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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

About "idea guys". During World War II, after the defeat at Dunkirk, Britain formed a national government, headed by Winston Churchill. This was not a Conservative government, but rather, was national, in that all parties were invited to participate. A number of MPs suggested that, to increase participation of small parties, Churchill should appoint a few "Ministers Without Portfolio". He absolutely refused. He had previous experience with this and thought it was a disaster. "Ministers Without Portfolio" became "idea guys". In meetings, they made lots of suggestions, and they held up conversations with their ideas, but they were not in charge of anything so they never really had to take responsibility when things went wrong. Perhaps worst of all, in Churchill's view, because such ministers had no real responsibilities, they aggravated everyone else by asking questions about what the ministers with real responsibilities were up to.

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" "idea guys". In meetings, they made lots of suggestions, and they held up conversations with their ideas, but they were not in charge of anything so they never really had to take responsibility when things went wrong"

Reminds me of a whole layer of people at corporate headquarters of my company. They send out beautiful newsletters, hold seminars and meetings about all kinds of stuff but as soon as it has been published it fizzles out and nothing comes out of it.

We have similar people at our org. Most of the time the idea is the easiest part. They don't want to be bogged down in the details, compromises or restrictions necessary to bring it to life.

Why stick around for the hard part when you can get the promotion/cred for the idea and move on?

Exactly. I can just push another corporate social network, do a few beautiful videos about all the collaboration, but why bother thinking about why nobody is using it?

Of course Churchill was perhaps one of the biggest idea guys of the lot. He did plenty, but he also interfered and had bad ideas a plenty too. Thankfully, he was mostly open to being told to butt out.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (SOE) was a famous Churchill enthusiasm, yet he had many useless impractical ones, that were a huge distraction, too.

And sometimes worse than just useless or impractical.

(cough Gallipoli cough)

Gallipoli. Norway. Gutting the Royal Navy as chancellor in the 1920s. Those were the truly damaging ones.

Of the impractical, well, he was a great believer in the boffins, so he supported SOE and other secret warfare, Bletchley, tanks etc. Yet he also promoted research into death rays, aerial mines, The Great Panjandrum (a huge 20 foot rocket powered catherine wheel intended to clear minefields. Test footage on YT), Project Habakkuk (An aircraft carrier made of pycrete - ice). I could go on all day. :)

Yet to get the good science, he probably had to let the boffins explore the bad and the silly too, so frankly I'm glad he had some of those seriously oddball thanks to hindsight ideas.

I generally describe Churchill as an object lesson in how history can decide that getting one big thing right (that Nazi Germany was an existential threat that needed to be taken seriously) outweighs getting basically every other thing wrong.

I'm not nearly as harsh about it. He got some impressively big stuff wrong, and right. Above all he wasn't afraid to act. Above all, that's what was needed right then. He'll always be controversial for his more extreme examples of being wrong. Such is what seems to make a great general or wartime leader.

More he was a wartime YC - he backed all sorts of clearly idiotic ideas, and a few of them turned out to be platinum. Would Lord Halifax, Chamberlain or Atlee (or worse May, Johnson or Corbyn) have poured the equivalent of billions into tanks that were crucial in WW1, or into Bletchley that turned out to be the golden goose, or radar? Nope, almost certainly not, they'd have all have died as unproven too, and we'd probably have lost.

An aircraft carrier made of ice is clearly an absurd idea. Yet if it had closed the Atlantic gap, as intended, millions of tons of shipping would have been saved.

Actually no, not an absurd idea at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

Aye, the scale needed killed them. Often held up now, from 70 years on, as one of his especially silly ideas.

WW2 was an existential struggle for all parties involved. No stone was left unturned in the pursuit of victory. Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight. In 1939 things like constructing fully welded ships was futuristic delivering meaningful bombs with rockets was science fiction and making bombs by splitting atoms was pure fantasy. By 1945 we had liberty ships, ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.

Quite so, that's rather my point. He backed the really wacky ideas if he saw potential, and saw potential in so much. I don't believe May or Corbyn, or any of the current generation of professional politicians of any nation, could have got close to that role with any amount of advisers or instructions. Churchill was an amateur scientist, and amateur lots of other things. He was interested in the world, a life outside politics, and in technology, in ideas. May would win the war by keeping people on message. Except that's how one gets Panzers in Parliament Square.

Tanks. The clearest example I can give of that Mr Churchill not knowing when to keep his nose out of things that don't concern him. One notable time he would not be told to butt out. They almost certainly would never have arrived in WW1 without him. When would war have ended, 1920, or later? The naval blockade was working, but so very slowly. The Americans, joining in 1917, still duplicated for themselves every mistake of the Allies in 1914 and 1915, except compressed into a far shorter time span. Machine guns without mobility made it inevitable. It needed an idea guy. I hope that doesn't sound too cliched, I'm far from Churchill's biggest apologist.

Churchill adopted tanks as his pet project. As First Lord of the Admiralty, whilst running the Navy, by taking funding from naval things. He formed the Landship Committee, and appointed a naval architect. The Army had thought them pointless. They were initially called land ships because the navy were the only ones who actually did see the point. The Army saw the point after first use. Then wanted lots more of them. The rest, as they say, is history and quite a few tanks have been built since.

Edit: What provokes downvotes here? Surely not for comparing current politicians poorly?

"Most wacky ideas never lead to anything. A lot of wacky ideas seem like sure bets in hindsight."

I was just reading how a French inventor offered one of the first submarines in existence as a gift to Napoleon. He refused it.

Imagine if France had instead started massively supporting submarine research and development instead. They could have had a couple of hundred year lead on the rest of the world in submarines and perhaps dominated the seas from then on.

Of course, even then it wouldn't have been so simple, as there'd likely be technology theft and simple inspiration by others that would make their lead not so great. But the potential to make a great difference was there and it was squandered by an otherwise extraordinary leader.

Wasn’t Gallipoli disaster a result of admirals not providing support Churchill requested? And the plan that was implemented wasn’t something Churchill actually advocated for?

Pretty much, and the Navy wanted to run things differently to the army. Then they ran into far more resistance than expected.

Churchill gets the blame from history. Such is the way of things.

Didn't Napoleon say something about how a general fought the war by fighting his subordinates?

They navy messed that up by thinking they could do it all and not waiting for the planed joint operation with the Army.

And they ran into the best Turkish General

IMO, it was shown again and again during WWI that mobility/logistic issues always favored defensive strategies when a determine force was present on both sides.

I doubt there's 1-3 things that would have dramatically altered the outcome.

So Dan Carlin spoke about Gallipoli in his superb podcast "A Blueprint for Armageddon" [1]. It's more complicated than you might think.

Basically, Churchill recognized that the old battleships they had were, well, now useless. Given that, the idea was to use them to try and open up the Dardanelles because they were essentially zero cost to lose. The Admirals, who were quite attached to their ships, viewed this plan differently and rather than striking with no warning (damn the losses), went in and out and gave the Turks time to entrench themselves.

The plan was basically never to land anywhere there, let alone Gallipoli.

Now obviously the buck stops with Churchill being in charge of the Admiralty but there was a confluence of errors that produced that particular clusterfuck.

[1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-bluepr... (Part 3 of 6, starting at about 2:50:00)

Sending the Black and Tans to Ireland was another one of his ideas...

Well put, though he did have the distinct responsibility of communicating leadership decisions. “Ideas” are not a responsibility, but “communicating decisions” certainly is (in organizations scaled beyond the threshold for effective informal interpersonal communication, i.e. bigger-than-tribal).

If you actually try and implement your ideas, or can successfully get other people to do the work of trying them for you, you're not an idea guy.

I'm not sure where this interpretation has come from but it doesn't ring true.

Apart from anything else, Churchill's war ministry did feature a Minister without Portfolio.

Executive body is wrong place for the idea guys.

Like scrum masters, or nonworking spouses?

Scrum masters shouldn't be contributing ideas in terms of implementation or design unless they're also part of the dev team. They're there to facilitate. Product owners are probably more akin to "idea guys".

Edit: Even product owner is a bit of a stretch on my part. They're presenting user stories and requirements, which the dev team can pick and choose from the backlog (which, albeit, is prioritized by the product owner).

I've never understood how those small parties persist. Either they're aligned permanently with one of the two dominant parties, where they can be given positions of trust and power, or they flop around (in which case nobody can make long-term deals with them). They strike me as the "ideas guys" of politics, carping about the way things are done without the risk of having to actually implement their own goals.

They only really persist if there aren't long term dominant parties. Or as opposition parties.

Perhaps today. Particularly with our especially unrepresentative first past the post system that can only work for two parties. Going further back UK politics was much less whip-driven, or politics by pager as became the Blairite tendency. Minor parties were a more accepted part of politics, as was a far wider range of views within a party.

They exist as a way of pulling people towards issues and as a release valve if the primary party gets too corrupt.

Take the Green Party in Canada. Without it, the remaining left(ish) parties in Canada only have to go a little better than the Conservatives on the environment to get the environmental vote. With the Greens in, they have to at least meet them half-way or they risk further splitting the centre-left.

They also sometimes hold the balance of power. This puts their issue front and centre.

Why has wanting clean air and water become a left right issue?

Because it's not the goal that's in dispute, it's the difference of ideas about how to achieve it.

The American right doesn't believe that climate change even exists, they aren't offering any ideas on how to combat it.

Pretending that your position is the center, and everyone who disagrees with you is an extremist doesnt work very well.

The right doesnt oppose clean air, it opposes giving Al Gore's carbon credit company a blank check.

The right (in the US) could just as easily ask why has boarder security become a left right issue.

> The right (in the US) could just as easily ask why has boarder security become a left right issue.

That's because the right made it a partisan issue.

Bill Clinton was tougher on immigration than Donald Trump is. The Left made it a partisan issue, not the right. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RzlviQH4FhQ

https://www.fairus.org/issue/legal-immigration/us-commission... The bipartisan Jordan Commission recommended cutting legal immigration in half and punishing employers for hirin illegals. The democrats made this a partisan issue.

In the past it was the right who owned this issue. Conservationist was the term. Now it's environmentist and seen as a left value.

What are some examples of the old conservationists? Theodore Roosevelt?

I can't prove it, but I'm convinced it's due to lobbyists.

Small parties provide opposition. They can change the national conversation on issues[0]. Sometimes they provide confidence in minority parliaments (remember, in our system of government, losing a confidence vote generally means an election).

Small parties also provide a protest vote, and since voting occurs on a riding-by-riding basis, the desire and intent of the protest can vary. Sometimes protests can be so widespread that no government can form a majority. In Canada, we managed to elect three minority governments in a row over a period of seven years (2004 - 2011).

In short, voters use small parties to send a message.

[0] The NDP's first national leader, Tommy Douglas, was never Prime Minister, but is known as "father of Medicare" and is generally well regarded by Canadians decades after his death.

The flip side of this is the toxicity of first-past-the-post. You get a choice on once issue and have to take the rest that comes with it. It baffles me that people accept this.

To elaborate on this, in America today it's possible to waste your vote, because you can't represent secondary political opinions, e.g. a vote for the Starbucks CEO doesn't flow down to your second choice.

In some other systems, you can choose multiple options. This makes it possible to represent an opinion like "Starbucks CEO, then Democrats, then Libertarians, then Republicans", and so smaller parties can still get votes without compromising the election of larger aligned parties.

The SF mayoral elections work this way and it's quite cool.

Why not allow people to vote themselves on each issue? The purpose of a single person representing an area is less desirable than ever. Direct democracy would solve a lot and create different issues.

This has been attempted, and generally leads to disaster. When a bill for increased spending is introduced (for say, better roads, more schools, etc), it receives widespread support from the voters, and easily passes. When another bill which raises taxes (in order to pay for the previous purchases) is introduced, it enjoys widespread condemnation, and is soundly defeated. Bankruptcy ensues.

Making mistakes is a crucial part of learning.

Quite the contrary, small parties focused on a niche goal can be very effective in attaining that goal - if the dominant parties need their support, they pretty much have to give in to the small party's pet peeve, and in return the small party gives them votes for the other issues.

For example, at least a part of current Brexit hassle is because the DUP (with their 1.5% of total MP seats) are needed by May's government, and they got to veto one of possible options of solving the Ireland-North Ireland customs border issue. There are many other examples worldwide, where small parties focused on a particular domain of problems can get an oversized influence in that domain.

I never understood why in a democracy those votes for small parties are allowed to go to waste.

They should be able to give there "dropped" votes to a bigger party for a legislative period, for negotiated terms.

"If you promise to push opticfibre to all homes in these citys, you can have our voters voice for the next 4 years."

This would solve the problem of unheard voices and- allow actual negotiating politicians to be trained and get busy.

Ranked choice voting

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