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Swedish police forcibly remove Greta Thunberg from parliament entrance
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!
There seems to be an assumed competency that doesn't match reality.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they'll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder "why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me."
Additionally, since they're also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they'll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people's perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that's just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that's inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It's just that everything else is a lot worse.
You see, you're engaging in the assumed competency right now.
They DO NOT magically know more about an industry than the professionals in those industries. Ever. Period. Their decisions don't make sense because they're corrupted morons, not competent legislators. They do not know the intricacies of the bills they pass nor their impact most of the time.
While politicians can use skill as you describe, they don't have to and in fact often abuse that assumed competency to hide the corruption.
"Trust me bro, this tax cut will totally trickle down! I talk to economists every day!" Assuming they are competent only hurts YOU, because it primes you to buy in to the gaslighting.
Note, I said "some". If you think they are all terrible, you've likely been propagandized. I also said they're jacks-of-all-trades, I never said they know more than a specialist about that specialist's field. This is why they need to consult specialists. What they do know is things outside of that specialist's field. Say, they know more about governmental budgeting than a doctor would. They know more about medicine than an economist would.
And again, some. They're not all the same, that's a gross and inaccurate oversimplification based on emotion.
I'm trying to point out how you are still glamourizing the job, which is the first step to buying in on their excuses. After all, you won't ever have the "insider knowledge" they do.
You know who else has "insider knowledge"? Crypto bros, bankers, and lawyers. What do they use it for? Getting money from people.
In many cases, it's justified such as a skilled lawyer knowing which angle will get you off the hook, but in many other cases it is not. Outwardly without that true insider knowledge, YOU have zero ability to discern who is honest and who is gaslighting.
If a metric cannot discriminate between an honest person and a gaslighter, it's not a good metric. Politicians having "insider knowledge" is, in fact, a red herring at best. If their idea IS good, it will have FAR better justification than, "trust me bro, the lobbyists say it'll be great.".
What I'm saying is, the LAST thing you should do is trust a politician's "insider knowledge". If you want to learn how to survive prison, you don't go asking the Warden for advice.
I don't think its glamorizing to point out some of the nuances in the job itself. And they're not all in some grand conspiracy or something. You can understand why a good one believes as they do, if you put in the work. You just need to learn enough about the issue to become somewhat fluent in it. Say, covid vaccines or something.
Real information, though, not just emotionally-digestible good-sounding information. It takes actual hard work, like classroom-style.
Eh, glamourizing isn't quite the right word for sure, but the point is that you cannot use "insider reasoning" to justify anything. At all. Ever.
I do software engineering. I have to explain to non-tech savvy people extremely technical things weekly. They do not need that "insider knowledge" I have to determine if the idea is sound.
That's what I'm pointing out: "insider knowledge" is nothing but gaslighting, because a real pro can explain things to a non-pro in an understandable way.
If trusting "insider knowledge" only increases your chances of being gaslit ... why trust ANYONE who uses the excuse to not actually clarify things? My point is your mindset is still leaving you vulnerable by giving ANY creedence to "insider knowledge". If they know what they're talking about, they WILL be able to explain it in simple terms.
Einstein dumbed down relativity for middleschoolers. Why should politicians be allowed to fail to explain much, much simpler things?
That's why I just explained that you can understand exactly why they have the positions they do, if you simply put in the work to do so. We run into trouble, however, when people try to understand without putting in that hard work.
Then people begin to just apply blanket assumptions across the whole profession, like "politicians bad" or whatever. In real life, nothing is quite that simple.
But to really "get it", you need to pay quite a lot of attention to voting patterns, as well as work to understand whatever issue is important to you. A good politician, which do exist, has done that work. A citizen that does not will not necessarily understand it, however.
You've mischaracterized me several times now. I think the reason that is happening is because I'm challenging a worldview that you hold. Not because I am actually doing any of the things you claim.
Lastly, Einstein's Relativity in both its forms is extremely misunderstood. People think they get it, but they're just wrong. Really understanding it comes in around 2nd-3rd year of college level physics. It's not E=mc^2, that's pop science. When it comes to a politician, they can spend their time teaching you, which is really the job of a teacher, or they can spend their time teaching themselves what is necessary to do their jobs.
It's easy to wish for the world to be simple, like in a video game or movie. But its really horrendously complicated, just about all the time. You can understand this yourself, if you put in the degree of hard work that is necessary. Economics? Complicated as fuck. Geopolitics? Complicated as fuck. Psychology? Complicated as fuck. It is not your politicians' jobs to teach you these things, that's the job of university professors, mainly.
Yes, people SHOULD judge things by examining the details on a case by case basis.
Notice how you started by saying, "...understand why they have the positions they do..."
You're STILL doing it. You're still assuming they have the position based on meri, just misapplied merit. They do not. That's the entire point. Even if they're skilled manipulators, they're still fucking moronic for the actual political skills you described earlier. Most of them are only good at self-preservation, not actual, functional politicking.
I'm not assuming anything. I have a broad knowledge base that I put a lot of work in for, over a lot of years, and I like a handful of politicians that vote as I believe a knowledgeable person should vote. I'm not "guessing" like some random kid would need to. I'm not using my feelings.
I'm against trickle-down-economics, for instance, because I've spent hours and hours poring through really dry, boring shit. So I don't need to guess that it boosts corporate profits in the short term, but does not measurably improve life for the working class.
I don't need to assume anything, because I put in work a long time ago.
When it comes to something I don't understand as well, say, global trade, I just don't keep a strong opinion. Then I vote based on those things I understand. Feelings and assumptions and trust don't belong in politics. Facts and hard work and not having an undeserved opinion are what belong.
Note, I've never asked you to assume politicians are good or something, have I? I've simply described the necessities of the job. But you really didn't like that I guess, you maybe think "a normal guy" could do better? And no "normal people" ever run or something?
I'm not talking about YOU, you numpty, I'm talking about politicians in general. YOU should not trust THEM, because politics is not meritocratic.
When you say they have insider knowledge you don't, you are gaslighting yourself. That's the whole point. You talking up how smart you are just makes it sound like you think you're above being gaslit while you opened by saying politicians have special knowledge...
I'm trying to point out that you seem to have a preconceived notion of competence in politicians regardless of how much you say you "don't trust" them, not that YOU are incompetent. A preconception can and does poison logical analysis all the time. With such preconceptions, you don't have to fail a step of logic to arrive at the wrong result.
If anything, I'm saying trust yourself before any politician even if they have some good lobbyist propaganda coming out of their mouth.
When did I ever say they have insider knowledge that I cannot receive? I mean, for starters they absolutely do, they have access to intelligence reports and various classified things that would be illegal for me to see. But that's mainly just to do with the military, so whatever.
But I haven't been talking about any insider knowledge, just you have. I've been talking about issues, and the importance of having to actually work at getting an understanding.
There are only issues, and solutions. That's it. Also known as policy ideas. Should taxes be higher or lower. What percent. Tiered or flat. Etc etc etc. It's not mysterious or magical. It's just complicated, but you can learn it all if you put some work in.
How about immigration? How about education funding? How about welfare reform? They're just issues dude, solved with things like laws and policies. You need to learn them, not just handwave shit away as "ooooh insider knowledge is good/bad/whatever". You want to generalize it seems, but you shouldn't. Everything is specific, its own rabbit hole to be learned. Knowing one does not mean you know others. They're like subjects in school. If you get really good at math, then you know a lot of math. You can even judge if a math teacher is a good math teacher or not. It doesn't make you know history though.
That's like a politician. If you know a lot about immigration policy, you can judge which politicians are good at it, and which are fucking garbage. This is smart to do, so you know.
You should know which ones are good and bad. If you don't, that's not their fault, it's yours. That's commonly called a "civic duty", to understand the issues in your country. At least somewhat, you know? Nobody has time to become a real expert. But you can become fluent.
The very idea they have unique knowledge implies insider knowledge.
That's why I went on to say how real professionals can explain even highly detailed and complex things to those without intricate knowledge anyways.
I'm trying to hold up a mirror so you can see that you do indeed seem to have some faith that politicians are competent, regardless of what knowledge you or they possess.
That faith is misplaced. Always. My entire point is politicians are specifically vile "professionals" who specifically will not ever explain the actual reasons for things. You cannot ever treat them as if they know a damn thing.
When they say, "it's complicated." it's because they don't want to explain it because they know you won't like the answer.
That's it. Period. THEY are the professionals that should be able to explain a complex thing simply, are they not? Why do they constantly choose not to, and why do you constantly fail to see the problem with that?
Okay, when did I say they had unique knowledge then? Asides classified stuff, that doesn't count. You keep saying that. I keep saying it's not unique, you just don't want to go learn it.
So, they sometimes actually do explain things, Katie Porter for instance was pretty well-known for going into detail. Did you ever try listening to her, assuming you're American? Did you watch Biden's recent State of the Union? He explained several policy plans he has, though not in particularly great detail, it was just a speech. Do you listen, ever?
The main problem is you seem to expect them to come to you, wherever your media bubble is, and teach you everything. That's again, not their job. It's not their purpose. All the time they spend campaigning, trying to convince Joe-schmoe to vote for them, is time they aren't doing their actual jobs of governing the country.
Again, they're not teachers. They're not salesmen. We do not vote for people to teach us, we should not vote for them to sell themselves to us. We vote for them to make our rules. They already campaign way too fucking much.