Political science: coming soon to a political system near you

A biologist who has never seen a cell, live or at least a detailed reproduction, is no biologist. Neither is a physicist unable to describe the physical properties of an atom of silver really a physicist. Professionals are experts in their line of work because they know the inner workings of a particular system. An engineer who doesn't the precise working of each gear and electric gate in an automaton has neither understanding nor control over the machine's functioning.

No sane individual would trust, or even take seriously, a doctor who does not know where the liver is, because his understanding of the inner working of the body are limited to overall characteristics, much as medieval medical science understood so little about the body that they aggravated the situation more than they did help.

I consider professionalism in any line of work to be related to a significant body of knowledge that must be learned in order to properly exercise a career. I also consider it to be related to a certification of some sort, most preferably a democratic consensus over what knowledge and proficiency must be demonstrated to hold a recognized title. There have to be respected judges but the overall policies must be conceived out of democratic decision-making.

I will stop right here and ask you to reflect whether or not you agree on each and every statement I have made above, at least generally. I can wait... I'm sure some people will reply that an elite-based system is a wrong idea, period. However I do not think any sane individual would ever be diagnosed, let alone operated on, by an unregistered medical doctor. Neither would a sane individual consider for a moment letting an amateur handle their life savings or car.

I chose very similar and obvious examples where we generally agree that there needs to be a proof of competence where our lives are deeply concerned. They were selected to reflect a fundamental system that contradicts all rational knowledge humans have gained. For certain unexplained reasons, in the most basic system of each and every society, one which affects all other aspects of life, there is neither understanding of the inner mechanisms, training related to the inner workings of the system nor certification of any sort.

Let us consider politicians and political scientists and their respective qualifications. Political scientists are exactly like medieval medical doctors, looking at the arms movement and hypothesizing that it may mean such or such disease for which he, obviously, has a cure. The mere mention of the word heart evokes images of all the emotions processed in its center, along with myriad other myths. Each and every scientific endeavor has provided proof that until any idea is firmly proved, it is much more likely that the truth is closer to the exact opposite of the popular paradigm.

Political scientists look at the overall idea of a government, but never peek at the inner workings. Just as the obvious object of study of medical science is the human body, the obvious object of study of political science is the system of government and its inner workings. So as long as the real dynamics of political decision-making, as opposed to the supposed dynamics, will remain unstudied by political scientists, we will never see any solid understanding of government and political systems.

Never in my years of study in political science, in any academic paper or object of interest have I seen the inner working of a government. Political scientists are spectators to a smoke-screen projection. Neither during his training or his career will a political scientist see, let alone understand, anymore than the descriptions of the mechanisms involved. The dynamics are completely hidden from sight through executive priviledge and other arbitrary traditions. It is accepted and unchallenged that what really goes on inside a government can not be understood.

What is ignored is that governments are a human creation and operation and can be fully understood if there is will to that end. The reason is that there are much fewer processes in a political system than there are in the human body and while they will not be fully understood for quite a while, it is perfectly possible to fully know them. Political science has an important advantage over all other sciences, but has failed to make use of it and as a reason lags behind all other sciences as the one with the fewest achievements.

Politicians are practicians who have mostly never even looked inside the government. Despite statements to the contrary, our political systems are under the rule of amateur politicians, who have never demonstrated proof of their competence or even basic understanding of their body of work. There is no formal training for a professional politician and there is no accreditation either. Politics is mostly a marketing-based market, with little substance and no understanding of the most basic inner dynamics.

Accreditation is a sensitive matter but education is not. There are clear proficiencies that a politician must master and it would be easy to develop an academic program that would reflect the matters a politician works on. It would not even be necessary to make such schooling to be mandatory, as it would be much more likely to reflect the true needs of a political system if the voters can judge of the usefulness it provides to candidates.

While the issue of accreditation is sensitive, the issue of banishment is not. There are clear violations for which full banishment of the political system are as clear as those for a medical doctor: corruption, incompetence (often very obvious with the right knowledge), profiteering and others that still plague our political systems. The reason those crimes are lightly, if ever, punished is that they are hard to demonstrate. This is however only a matter of will, as the laws that prevent full knowledge of each and every dynamic of a political system are consciously enacted to protect those crimes.

The field of political science will begin when political scientists will devote most of their efforts to the study of the actual workings of governments, with the full knowledge of the details involved. Only then will the adequate checks and balances work correctly to protect the system from corruption and incompetence. Only then will political scientists understand their field of study and develop political science as a professional academic field.

A workable energy policy: what would $1 trillion do to help the problem?

One factor that is usually missing from pollution-control policies is the matter of investment in research. It is not taken seriously enough, despite being the single most important factor in this issue, the only capable of resolving it. We will not take care of energy problems any other way than through new technologies capable of sustaining a high quality of life.

Think for a moment what $1 trillion would bring to energy research. Spread out over 10 years, this represents $100 billion in annual budget (only 0.002% of the current world GDP). Significant improvements in several forms of alternative energies would combine to save much larger costs within a few years. More advanced forms of production, such as nuclear fusion, anti-matter and dark energy would also be much closer. We could create enormous wealth while helping to achieve energy independance.

The most efficient format would be a prize factor. Let's say there was a $100 billion prize on the development of a significantly higher efficiency and sustainability energy technology. The assurance of such a large payment would fuel scientific entrepreneurship, creating jobs and heliping science. I think it only makes sense that if someone were to develop something as significant as controlled nuclear fusion, solving all our energy problems, $100 billion would be a very small price compared to the wealth it would create. Smaller prizes could be granted for significant but lower improvements, encouraging a flourishing market of research securities.

It would be simple to build a system of private investment through stock options. Besides the large sums of the prizes, such discoveries are obviously lucrative patents that will generate significant royalties. So investments could be sold in the form of stock options on registered projects. After discovery, the stocks would be bonds of ownership on the royalties generated by the patents, shared equally with the creators of the patent.

Such high economic incentives would undoubtly be the most important builders of our energy efficiency. Small companies with the talent and know-how to achieve the objectives would be prime targets for very lucrative investments. Thousands of teams will compete to achieve the most lucrative goals. The X-Prizes and the Grand Challenge have proved that achievement prizes work as an incentive. If they covered all the possible discoveries that would benefit humankind, we would be in a win-all situation: public grants would only finance successfull attempts, private investment would be driven by a $100 billion a year industry, which would then be much larger thanks to those investments. There will be significant risks to investing in few research teams, but the prizes would be significant.

I have come to the conclusion that through the coming decades, all of wealth will concentrate in the form of intellectual property stocks, invested in patents that pay royalties. Knowledge will be a tradable commodity, the most lucrative of all. This energy research investment market would merely the beginning, as there are much more goals in the fields of technology and engineering. The assurance of a couple billions upon success is undoubtdly the single most powerful incentive to achieve any possible objective.

Wal-Martonomics

Wal-Mart became rich by paying less for everything. Now it wants to get richer by wasting less. In a policy that makes sense on a long-term planning, Wal-Mart decided to:

1. be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy.
2. create zero waste.
3. sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
   

TreeHugger - It's Getting Harder to Hate Wal-Mart

On a long-enough time scale, industries will face the cost of borrowed growth. The single most important property of an economic system is to be sustainable. Any economic system that is not sustainable will eventually collapse and is therefore temporary. Any company that exists in a system must surely not see economic shocks in the future as a result of current practices as good long-term planning.

Such a policy is only rational and economically sane if the owners wish the company to remain in business on a long time scale. It has been established that very costly impact will result from the heavy pollution we created. Looking beyond such a possibly grim future, it makes sense that anyone capable of improving sustainability will have strong economic incentives to do so. For most individuals, stocks and other financial assets are retirement funds. While it is exciting to watch them rise fast, it is the overall result that counts. It seems Wal-Mart has decided to stay in business for a long time.