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More Stupid Decisions

Entry 1671, on 2014-07-31 at 23:03:36 (Rating 4, Politics)

Why do so many of our politicians make so many stupid decisions? Is it because they are, themselves, stupid? I don't think so, and in fact many seem fairly intelligent. More likely it is because they know nothing about the subject they are supposed to be in charge of, along with the obvious additional factor that many politicians are driven by the ideology of their party rather than what is genuinely the right thing to do.

One of the more obvious signs that politicians are making stupid decisions is that what they do is so often criticised by experts in the relevant area. I agree that experts aren't always right, but compared with politicians I know which side I would be backing!

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon when any party is in power but when we have a right-leaning government in control, like we do now, the most common disagreement generally comes from education. They really just always seem to mess it up and go against the opinion of experts.

I know that ministers have experts advising them on what to do, but I would be very surprised if any adviser felt free to disagree with the clearly stated policy direction of their political masters, even if they knew it was wrong. In other words, they only tell the minister what he or she wants to hear.

To be fair, this phenomenon is common in all large organisations where managers, advisers, or consultants generally just say what the person in the next level up in the hierarchy or who is paying them wants to hear.

The justification for unpopular decisions generally involves suggesting something like the opponents just can't cope with change, or can't see the big picture, or are acting out of self-interest, or have a political or philosophical bias. I'm not saying that there aren't occasions when some of these might actually have an element of truth, but most of the time they are just a convenient way to try to discredit perfectly reasonable points.

A phenomenon which often surprises me is how ministers swap their portfolios around. You would expect that to be sufficiently skilled to be a minister in one area would be impressive enough but what about these people who have had multiple successive portfolios? Were they really so skilled and expert in multiple areas or do they just know nothing about any of them?

A good example in our current government is Anne Tolley, who started with the Child, Youth and Family portfolio, then became Minster of Education, and is now Minister of Police. Is she an expert in social work, education, and law enforcement? Well no, she has no qualifications or expertise that I can establish. In fact she seems to make a total mess of everything she touches, but she does toe the party line so what else matters?

I realise that to be a leader and to be able to make the big decisions isn't necessarily the same thing as being an expert in the area you are making the decisions about. But it would seem to me that a few relevant qualifications or experience as well as being a good leader would not be a bad thing. Unfortunately that isn't the way the system works so I guess we had better just get used to more stupid decisions!

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