Politics is perhaps the number 1 area to address in the world for me. If big business has too much power, it still has convince politics to implement some policies. Getting things to be the law is important, there is a lot of power available to enforce the law so making the right laws is critical.
I don't feel very comfortable about the current mehanisms in place for creating law. I would like more input from people outside the political sphere (fewer career politicians), outside the geographical sphere (for the UK - less London-centric, I know all my best ideas come when I'm immersed nature), and possibly from the population at large (who, even though spectacually ill-informed on most topics can still come together wonderfully productively when given the right tools/incentives).
Suppose the left/center/right political spectrum is -100 for far left, 0 for centre, and 100 for far right. If I define mysef as left, perhaps an 80% left, then it "creates" the concept of an 80% right. This is a simple mathmatical fact. The centre is in the middle, therefore has an equal sized political space on either side. If I define a distance from the centre to mean the furtherst left you could be (-100), then this means the furthest right you can be is 100. If you could be 120 right, but only -100 left, then the centre would be at 10, not 0. And the centre is a 0, by definition - it's the centre.
I like to say my politics is central. In reality if you asked me a set of questions and plotted it on the spectrum it would very likely put me firmly in the left part of it, perhaps quite far to the left (basic income, no moral justification for rewarding people for hard work). But to me, I am very moderate and somewhat conversative (whatever system of governance I might conjure up I wouldn't want to have it immediately implemented as it probably has some terrible flaws in it that will be revealed in practise, the status quo has a lot going for it in that it delivers what it delivers).
The problem with the political spectrum is it tells me the range, and then just lets me place myself on it, what if I disagree with the question? How can I be sure the range has fairly been represented and that the left/middle/right are equally weighted?
By defining myself in the centre I create two equal spaces either side. Maybe I should position myself a little to one side, but you get the idea. The problem is of course convincing anyone else to use my new political spectrum. I probably won't even use it in anticipation of defeat.
This debate is probably as old as conversation itself is, it's essentially the problem of free will. I'm not concerned with the pure question of free will itself, but the the idea of assigning responsiblity to human actions.
There are reasons external to a person that can explain why they take an action. Society has a significant role in creating yobs, they do not emerge into the world a yob (and even if they do, or are significantly predesposed to be one, anything that happened before they were born is also outside their control).
But if you told people that it would excuse all behaviour, and would probably encourage more bad behaviour as the individual is no longer responsible for what they do. So assigning responsiblity to the individual for everything that results from their actions is a useful technique to get people to behave better. Also if somebody is told they do not have the power to change their character then presumably they will be less likely to do so.
It's one of the tricky areas of society as it seems to involve "the people" believing in a lie for the greater good. If you listened to the life story of the yob it would make some sense, if you spent more time getting immersed in their life, there seems a fair chance that you would intuiitlvey understand why they take actions, it would make total sense.