Here in Australia we have the rather appropriate intersection of two days. Avid readers of this blog will notice that, as the first Saturday of spring, today is PDA Day. Revel in the holiday dedicated to everyone’s favourite pastime – public displays of affection.
Rather less excitingly, today is also voting day for the federal election. Either way, go out there and get fucked.
I haven’t seen After Earth, and why would I? Apparently critics amateur and professional are slamming it, which must mean it is as awful as the trailer makes it look. But apart from that, the concept – planet Earth full of creatures that have evolved to kill humans – is as dull as it is familiar. After all, as the internet likes to remind me, Australia is full of creatures optimised to cause me harm.
But in a rare twist, the internet actually underemphasises the danger our species pose. Yes, we have spiders and snakes and puppies and babies all overflowing with toxic venom, but those aren’t all that terrifying. In an all-out war, the human race would bring to the table far deadlier poisons. No. What I’m talking about are species that are more than capable of resisting armed intervention, of destabilising our civilisation, of leaving us truly humbled before them should direct conflict arise.
Emus
Giant birds, even flightless ones, should earn fear and respect. Emus are no exception. Strong, fast and aggressive when they want to be, these swarming, feathered tanks could face even determined efforts to gun them down.
How do I know this? Well, it’s happened before. This awesome quote from ornithologist Dominic Serventy sums up the Great Emu War best:
The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.
I point out that these were ex-soldiers armed with trucks, machine guns and thousands of rounds of ammo, all with the sole objective of killing as many emus as possible. An inferior force can defeat a superior one by making it too costly to continue fighting, and the emus did exactly that.
Kangaroos
People outside of Australia don’t fully appreciate how dangerous kangaroos are. On country roads, they are hit by cars all the time. And that’s not due to poor driving – kangaroos actively try to throw themselves in front of moving masses of steel with a fanaticism that has to be admired.
They appear, en masse, around dusk and dawn, perfect times for intercepting sun-blinded drivers. Then they actively try to get hit by cars. Kangaroos have to be seen to be believed. They will match speeds with your car. They will randomly leap out in front of your car. They will stop in the middle of the road. Their behaviour is too directed to be considered reckless. And don’t forget they move by jumping, placing them on impact in line with a car’s weakest point – the windshield.
The tactics here are obvious. By striking at ground vehicles, they can jeopardise both civilian life and most coordinated military efforts against them. And if you think we can build more cars than they can breed, well, think again. At over 25 million in 2010, their population is greater than that of humans. They are one species which has thrived under European settlement, and they can use those numbers against us.
Wombats
At a metre long and low centre of gravity, they too have car-stopping potential. Combine that with a tendency to dig extensive tunnel networks and you have something which can cause all sorts of grief.
So, what can we conclude from all this? I think it’s that our brains give us an advantage over the rest of the animal kingdom, not in the form of technology, but rather in the form of organisation. If these three species alone could get their acts together, they could drive humans from the continent in months. But even without coordination, they exploit our vulnerabilities and whittle us down each and every day, which I find far scarier than any giant baboons. M. Night, take note.
I know I’m behind the curve on this one, but I just saw Everything Is A Remix. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to check it out. Appropriately enough, I’ve had an idea brewing in the back of my mind for a while now that this series plugs nicely into.
Information is not a commodity, not in the tradition sense, and yet it is treated like one. The concept of intellectual property is that you can own and control the distribution of discrete ideas, much like how you can own and distribute physical goods. This is self-evidently wrong. Ideas, media and other non-material goods can be copied and distributed to any corner of the world in an instant, for no more cost than bandwidth and data storage. And while if I want to sell a car I’ve built in New Zealand I have to actively try to ship the units there, to restrict selling information in New Zealand I have to actively try to identify and block Kiwis. Finite stock and regions don’t naturally exist on the web, not without them being imposed.
This has been in my mind ever since the US Ambassador to Australia famously complained that Aussies pirate Game of Thrones too much. But what are our alternatives? It’s not on free to air television, and shows that do make it to our networks are butchered (for example, the Futurama movies: they appeared on our screen months after airing in the US, were shown as three separate episodes each thus ruining the flow of each story, and had lines cut to make room for advertisements). Foxtel, which has agreed to fastrack Game of Thrones (if not other shows,) is a prohibitively expensive subscription service with no option to buy just the one show you want without getting loads of crap as well. And alternatives to the traditional broadcast networks that embrace the internet rather than trying to fight it? In Australia, you get this:
Netflix – Game of Thrones probably wasn’t the best example for the ambassador to pick, given that even in the US you can’t access it either: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
The ambassador touched a nerve here. In Australia we get games, shows, movies later, for a higher cost and sometimes lower quality than in the States. And while that may make sense for anything you need to assemble and ship around the world, it doesn’t for bytes. The fact that the torrents show up at the same time for everyone around the world proves that different costs, dates and viewing options for different regions is a deliberate choice distributors make, not restrictions imposed by economics.
These distributors are still operating under the 20th Century paradigm of the scarcity and controllability of information. While back in the day you could control who buys a CD and for how much, these days you can’t control who downloads the contents of a CD – only whether they’ll pay you or torrent it. And these companies are digging in their heels, as we have seen in the US with SOPA and its ilk, trying to retain the old-world model in a vastly new environment. But as long as the internet is around, business models that try to ignore it are doomed.
But this is just this start. The real impact of accessible information hasn’t yet been felt.
Right now everyone is talking about the rise of China, watching in awe as they lift a billion peasants out of poverty, fashioning into the world’s second largest and still growing economy. The first step of this transformation is manufacturing. Just like Germany, Japan, Spain and dozens of others, they have fuelled economic growth out of poverty by taking farmers and getting them to mass produce cheap goods in factories. Meanwhile in the US, advances in robotics are promising a renaissance of their manufacturing industry. While there is more to any economy than manufacturing, it is a key part in economies both developing and advanced.
And what freeflowing information will inevitably do is destroy this model utterly.
The global availability of non-material goods – movies, music, ideas – is just the start. Domestic 3D printers are on the verge of becoming ubiquitous – first in wealthy countries, then in developing countries as prices fall, quality rises and their value becomes obvious. The advanced machines can do more than just print plastic replicas of figurines; they can create sophisticated mechanical devices, chemical compounds, food, even organs. When this technology becomes available at every level of society, the free information of the internet will undergo a phase change and become physical. Scans of objects and blueprints for components will be just a click away. Material goods will be as accessible as TV shows are now, and we’ll be having the same antiquated arguments about stealing objects which you aren’t allowed to legally buy.
Economics is based on the assumption that resources are scarce. But with infinite intellectual resources and material goods at your fingertips, most of what is now scarce becomes limitless. Raw materials will still have a price, but the ability to scan and replicate most objects will lead manufacturing industries through the futureshock that media is now going through. Unless most countries choose to ban the internet and/or 3D printers – technologies with such obvious and universal economic advantages – the economies of the world will have change forced upon them at the very foundations.
What this will look like, I’m not sure. There’s a chance that the law will somehow curtail this, despite the drawbacks. After all, lawyers are surprisingly creative when it comes to not looking at the bigger picture. But I see the collapse of economics as we know it as being a painful, perhaps fatal transition. One possibility I see is sharp booms as GDP, the value of all finished goods, skyrockets as every home produces appliances galore. This would be followed by a sharp crash as entire industries collapse. In terms of real GDP per capita, we would see vast losses which would cause unrest and panic, and yet in material terms, people would be richer than ever. Food would still be put on the table and people would still have the latest gadgets and gismos, but there’d be no money floating around. Energy would have to be free in a world where any home can print their own generators, and yet high unemployment and inflation (even stripped of much of their impact) will likely cause turmoil.
Certain businesses would thrive. A throwaway culture would arise stronger than ever which would lead to a lot of waste, but with such a demand for raw materials this junk would be salvaged. This hunger for raw materials and easy access to brainpower and rapid prototypers would see a new space race, eager to pull down space junk and asteroids to where they are needed. Bandwidth would become a valued resource, one that like food would be considered a basic human right. Services, unprintable and undownloadable, would endure until advances in automation squeezed people out. Niche luxuries will exist (people will always have an appetite for ‘farm-grown steak’) but will employ very few people.
Money as it exists now wouldn’t be relevant – too many people could do away with it utterly yet still live comfortable lives. If we are flexible and creative, we might embrace alternatives. New currency, backed perhaps by the nation’s data storage or bandwidth, would come into play to moderate what remaining consumption could be. People would earn little from these industries but would need little, with so much being freely available.
Then again, if the ubiquity of production does lead to anarchy, maybe we won’t pull through it. Maybe the traditional view of economics is too powerful to give up, even when we are free of it for the first time in history.
I started off by talking about how information isn’t a traditional commodity, not anymore. It is vitally important to the future of the entertainment industry, of our thinktanks, of our inventors and authors and programmers and artists, that we properly embrace this new reality. Companies that trade in information need to allow consumers to access and, yes, pay for their creations if they want to remain profitable. But it’s also important for the rest of society. More and more industries will transition online, whether by choice or not, but if we let laws hold this process back it will kill the promising future cyberspace offers.
This disintegration of boundaries and limitations caused by the internet will only intensify over time. We need to position ourselves so that we move seamlessly into this profitable future, rather than be torn apart by it.
I wrote this article a while back, but before I posted it… well, the topic was covered far more thoroughly than I ever could. But in the wake of yet another shooting – at a Mother’s Day parade of all things – I feel I had to dust this off and add my voice to the roar. So apologies if this feels like rehashing John Oliver, but clearly the message hasn’t sunk in.
Look, America, it’s really time you took gun control seriously
I don’t think Americans are dumb on this issue. Any lobby as powerful as the National Rifle Association is more than capable of derailing intelligent discussion. But it’s time to move above the rhetoric, and really think about the issue of gun control.
Even in America, there’s no such thing as “the right to bear arms”. It’s a privilege, nothing more. After all, guns are licenced. The criminally insane aren’t allowed to possess firearms, and I understand that it’s a common parole condition, too. Like all others, this privilege to bear arms is one that can and is revoked for the common well-being of society.
When Obama called for a ban on assault weapons, there was enormous backlash. But here’s the thing – assault weapons are only useful for killing humans. No one is denying this. So who would want such a device? The benefits in protecting your home against nutjobs with deadly weapons have to be weighed against the costs of giving nutjobs easy access to deadly weapons. A good guy with a gun can’t stop a bad guy with a gun. Nothing can.
Having the entire population armed won’t stop gun violence. If a single crazy person can shoot up an army base, then what chance do schools or shopping centres have? The fact that so many spree shooters take their own life, either directly or through a suicide-by-cop scenario, shows that the fear of death is not a disincentive to these people. It also shows that having an armed population doesn’t work.
But what happens if you take guns out of the equation? As it turns out, I am living through a case study. In 1996, Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people, wounding dozens more, in what became known as the Port Arthur massacre. In response the Howard administration initiated gun control programs. And yes, people objected. People complained. Citizens cried out in rage that the government was stripping them of their rights to blah de fucking blah. But that was the last such massacre in our history, the government has not gone tyrannical and armed gangs only attack the houses of other armed gangs.
Let me make this clear. Before gun controls, we had massacres. Afterwards, we had none. Here’s a list of them. Note that there were some in the 1980s, some in the first half of the 1990s. And then zero. None. No spree killings. The availability of guns is the only variable that’s changed.
Except violent movies and video games which have, of course, increased in popularity and violent content since then.
Banning assault weapons, especially guns in general, will reduce the number of spree killings America has to endure. Given the tendency for nutjobs to stockpile weapons these weapons will still be available, but less available. If you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns, but if you keep them legal any messed up kid with mental problems can get their hands on them. Guns don’t kill people since people kill people, but people with guns kill many more than those without.
So yes, in your deluded little fantasy world, if guns are taken away then there’s nothing stopping the government from invading your home and kidnapping your family. But historically speaking that has never happened. Gun massacres, though, seem to occur with distressing regularity.
The choice is yours. Try to protect yourself with what are purely and entirely weapons of war and you’re putting yourselves at risk. Restrict access to these and everyone becomes safer. Anything else is spin and paranoia.
ANZAC Day is a great holiday. Truly, it is. And like so many of my opinions, I can back this one up with evidence. Consider a generic annual day dedicated to thinking about wars present and past. The way I see it, there are four approaches we could take to such a day:
1) We ignore it. I don’t think anyone is advocating that we sweep history under the rug, referred to only in hushed tones. No. We need a day to reflect on these matters.
2) We glorify it. We thank those who serve and have served. The bravery of those in our military is saluted and held up as examples for the rest of us. Tales of courage under fire and mateship in the face of death are exchanged, with the suffering glossed over. This approach would be quite concerning – rather than forgetting history, we are misrepresenting it. Arguments could be made as to which would be worse, but clearly neither is ideal.
3) We condemn it. War is presented as the raw tragedy that it is, with soldiers and civilians on both sides the victims of a wide-scale succumbing to our basest desires. Those who serve are at best seen as pawns in a deadly game, at worst as participating in a massive crime. Just writing this paragraph made me feel sick, so let’s not go with this one.
4) We balance it. Those that fought, those that suffered and lost, need to be remembered and their pain understood. But their bravery, their sacrifice, cannot be ignored. Soldiers aren’t criminals – they are heroes in a vast, tragic play. Love the warrior. Hate the war.
It’s obvious which approach is the best, the sanest, the most respectful. We can’t forget history and we can’t ignore the unpleasant parts of it, but also we can’t wallow in misery. Blighting the past makes us forget that the military fights so we civilians don’t have to. Besides, if you are opposed to war then you need to understand it, truly appreciate it from all angles, before you can successfully oppose it. Wars are stories about individuals on the front line and their families back home, about nations and economies and generations, about people. That’s why we need a day to both give thanks and to mourn. One without the other leaves us vulnerable to repeating the worst of our history.
And if you want a day to really reflect on the dark histories of war, there’s always Remembrance Day.
So by now the Human Brochure, Canberra tourism’s latest attempt to draw in moneyed crowds, has marched a path across the Twittersphere. In its wake we find criticism and controversy. It seems that a lot of average people on the street aren’t all that thrilled about tax payer money being spent to entertain bloggers. And so the endless whinging session that passes for public comment continues.
This blog post, in some ways, is part of that. I mean, here I am expressing my opinions, angrily, through my blog. I’m no different from any of the naysayers swarming the Riot Act with their moaning. And yet I’m completely different from them. See, I’ve actually considered my opinion before broadcasting it.
Yes, I’m an arrogant arsehole. But what’s more arrogant – taking time to ponder the issue, changing your mind a few times before deciding to share your thoughts? Or perhaps passionately bleating every half-considered microepiphany you have, like it was a universal truth? So bear with me and let me justify my annoyance a little.
These people have the opinion that the campaign will never work, that it isn’t original, that it was a waste of money. Some have said the whole idea is ridiculous, that essentially bribing people to say nice things about your city is transparent and won’t work. This, right here, is how I can justify my arrogance – just think about that last sentence for a little bit. Apparently the entire concept of advertising, which is literally nothing more than paying people to say nice things about your product, doesn’t work. Who knew?
With all of these opinions floating around, let’s talk about some facts. It’s a fact [1] that at $1m, this was far cheaper than a traditional advertising campaign. It’s a fact [2] that this sort of thing draws a great deal of attention, and it’s a fact [3] that people were saying great things about Canberra.
Was this a risky move? Oh, yes. If things had gone wrong for a lot of people it would have been disastrous. But this sort of marketing is pitched perfectly at Canberra’s problems – specifically, that everyone sees it as a boring country town with little more than the War Memorial and Parliament. People have heard of Canberra, but have a bad view of it. This sort of campaign can fix a bad image.
So why am I getting so ranty about this, in particular? Maybe because it’s a microcosm of what is wrong with people. Here we have people in the government trying to address a problem in a new way. It’s not trailblazing, so there is very little risk, but it is a different approach. And what do people do? They all shout off their mouths without putting the slightest effort into balancing the facts. Want to say that a cheap, proven, effective marketing strategy is a waste of money? Great, maybe we should go back to paying advertising executives big money to come up with tourism ads that offend the delicate sensibilities of those they are trying to advertise to.
Sure, I rant and hate and spew bile up and down the internet. But the targets of my outrage are usually those who indulge in the process, centuries out of date, of basing their facts on their opinions, instead of, well, the rational way. If every even slightly unusual idea gets hit by a torrent of automatic abuse, then we will have no new ideas. Or even old ideas. We’ll be stuck with the current ones, whether they work or not.
It’s the 21st Century. Start bloody acting like it.
Yes, it’s true – I’ve slowly moved myself into a position where I’m casually but constantly battling the Americanisation of the English language. I’ve been known to mock friends and loved ones who call the last letter “zee”, I complain bitterly whenever Australian media use American date formats and I even cringe when people say “thanks, man” to me. I’d be especially critical of any non-American spelling the word as “Americanization”, which robs the word of its delightful self-defeating nature. But the question is, why do I care at all?
I count Americans among my friends, but their language among my enemies.
If I had to guess, I’d say that most people who sympathise with my goal of defending the unique and wonderful flavour of English we speak in Australia against the seppo tongue would be Grammar Nazis. The profile fits. Grammar Nazis are notorious for opposing change or improper use of any kind in the language. It’s a highly conservative philosophy. According to them, linguistic evolution is a thing of the past.
I myself have been accused of being a Grammar Nazi. On the surface, there might be some similarities. I like grammar. People at work are always asking me the check stuff they write for mistakes. I know what an Oxford comma is, and I know how to use “whom”. Heck, I know what an adjective is, which unfortunately is more impressive in certain circles than I’d like. It bugs me when people use the wrong homophones or leave out apostrophes (or, commonly enough, both at the same time). All this is doubly true in material that really should be checked for errors before publication – advertising, journalism and so forth.
But I’m not a Grammar Nazi. With great pride I wear the label of a Grammar Nerd. What’s the difference? Well, for one thing I’m not conservative. I find linguistic evolution to be a beautiful thing not just to witness but to participate in. Deliberately, I use nouns as verbs all the time (eg, “I am gonna pub so many pubs tonight”) and why not, as long as meaning is clear? I take joy in splitting infinitives because, unlike a Grammar Nazi, I think that Latin is an awful, arbitrary guide to how to use English. I even say “lol”. Unironically.
Inventing new words, my birth right as an Australian, is something I indulge in. My latest portmanteau to take off is “keenvailable”, a word I find fills a gap. It is possible to be keen for something, but not available. Conversely, you can be available for something, but not keen. Sometimes you want this level of detail – unavailable people might come if the circumstances are changed, but only if they are keen. But sometimes you need a straight yes or no answer – “Are you keenvailable? You are? Great, I’ll add a table to the booking!”
There are existing ways to ask this question already. But there’s a reason every natural language is riddled with redundancy. Frankly, I got sick of this happening:
Winnipeg: Coming to the pub tonight?
Person: I dunno, maybe.
W: What, do you have plans or something?
P: Nah.
W: I bet you could use a night out.
P: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
W: So see you tonight?
P: Yeah… yeah, okay.
Now, the whole ordeal of having to convince people to do anything is simplified:
W: Keenvailable for the pub tonight?
P: Um… yeah, I guess I am.
Your results may vary, but I find the word forces clarity by breaking the amorphous question of “are you coming?” into firm conditions of “do you want to?” and “are you free to?”
You’re welcome.
The point of all this is, I’m not afraid of linguistic change. I yearn for it, I even nurture it. So why do I specifically resist the specific change of Americanisation? It isn’t some form of general linguistic xenophobia, either – I incorporate foreign words and slang in all the time. Just not American words and slang.
America’s influence over English, globally, is incredibly strong. No matter what happens, for better or for worse, Americanisation will happen. What concerns me is the scale of it all. It’s so pervasive that when I mocked someone for using “eww” instead of “yuck” they didn’t understand why, even knowing my attitude about this. I myself am guilty of it. And that’s the point – if we just sit back and let linguistic evolution take its course, Australian English will be swallowed by its culturally dominant cousin from across the sea. By resisting I hope to keep languages evolving while staving off extinction.
I understand that this makes me sound completely mental, difficult to be around and down-right pedantic. Not to mention hypocritical. Honestly, it’s hard to deny. But I think the differences in the English dialects are precious enough to make the effort defending. And if not for abstract notions of fighting cultural imperialism, then at least consider the practical benefits – any formal document, whether it’s a thesis or resume or minutes from a meeting, should be written in formalised Australian English. Might as well keep in the habit.
(This is the part where you go through this post and previous ones to point out my own use of Americanised terms. Believe me, if I’m guilty of this but don’t realise it, I want to know.)
What does it mean to be politically conservative? Is this a label that makes sense? Is it one we should be using?
The way I see it, being politically conservative means being both economically and socially conservative. That’s the trend in the US, it’s the trend in Australia, and it seems to be the trend elsewhere, too. But, does it make sense, politically, to lump conservative with conservative, progressive with progressive?
In broad terms, being socially conservative means you value tradition and established conventions, while being socially progressive is about trying to change things for the better. Economically, conservatives advocate a small government, lower taxes and harsher stances on crime, while progressives advocate a government that provides services and regulates the economy. If we take these definitions, then the question arises – why do political parties tend to align fully conservative or fully progressive?
Until society becomes something worth conserving, I will never be socially conservative. But, while I lean towards a socialised view of how the government should act, I certainly see the logic in aiming for a small government. Contradictory? Perhaps. But it makes more sense than applying a simple, rigid view towards the economy. Sometimes government spending is bad. But we can’t expect corporations to act on our behalf. Economies are far too complex to be always handled with the same set of tools.
My point is, my social views don’t align with my economic views. This leaves me politically stranded.
Consider the legalisation of marijuana. It’d be a socially progressive move, and yet it would allow us to scale back some parts of law enforcement, save a lot of taxpayers’ money and even generate new tax dollars. Conversely harsher punishments for crimes, something socially conservative people tend to favour, would lead to raised taxes and larger government.
You could argue the above example is proves nothing. After all, economically conservative views call for a government that is overall smaller, not smaller in every way. I mean, they aren’t all anarchists. But is there any logical reason why someone who respects the good ol’ days also wants less government involvement? It’s not hard to imagine a nostalgic old man near retirement who wants the government to take financial care of him. Or someone who wants the government to expand key services like health and education while loosening market restrictions. Does conservatism really imply a totally conservative outlook? Does sympathy for social progress really require economically progressive leanings?
If you feel that politics is broken, well… this isn’t the cause. But having to compromise your opinions to fit into arbitrary pigeon holes can’t exactly be helping.
Suppose, for a minute, that you were the reigning monarch in a constitutional democracy. Or maybe a famous and beloved philanthropist. Although you hold no real power, you have a great deal of influence and a decent amount of wealth to play with. While anything you say can be ignored, it will at least grab the attention of the media.
How, given the limits of your authority but a healthy disregard for the conventional, do you fix society’s problems?
Democracy. It’s a fairly broken system, would you agree? It seems the biggest problem with it is that by definition it is government by the people, but people are idiots. This is a hard thing to counter, but the problems run deeper than that. Sometimes I feel like the issue of partisanship is inseparable from democracy – whether it’s the US Republicans preventing any change offered by the Democrats or here in Australia the Noalition… well, saying “no”, it’s a miracle that anything ever gets done. But it gets worse. For some reason people want their leaders to be likeable or the same church as them, rather than being effective leaders capable of leading a competent government. Not to mention that good politicians don’t necessarily make good leaders – popularism and myopically looking no further than the next election do the country no favours.
Given all this, is it possible to fix democracy given little more than the attention of the public? I don’t know. This seems like exactly the sort of question that can be crowdsourced, and if you have any ideas I’d be interested to hear them.
But I do have something that feels like the start of an idea. Imagine a TV show that uses entertainment to soften a message that is, effectively, an objective analysis of the policies of the major political parties. This could take a number of forms. Getting the edutainment balance right would be crucial.
One thing I envisage is having well-defined categories for comparison – economic policy, defence, foreign relations, health care, the environment, and so forth. Timeless issues that will affect each and every generation. Time could be allocated for miscellaneous issues, but let’s face it – whether your economic policy will bankrupt the nation is slightly more relevant than if you can make empty promises about stopping people smugglers, an issue that has a lot of political sway given that it doesn’t actually impact on anything going on in the country.
To this end I see spokespeople for the parties reading out the key points of their policies in each category. I say “spokesperson” and not “senior political figure” because anyone recognisable as belonging to a party would be banned from this role. Individual personalities will be, as much as possible, separated from the parties, leaving the policy to speak for itself. These policies would then be torn apart on live TV by a panel of experts – an unfair thing to subject junior politicians to, but they are less likely to be able to dance around the issues. Choosing this expert panel would be one of the challenges. They’d have to be politically neutral of course, but they’d also have to be a mix between people currently working in the field (so they know the recent issues) and people with a little distance, eg former workers in the field, or foreign academics (so as not to be biased by whichever policy offers them the most perks).
This panel would also be responsible for debunking all the common misconceptions people have about the issues, or at least provide a more complete picture. There will be a lot of these, but the focus should be on policies the experts hate but voters like. If a policy is put forward but every expert says it is rubbish, that is what should be conveyed to the public, not whether or not unqualified, impatient masses think it sounds good.
Speaking of impatience, these discussions would have to be kept brief out of necessity. In order to prevent oversimplification or sensationalist editing, the summaries as well as detailed discussion points would be posted online. This website would be constantly referred to in the show. Politics is complicated, and as it stands even if you want more than just the soundbites you’ll be hard-pressed to find the details needed to make an informed decision. And while not everyone will read all the details, enough will so that if the summaries or reported outcomes of the debate are misrepresented it will quickly become obvious.
Some time could also be given to third parties and independents. Two party systems simply do not work. If an alternative has a valid solution everyone needs to hear about it.
I’d watch a show like this. But to really drive the message home it’d be nice to have some light-hearted fun along the way. Comedians would be invited to talk about this issues raised, and while they would be allowed to poke fun of the politicians they’d be required to keep the focus on the policy. Political awareness cold be tested in the form of questions posted to the television audience, along the lines of having to assign pieces of policy to the parties that advocate them.
There could be dozens of elements added to a program like this. Time could be allocated for foreign solutions to relevant problems. Questions could be posted to the party leaders regarding the successes and failures of policies similar to theirs that have been tried elsewhere. Difficult questions could be put forward, like asking politicians which of their opinions disagree with their parties’ stances.
The gaping flaw with this idea is how to make it happen. For one thing, it would quickly become a sensationalised mess unless it was funded by generous organisations not looking to spin it into a profit. There’s also the trick in convincing politicians to take part in it. But here’s the kicker – if you have the influence and the attention of the media, then if you put this idea forward people will pay attention to it. Any party that refuses has to be asked the question – what exactly are you afraid of?
This idea isn’t perfect. Even if you pulled it off perfectly it wouldn’t necessarily fix democracy. But something resembling this might be one part of a machine that transforms voters into well-informed, competent decision makers. It’s a tall order but changing a culture isn’t impossible – after all, that’s how democracy arose in the first place.
Is it possible to be too successful?
Maybe, maybe not. Either way it’s important to be wary of success. Achieving one goal can open up unexpected, sometimes ironic issues that were simply inconceivable to those who solved the original problem.
Problems aren’t always bad, though. Sometimes they are a symptom of something far more important going wonderfully right, a bit like unpleasant side effects in life-saving medication.
Consider three major problems Australia is fortunate enough to be blessed with:
First is obesity. We are fat and we are getting fatter. This, I’m sure you all appreciate, is bad. Statistics are bullshit 90% of the time but when they all point to the same conclusions they are hard to ignore. And any treatment of the stats shows that two things are obvious: obesity is unhealthy, and we are becoming more obese.
Problem.
Second is, well, children are ignorant about some pretty basic stuff. Recently in the news was this survey which showed that kids don’t know as much about where food and clothing comes from as adults do. Not an alarming or surprising realisation in itself, but a lot of these kids thought cotton comes from animals and yogurt from plants, which we as wise and enlightened grown-ups know is just bonkers. Food and clothing are right at the bottom of the pyramid, so such fundamental gaps in awareness can’t be seen as good signs.
Problem.
Third is Federal Politics. The last election was an embarrassment to the nation. People loathed Labor, not for orchestrating a coup but for doing it out in the open instead of behind closed doors. People don’t like to see that sort of stuff go down. Labor managed to win, though, only because the Liberals were led by one of the biggest fucking morons in political history. People mock Barnaby Joyce but are quick to forget that before he was the clown of the Coalition, Tony Abbott was. And yet the Liberals pat themselves on the back, thinking how great it was that they came so close to beating a government that had no real hope of re-election.
The next election isn’t looking to be much different. A lot can happen between now and then, but it’s humbling to think that if either of the two parties had been led by a pile of rocks in the last one, they’d have won in… a landslide.
Problem.
But these are great problems to have. All you have to do is consider their causes.
Obesity can be blamed on the cost and availability of junk food, advertising, laziness, home entertainment that kicks the shit out of going outside, even our own genetic makeup. And all these things play their role. But at the end of the day, the reason we are so fat is because we are so rich. Fat is success. The average person now is so much richer than they would have been a few generations back, certainly more than a few before that. Food, in all manner of varieties and qualities, is in abundance for Joe Citizen. This hasn’t always been a given – for example in the UK, sugar rationing only ended in 1953.
Obesity is a serious problem that needs addressing, but a mere side effect compared to the problem of starving to death, living hand to mouth.
So children are ignorant about things they shouldn’t be. You want to know what children aren’t ignorant about? Stuff they deal with in their day to day lives. They can surprise you by how knowledgeable they can be. And the average child today does not milk the cow, nor do they harvest the cotton, nor do they do any of that agrarian nonsense that the typical family doesn’t have to give a damn about. Again, thanks to our wonderful, first world wealth, most families pay someone else to raise the animals and sew the fabrics.
Kids should not be ignorant about the origins of food and clothing. Lack of awareness about food and nutrition plays into the obesity problem. But there’s a difference between “should know” and “will die cold and hungry if they don’t know”. Our successes in building up the wealth of society have led to the problem of kids not having to know how to lead peasant lifestyles. Solution, meet side effect.
Which brings me to Federal politics. Pretty much all the major parties suffer from too much security. All politicians outside the major political organisations couldn’t lead the country because their ideas have never been tested against the system, and those within know that Australia is robust enough to take all sorts of punishment. No one is going to invade, the economy is rock solid and the people aren’t on the verge of revolution. Our politicians have nothing to fear but each other. No other environment can permit such petty, endless crap.
Remember a few years back when the UK bought an aircraft carrier but couldn’t afford any planes for it? That sort of incompetence can only find the light during a time of peace. With no dangers looming, suddenly the impetus to think things through and watch the consequences vanishes.
These are all serious problems that need immediate attention. Genuine #firstworldproblems plague us, killing us as individuals and communities. But somewhere one of our distant ancestors is watching some guy in his early twenties struggle to get off the couch, thinking “Fuck yeah! I did my job, and did it damn well”. So next time you see some nine year old kid verbally abusing her mother for buying her a 16 gb iPhone instead of the 64, don’t think that society is going backwards. Instead, celebrate the fact that society is so wonderful, so successful, that it inevitably spawns these little dipshits.
beersandtears 