Rutte’s participation society is all well and good but are institutions ready for it? asks Farid Tabarki.

H.G. Wells wrote ‘New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises: ‘Why then are you not taking part in them?’

That’s what we should do more of: participate in new ideas. I was happy when the king proclaimed the new participation society but I’m afraid the concept, in the hands of the prime minister, will turn out to be no more than the umpteenth cutback.

As in the United States, charity will no longer be the government’s domain but that of the super-rich whose purses won’t be noticeably lighter for it anyway. It’s very Dallas meets House of Cards, don’t you think?

Bentley

Wasn’t it the government’s task to serve good causes? Not by organising everything but by facilitating participation? First of all we should abolish the housing corporations. Let’s start with Rochdale, a corporation with tens of thousands of homes in its portfolio. It recently fired its director, Hubert Mollenkamp, who called houses ‘huts’ and whose favourite means of transport was a chauffeur-driven Bentley.

The corporation is still doing what it does best: making sure that neither home owners nor tenants have any input whatsoever. I know, I happen to own a home in a building mainly occupied by Rochdale tenants. Rochdale has a majority interest and uses it to block any suggestions for innovation.

Rutte may advocate the participation society, institutions so far have been less than enthusiastic. Housing corporations, energy firms and economic affairs minister Henk Kamp, who gets his knickers in a twist at the thought of schools generating their own energy or finding a company who will do it for them: they really don’t like it at all. But times have changed. Tenants are not idiots, administrators are not sheep and citizens are sentient beings who want to do their own thing.

Power

So Mark Rutte, what are we going to do about it? How can home owner associations go about putting solar panels on roofs without let or hindrance from the government? How can we make sure home care isn’t a euphemism for cutbacks? How do we enable students to organise their own education and how do we make sure unions put the future first instead of individual interests?

I believe in your participation society Mark, honestly I do. But first you have to break the power of the institutions which belittle us. Then we can all participate and poor H.G. Wells won’t spin in his grave.

Farid Tabarki is a trendwatcher, public speaker, panel moderator and founder of Studio Zeitgeist in Amsterdam.