From Ross Gittins

...

So what's the answer? Schwartz and Sharpe say that, though we will always need rules and rewards in the running of institutions, increasing the emphasis on rules and incentives discourages and diminishes the third, more elusive element needed to make institutions work well: what Aristotle called phronesis and translates as practical wisdom.

People exercising practical wisdom use their skills and experience to achieve to the best of their ability the ''telos'' or true purpose of their activity. Practical wisdom involves finding the right way to do the right thing in the particular case you are dealing with.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 28/04/2011

Reporter:

Former finance minister Lindsay Tanner says the media has driven politicians away from serious debate and towards spin and gimmicks.

LEIGH SALES: The former finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, was one of the so called "Gang of four" who ran the Rudd Government. He quit at the last election, citing family reasons. Caucus minutes leaked last year claim that he was opposed to Labor's dumping of the emissions trading scheme.

Now Mr Tanner has written a book called 'Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy'.

Lindsay Tanner, in your new book you write that Australia and its people deserve much better than the carefully scripted play acting that now dominates our nation's politics. What do you mean?

LINDSAY TANNER, FORMER FINANCE MINISTER: We got to a situation where spin, robotic scripting, all of the things that you've heard lots of complaints about over the past few years I think have seriously distorted the picture of politics even more distorting than usual, that is conveyed through the media. I've tried in this book Sideshow to ask why is this happening. The answer is politicians are reacting to how the media portrays them. They're getting more and more defensive because of "gotcha journalism" and more and more are drifting into a world of flimflam and stunts and gimmicks, announcables and spin, both to protect themselves and also to stay in the media. So you get a toxic interaction between politicians and the media that is driving the Australian political process further and further away from issues, from the national interest, from serious political debate.

LEIGH SALES: But that casts politicians in a pretty passive position.

LINDSAY TANNER: Look, they're not entirely passive, that's true, and certainly responsibility for these problems is, I think, ultimately shared between politicians, media and the people who vote for them and who watch and read and listen to the media, the whole community. It is possible that a big political dividend will come to somebody who decides to try to break out of these shackles, but there are endless examples of where distortion, trivialising, misrepresenting by the media sends signals to politicians about what they'll get punished for and what they'll get rewarded for.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3202864.htm

After years of declaring he stood for "truth, justice and the American way," Superman has provoked the ire of rightwingers by threatening to renouce his US citizenship.

In the latest issue of Action Comics, which went on sale on Wednesday, the Man of Steel decides to take the step after he intervenes in a protest against the Iranian government.

After the Islamic regime brands his non-violent protest as an act of war taken on behalf of the US president, the DC comic hero says he will renounce his citizenship before the United Nations.

"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy," he says.

Although Superman never actually renounces his citizenship in the story, conservative commentators reacted with disgust.

In a blogpost at The Weekly Standard, senior writer Jonathan Last questioned Superman's beliefs, now that he seems to have rejected the United States. "Does he believe in British interventionism or Swiss neutrality?" Last wrote. "You see where I'm going with this: If Superman doesn't believe in America, then he doesn't believe in anything."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/29/superman-threatens-renounce-us-citizenship

Since the 1970s, as the veteran British socialist Tony Benn has observed, political power has effectively been transferred from the ballot box to the wallet and all over the world, democracy - real, true democracy - as opposed to the banker-friendly faux-democracy aggressively promoted by the US State Department and neo-con think tanks, has been on the retreat. That is until now.

Some may not see the connection between the toppling of a decrepit dictator in the Nile Valley, the Arab spring in general, anti-austerity riots in Greece and the fall from grace of News International, but I would argue there's a strong one. Namely that all are manifestations of the growing public anger against undemocratic and unaccountable elites across the globe.