Post in I am a citizen not a consumer

Jul 24 10:44 UTC

John Miller wrote:
>
> ... The real problem I think this whole thread might be about is the
> shift politicians make into selling themselves in public rather than
> governing.

I wonder if the government is confused about roles.  Mick inspired
this thread by pointing to a distinction of roles for people:

  * consumer of government services (passive)
  * citizen (active)

Here's an overview of all the roles.  (I hope you can see this.  You
may need to switch to a fixed-width font.)

              Relations between Lifeworld and System
               from the Perspective of the System

  Institional
  orders of the       Interchange relations          Media-steered
  lifeworld                                          subsystems
  =================================================================

                  1)
                                 P'
                        - - - - - - - - - - >
                           Labour power

                                 M
                        < - - - - - - - - - -
                            Income from
                            employment
  Private                                            Economic
  sphere          2)                                 system
                                 M
                        < - - - - - - - - - -
                             Goods and
                             services

                                 M'
                        - - - - - - - - - - >
                              Demand

  =================================================================

                  1a)
                                 M'
                        - - - - - - - - - - >
                               Taxes

                                 P
                        < - - - - - - - - - -
                            Organizational
                           accomplishments
  Public                                            Administrative
  sphere          2a)                               system
                                 P
                        < - - - - - - - - - -
                             Political
                             decisions

                                 P'
                        - - - - - - - - - - >
                            Mass loyalty

  =================================================================
    M = money medium,  P = power medium

   (From Habermas.  The Theory of Communicative Action.  Volume 2.)

This shows that the government (bottom right) has come to see us in
two roles.  First, it sees us as a "public consumer", exchanging taxes
for services (1a).  This is mostly a passive role.  We are *forced* to
pay taxes, and we have neither *final* nor *immediate* say on the
services we receive in turn.  (Note how this is unlike our role as a
"private consumer" (2), where we usually have choice.  Simon is
concerned with mechanisms to help overcome this problem, and to
improve the efficiency of the exchange.)

But the problem mentioned by John (and hinted earlier, by Mick) seems
to issue from our other role, where we exchange mass loyalty for
political decisions (2a).  It's a little unclear - what exactly is
this role?  Is this the role of a free and responsible citizen?  Or is
this where the "selling" is going on, and the "circuses" are being
organized?