On Politics And Governance

The key innovation that has powered the modern era is: organizations. We solve a great many problems by creating an org, setting it tasks, giving it powers and resources, and putting some key “masters” in charge.

Besides participating as suppliers, customers, employees, or targets of such orgs, there are two other key ways we engage such orgs: politics and governance. In politics, we take sides among the different alliances of masters and tasks, struggling for who will dominate. In governance, we try to hold masters accountable for achieving tasks, and seek new better ways to choose, reward, and monitor them.

Low status folks have long been advised to keep their head down and stay out of both politics and governance. Higher status folks, in contrast, are somewhat encouraged to do politics, if they are willing to risk suffering repression when their allies lose. We like democracy as more of us can more safely be political, and thus see ourselves as high status, though politics becomes less safe as political polarization rises.

However, most folks are well advised to stay out of governance, at least when that involves any substantial chance of holding masters more accountable, and thus cutting into their spoils. Masters coordinate to block cuts to their spoils. (Yes, some spoils come via achieving promised tasks, but most don’t.) In contrast, masters don’t mind and even governance changes that don’t risk stronger accountability. Such as making it more popular, inclusive, decentralized, more intensive participation, etc.

How much should you fear masters displeased by your meddling in governance? Greatly! Org masters, and their allies and wannabes, are the fiercest predators of our world. Smart, energetic, and well-connected, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing, smiling broadly, speaking gently and grandly, but holding their fangs and claws ready in shadows to strike when ready.

Alas, our world has long suffered from poor governance. So much so that for most problems we know how to solve, we don’t actually solve them. We got better enough at governance to allow the modern world to have big orgs, but just barely.

Today, our civilization faces problems so huge that we will mostly likely fall, as did the Roman Empire, to be replaced by insular fertile cultures like the Amish and Haredim. Better governance seems our best hope here, and promising alternatives do exist, ones that can be tested at small scales before deploying on larger scales. Alas such efforts are mainly blocked by spoil-protecting masters. Will enough of us risk their displeasure to force such innovation experiments in time?