Why are Popular Movements so Unpopular

I believe that people are generally good. On the old 'weigh up the opportunities to be evil, vs the actual incidence' and you see, people aren't all out to get you. Or anybody.

I also resoundly reject conspiracy theories. I may entertain some, but generally they rely on a quality I just don't believe in. Not evil, but competence. I generally believe that people are incompetent. Conspiracies usually take the highest degree of competence because they operate in uncontrolled environments where effects are hard (if not impossible) to predict.

Most badness, evilness then comes from ignorence and incompetence. We don't know that we are doing it. For example, people aren't wantingly destroying Orang Utang habitats, they simply don't know if their shampoo contains palm oil. It was probably never labelled in the first place because the manufacturers never anticipated that palm oil would threaten the Orang Utang species. Maybe they did, but thought that not as many people would imitate them, or that their shareholders demanded it, coming again from a place of ignorance.

Blah. Why are the Socialist Alternative so annoying? To many they may look like a successful organisation, but I think they are a pack of losers doing more harm than good.

For example, last week as I was riding home to get changed for the citizenship ceremony a girl on the corner of Bourke and Swanston cranked up the volume on her megaphone and gave a heartfelt, terrible, nauseating speech that bemusingly had people running around with fingers in their ears trying to get away.

This is by no means a socialist alternative phenomena, most popular movement based organisations persist with terrible representatives, ineffective techniques and make the same mistakes over and over.

For the organisations I'm involved in they aren't immune. I spend time on two, one is really good FLN achieves tangible outcomes and makes a huge difference in the lives of refugees. They have a strong and diverse support base and create a wonderful welcoming environment for all.

Then Prosper/Earthsharing isn't so great. They believe great things, but are capable of reeling out speakers that would give the socialist alternative a run for its money in the bad stakes.

Why is there no quality control? Why don't these organisations improve to improve their popularity? Why do they seem hellbent on driving people away?

For example, Prosper throw several speaking events throughout the year. They never record these events unless it is an international speaker. They don't record or review their own inhouse speakers. They don't solicit feedback from the audience, and like the Socialist alternative employ misleading advertising to attract audiences. That is disguising a talk on Land and Land Taxes as a talk on the environment, paying lip service to the environment and then extolling the virtues of Henry George for 40 minutes.

Prosper also presented me with the opportunity to see the worst key note speaker I have ever seen. I can't describe to you the disjointed nature, incoherency and good old fashioned dead air that made up the talk. You'll just have to take it on faith, it was bad. It was the worst. All it really lacked was personal insults directed at the audience, sadly this probably would have improved it.

Yet no improvements have been made. No learning occurs, so the same story happens over and over - a small audience of new faces shuffle in. Stay largely because they are too scared to leave then shuffle out. Meanwhile the loyalists go up and actually give the speaker that did the damage a pat on the back and encouraging positive reinforcement. Nobody asks the audience what they think, more often they are told what to think and we never see them again.

What could we do differently?

As suggested we could actually ask people what they think, get feedback, record the talks so the speaker can perform a post-diagnositc, guage audience reactions and see just how long they paused for, or why they were leaning throughout.

Sadly I think 'popular' movements are shelters in a sort of way. A charity to the members, not by the members. One person once put it 'the more friends I had, the less political I got' there is I feel definitely a social motivation to joining the socialist alternative if not other organisations.

I meet people in voluntary organisations that are passionate and immovable that in my opinion couldn't cut it at all in the private sector. They are there because they have found somebody who will have them. The numbers of these misfits and corporate (as well as plain simple social) rejects is significant but a minority. Hence when I ask myself of screaming megaphone girl 'surely the Socialist alternative have a better speaker than this' they probably don't on further reflection.

This is who the socialist alternative appeal to. Hardcore, dogmatic, socially inept and uncharismatic people. The number is large and they cluster together united by a movement that I ultimately can't believe in. (megabeauracracies rely on super-competence being in control, market systems don't. I don't believe in plain old competence, so I'll take the market system over central planning).

But as always, the strenght is the weakness. Socialist alternative have grouped together social refuse into a coherent visable movement. Organised and motivated, and ultimately - generally unappealing.

I guess let's call it the China effect, China is big, but people forget that the world is bigger. They are cohesive, and so they look big, the biggest in the world, but crucially the Chinese population is not the majority of the world, they are a minority.

So too, are organisations like Socialist alternative, their membership is large (but ultimately, compared to everyone else, small) they look big because they are cohesive, have megaphones and red flags, tables with bages and a large public presence. I assume they are growing too, but not dramatically. They may go from 500 to 1000 in ten years for example. But at some point, they are going to hit their limit. The only thing that could bolster their membership to some majority view is an event that leaves hundreds of thousands of people disenchanted and disillusioned with all the alternatives.

Like the depression drove Germans into the breast of the Nazi party. I'm not comparing the Socialist Alternative with the Nazi party directly, the true tragedy being that for popular organisations, these sudden influxes in popularity result in more talented members to draw from for leadership and the faithful doing the 'hard' ineffectual yards now get displaced by the competent and charismatic.