour? You havin' a laugh!!!

[ART]

Last week David Camoran claimed he liked nothing more than a few beers while watching darts on the telly:huh: How common is that I would stay with Bully Brown Better the divil you know.

 

[davek]

As I've said a few times before, I would like government to be very small. Society needs various social technologies to prosper, ie things like law and order. The state can provide those. It doesn't need to provide health, education, charity etc.

It's a basic rule of complex systems that they function much better when ordered from the bottom up than from the top down.

Problems come in society when power is concentrated in the hands of the few. Politics is living proof of this as every party descends into sleaze and corruption once in power. There's no choice. In pretty much every walk of life we have abundant choice, yet in our choice of government we have two, and even then the choice is only offered every four years, and only then if our view coincides with the majority of others that vote.

It's a well trodden path in other intellectual areas, not least economics and computer science, but is also something explored politically by people such as Karl Popper and FA Hayek. They'll no doubt talk about it all far better than I could so they're probably a good place to start if you want to understand what I think government should/should not do.

That's way too abstract. It's all well and good banging on about grassroots control and empowerment (as all political parties do, by the way), it's entirely another matter to demonstrate how that works if you try to reverse the processes we have in place for ordering our lives. You brought the word complex in and it's a relevant one: our needs are manifold and cant be taken care of by networks of people using communication tecnology to bypass bureaucracies (as your mate Cameron hinted at earlier this week). It's just bluster.

I think at the back of all this is a belief that we are only motivated to achieve if it's to look out for ourselves and immediate family/friends. It's a 'there is no such thing as society' ideology smuggled in through the back door. I distrust all those with an anti-state attitude for that reason.

 

[davek]

BBC News - Second bullying helpline patron quits over No 10 row

All going off with that bullying allegation now. The daft cow accusing Brown has the Charity Commission on her tail and two of the charity's four patrons have quit. Her governors will sack her soon. She's obviously a Tory with an axe to grind. She deserves all she gets...which will probably include a few quid from Tory Central Office.

 

[Rook]

It doesn't really matter who's in charge. If we say jump any British pol replies how high. If we say bend ov.....well the less said the better.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

BBC News - Second bullying helpline patron quits over No 10 row

All going off with that bullying allegation now. The daft cow accusing Brown has the Charity Commission on her tail and two of the charity's four patrons have quit. Her governors will sack her soon. She's obviously a Tory with an axe to grind. She deserves all she gets...which will probably include a few quid from Tory Central Office.

Cary Cooper works with us so I'm not surprised he's stepped down.

That's way too abstract. It's all well and good banging on about grassroots control and empowerment (as all political parties do, by the way), it's entirely another matter to demonstrate how that works if you try to reverse the processes we have in place for ordering our lives. You brought the word complex in and it's a relevant one: our needs are manifold and cant be taken care of by networks of people using communication tecnology to bypass bureaucracies

That's entirely the point. Needs can be met by emergent means. Popper for instance argued that it is a Plato'esq arrogance that suggests man can control everything via central dictat, and it's a misplaced arrogance. Precisely because society is so complex is a reason for decentralized control. Society is simply too complex for any government to manage successfully.

Nature itself is a perfect example of an incredibly complex system, with no central control (assuming you don't believe in God anyway), that has evolved into the most amazing thing.

I've just got back from the pub so am undoubtably not at my lucid best, but there are lots of fascinating texts on this subject should you wish to explore further.

I dare say you have a good point about getting from here to there. It's an issue that has stopped me delving too deeply into this as the situation seems futile, yet philisophically it still seems undoubtably right.

 

[davek]

That's entirely the point. Needs can be met by emergent means. Popper for instance argued that it is a Plato'esq arrogance that suggests man can control everything via central dictat, and it's a misplaced arrogance. Precisely because society is so complex is a reason for decentralized control. Society is simply too complex for any government to manage successfully.

Nature itself is a perfect example of an incredibly complex system, with no central control (assuming you don't believe in God anyway), that has evolved into the most amazing thing.

I've just got back from the pub so am undoubtably not at my lucid best, but there are lots of fascinating texts on this subject should you wish to explore further.

I dare say you have a good point about getting from here to there. It's an issue that has stopped me delving too deeply into this as the situation seems futile, yet philisophically it still seems undoubtably right.

Another way of putting it is that it's an imperfect system. Accepted, it is.

In any case, as you concede, devolved power from the centre is only possible on the basis we have centralised organisations like the various arms of law and order and natonal defence overseeing the whole thing, so what are you left with in this cobweb 'structure'? Health, education, transport...the basic building blocks of a modern society and economy you'd presumably like to see deconstructed. How can they be atomized and still retain cohesion? In microcosm: the Tories are are thinking of going down the Swedish route of breaking up the nation's education provision - right at the moment the Swedes are thinking of ditching it as a riotous idea. Things have been concentrated over time because, invariably, that's been the course of action that made sense and still does make sense. We've evolved that way of operating.

There's a debate to be had on the merits of centralising, I agree. You only have to look at the state of the Eurozone and it's response over the rogue Greek economy to see that.