Primary Colors

Political scientists, trained to think in buckets and building intellectual scaffoldings, lose their compass when political processes do not fit perfectly in the buckets that have been useful in the creation of theories that explain the past.

I remember when sets with paint brushes, water colors and drawings with numbered grids became popular. It was suddenly possible to paint by numbers. I received a colorful and splendorous macaw as a gift. I spent days coloring it carefully, making sure to stay within the lines. The result was no work of art, but the process was fun and the toy continues to sell well. None of them is a Picasso, but many could resemble one.

Something similar to painting by numbers occurs when we try to grid the political processes and their dynamics under the rubric of democracy, dictatorship, capitalism, socialism, communism or mercantilism. The labels lose significance when we do not understand how governments and societies combine the primary colors of political organization. In order to understand if a political system is participatory and progressive or repressive and destructive, and other permutations of these four factors in the political spectrum of a society, it is useful to indentify the “primary colors” with which the social reality of a country is painted. Societies and processes that are constructive, participatory and dynamic produce “works of art” that inspire and uplift the citizenry, even if not everyone likes them. When the primary colors do not combine, the end result is a destructive dynamic.

The “primary colors” of constructive political processes are: Freedom of expression (speech and conscience); connectedness, or the opportunity to connect with leaders and everyone else; and constructive recognition and feedback. Freedom of expression is achieved through training and specialization. Social connectivity with my co-citizens and leaders is developed through the growth of mutual respect. Constructive recognition and feedback is achieved through evaluation and reporting systems that we understand and to which we can respond in order to get “good grades.” Freedom, connectivity and recognition are the yellow, blue and red of political growth.

If a government is able to utilize at least two of the three primary colors, the political system will last, even if the economy fails. If a government uses only one or less of the “primary colors” to paint society, the political system will collapse even if the economy is relatively stable. Of course a growing economy allows us to forget the colors for a while, but not indefinitely. Two examples are helpful in the analysis. Cuba has grown poorer over the last 50 years and the political system has lived on. Beside military repression, the Cuban regime has used two primary colors to satisfy the political needs of its inhabitants: connectivity and constructive recognition and feedback. It has not allowed freedom of expression. Those Cubans unhappy with the lack of liberties exiled themselves. Venezuela has gone through extreme economic cycles and there are many more in the future, considering the dependence on the State and oil, and the regime of President Chavéz has survived the economic highs and lows, because the system has used two primary colors: freedom of expression (open to more than 50% of the population and closed to the vocal opposition) and connectivity. It has not given its citizens constructive recognition and feedback. To the contrary, it entices its citizens to behave destructively, critical of one another and loaded with mistrust in all. The Soviet Union fell because it stopped painting with any of the three colors. It survived for many years, just like Cuba, thanks to connectivity and constructive recognition and feedback, but those two colors were lost when the leaders aged and stopped expressing empathy and constructive recognition to their citizens. If freedom of expression disappears in Venezuela and is not replaced by constructive recognition, the only way of maintaining the regime will be through military repression, particularly in the face of an economic crisis.

In order to organize the political systems of countries it is more important to recognize and utilize the primary colors than political and economic memos.

God is a Dilettante

As all youngsters exposed to religious teachings, I was profoundly impressed by divine powers. God has infinite abilities. By comparison, we are limited but aspire to attain the reach of Gods. Yesterday, while having breakfast with a good friend, we discussed the problems facing the Obama administration, his successes in national and international relations, and the challenges of aggrandizing the tentacles of government, which begin with virtuous promises and end up strangling growth.
While analyzing strategies to improve public health systems and the difficulty in maintaining high rates of innovation vis-à-vis corporate growth and stability, my friend and I discovered something very simple and revealingly tragic. God Almighty is a dilettante, as are many other public and corporate leaders. That is why the world faces such surprising and destructive events. If God had chosen to specialize, humans, especially those that aspire to be gods, would have also chosen to specialize and everything would work much better!

Governments should specialize in covering epidemic risks, defending their tribes from unexpected attacks by destructive troops, and making sure laws are obeyed. Governments do not know how to manage companies, save banks, produce steel or electricity, let alone develop high-tech companies. I won’t even get into whether governments should handle education, since that is a lost battle even in the most advanced countries; but wonder why education is the industry with the lowest growth in productivity in the last one hundred years?

Our breakfast discussion focused on the mounting costs of health care in the U.S., and probably everywhere. Medicine and the efficient administration of public health, also lend themselves to the benefits of specialization. Doctors should not pretend to be more than high level supervisors of pharmacological or surgical intervention processes. Surgeries and the greater share of health care delivery should be, metaphorically, in the hands of midwives. In Venezuela health care worked better when pharmacists recommended prescriptions, even if restricted, in order to cure well known diseases. Technical experts that specialize in repeated surgeries and cures do a better job than great doctors whose responsibilities are split between handling patients, keeping up with advances and managing their practices. Most medicine, except for rare diseases which require creative cures, should be left to the carpenters, electricians and plumbers of medicine. Literally, technicians without a medical degree that focus on routine operations and cures, and do it well, are better than doctors that are not equally specialized and are more interested in becoming Gods or even bullfighters. Countries, such as Cuba, China, Russia, Canada and others in Europe, that have separated routine surgeries from more sophisticated, imaginative, scientific and creative processes, show high success rates in routine treatments and lower mortality rates in basic surgeries, carried out by technicians without a Doctor’s degree (maybe a health technician accreditation). That is why it is better to not have generals acting as police officers or running countries.

Those who believe they can do it all because they count on divine or mythological powers, end up doing it all poorly. If God was not a dilettante he would have eliminated telluric phenomena. But since God wants to be in the business of getting boyfriends, winning lotteries or finding lost keys, s/he does not have time to specialize in the more important problems that humans can’t really solve. The key to a better world is pushed-down, widespread specialization and not dilettantism. Dilettantes should be circumscribed to aimless children of the rich that scatter their wealth as quickly as possible. Even the most creative and capable need to learn how to specialize. Creative people must not try to control all that surrounds them, they should leave that task to specialized managers. It is no accident that the Catholic Church has promoted so many saints. I am sure that the Church’s intention is to help God focus on the more important aspects of human destiny and let the saints take care of everyday miracles.

As you can tell these notes are not about the dilemma of the existence of God or the usefulness of saints, which is indubitable. These notes are about the importance of developing technical training schools, not only for carpenters, plumbers, electricians and beauticians, but for medicine, construction engineering, education, public service and many more, to increase the productivity and integrity of these services. If our public servants obtained diplomas certifying their technical knowledge and ethics, it would be more difficult for them to become opportunistic and corrupt for they would risk losing their professional accreditation and, more importantly, the pride of being a specialist in the field. Professional pride and specialization go hand in hand. Dilettantism is psychological consumerism with low social productivity.