Democratic governments and long term vs short term good?
Discussion
There are, of course, some decisions that governments can take whilst only having to think about long-term ramifications, and others where it's purely in the short term, so those should be relatively simple to take.
Where short term and long term interests potentially conflict, though, will any democratic government ever choose the long term good over the short term, given the fact that they will have to go back to the ballot box, potentially after the short term impact is felt, but before the long term.
To give an example - and please, for God's sake, nobody use it as a reason to divert the conversation into yet another Covid discussion, I would suggest the following:
Short term consideration
Quite a lot of people are dying with Covid, so if we tell everyone to stay at home as much as possible and wear masks when out and about, hopefully death rates will decline and we'll look good.
Long term consideration
Children's immune systems develop through coming into contact with various lurgies and sniffles that they then learn to fight off in the first 6 or so years of their lives. By isolating the kids of today from their peers as much as possible, we may or may not see a huge spike in fatal illnesses caused by compromised immune systems a few years from now.
Let's try not to get in to the relative merits of whether either of those considerations is correct, as that's not relevant to the question I'm asking. Please accept for the moment that both are equally correct, but that we won't see the impact of the long term consideration until long after Boris has retired.
Letting people die now doesn't play well in the papers. Letting people die ten years from now won't play wonderfully then either, but that's not now, is it? With that in mind, do you think any government can ever be relied on to risk their popularity now to so the right thing for the future?
Where short term and long term interests potentially conflict, though, will any democratic government ever choose the long term good over the short term, given the fact that they will have to go back to the ballot box, potentially after the short term impact is felt, but before the long term.
To give an example - and please, for God's sake, nobody use it as a reason to divert the conversation into yet another Covid discussion, I would suggest the following:
Short term consideration
Quite a lot of people are dying with Covid, so if we tell everyone to stay at home as much as possible and wear masks when out and about, hopefully death rates will decline and we'll look good.
Long term consideration
Children's immune systems develop through coming into contact with various lurgies and sniffles that they then learn to fight off in the first 6 or so years of their lives. By isolating the kids of today from their peers as much as possible, we may or may not see a huge spike in fatal illnesses caused by compromised immune systems a few years from now.
Let's try not to get in to the relative merits of whether either of those considerations is correct, as that's not relevant to the question I'm asking. Please accept for the moment that both are equally correct, but that we won't see the impact of the long term consideration until long after Boris has retired.
Letting people die now doesn't play well in the papers. Letting people die ten years from now won't play wonderfully then either, but that's not now, is it? With that in mind, do you think any government can ever be relied on to risk their popularity now to so the right thing for the future?
The electorate isn't solely concerned with short term as opposed to long term. I think the issue is that those who will be affected by the short term cost or benefit often know who they are so this significantly influences their voting. Longer term benefits and costs are more diffuse. If I'm a struggling widget manufacturer and a political candidate proposes something that might provide a temporary breathing space this could well be significant in deciding who to vote for. If I'm not, I may very well be aware that whatever subsidises the widget maker will damage the economy in the long term and I will probably be slightly worse off than I would otherwise be, but that is too small an effect to affect my voting decision.
EG, see US steel manufacturers and Trump's import tariffs. The small number of steel workers affected liked the idea, or at least liked that Trump seemed to recognise their problem. The far larger numbers of car workers etc who suffered from the policy weren't individually affected that much.
EG, see US steel manufacturers and Trump's import tariffs. The small number of steel workers affected liked the idea, or at least liked that Trump seemed to recognise their problem. The far larger numbers of car workers etc who suffered from the policy weren't individually affected that much.
tangerine_sedge said:
Actually, I think a better and more relevant example is HS2. Long term benefit is huge, but short term means pissing off lots of Tory voters in the heartlands. I'm constantly surprised that this government is holding it's nerve and continuing the project.
Yeah, that's a really strange one, especially as I'm not even sure on the short term benefits!Given their red wall wins, I'm surprised they didn't flip HS2 in favour of a couple of East-West express lines across the North to massively speed up connection between Northern towns and cities and improve access to the already pretty quick central spine routes.
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