http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehcY37DW2og
Attached link is Professor David King's lecture on the challenges we face as a global community. A vast summary of today's major issues, but I only wanted to draw attention to one statement here. At about 13:50 in the video, we are told that science alone cannot govern, and democracy is needed also. The example given is that the Chinese government is the most scientifically savvy government in power today. I'm going to assume it is their success in achieving their goals that gets them credit here, and their human rights record that is used to demonstrate why democracy is needed also.
My thought on this one though, is how can democracy and science ever go hand-in-hand when the 'scientific savvy' of a government is much greater than the scientific savvy of the average voter? We are told that smear campaigns on GM foods by the media influenced the population of europe to reject GM foods, and this has been devastating for economies of countries reliant upon stable crop yields. Clearly the voting public cannot be relied upon to make scientific voting decisions on matters of scientific complexity.
Both professor Sir David King and the royal society have come out to say that we need nuclear power in the short to medium term to make up our energy requirements in the UK in order to give time for renewable energy technologies to develop into economically viable options. Yet nation-wide there is great support for the conservative, liberal democrats and even the green party, who are all opposed to nuclear power.
Can science ever be given the freedom to govern logically without an iron fist in a country where the majority of people are not scientifically minded and the media has the greatest influence on political opinions?
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“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill.
ReplyDeleteI think the solution has to be to find ways to improve the average level of scientific understanding, or at least the appreciation of its methods. If more people understood that wanting scientific government is equivalent to asking for governance directed the best available evidence and to change its policies in the face of new evidence then maybe they'd support it?
Democracy unequivocally has its problems as you have eloquently outlined, but I'd choose it over any of the alternatives. It's worth considering how you could tweak the adjustable parameters of a democracy;
direct vs representative
open vs secretive
'big' government vs small
balanced vs strong
different election systems
different levels of government
religious vs secular
what to enshrine in a written constitution or to do without one
length of terms
and so on....
Historical and current experiments suggest that even benevolent dictatorships don't tend to remain benevolent for long. Even assuming the dictator is perfection incarnate, will his successor be?
Will those who advise him feed him the real information?
Do you trust everyone that will be relaying and implementing his orders? because they will have absolute authority too, in the name of the dictator.
It is interesting to observe what occurs when a group of individuals claim supreme authority in the name of a god and what those who 'interpret' and carry out his commands get up to... Indeed there have been examples where dictators have died and yet no-one knows for quite some time, with orders still being given in their name.
My postulate is that any unaccountable system of government will tend towards collapse through bribery & patronage, infighting in its inner circle, personality cults and a feeling of oppression amongst the populace. There are hundreds of examples where this is the case, both current and historical.