I love that they won and I love the hope and expectation surrounding their victory but MAN have you ever SEEN a working group of 80 academics?
There's definitely a chance of failure here.
I love that they won and I love the hope and expectation surrounding their victory but MAN have you ever SEEN a working group of 80 academics?
There's definitely a chance of failure here.
I laughed out loud at this — my dad is a retired Uni professor, so I know exactly what you are talking about — but I'd point out that the "student list" has around 140 seats in the parliament, so 80 academics hopefully still has another 60 common sense people who are not all about being right all the time, and who bring other perspectives too.
> common sense people
Just as we should keep in mind that brainy academic types can get carried away in theoretical flights of fancy, we should also acknowledge that 'common sense people' are not composed exclusively of experienced and unselfish pragmatists, but also wilfully ignorant and cynical anti-intellectual types.
Academia, especially senior academia (professors, academics, uni leaders, department heads) is the profession in my opinion closest to the politics, if not the exact same, just that you don't see them every day in media. So don't worry, they're more than qualified.
Umm, you might want to read a but on the (new) opposition, ex 12+ years of total unchecked control.
I didn't, but I saw a friend go into a week long alcohol session because he wanted to leave academics and couldn't take it anymore...
It must be like a pit fight, but with connections and half truths
"in academics the in-fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low" - interesting to see what happens now that that stakes are just democracy and an entire country!
I mean the whole point of democratic system _is_ you want rotating cliques and infighting. Because defaulting to consensus isn't really that democratic.
The large blocks need to be able to move forward in legislation but the more uglier and tumultuous the backroom dealing are (within legal bounds) the healthier the democracy is.
I believe this is also what colours our views of the general academic infighting — academics are rarely rotated out except in the lower ranks, so it's a different type of skillset of building long-term alliances that drives their progression through the academic field and available careers in a particular institution (not even talking about "academic points" through publishing in recognized journals, which is a different discussion altogether — even with that criteria satisfied, to move to the next rank of professorship, you need to be elected by your colleagues).
Basically, academic tenure is opposite from democracy.
Potentially, but it might also be how humans work. See any season of survivor.
Survivor is the opposite of how real human societies work - especially the tribal ones that thes show is aping. Real tribal societies are stable forever, and they are almost entirely related people (especially if we're talking about smaller tribes). You're reputation for helpfulness is crucial in any such society, so the kind of backroom dealing and betrayals the show is known for are almost entirely out of the question: if you are found out as a schemer, you don't get to go home to your real family, you risk being ostracized for the rest of your life.
The tension between effectiveness (cohesive decisions swiftly implemented) and representation (complex reduction of utterly disparate points of view to a workable compromise) is the main force at the core of democracy.
Most of the electorate doesn't really understand it, constantly clamoring for one or the other to be the only guiding principle, but you need both - and one has to find a way even when they appear completely irreducible. Democracy is beautiful in a very messy way, a bit like nature.
The usual grifters have had their chance in most Western governments. Lawyers, landlords, the gentry, etc… I am skeptical but the present bunch that is usually very well represented in most western/eastern governments have had plenty of time and opportunity and look where we are at now.
> and look where we are at now.
Living easier, richer, safer lives than 99.99% of all humans who have ever existed?
Yes, largely due to the scientific and medical progress humanity has made despite the sleazebag politicians being in power
IMHO, the logical conclusion of your comment is that humans basically suck at prioritizing common good and very long-term vision, independently of their background.
From what I observed of my time in academia, I don't see any reason for academics to do any better than other groups. Like everywhere, the starry-eyed, altruistic ones always lose the fight against the political sharks.
This is very general and I don't see the point honestly.
Different countries are very different.
You probably can name "the usual grifters" in your domicile but don't expect the same patterns to be transferrable to different regions.
Sometimes pathologies are portable like the the authoritarian state capture toolkit but even there _who are you doing it with_ can be quite different even though _how you are doing it_ may seem familiar.
Also by any metric the general unspecific list of countries "east and west" has lots of variance in life expectancy, happiness, poverty, literacy etc.
So I can only read this as pointless general venting or faux cynicism.
Maybe they will fail, maybe they will do very well - time will tell. Even if they fail badly, it still can't be as bad as an authoritarian rule, right?
Previous gov now is opposition. So if students fail, next election might bring back the old team.
Isn’t China run by engineers?
It isn't a parliament though.
China has a parliament. It's part of the communist uniparty / dictatorship, but it's a parliament.
There’s a chance of failure in any human endeavor. but I am sick of lawyers, bankers, landlords, lobbyists and various other grifters hanging on currently in most western governments no one can say that they haven’t had their chance. There needs to be a wider variety of professions involved at/in the legislative branch.
Having spent a significant time in academia, the problem is you are never judged on what works, but on what idea you can take credit for. Now this is not great for innovation, but it is disasterous for keeping things running.
I could not imagine a group more able to come up with new ideas and have no ability to actually execute!
Should be exciting
which is why one or more gravitate to academic administrator, eventually become a professional politician and we're right back to where we started. In the meantime either something exciting or absolutely nothing might happen!
"Winning was easy, young man. Governing's harder."
Seems pretty obvious to me that it's not going to be 80 academics debating everything under the sun, but instead dedicated groups focusing on their expertise area...
Liable to get hoodwinked by "academic publisher" types.
> There's definitely a chance of failure here.
I was thinking the same.
This can either go incredibly well or it can go incredibly wrong.
They need historians and political scientists, and maybe some politicians, to constantly remind them not to allow perfection to be the enemy of good.
It is not always obvious how to lay ground work over a decade ... or four of them.
It isn't even mostly about fixing problems. But how to make government act as an expedient rather than as an impediment.
A group of 80 academics sounds like the level of dysfunction that can only be superseded by a group of 80 politicians.
You can either support the status quo or you can support change. You seem to have chosen the third option, blanket cynicism, which is more like opting out. Yes, there are bad examples of every-single-thing in the world, and you can choose to cling to those bad examples and throw your hands in the air instead of engaging more critically and looking for ways to build instead of mock. The cynic's path accomplishes nothing and, frankly, poisons the world for those who give a fuck.
Because a working group of 80 career politicians is more effective?
Maybe. Politics is a skill, and not everyone has a knack for it. It’s dirty, requires compromise, and a willingness to work with your opponents. Or, well, at least it used to.
> Politics is a skill
It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".
Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...
CHA is not a dump stat.
Getting elected is table stakes and shows you have the soft skills needed to organise, campaign and convince. Which is the minimum you need to get disparate groups of humans to pull in the same direction and make progress in advancing the country.
Theres no consolation if you get experts to plan solutions to problems but 1) the people you need to implement the plans have their own opinions or priorities and 2) the public want focus in some other priority and are start rioting if they don't feel heard.
You need schmoozers as much as you need tacticians.
There are two largely non-overlapping skillsets when it comes to politics and governance. The soft skills being effective means you can get elected, that does not mean they are good at governing (and is often a detriment to having good solutions and governance).
I don't currently have any data that says otherwise and the counterfactual remains unexplored (but it will be with this parliament!), but things that people do and say to get elected often are things that if implemented...would not solve the problems the populace that elected is having.
I don't think we need schmoozers, we need people who understand the problems of their populace and have the structural power to implement their solutions. We shall see if they need more than this, but this would be the first exploration of the counterfactual.
People who have their "own" priorities don't end up upsetting the apple cart when we make success in implementing those solutions the same as their success (which if we are effective problem solvers, should be possible. See Deng Xiaoping)
The schmoozers/lobbyists aren’t working currently in America we need problem solvers and clear thinking.
That is an overly cynical view.
A lot of the problem can be attributed to voters accepting the blame game, overly simplistic solutions, and expedient absolutist views over debating a plurality of options.
I'm not saying that the political system isn't to blame here. At least where I live, it is structured in such a way that winner takes all and loyalty to the party is more heavily rewarded than representing the constituent. But, again, that is a system that we in some sense designed.
It's not an overly cynical view, it's a realist view. Every person and organization's behavior should be considered and predicted by its motivations and incentives. Deviation from that would be naive and non-scientific.
Western politicians and political parties incentives are to get elected while doing as much as possible for special interests (and by extension, as little as possible for the common good).
Absolutely. the first time I found out the Chinese have quite a few engineers involved in government. I said that explains all the infrastructure being built. Mind you no human endeavors are perfect. But there was a time in the United States not too long ago where there was more of a can do attitude, I don’t understand why high-speed rail is not a thing.
I also don’t understand why the Pan American Highway or rail from Nome, Alaska to the tip of South America never got built. Nor can I understand why Oak Ridge, Tennessee Thorium Research Center and further development was left to rot. The Chinese are very close to throwing element 90 in our face.
Democracy is a popularity contest
Yes. That’s kind of the point. The words aren’t that far apart in etymology either. By Latin definitions the most popular (liked by the general public) candidate will be the democratically chosen (rule by the people) one.
Yes but the hope is we can make the popularity center on the solutions and ability to execute them.
> Politics is about getting elected
There's a lot under the umbrella of "politics" that happens after you get elected. If you want to accomplish anything after you get elected (heck, even if it's just personal enrichment) you have to be somewhat skilled at getting others to work with you, one way or another. As a politician you can have flawless convictions and be right and well-informed about all your decisions, but at the end of the day you're just one vote (to use legislators as an example) and it does nothing if you can't convince or work with others.
It depends on the political system. In many a parliamentary system, voting differently than what you are told means you will not be in the party list ever again, so for the day to day, there's very little convincing effort when you have the majority. And especially in systems where there is very little legal money in politics, the carrot is just ability to get access for not-so-legal money. So party leadership is a matter of having enough businessmen friends, and having will to power in a rather unclean word.
The whole "you are just one vote" doesn't really apply there. As the 30th legislator on your party list, you show up and vote as you are told. And in systems like the one in the US, barring rare moments, it's also not all that different. The card that your party will abandon you, and that if you want a position of any importance you have to play ball means many a junior congressperson just votes as they are told, and spends time fundraising.
I think you're basically proving my point? (My point being: politics isn't just "getting elected".)
In such political systems where you essentially must vote the party line, what makes an individual "effective" (ie. what constitutes being "good" at your role)? I'd say it comes down to all kinds of political soft skills, ie. forging the right alliances, convincing the right people to change course, understanding motivations of others, etc.
All of these are generally called "politics", and are things that happen very much after you're elected.
great comment, poetic and to the point
As an engineer writing software and running a small team I'd flirt with the idea of "moving up". Then I'd really study what the VPs and CEOs actually did and realize that I didn't have any real desire to do that all day everyday. I could do it but it would require me to rewire my psyche and soul (not saying it's bad, just not for me).
In some clusters, senior academics are exactly like that.
And in many others they’re small czars of their own kingdoms. However it’s always nice to refresh parliaments with new educated people, with new progressive political movements, shatter old alliances and practices.
That's an understatement...
Competence of democratic politicians is to be liked and get most votes. Usually it means to be without values.
I hope more people will realize that voting for uknown politicians that offers empty promises for artificially made problems means givig up our responsibility and at the end, make things worse as we see in current democratic countries.
As opposed to voting for Vucic here? T
The “skill” of career politicians is mostly loyalty and appointing people based on loyalty is the worst criteria.
In my lifetime, it has been a skill of procrastination. and milking the public…
We'd be living in a better world if politics was a skill and our politicians were good at it.
I think he means polticians lying, being trecherous, compromising until nothing gets done and no ones career is hurt, etc is a skill. It would be better for the people if people with these skills were not in public office. Anything that takes away from being a servant to the constituents and become self-service needs to be removed from Politics.
You should see the skill level of politicians that were there till now, I'm not even sure whether calling them politicians is fair - maybe something closer to criminals, I'd say. Serbia (like the majority of the planet) needs honest and unspoiled people in governance. Educated or not, academic or not - these folks made the personal sacrifices and didn't earn student trust easy. Time will tell... But please spare me of the politics as an amazing unique skill, I saw where that led. Let's begin with being more fair.
I would assume PhD holding people are smart enough to understand their limitations and strengths.
They've been elected during a very special events. They know what's expected of them. Looks like compared to the previous powers this lot at least gives the country a fighting chance.
Ehhh, that's the flaw in the logic. Holding a PhD doesn't necessarily make you better at anything other than strictly the topic of the PhD (and sometimes not even that), maybe only following arbitrary orders from senior figures.
Holding a PhD at the very least means you can spend a sustained long amount of time on (potentially) intractable problems and try to arrive at solutions for them. That's a good skill to have when...you've been elected to solve problems.
Is not the average life of a non-PhD holder an equally-sustained and long amount of time spent on the intractable problem of reaching whatever incredibly complex state-of-humanity they embody?
I agree, my thinking was orthogonal to what you're saying (or the other way round).
Seeing how many politicians are utterly corrupt and ignorant cunts certainly a parliament full of people who understand the importance of facts and capable of logical thinking is not worse than career politicians mostly skilled in the game for their team, nothing else.
Clearly you’ve never been to a faculty meeting :)
One could even say politics is also a science.
One does tend to talk alot doesn't one
I'm not sure if it used to be like that, but the skill required to politicians now is to get themselves elected, and that largely means the ability to lie well
Management is basically 99% people's relations/network. It doesn't matter how good the technical implementations are at the top, if they don't have the knowledge and capacity to enforce it downstream from middle layer to the base. There's so much people involved whose interests are farmed by your competitors.
Imposing it top down requires oppression. Imposing or pressuring this huge layer from the bottom requires a continuously updated base so you can squeeze from the top and the bottom to enact the changes needed quickly.
It's impossible for leaders at the top, to personally vet the members of a village or city council for example.
I think I've never seen any of such concatenation of events and organization to have ever happened.
I believe this is the usual tension that's present even in private companies: are professional managers better than field experts at managing work?
The pure ideal is to get a field expert who is good at management — but sometimes hard to attain!
The question then really becomes if — for a manager — a senior expert is better than an experienced manager who can detect exactly when to pull in the experts? A great manager would be great, but these are similarly rare (rarer than good experts in a field).
And this is probably always on a case-by-case basis: it completely depends on the circumstances, individual qualities, and supporting people around them to decide which is better for a given situation.
The same holds here: the best you can get is an expert with a wide grasp of the entire field they will be active in, supported by good, smart common-sense people to manage and guide their thinking and solutioning in the right way.
Before you ask, Gyúcsány was better
This is an interesting experiment, although I wouldn't call it a technocracy just yet. Italy had technocratic governments under Mario Monti and, to a lesser extent, Mario Draghi, with mixed results.
Having highly educated people in parliament is one thing; actually governing a country is another. Political leadership requires negotiation, compromise, institutional knowledge, and the ability to execute decisions.
I'm curious to see how Serbia handles the transition from academic expertise to actual governance, especially without a conventional party leadership structure.
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> MAN have you ever SEEN a working group of 80 academics?
As compared to what? A working group of 80 uneducated idiots?
If democracy doesn't work if you put smart, educated people in control then it doesn't work, period and we need to pay better attention to whatevere China is doing.
China has more engineers involved in their government. Who tend to be more clear- thinking let’s solve the problem at hand. Which explains why they have so many infrastructure projects going on across their country.
It also partially explains why they pursue are open to multiple solutions to a problem. And it certainly explains why they looked at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and that thorium research and built two thorium reactors and will probably build many more because guess what?
They figured out how to make it work and apparently solved that alloy molten salt problem, it took about 10-15 years but they are on schedule. to deploy many more reactors after 2029.
They also switched or are are in the process of switching from lithium batteries to sodium ion batteries which is something else they didn’t have to do, they could hung on to lithium through 2040 milking, but instead they are moving on, which is also something that can happen when you have a bunch of engineers involved in the decision-making as opposed to those finance/MBA people who have a tendency to want to milk people for as long as possible.
https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/china-emerg...
The US used Thorium reactors back in 1962 (Indian point 1). It wasn't retired because it didn't work. It was retired because Uranium was more efficient.
I heard it was retired because it had no military use unlike Uranium that is dual use.
Good luck protesting when that government of engineers does something you don’t like
In which country? The US is an aggressive total surveillance state that executes people in the street and gives out 30 year sentences for people who didn't even show up at a protest, the UK jails grannies for holding up Palestinian flags, and Canada something something something something truckers something something.
In the long term, the US is far more likely to turn into China than not.
Yeah, because protesting billionaire bought laws has such a wonderul track record in the West that there are scarcely any left.
To protest in most places in Australia you need a government permit.
The real question is, would their capable decision making survive in a democracy, where russian propaganda through American billionaire's media tell voters what to think and more importantly what to fear?
> A working group of 80 uneducated idiots
This is why people hate IT nerds.
Stupid people are driven by their inferiority complex to poison the culture with ideas that intelligence and education have drawbacks. In reality there are no drawbacks. Intelligent and educated people are as capable as others in all areas of activity and are vastly more capable in some of them. Politely tolerating insults like that and this cultural poisoning is the reason why trump is the president.
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