Some thoughts on governance

Let’s begin this with what would seem to most people to be an absurdity: a family that is run as a business is.

In this absurdist example, children are not cherished and nurtured, they are “held to account” for the amount of profit they make - they have to reduce their costs, and generate increasing amounts of income. Children are not a joy: they are a burden to be brought to productivity as soon as possible. The profit does not stay within the family, it goes elsewhere - maybe previous generations living in other houses, or, if we were to extend this analogy to include takeovers, those who owned the family being considered in this absurdist example (i.e., slaves).

It would be psychologically abusive, unhealthy, destructive, and - to use a weasel word - “inappropriate”. It would not be a family, which is about enabling its members to achieve their human potential and a meaningful, rewarding, and enriching life.

And yet there are places in the world where physical survival is such a major problem that some families still see children as a benefit because of the labour they can contribute - whether in the fields, or by aiding in making bricks/carpets/etc. I am thinking particularly of places like Zimbabwe, where Mugabe and his accomplices stole the nation’s sovereign wealth for decades, and robbed the nation of from its human potential - which is the ultimate wealth of all nations - as all poverty does.

There have also been historical cultures where families are considered the greatest importance of an individual’s life - thought to be what one should be loyal to above all else, above nation, above personal wellbeing, above personal choice. I can’t say whether that error has been eliminated completely or not, but I know there are still families that, for instance, are homo-/bi-/transphobic, which makes the families abusive, as well as robbing those families of the human wealth that is the person being expelled.

In the early stages of human evolution, we probably lived in a more tribal situation than a family - or even an extended family. In those days, I would suggest the focus was on survival - skills and ability, not whether individuals met particular rules. Most of the revulsion people claim to feel about sexuality - or used to try to deny about their views on races, in the case of white supremacists - is taught. Given that it robs that family of human potentially, it is an example of self sabotaging "governance" - the sort of behaviour that would have a businesses owners up in arms and demanding resignations.

Families are meant to be about emotional and psychological security, which is crucial to human health and wellbeing, and the achievement of the human potential of children - for their own sakes, not the sake of the family. Families should be about love, not physical profit.

Businesses are often portrayed as being about profit in today’s hyper-capitalist world (incidentally, I still can’t find many of the claims that are made about Adam Smith’s writings in Smith’s writings, but they are very dense and boring, and I haven’t read them all yet . . . I still wonder how much is interpretation placed on the books - or from other material I haven’t come across yet), but the issue of human potential is actually recognised by good businesses - there are plans for ongoing development of staff, businesses care - to some extent - about staff attitudes to the business (although that is in good part because the business does not want to lose the investment they’ve made of training), we have - in some nations - sick, carer’s/parental and annual leave.

The business still has to make a profit, or it will cease to exist, but modern businesses recognise that its staff are, ultimately, one of - if not the - greatest asset the business has (some - a very few - companies may have intellectual property [IP] that is more valuable economically than staff).

In saying that, what is clear is that attitudes matter. The business wants to sell its internal policies as being good (and many, these days, are good - for instance, on inclusion and diversity) to current and potential staff. Businesses care about reputations - and have started to understand the importance of that more as the concept of social licence has been promulgated. (And many business leaders have a comfort with emotions that belies the incompetence of previous generations of rigidly despotic heads of businesses [and families]. A good example of this is the statement this week by "Male Champions of Change" against non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases.)

Some handle this badly - and we’ve seen changes at a senior level of a mining company in Australia this week as a result of some poor decision making (that infringed indigenous rights); others handle it well.

Some of the courses I’ve done on LinkedIn cover crisis management and communication (which largely aligned with what I’d seen and come to appreciate as a result of living long enough), and it is “interesting” to see which businesses handle that well, and which don’t.

Of course, there is still room for improvement in the business world: they’ve been slow to realise the risk of the climate crisis (some still don’t), some businesses have not embraced the concept of social licence sufficiently to act against modern slavery in their supply chains (which may as a result of the limited realisation of the human potential of its managers, perhaps? In other words, they need to be helped to develop as humans to the extent that they are comfortable accepting working with such “emotional” issues, I suspect), and there is a tendency to see the education system as preparing people for their economic roles.

That latter attitude is wrong: education is about ensuring society sees the development and realisation of the human potential of students - which is of benefit to society as a whole (especially in realising the next generation of developments, such as personal computers, the green revolution, agriculture, the making of tools, and domesticating fire), businesses (more capable and creative employees), and those students. 

This week I came across a quote (wrongly, it appears) attributed to Einstein: 

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Education includes passing on knowledge, and developing skills, but also - in my opinion - taking on a backstop role and making sure that problems caused by the crushing evil of poverty, poorly functioning families, and flawed ideologies (such as racism, homo-/bi-/transphobia, etc) are overcome - for the sake of society, or the greater good, if you will. It must make sure that we do not make the error of "judging fish by their ability to climb trees".

Good economists recognise that robbing society of 50% of its human potential by discrimination against women was wrong; so too is robbing society of its human potential by discrimination against other minorities.

From a human potential perspective, no-one has a right to abuse their children by limiting their potential through inculcating hate and bigotry any more than they do by deliberately cutting off a leg or hand. My opinion is that parents teaching their children to hate is an act of child abuse.

And now I’d like to turn to the topic of governance - specifically, that of the Morrison government and their key Murdoch media conglomerate backers, which I will refer to as the Morrison-Murdoch regime.

The Morrison-Murdoch regime is:

• acting against the interests of Australian society by robbing it of its human potential in LGBTIQ+ people, immigrants (especially refugees, who are typically highly motivated and likely to contribute more than their share to nations that welcome them), and others who may not vote for them;
• harming the perception of Australia - in a sense, harming our nation-level social licence to operate - by creating an image of Australia as a nation of backward (including technologically inept) haters;
• creating future costs by denying the reality of the climate crisis and failing to take proper action to manage the climate crisis;
• further restricting Australia’s achievement of its potential by limiting education, and recreating Australian a a regressive, backward, behind the times nation (I grew up when the concept of cultural cringe was being debated; in a few years the current cultural cringe will have become widespread); and
• robbing Australians of their personal human potential by creating fears, false perceptions and xenophobia that is the nation equivalent of the child abuse of teaching a child to hate.

The Morrison-Murdoch regime is, in my opinion, like the business manager who is struggling to comprehend (a) that modern human slavery is real, and (b) that they have a moral and business obligation to act against that.

If a business’s leaders operated as badly as the Morrison-Murdoch regime, their shareholders would revolt; if a school was as inept, it would find itself without students; if a family’s parents were as bad, child protection services would step in.

Fortunately, we have a backstop: it is called an election.

The problem is, many voters seem to be in the grip of the paralysing fear of neoliberal, revanchist and xenophobic illusions.

How to deal with those emotions is crucial to enabling our nation’s backstop to be effective.