Are the issues too complex to understand?

[razz]

CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/obam...tics-1.3573379 had this article today and I wondered if you feel it has merit. I don't know the US experience obviously but I was convinced this was true in our last election based on the topics of discussion that came up as important issues.

"This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States," President Barack Obama said in response to media questions about presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Sorry Mr. President, you're wrong. Politics has always been partly a reality show. It has always been partly entertainment. Trump's advantage is that when it comes to reality shows, he's had the most experience...

The trouble is, of course, that no one really knows the answers to our hardest economic questions.

Our highly educated experts cannot be sure what will happen when they cut interest rates below zero. They really don't know whether flooding the world with cheap money will eventually come back and create unintended consequences.

Voters are even less equipped.

For all our celebration of democracy, the vast majority of voters don't understand bond markets or derivatives. As we saw in the U.S. property crash, many don't understand central banking or interest rates.

Many have a pre-18th century understanding of international trade. They imagine a world where countries profit from exporting as much as possible and importing as little as they can.

Keeping it simple

Politicians have known for years that you have to keep it simple.

For instance, some of us may realize that understanding quantum computing is essential to keeping North America's place in the world economic order. But even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — celebrated for his public definition that made a splash on social media — knew a real explanation of quantum computing would have gone over our heads and his.

The problem with reality show-style simplification is that for the folks at home it depends on some sort of basic honesty and expertise from the people doing the simplifying. The audience really isn't qualified to catch the errors, whether intentional or honest mistakes.

The necessary oversimplification of the world by politicians may be related to a phenomenon known in the software industry as "bikeshedding" or Parkinson's Law of Triviality.

Essentially, it's an observation by British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who found that in a committee charged with making decisions about a new nuclear plant, members were relatively silent until they got to the trivial issue of how to build the bike shed, when everyone had an opinion.

People are often ill-equipped to consider complicated matters and so focus on the trivial...

All politicians, including Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton oversimplify. There is just no other way to explain complex ideas briefly to a mass of voters.

Trump isn't alone in offering glib solutions to the complex problems facing the world, he's just very good at it. In the world of reality television politics, he's the one with the most experience.

It's fair to say it's not the job of politicians to understand all the details. We elect politicians to hire experts to run the complex bits of our economy.

In the past, it has been the job of experts and journalists and commentators to listen to those pronouncements, weigh them and help voters decide what is true.

But as The Donald tweets about his taco lunch and media organizations pass on his reality show comments verbatim, it may be that for a large majority of the U.S. population, the analysis stage has been left out and they think of reality show simplicity as truth..."

[ApatheticNoMore]

The trouble is, of course, that no one really knows the answers to our hardest economic questions.

Our highly educated experts cannot be sure what will happen when they cut interest rates below zero. They really don't know whether flooding the world with cheap money will eventually come back and create unintended consequences.

Voters are even less equipped.

the writer of this seems more ignorant than any of the voters if they believe voters make this choice. Since when have voters voted on that? Fed policy is already pretty shielded from voters.

He's also very selective in what he thinks is important to know. Bond markets and derivatives, but not what it is like to make it on minimum wage (also understanding business is mentioned but not say ecology ...).

It's some kind of variant of everyone can't know everything. Well yea. But what is interesting about that anyway? Does it assume no one can vote on what they DO know?

[LDAHL]

He seems to be arguing that we should let the credentialed experts explain thing to journalists, who in turn will put the information into simple terms the simple-minded common folk can understand in order to "help them decide what is true". This would be better than simply passing along the raw data feed of who said what and who did what.

As journalists so often do, I think he gives too much credit to journalists.

[creaker]

It's not just understanding the issues - it's understanding the players - what powers those players may yield. And understanding that has no relevance on what those players want for outcomes. And in most cases none of the players are completely honest what their actual intentions are.

It's simpler for the people with intended goals - they are tunnel visioned on what they want. It's looking at the whole thing that is too complex. "Plots within plots within plots".