Scientific-based governance

A scientisty type person

If you're like me, then you'll be frustrated with politics and how it works. It seems in this day and age (especially here in the UK), government is hell-bent on hurting as many people as possible – mainly poor people, but everyone else not in the highest / upper levels of society as well. I can kind of get behind the Labour slogan of 'for the many, not the few' – but I still don't trust what's going on with that party, and I can't trust those in the leadership who are supportive of Brexit. I mean, look how that's going.

I feel like politics at the moment is more about personality than ability. It's about getting to the top and acquiring power rather than using one's position to improve society. No one is immune, it seems, from the temptations of getting kickbacks in return for political favours and so corruption seems to always be present at the table of politics. And then there's the childish bickering and jeering between grown men and women, drowning out those they disagree with. Watching Parliament on TV is just like watching the school playground a lot of the time. I can't help but feel that this kind of adversarial politics distracts people from the work they should be doing to improve the lives of everyone.

Of course, I do believe that there are good and decent politicians out there working hard for their constituency and for their country. They put in long hours and make huge sacrifices, traveling to Westminster several times a week to have their say. The trouble is, I think, that the further up you go the more out of touch you become.

Personally I don't think our current system is very fair or conducive to today's modern world and it needs to change.

Interestingly, there is something of a growing movement towards having a new kind of governance based on scientific evidence. The idea is that rather than make up new policies in the hope that they will work, government uses research and facts to find out whether or not they actually do.

Finland is apparently dabbling in this idea, as demonstrated by its so-called Universal Basic Income pilot which made the headlines recently when the results were published. They supposedly set out to empirically test and research the concept of UBI (more about this here), but then the politicians got in the way. They didn't like the way it was going to be done and so changed the whole thing. It wasn't a genuine Universal Basic Income (ie regular government payments to citizens every month, no strings attached), it was a watered-down version only given to the unemployed with certain conditions imposed on them.

Interestingly, the results still showed that overall it improved people's lives (albeit for the short term while the programme was running), proving that putting money into people's pockets can make a simple but huge difference.

Whilst it's good to hear this, it's still frustrating that politicians won't let scientists do their job, because if our leaders want to have policies that actually work then it's a no brainer to actually test them and show whether or not they do.

That way they get to improve society, save money and look good.

Who wouldn't want that?