On Politics And Governance

The key innovation that has powered the modern era is: organizations. We solve a great many problems by creating an org, setting it tasks, giving it powers and resources, and putting some key “masters” in charge.Besides participating as suppliers, customers, employees, or targets of such orgs, there are two other key ways we engage such orgs: politics and governance. In politics, we take sides among the different alliances of masters and tasks, struggling for who will dominate. In governance, we try to hold masters accountable for achieving tasks, and seek new better to choose, reward, and monitor them.Low status folks have long been advised to keep their head down and stay out of both politics and governance. Higher status folks, in contrast, are somewhat encouraged to do politics, if they are willing to risk suffering repression when their allies lose. We like democracy as more of us can more safely be political, and thus see ourselves as high status, though politics becomes less…