Quantity as a political weapon

Governing well is not spending more looting citizens and playing Robin Hood

The quantity paradigm is used when best suited by propaganda, but numbers are well interpreted only by experts. Quantities can be large/secondary, apparent/real; qualities might not be measurable, intangible (vocation, patience, capacity to enterprise/fight, etc.). The Spanish GDP has not grown in 20 years because private activity is penalised with high taxes and social tax payments; education is anti-liberal. Sánchez states that he lowers debt because inflation has increased the GDP more than debt has, but debt never stops growing; he says that inflation lowers because it increases less. No quantity of pieces of evidence will convince idiots. R. McNamara extended the quantitative ideology (indicators-based management) as the World Bank President (1968-1981). From that mud slides down the business sludge of rankings; public institutions pay thousands of euros to be photographed and show what best suits them. Rankings equal what is different by confusing the essential/accessory, generating vices, producing disposables, no innovation; they deteriorate education, research; they squander talent and endless academic lives; they cover up for crimes; they blame the innocent, award swindlers; institutions and democracies deteriorate. A surgeon well-qualified in a ranking by surgical successes can skip doing a risky operation so that failure makes the ranking no worse. Police find real innocent people officially guilty to not make it worse. Rankings make the gullible and mediocre drunk. The ball is so large that thousands of volunteer prisoners flow with the tide (too big to fall). In 1975, Donald T. Campbell warned: a quantitative evaluation of people and organisations degenerates by producing the opposite results to those sought. Why? Because humans are weak. When something favours us, we are tempted to take short cuts, we make reality false by taking advantage. So laws, norms and scales must be applied to attempt to avoid poor passions and for ethics to prevail. Authoritarians use parliamentary support as a short cut by converting our weak democracy into formal dictatorship, which breaks separation of powers by changing laws and appropriating institutions. If rectors follow rankings, the whole university will follow them because it must look good in a photograph it pays. Good management is identified as looking good in rankings; it neither serves citizens nor considers what is important: the capacity to run risks; solving problems that are of interest; facing what is difficult; having the will to serve citizens; generosity; creativity; responsibility. Students’ level constantly drops because centres’ success is financed by quantities of pass grades. So passing more students reduces failure. The communists of today’s PSOE make “equal opportunities” equal to giving pass grades away. There will be no failures if public centres are financed for “successes”. If Town Councils are financed for number of crimes, data will be forged to obtain more income by simulating fewer crimes. What fakes the crimes ranking? Crimes are computed as all the same regardless of them involving robbed handbags or stabbings. It suffices to reduce (or distort) minor crimes to state that crime is low because numbers of crimes do that. However, serious crime is increasing, the number of stabbings never stops rising. The quantity of illegal immigrants’ serious crimes is covered up as isolated incidents. Socialists are masters of propaganda because they do not know how to manage without squandering. President Sánchez uses the Synod of Bishops by alleging that terrorism cannot be identified with religion, by hiding that the murderer of the verger in Melilla should be expelled, but denies evidence: illegal immigration increases crime. President Puig shows graphs of rising quantities of teachers, grants, public employees, etc. His “achievements” involve spending more by worsening and politicising public services (indoctrinating in education; overcrowded primary healthcare), pillaging citizens (higher income, inheritance, assets taxes) and plunging us into debt (supporting criminals) by placing disproportionate fines for “real-estate harassment” for whoever defends their private property. Legal insecurity and tax pillaging make people flee from investments and addresses for tax purposes (towards Madrid). There are too many politicians, advisors, official cars, administration workers, bodyguards, high-ranking posts, suicides, serious crimes, subsidies, criminals occupying private properties; too many people have parliamentary immunity; unemployment and per capita debt are too high. Governing well is improving citizen’s lives without lying to them and paying less tax.

Post published in Las Provincias