Complexity or simplicity in government

We have been in the fortunate position of having surplus resources (it is another matter that most of these were not real but borrowed...), and to manage these resources we have built a more complex society.

Think banking products, think local government, think central government, think social care, think the NHS... always more complex. More IT, more databases... more services?

To start with this increased complexity had a positive marginal value - that is complexity went up and costs went down and this contributed to better services for your tax. But over time there were diminishing returns, and the establishment of a huge bureaucratic elite. Until finally, today, the marginal value contributed has disappeared completely. Any more complexity introduced at this point simply introduces more costs.

Our society elite today has added layers of bureaucracy and taxes too many and have extracted all the value it is possible from society, and they are now in the process of trying to extract some more.

Remember at the start I said in brackets that all this was built on borrowing and credit, and that is itself has become unmanageable to day, both for individuals and for government. Such complexity, built on borrowing, will mean a double collapse because the stress it has created in finance plus society makes our politicians unable and inflexible to respond. They are simply faced with potential collapse.

There is no way they can see to make things any simpler, the whole edifice has become too huge with tight interlocking systems and it is not amenable to change. What is worse even when small adjustments are tried they cannot be done as any simplification discomforts the entrenched elites.

Will our society now remain as complex as ever, with the value of more complexity increasingly negative, and a complete inability to react? That is the question, isn't it? Can it?

This is the issue that we are facing at this general election. There has to be a change, but which politicians can and will recognise this and be able to manage the transition moment when everything suddenly and dramatically becomes inevitably simpler. Total, unrecognised and unmanaged collapse IS the last remaining method of simplification. Collapse to simplicity will wreck the glories of perceived past achievements.

[At the moment when prospective Chancellors are quibbling about £10bn here and £10bn there, when our total debts are over £2000bn seems they haven't yet got the message]

Who to elect?

It is the people who discover how to work simply in the present, not the people who mastered the complexity of the past who will get to say what happens in the future. Those are the people we must find and place in government.