it’s always fun to teach animal behavior during an election year and see how humans measure up to animals when it comes to picking leaders. The most glaring difference is that Nature and evolution reward those who get the job done using the least amount of energy. That got me thinking about two things. One is the way humans often use money as a substitute for energy. The second is the ever-increasing cost of political campaigns with so little in the way of returns for society.
Because it seems highly likely that politicians will find reasons not to pass any kind of meaningful campaign reform until the country ceases to exist, perhaps we voters need a system that rates the energy-efficiency of those running for office like the one that rates our refrigerators and other appliances. Just as animals must fulfill a certain basic set of priorities–such as signaling their ability to establish and protect a physical and mental (rank) space, secure food, water, and a mate, and successfully raise their young–all using the least amount of energy, we could impose those same standards on our political candidates.
Admittedly, just reviewing their records and rating how energy-efficiently they fulfill those animal priorities might be all it would take to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of physical and mental fitness, but perhaps a list of what the public considers the most critical social issues would strike some as more professional.
Once we have the list of issues, we could determine what percentage their total time campaigning each candidate devotes to discussing those issues. Then we could take that percentage of the total amount the candidate spent during that campaign and assign a dollar value to that topic. Voters could then compare the energy/dollars spent versus the amount of meaningful information imparted on each subject. As in the animal kingdom, the most fit candidate would be the one who imparted the most information for the least expenditure and the most unfit would be the one who spent the most to accomplish that same goal.
We could call it Natural Politics. 🙂