I must confess I have never truly understood why we lavish such resources on protecting, praising, and propping up a vanishingly small caste of public figures while billions wrestle daily with rent, food, and dignity. Nor do I grasp why so many of us are enthralled by that caste.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are rich - so what? Wealth is not a sacrament. It doesn't confer moral authority, nor does it guarantee wisdom. Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen have learned to turn attention into influence - again, so what? A knack for spectacle is not statecraft; a megaphone does not make a mind. And yet, across the so called West, the pattern repeats: those least suited to steward the common good are installed, and we, bewilderingly, cheer them on.
Why? Partly tribal reflex: the old instinct to circle the tallest totem and mistake height for virtue. But our media ecology doesn't just mirror that impulse - it weaponises it. Headlines privilege conflict over consequence. Broadcasts and broadsheets chase virality, devoting scarce airtime to court gossip and poll thespians rather than explaining how budgets work, what trade offs look like, and how to alter them. Platforms amplify outrage and celebrity because outrage and celebrity sell. The result is excess - bullet-proof motorcades, entourages, speech writers, curated indignation - built on the premise that greatness is rare and must be guarded and indulged. Up close, it often feels obscene: celebrities hollow, rulers expert mainly at insulating themselves from criticism and monetising attention.
These arrangements are designed - rituals, incentives, and habits accreted over time - and they can be redesigned. History across Europe, Australasia, and North America shows that when communities value contribution over display, and the commons over courts, institutions shift, sometimes dramatically. We are not condemned to worship status. We can prize service, reward competence and care, and recognise the many rather than gild the few. It's not rocket science...
The demystification of office begins with transparency around its actual costs. When we cap ceremonial spending and publish every line item—motorcades, residences, trips, events—we strip away the mystique that allows mediocrity to hide behind spectacle. Rather than luxury protocols, we need civil service norms that ground public stewardship in ordinary constraints: modest housing, commercial travel where safe, public transport when feasible. This isn't hair shirt theatre but a fundamental reset of expectations about what public service actually entails. When those who govern live within ordinary constraints, the romance of office fades, and with it the cover pageantry provides for mediocrity.
The machinery itself demands reconstruction around competence rather than connections. Senior appointments emerge through open competitions featuring blind skills tests and structured interviews, while rigorous conflict of interest rules and cooling-off periods create genuine accountability. Procurement modernizes through transparent portals and mixed human-algorithmic scrutiny that chokes off sweetheart deals before they take root. None of this is glamorous; all of it is administratively doable in Westminster systems, presidential systems, and coalition republics alike.
Resources flow toward what people actually encounter in their daily lives when we dedicate a fixed share of public budgets to participatory processes with residents deciding on clinics, parks, crossings, school meals. This pairs with a guaranteed floor of universal services—primary healthcare, clean water, broadband—funded before prestige projects receive consideration. Indexing top officials' pay to median public sector wages and linking any bonuses to measurable outcomes creates accountability that runs both ways: fewer families in poverty, faster permits, cleaner rivers become the metrics that matter. Government begins to feel like a well-run utility rather than a cathedral with cardinals outnumbering the congregation.
The concentration of power in single offices creates the drama that feeds celebrity politics. Proportional representation and multi-member districts dissolve winner-takes-all melodramas, making coalition cabinets the norm rather than the accident. When we stagger term limits and rotate key portfolios, renewal becomes steady rather than chaotic, while pushing decisions downward—schools, streets, housing, water, transit—and matching authority with actual fiscal power transforms devolution from administrative farce into genuine self-government. Neighbourhoods gain participatory budgeting with guaranteed funding slices and open ledgers that allow people to trace a direct line from votes to potholes filled.
Direct democracy finds a place here through careful design that enhances rather than undermining deliberation. Citizen-initiated referenda and popular initiatives operate with sensible thresholds, plain language voter guides, and nonpartisan fiscal notes, while constitutional changes require higher bars than ordinary statutes. These tools gain strength when surrounded by deliberation: citizens' assemblies drawn by lot examine complex proposals, question experts, and refine wording before votes occur. Informed democracy becomes durable democracy through this marriage of participation and reflection.
The media—our supposed teachers—must abandon their role in maintaining the artifice of elite importance. Public interest journalism receives funding at arm's length from the state, with governance firewalls protecting editorial independence. Comprehensive ad libraries, lobbying and meeting registers, and transparent corrections become standard requirements, while open recommender systems and political content flows submit to audit by accredited researchers. Public funding and broadcast licenses tie to a duty of explanation and education: sustained coverage of budgets, service performance, and policy trade-offs rather than endless reruns of elite theatre. When attention operates as a public resource, subsidising its waste becomes indefensible.
Security should respond to actual danger rather than maintain the illusion of importance. Instead of surrounding rulers with permanent entourages and armoured motorcades regardless of threat level, protection gets scaled up or down based on real risks assessed by independent experts. When genuine threats diminish, so does the security apparatus. Political events stop hiding behind fortress-like venues and closed-door meetings, instead happening in ordinary spaces where people can actually walk up and ask questions without scripts or barriers. Countries like Denmark, New Zealand, and Australia already prove this works - their officials move through public spaces, take public transport, and engage with citizens directly without the imperial trappings that distance rulers from the ruled.
Dignity returns to care work when we flip the spotlight from so-called "leaders" to those who actually maintain our societies. While we shower politicians with recognition, nurses, sanitation workers, teachers, and carers are neglected. Civic service programmes that pay living wages to retrofit homes, restore ecosystems, tutor children, and care for the elderly redirect both resources and status toward essential work. The work exists; coordination, funding, and recognition must follow.
Systems learn when sunset clauses force programmes to demonstrate results, plain language dashboards make performance visible, and pilot alternatives in matched regions allow evidence to guide scaling decisions. Complaint-to-fix loops with service guarantees and public resolution timelines create feedback mechanisms where competence grows through immediate and visible accountability.
What becomes possible right now, without waiting for permission, involves supporting institutions that already model this future: credit unions, cooperatives, community land trusts, worker-owned firms, local newsrooms. Councils and parliaments respond to pressure for participatory budgeting, open data, and independent auditors. Voting for rules matters as much as voting for rulers—campaign finance reform, proportional systems, anti-corruption packages shape the terrain on which politics unfolds. Redirecting attention through funding investigative journalism, rewarding explanatory reporting, and starving outrage clicks shifts the incentive structures that currently reward spectacle. Building mutual aid infrastructure and cross-class coalitions that pursue concrete wins creates alternative power bases that don't depend on elite permission.
This transformation appears achievable precisely because it already exists in fragments. Participatory budgeting operates at scale in cities from Paris to Porto Alegre and Melbourne. Proportional systems in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries dampen cult politics through structural design. Ireland's citizens' assemblies have reshaped constitutional law through deliberative innovation. Open contracting platforms in the UK and EU have reduced graft through transparency requirements. Cooperatives employ millions across Spain, Italy, and beyond, proving alternative ownership models at scale. None represent miracles; they emerge from administrative choices sustained by public patience and commitment.
The status quo wastes resources and ridicules human potential precisely because it remains totally unnecessary. It flatters the few and numbs the many while failing to deliver on its most basic promises. When we treat old-style leadership as irrelevant in today's context, stewardship as craft rather than throne, make corruption dull rather than daring, and route treasure to commons rather than royal courts, what emerges feels proportionate: less theatre and more care, fewer pageants and more plumbing, representatives who can walk down streets and answer questions without scripts or convoys. No grand rupture proves necessary—just deliberate, visible changes repeated: one budget line, one assembly, one repaired bridge at a time.