The new pedagocracy

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The global elite are trying to make one size fit all around the world. They seek to enforce the power of their ideas by recruiting people of like minds to leading global bodies and into the civil services which staff governments. They value highly the formal qualifications put out by universities and professional bodies. They create a hierarchy of income, respect and wealth based on approved knowledge of a certain kind and membership of the privileged educational clubs. They find entrepreneurs uncomfortable with their radical ideas and ability to change the world without necessarily having passed through the right institutions. They seek to vilify or ignore anyone with a different view of the big issues of the day from how to promote growth to climate change and the way to respond to a virus.

They claim there are correct scientific or factual answers to complex problems. They think there is something called “settled” science. They seek to limit the scope for permitted dissent or political discussion of other options and approaches. They edge towards the idea of a post democratic age, when the views and wishes of the many distilled through the electoral process are replaced by the rules and laws of the so called international order, set down and interpreted by lawyers, senior officials and conforming politicians. They are intolerant of others whilst preaching tolerance on their own terms. The worst of them can be stupid in the way they deny the obvious, bury inconvenient evidence or scorn what commonsense suggests.

We need more debate about why the advocates of this approved and regulated international order are so often wrong, and why they think doing damage is an acceptable price to pay for their ideas.

If we take the issue of the “settled” views on economics, they hold that Central Banks are all wise and need to be independent. They seek to take as many issues as possible from competition policy to environmental policy out of the hands of elected politicians and ultimate public debate and control and put onto a rules based autopilot instead.

This system has delivered the Oil and banking crash of the 1970s, the Exchange Rate Mechanism recession of the early 1990s, the Great banking crash of 2008-9, the successive Euro crises of the last decade and now the CV 19 slump. Much of this was a failure of Central banking as well as poor conduct and judgement by commercial banks, but the Central Banks are always protected from criticism or management change.

The system has also delivered an over powerful China cornering the market in many manufactured products whilst enjoying privileged trading terms with the West. China busily sells the West the products of the Green revolution whilst pressing on with the construction of many new coal fired power stations.

It is time this universocracy was made more accountable. Elected people around the world need to ask more questions about the obvious failures of the policies of some of these institutions and governments, and need to speak out more for changes of approach.

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