about Politicians

A politician is one who through the authority given them by their selectorate exercises governance/control over a community, but usually referring to  a level of government within a state. They determine the goals of a community and how to allocate resources for their achievement. For a politician to maintain its position or improve it they must ensure their selectorate benefits from their position, if they don't their particular selectorate will select another. For example lets take a look at our current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He was selected to be leader of the Liberal Party by a majority vote of 300,000 Liberal Party members. Which is 0.84% of the Canadian population. The Liberal Party selected him because he was the most likely to get the support of national voters in mild agreement to Liberal Priorities, but not actual members of the Liberal Party mostly due to his campaign donations and his personality. As leader of the Liberal Party which is his selectorate he is expected to reallocated government spending according to their priorities.

So Justin Trudeau selectorate consists of primarily the Liberal Party who selected him as leader. Secondarily it consists of the 6.8 million people who voted for him. I should point out however that 10.6 million voted for someone who wasn't Liberal candidate and 8.1 million chose not to vote at all.

To maintain his position he has to be better than any alternative leadership hopeful to the members of the Liberal party, and also be able to raise enough campaign donations and win enough support from enough voters.

While we are discussing the Liberal party I should take some time to explain what they are. The Liberal party is made of people who share a Canadian flavor of the Liberal ideology. An ideology is a set of preferences of how society operates and how it should be organized. This is distinct from how societies actually operate and which type of organization strategy is evolutionarily stable and sustainable for generations. Liberals are a type of idealist. Most idealist are taught to have a certain set of ideological preferences from their parents, media, and educators. Their ideologies are fully intellectually/emotionally integrated into their minds in very early adult hood, which gives them little time to empirically verify them. Ideologies follow the same process of intellectual/emotional mental integration as religions. As opposed to naturalism where naturalists employ the scientific method to determine what they ought to prefer and that a society organizational strategy must be evolutionarily stable and sustainable. Idealists prefer moral/emotional reasoning to the scientific method. Idealists are well known for exaggerating evidence that supports their preferences and understating or rejecting any evidence that contradicts their preference usually falling back on moral/emotional reasoning when forming their rebuttals. Idealists also have the tendency to think that their ideology has been "proven by history" and has the support of "the evidence". This is easy to state when you reject everything that contradicts it.

Integrity and honesty is not a word most people use to describe politicians. I'm not sure this is fair to politicians, because of the idealism of their selectorate. Their political survival demands finding optimum policies and positions which satisfies the fiveish levels of their selectorate in following order of importance;

1. Party members
2. Campaign contributors
3. Your riding voters
4. Other voters
5. Potential voters

Not all of these five groups have the same set of preferences even though their is likely a lot of overlap. On occasion a politician must alienate a lesser selectorate group for the sake of gaining support from a more influential selectorate group and hopes the lesser either forgets or forgives. A politician who fails to do this risks being replaced by a politician who will. Their survival as politician depends on this. A politician who makes decisions using the scientific method will alienate the idealists who form the majority of the selectorate. Despite the fact that decisions made using the scientific method are usually more reliable in their outcomes than those not using evidence. Politicians have to respect and consider the popular prejudices and biases of their selectorate or end their careers.

Political parties compete with one another for the support of people. They select politicians that they feel will help them do this. In places where there is free speech they do this by investing in media that supports the party and divests in media that doesn't support the party. They seek to influence that curriculum of schools. The party that can get the schools and media on their side they will be more successful. Maybe even successful enough to marginalize competing parties so effectively that they become the sole party. Political parties will use the media and tax dollars to promote the view that their political party is responsible for every success in the country and they are the most qualified to deal any preceived social justice issues and standard of life issue. Political parties do not empirically measure the effectiveness of their policies. Their conclusions are completely ideological.

An understanding of the nature of politicians is critical for the health of a nation and if we are actually going to get the results intended by the policies put forth by politicians in reality. The quality of of the politicians/policies is directly related to the math/science education level, commitment to realism versus idealism and a strong preference for generationally sustainable policies of the voters.