A country is not a business
Posted on May 11, 2010 at 10:58 AM
I watched Frontline last night and it was a good debate, and I didn't get so fed up watching it as I sometimes do. For a change on this programme the politicians, Minister Michael Martin, and Leo Varadker, put up a good defence of electing our TDS the way we elect them now, i.e. democratically. Pat Kenny is very interested in lists, he often brings them up as the answer to our problems, and that was one of the proposals of Dan O'Brien in the Aftershock programme that the Frontline programme then debated. Frequently on this programme the idea of having business people, run the country, is promoted. But they wouldn't have to go out and ask for votes, rather they would get straight into the Cabinet via lists, or appointed. This idea often aired by the same Pat Kenny who, on the other hand, last night, made a derogatory reference to the appointment, as opposed to election of the 11 Taoiseach's nominees in the Seanad.
Before going to bed I then read this short little book by Nobel Prize winning Economist, Paul Krugman. My father had bought me this little book sometime back and I put it in my handbag, alongside the kitchen sink I bring around with me, never to read till last night. It is short enough to read in about half an hour. Its title is 'A country is not a company'. The book is about the different role of business people and economists and how a business is an open system but the American Economy is a closed system. A country needed economic policy, whereas a business person's skills often lay in seeing the one product that could make a profit at a particular time etc. I know Ireland's economy is different to America's but the sentiment of the book got me thinking about why business people are not necessarily the best people to be in Government. A country is not a business. Businesses are run for profit, can collapse and disappear, or be sold on to a multinational, and move to a far flung part of the world. Business people are good at what they do, or at least many of them are, but what they do is very narrow. And then there is the fact that many business people, lauded by commentators in the media over recent years, have turned out to be emperors with no clothes, and worse, their recklessness, has contributed to problems in our economy. The other notion that one woman promulgated on the show was that our best and brightest should be educated to be entrepreneurs (whatever she meant by that) and not go into medicine or science. Our health service wasn't working and those with high points were wasted in it, she said. Many people who have been cared for by nurses and doctors in our health system, including myself, and who have felt all the more secure because of the calibre of people in our health system, would beg to differ, I believe. And far from needing a business model for our health system to make it better, we need a political vision, like the socialist ones that established the universal health systems of France and Britain.
Comments
I remember on one episode of Frontline, an individual business man who was speaking from the audience about his successes and said that he should be made a member of the cabinet and people like him.
It is annoying to think that people feel entitled to comment that they are better than goverment and politicians because they hire a 100 people or can push a product down a conveyor belt.
If they are over 18 years of age, why don't they run for politics themselves and meet with the people who would have to live in an Ireland Ltd.
Canvas your customers, offer them something unique, make them brand loyal, deal with their queries and they will return every five years.
I grow less supportive of PRSTV as time goes on but my problem with it centres on the kind of behaviour it encourages among citizens, i.e. the desire to have a member of parliament at their beck and call. Last night's TV argument that the voting system caused the current mess was risible.It was yet another way of avoiding talking about ideas, real politics. It reduced politics to rules and strategy. We are in this mess because the majority chose to support foolish economic policies. Changing the voting system won't obviate the need to debate and choose between different notions of the good society.
There's far too much nonsense spoken about the need for a manager to be an expert in the field in which he or she operates. However, the variation of this which you consider here is pernicious. The notion that expertise in business is the only requirement for management is but a short step away from a desire for business people to manage the country. Of course it's undemocratic, authoritarian bullshit but it's worse: it's part of a continuous argument that our response to the mess generated by uncontrolled business should be to give more control to business.
(I'm involved in a discussion of this on Facebook.)
Colum,
I was glad that one member of the audience pointed out in response to Justine McCarthy's proposal for a referendum and new constitution in order to have more egalitarianism etc. that there was already the means for a referendum, namely a General Election.
Just on your point though on PR STV, surveys of parliamentarians elected by mixed member sytems where so many are elected by constituencies and so many by lists in the regional parliaments in Germany have found they spend 48 per cent of their time on constituency work compared to our estimated 53 per cent. In other words a matter of degree. A German diplomat advised me that those elected on lists because the lists are regional do even more constituency work than those running from constituencies because they need to be anchored in local areas in order to get placed on the list. Without question those in the British constituencies, elected first past the post spend as much time on constituency work and at surgeries (their clinics) as TDs do and it was Irish American Politician who said "all politics is local".
The reality for me as a T.D. is that most people don't see me as at their beck and call, contact me as a last resort and are both apologetic and extremely grateful on doing so. Most people that get in touch with me do so about things that are directly relevant to my role as TD and the issues they bring to my attention help me empathise with their plight and make me a better legislator.
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