The complication of simplicity

Very often reducing problems, or even perceived problems, to their simplest elements enables us to achieve clarity of thinking, and see issues for what they are. Eliminating the superfluous, the decorative and the distracting can enable us to see what really matters.

But often it doesn’t.

In the current thinking of some political parties , the issue of tax has been reduced to the simplest element with a clamour to tax those with wealth more. A Robin Hood style of re-distribution of wealth by taking from the wealthy (and usually hard-working ) and re-distributing to the poor and deserving will surely solve the problem of inequity. The thinking is that such a re-distribution will solve all our problems. Except of course we know it won’t. Because beating up the wealth creators doesn’t encourage them to create more wealth. Perhaps we should step back from the issue and ask the question “What if we spent the tax take we already have more wisely?”

If governments gave up the woolly and mis-guided thinking on where and how they spend the money they already have, and applied adequate oversight and reduced wastage, they would find the current tax take is more than adequate. Eliminate the consultant gravy train , delete the focus on simply growing the size of government, and ensure that projected outcomes were realised. Then there would be more than enough funding.

Something similar exists on the issue of diversity. There is a clamour from some for mandated diversity in a number of areas, including governance. The thinking is that by having specified proportions of members by gender, ethnicity and various other determinants (cat or dog lovers, people who identify as artichokes and the like) that we would achieve better governance by having more diverse backgrounds, experiences and opinions. Whilst having a diversity of thought and background matters, what surely counts more is quality, knowledge and experience.

Reducing the issue to simply numbers misses the point. Mandating specific numbers of participants by gender or ethnicity or some other determinant does nothing to improve the quality and outcomes of governance if we don’t consider the quality of those participants. Diversity matters, but shouldn’t quality and ability and competence matter more?

Very simply, it doesn’t matter at all what diversity we have in an institution such as our parliament, if the individual members don’t have the skills to do the job.

Whilst there is a time and place for reducing issues and concepts to their simplest form, very often what is more useful is to strip back the issue to what is important. Not just what is easiest to convey in a sound bite or headline.