A Product of Us

Politics in Finland is interesting, because it is quite different to what is seen in many countries in the media, especially the US. It is far "healthier" here in many ways, where, the campaign cycles are far shorter, simplified, and pretty tame. For instance, the Presidential election is on now and the first round will finish on Sunday. Unless one candidate gets over 50% of the vote, there will be a second round with the top two. This is likely, especially since there are about 10 candidates from the largest parties involved, with around 3 having "some chance" of taking the first or second slot. Some of the candidates didn't announce they were running until late November, early December.

As said - different to the US.

But, because of this once every six year event, people are talking politics and assessing what is important to them, the unions are flexing their strike action muscles for relevancy, and people are coming out with their moral stance on immigration, or the economy. And of course, while the rule is "don't talk politics", my clients and I like to break the rules a bit.

This post isn't about politics though.

Today I was asking what the role of the government is, but for some background, Finland has a President and a Prime Minister, meaning that the first is more of a figurehead that does international relations work, and the latter is more internal practical, so looks at the economy and legislation within the country. But, like most things, it all gets conflated in people's minds, especially when they are looking at what affects them.

And this is the problem.

What we pay attention to, is what affects us, or what we think affects us, without considering all the other ramifications of our position. For example, Finnish people don't want to be like Russian people, and they of course don't want to be attacked by Russia. However, in order to make themselves feel protected, they have been spending for years and ramping up military spending, especially since the invasion of Ukraine a couple years ago. They have joined NATO also.

Great - but there is a massive cost to this, and that money has to come from somewhere, which is normally in the form of debt. The last government was in during Covid, and they took a lot of additional debt too. But, people don't seem to understand that when a government takes debt, it is essentially going to be repaid in the form of increased taxes, or cost-saving measures in the future, because unless something dramatic happens, business isn't going to cover the shortfall. And of course, people don't like increased taxes and cost savings on government services, so they strike and complain.

But, they still want to feel safe, so still support military spending.

Yet they don't seem to realize here that the only value Finland really has, is in its people. This means that if security comes at the expense of the people, reducing opportunity, health, wealth or whatever, the country is actually getting weaker and becomes more of a target for Russia. Because they know that a country that has its value in the people, is valueless to take, because they lose that value immediately. All the businesses collapse, leaving just more mouths to feed, with only some more trees and a little bit of water - two things Russia has in volume already.

But, what Finns should be questioning, and what we all globally should be questioning, is the role of governments in general. Because one of the problems that I have, is that they are pretty much all party systems. We know that having "one party" (dictatorship) doesn't work, because it will favor narrow interests over the good of the whole, but we also know that each party is essentially narrowly scoped. This means that all party systems, are essentially introducing a type of elected dictatorship that will favor one area of society or the economy, over others.

It doesn't work.

Political parties as we know them, really have only been around for less than 250 years, which essentially coincides with the growth of the industrial revolution and also modern economics. These things are related, because what we know about business is, it is all about competition, it is about beating the rivals, not necessarily doing what is best for the consumer. We are consumers of government actions, and what the parties do are look to beat each other to gain market share, even if they are going to ignore the ramifications of doing so.

In politics, voter support is the market share and "profit" they seek.

As I have discussed a lot and also recently, for profit economies where the incentive is to create profit at any cost, will ultimately lead to poor outcomes for the consumers, as optimization will crush the employees, and keep whittling down the cost of production, to increase gain from selling what is produced. It doesn't matter if what is produced is not helpful or even harmful, as long as it makes profits, that is fine.

Same goes for governments.

But, a national government is meant to look at the betterment of the country, not a narrow set of the country. They justify narrowing through framing the needs of groups, which just happen to be the groups they require for votes to gain market share. But, if you imagine the country as a company, and all the various groups within it as departments within that company, it is nonsensical to compete against other departments. For example, what is the benefit in a manufacturing company that pushes the majority of resources into the finance department, but leaves very little for the production departments that build products?

Resource mismanagement in a company leads to entire company collapse.

But, it is also useless to have production people make the resourcing decisions for the finance department, because they don't know what they are dealing with, it is not their area. So, what a company does is hire the right people into the right roles, to do a job. However, if a mistake is made and the right person isn't in the right position, the entire company doesn't shutdown and start again, the individual is replaced. Or, if the department is not performing well, it is restructured to do better.

The way we look at governments that is the problem, because rather than seeing them as functions of society, we expect them to meet our needs as individuals. We don't want them to encroach on our personal lives, yet expect them to support our moral position. Instead, we should be looking at them from the perspective of governance, not governments. The difference in this sense is that through governance the manner of governing can be established, as can the rules that will be administered. The Government shouldn't be making the laws at all,, we should. All they should be doing, is administering what we have chosen as the best way to lead ourselves forward.

Party systems don't do this.

Essentially, there should always be a single government "in power", and that government doesn't change, because it is just a structure like a corporate entity is that has a business model. The business model profit isn't money, it is the generation of wellbeing, and the various components, the functions, the departments of the government, are never in opposition, but always in collaboration to that end, to increase wellbeing. The roles within the government and the tasks and rules of the government, are dictated through the governance model, which is an evolving model driven by the people themselves.

Whilst this sounds like a political article, it isn't, it is an economic one. The reason is that society is dictated be economy, trade and the flow of value in its many forms. What we should be looking to do through our various systems, is to improve the economy to the benefit of society. This isn't about making money, as money is just a tool that represents the value of resources. It is about the flow of resources, something that a dictatorship, or a narrow government party can never do well.

We constantly talk about the importance of looking after people, but we keep supporting governments and corporations that are aligned to do the exact opposite, because they are looking for and supporting monetary profit. As a result, they will continually support the maximization of monetary wealth, to the detriment of human health, because that is their key performance indicator.

Health is not.

No government or company cares about your health, unless it generates monetary benefits for them to do so. Currently, that is not how the economy is aligned, so none of them actually support your wellbeing, or mine. No political party has the answer, because they are all narrowly aligned and will therefore maximize their interests over others and create unhealthy disparity and unhealthy competition, that increasingly brings out our worst as a society, not our best.

So they can rule by fear.

Which makes us focus on what protects us, rather than what improves us. We look for security, not opportunity, and support things that make us feel safe, even if they actually increase the risk of negative outcomes. The government structure is broken, because the economic structure is broken, and they align themselves to each other for monetary gain, rather than them both aligning to human needs and wellbeing. There is no incentive for them to change, because we are not demanding change, and are actually supporting them to stay the same, by trusting them as our proxy to do what is in our best interest, even though it isn't in their nature to do so.

The economy is a product of us.
As is how we manage it.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

Posted Using InLeo Alpha

Hear hear, my friend. Hear hear

Nailed it.

I didn't know you lived in Finland. Lucky you! The Northern countries seem to be getting it done better than those down South. I wonder why this is so? Interesting.

More Germanic, aren't they? I wonder if it's cultural or something...

Your model works on a similar concept to the way the 12 Step Programs operate, btw. And they're massive, global, self-sustaining and unsponsored by any outside organisations so that the message remains clear.

Gifted.

It's pretty incredible.

I like the way you've applied this thinking to government and governance. I suspect government was supposed to be this until individuals at the top began to run it to profit themselves. Just human nature and your concept would, possibly, address that.

Anyhoo... always interesting, rational reads from you. Thanks