I was pondering my recent post on innequality. I ended that post by saying it was more important to focus on having a good vision and a plan, and so I was imagining the different types of large scale plans countries could have for dealing with various situations. The "it depends" conclusion is annoying but it really is the case a lot of the time, and it‘s actually a good thing, as long as you can recognise a good plan from a not so good plan.
Of course when you are making a plan and plotting a course of action you have to make compromises, make choices, and take calculated risks. The plan is the plan until something rather bad happens that you didn‘t expect, at which point you have to reformulate the plan, or switch to a backup / alternate plan. That‘s just reality.
Well it occurred to me that in this world where career politicians and lawyers tend to be in charge of countries, doesn't it make more sense for people with more experience in making tough decisions, having conviction, and taking action in a particular direction in response to outside events. There are jobs out there that do a lot more of this type of thing than politics and lawyering.
We might want to make sure these types of folks are more conversant and used to thinking about complex issues, which more and more rely on tech related knowledge. That way they could transition to making decisions that are relevant at the nation scale.
People that make rules for a living slow things down, people that do things get things done.