18 May

The problem with democracy as we do it is, that it pays no attention to basic competence. If you go for a job interview or have a performance appraisal at work, how good you actually are at the job is critical. If you fail on those, you're toast. Populist politics though means that you can have no idea what you're doing, and still win, so long as you're popular. (This is how going to high school works, if it feels familiar.) Take the current election. On just about every measure of good governance and public administration, this government is the worst in Australian history. It's irrelevant what party it is, these are objectively measurable things. But it will have little impact in the election. It's like hiring the most popular people to work for you, even though they don't have a clue what they're doing. Democracy won't survive. It's already in free fall, worldwide.