{"id":10003,"date":"2005-10-03T10:16:04","date_gmt":"2005-10-03T14:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/10\/03\/10003.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:53:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:53:07","slug":"and-well-need-a-leadoff-hitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/10\/03\/and-well-need-a-leadoff-hitter\/","title":{"rendered":"And we’ll need a leadoff hitter, too."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What the hell is the matter with people? I’m all in favor of a World Government (it can’t be much worse than World Anarchy), but Bill Gates in the starting XI<\/a>? Richard Branson? And I yield to no-one in my admiration for Desmond Tutu, but can we just keep the clergy the hell out of government? And if we absolutely have to have a linguist in the cabal, does it have to be Noam Chomsky?\n

OK, look. I’ll keep Mr. Mandela as a figurehead, moral center and token terrorist, although he’s clearly not up to the task of actually governing anymore. I’ll put Jimmy Carter in charge of the gavel, ’cos the man deserves a little something, and ultimate power will have to do. After that—\n

Look, I haven’t a fucking clue. I wouldn’t mind having Muhammad Yunus in charge of the treasury. Maybe Amartya Sen should be at the table, too. I’d pick somebody with a good grasp of constitutional law from some reasonably stable constitutional democracy, perhaps Germany. I’d like somebody with a good background in administrative science. We’d need someone who knows a lot about agriculture, and water and all. But—here’s my point—any Council of Elders that contains more than three names with which I personally am familiar would be a Very Bad world government. That’s not because I’m ignorant or American or parochial or privileged. I think it’s probably an excellent general rule that any Council of Elders that contains more than three people who are familiar names to any reasonably well-informed person would be stacked with defenders of privilege and also with people who do not work well with Councils of Elders. That’s how it is.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the hell is the matter with people? I\u2019m all in favor of a World Government (it can\u2019t be much worse than World Anarchy), but Bill Gates in the starting XI? Richard Branson? And I yield to no-one in my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17546,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10003\/revisions\/17546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}