This piece notes that elected representatives don't think enough about how public subsidies to science and technology play out as real world innovations. But then it says they should. But they don't. Why will they, just because someone says they should? project-syndicate.org/commentary/pol…?
It is a bit like saying "crime is bad, so people who do crimes should stop doing crimes." Like, sure, but what mechanism do you propose for changing the behaviour? And one sees this over and over in liberal complaints about the delinquency and incuriosity of representatives.
The state is structured in a way that rewards some behaviours and punishes others. TDGAF about monetary policy, or technological innovation, or democratic media reform, because at the moment doing so is at best a distraction, at worst a career-ending act of self-sabotage.
If you want people in the state to behave differently you have to change its structure, so that the distribution of incentives and threats to power-holders within it changes. Hence the need for deep *constitutional* change to the relations of power, information-power included.
And hence the need to model deep change in mass membership orgs that claim to be democratic but are controlled by elective/appointed oligarchies that *must* put their privileges over the needs and interests of their supporting members if they are to avoid career harm.
Whether it's the BBC, the RSPB, the co-op, or the Labour Party, enormous material power is currently hoarded by people who are required by the logic of their institutions to act in ways that frustrate the wishes and impair the interests of those they are supposed to serve.
