Are We Idiots?

Those of you following this blog will have read about the wisdom of the psychopath but George Papandreou touches on the wisdom of the crowd and urges us to not be idiots. He is a man who is willing to share his experience, what he has learnt from failure, and in 20 minutes he could provoke some deep thinking about democracy.

Within this TED talk there is a revealing moment when George offers an insight into how decisions are made at the highest level. He describes how heads of state were making decisions that affected the lives of every individual in their nations. George tells us that they were told to hurry up and vote, cutting their discussions short. The fundamental requirement of democracy, debate and discussion, was truncated in Europe because the markets in Japan were about to open.

We have parallels here in this shire, in local government. Our Council decisions do not affect the markets, but we have heard reports of discussions being stopped and voting called for before all the arguments, all the points our councillors wanted raised, were heard. Are we happy with that?

The rate rise we are all currently hurting from is only a symptom of the issues that we are facing here. We have a local government that lacks openness, transparency, and it fails to deliver democracy.

If the freeze on rates for two years that the Augusta Margaret River Community Voice has called for through their social media page we might be encouraged that citizens in this shire can use their collective voice effectively. We will not have a solution to all our local government problems, they are much deeper than that. There is no silver bullet available that can fix the difficult situation we find ourselves in. However, if we can mobilise a significant number of residents to attend the Q & A meeting on Sunday 29^th this initiative will demonstrate that we can be connected, that town and rural, north and south, can show empathy with each other and work together, with our councillors to find the solutions we need.

Maybe we will get our young people involved so that they realise democracy demands active citizenship and the wisdom of the crowd.

Or will we be idiots? Listen to George's TED Talk