JimC wrote:If it was about truly wanting power for such noble reasons, fair enough...Cormac wrote:What about if your desire for power is to ensure that children get a proper education, or that all people have access to excellent healthcare, or a desire to ensure that homosexual people should be able to marry and enjoy all the stability and support that straight people get from the state in terms of tax and inheritance?Svartalf wrote:Vacuous? No. It expresses pretty much what I deem those who want power are worth.Cormac wrote: I have to say, I think this is one of the most vacuous statements about politics and the selection of leadership.
Nothing happens politically without power. Therefore anyone who wishes to make a change in society for the common good must want power in order to make it happen.
Give me someone who wants power over a reluctant conscript any day of the week.
But realistically, it doesn't work that way. Or, if they start that way, after a while, the wheeling and dealing becomes an end to itself, and the corruption spiral begins...
Perhaps, but what I am responding to is the suggestion that political power should be given only to those who absolutely do not want it.
I was demonstrating why that is not a sensible idea.
In the first instance, you can't morally or practically force someone to do a job they don't want to do, or indeed to expect that person to do high quality work.
The notion also assumes that there are human. Beings of such pure heart and mind that they are immune to the insidious effects of power.
To get a good job done, you should choose someone who wants to actually do it. This doesn't mean that they'll actually be capable of delivering - but they're in a better starting position.