Needle-in-the-Haystack-Politics

February 8, 2010

I am scared of people who accept zero crime in their world.

In a large world with nearly 7 billion (7,000,000,000!) people, there will always be a few idiots… Yet, people exist who accept none. Typically, these people freak out at the sight of each incident which is reported in the media… even if it’s on a different continent.

A headline like “Person murdered in dark alley” will trigger a storm of hate and dissatisfaction with the world in general. I have seen people blaming the government for not being able to provide complete protection (day and night, for the entire population). I have seen people concluding that “society as a whole is just rotten”.

If you look at the simple statistics however, the main headline of the news should be “99.999% of the people had absolutely no incidents today”… which makes a pretty poor headline, I admit… but it is the most important thing that happens every day. (Yeah, the headline would be the same almost every day).

The world is changing. And for those who failed to notice: it is getting safer. It’s already so safe that we become about 80 years on average (that’s including all the murders) and most of us die of diseases related to old age or cancer.

The media are going through a strange phase. No longer do trained journalists make the news. It’s us, the ordinary citizens, who make the news. We write blogs (Yay for blogging!), but we also select what we read – which in turn generates money through advertisements. And an article like “puppy gunned down by 15-year-old” will actually get 50 million readers. Sadly, many people will read the article and get angry at the entire world because apparently the world is full of people who kill puppies. They totally fail to see that this is just 1 incident… and that a single incident does not require a response. And they don’t read the article next to it that addresses world peace, the economy or the environment. Because puppies are so damn cute, and damnit, somebody killed one! The bastard. Who cares about world peace?

Another worrying development is that politicians follow the news. They have to… They also follow our responses to the news. Obviously, to attract voters, they have to implement measures to prevent incidents.

And this is the point where it all goes wrong. The reply from the average reader is an emotional one. They read the news, and their first emotion is sent to the entire world. Within 5 minutes, the reader forgot. In addition, the reply is often a worthless piece of digi-junk, full of spelling mistakes and logical fallacies. This is an indication of how important the incident is to the readers. They can’t even be bothered to correct a post they make. Or they are not smart enough to turn on the spelling checker.

Yet politics seems to love incidents. And as I wrote before, they must act on incidents… which they don’t mind. If you wait long enough, there will always be a moment when you get the right incident.

But not only are incidents irrelevant. You can also not prevent them by measures that apply to the entire population. To prevent incidents, you have to make it personal. A teacher cannot prevent a classroom full of kids from cheating at an exam. But the teacher can prevent one or two individuals by looking at them constantly.
And that is why the governments of the world have a legitimate excuse to spy on all of us. They can log our every move on internet. They can store our bank data. They can tap our phones. All because they must prevent the one incident that may happen. A significant part of the population demands from their governments that they find the needle in the haystack.

Democracy was invented in ancient Greece. The people (men) of a city or nation would get together and discuss plans, and vote. Obviously, it was impossible to allow everyone to speak. I imagine that people would make sure that only the smarter people got to speak and that they made sure that the local village idiot was quiet. Our current situation however is one where all the village idiots of the world are able to respond to everything worldwide… together with all the other voters.

A solution to this problem is difficult. But if would help if a new law or rule must have statistical significance before it can be enacted. I propose a law that describes how to make laws, so that means it’s part of the constitution… and that means it’s a pretty big step. But hey, you don’t change society over night, so why not?

It might also help if politicians cannot set their own discussion topics, and if the agenda can only be altered in case of an emergency that requires immediate action (such as an earthquake, war or flood). Or if the agenda of the governments must be set a certain time in advance so that the news of yesterday simply cannot be discussed today.

In other words, while it seems that the average voter loves incidents and small stuff, we still need our governments to look at the big picture. So, please filter out all the incidents.

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