As much as I would rather write about the Prop 8 protest, the genius of Dick Cavett, or how beautiful life would be if Amanda’s comic strip came true, I’d like to bring things back to Friday’s exercise. What we set up was designed as an experiment in prioritization. We intended to give each group a limited supply of resources, forcing them to decide which services or areas were more important to uphold. By doing so, they would essentially be placing a comparative value on each of the given areas.
Prioritization is not popular, and I suppose it’s also not politically correct. But nevertheless, prioritization is an integral aspect of governmental policy, whether we choose to admit it or not. With the advent of the Obama presidency only two months away, I’m guessing we will be seeing major shifts in our priorities. How this will play out remains to be seen.
Back to the exercise. The second component of our exercise involved us assigning some sort of game changer to each group, causing them to re-evaluate their priorities. In some cases it only had a minor effect (we sent a famine to Rwenzururu, which had already prioritized malnutrition as their concern numero uno.
In other cases, however, these events (floods, diseases, and yes, coke bottles) disrupted the policy of the group, and they had to re-order their priorities to accommodate the change.
Many third world nations reflect this lack of resources. Combined with political or humanitarian crisis, it is no surprise that governments of such nations as Somalia have lost any power to maintain stability. Being in an already constrained position to deal with existing problems such as corruption, mismanagement, crime, or war, the additional issue of poverty is enough to overwhelm the struggling governments.
1 comment:
I agree with you that prioritization is something of a necessary evil. It seems to me to be a job more for a philosopher than a politician.
I find the prospect of being forced to do so in real life, as compared to in a simulation, simply horrifying. Who am I to say whether this man over here should die so that that man over there can live?
I suppose that my only criticism of your simulation is this: rather than use invented countries, you should have used actual ones, as that would have made the simulation strike closer to the heart.
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