How not to use a parliamentarian’s email (then you do …)
Among the first things I explain to those I take on staff are the three fundamental rules for managing emails. I'll bring them back here briefly, before moving on to more serious things, because prevention is better than cure, even if cure is very easy: just ignore. The two fundamental rules derive from the principle "all equal none".
Rule number one: equal to none by all
Dear category exponent who feels unfairly harassed for real or alleged reasons, I would like to point out that "er meilbombing" is a particularly stupid and counterproductive way to carry on a battle. The reason is very simple: the amendments are processed in the Commission. Having all the parliamentarians (including those of the other commissions) send the same letter on a specific topic does not change the political terms of the problem in any way, and loads only their assistants with useless work: that of canceling, without reading them, the letters arriving. Here the rule is that after the second letter that arrives with the same object, the first two and all subsequent ones are deleted without even being opened. The probability that a mailbombing has as its object a topic on which there is no real possibility of interlocution is in fact very high, as is the possibility that by leaving these emails on the server you lose sight of those that are actually important for your work. Hence ad nutum cancellation is an evolutionarily superior strategy.
I suggest ( it is not difficult and I explained how to do it ) to go and see on the institutional websites who is dealing with the issue that is crucial for you (and therefore who is the speaker, who is the president of the Commission, who is the group leader of the political force you want to address in that Commission) and to write to him.
To understand better: if you did a mailbombing to solicit the doubling of what you call the "hefty emoluments" of parliamentarians, I would first delete all your emails and then vote against.
Because the method comes first, and whoever has been here for a while knows this and knows why.
Rule number two: equal to none at all
Even in the absence of mailbombing, emails sent to all parliamentarians, or, alternatively, to a long list of recipients including the Pope, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the Presidents of the Chambers, political leaders, and some eminent or presumed parliamentarian, they have zero probability of being read. My former head secretary called them "trawling" and didn't even let me open them. Here the problem is much simpler: in the case of emails written to everyone, an obvious problem of moral hazard arises, since everyone can assume that the email has been read by another and that therefore the problem is being dealt with. 'other, and an equally clear problem of tragedy of commons , since the cost of blame for not dealing with the very important problem you want us to share is socialized, that is, divided among everyone, and this for the simple fact that you have decided to address everyone (decision which is therefore not a good idea …). On the other hand, those who decide to address PdR, PdCM, and so on down to the undersigned simultaneously, demonstrate that they are not very clear how things work, and self-select themselves in the category of the madman or the umarèll: here the problem, you will have it understood, it is the adverse selection , with the related disappearance of a possible transaction. Addressing people who certainly will not respond (and who frequently express policies that are not entirely shared by other recipients) is not the best way to entice other recipients to respond.
Rule number three: very equal nothing
Sorry, but time is short. Beyond the 10th line I just can't go. The "indinnied" tones cause me an unpleasant laxative effect. Expressionistic punctuation "is a scandal !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" makes me yawn. There is nothing you write in a hundred lines that cannot be written in ten, and in any case if the germ of madness or grillism does not appear in the first ten lines (hypothetical period of unreality) you will be contacted to get the other ninety. But if you start with a hundred, you end up in the bin with probability one.
Consideration and synthesis
For reasons unknown to me, these self-defeating strategies are mainly adopted by cultured or semi-cultured worlds such as that of my former colleagues or the school. I cannot understand why and I find this result particularly counterintuitive: those who should have greater capacity for cultural mediation prove to be drastically lacking it. Our poor children, one might say!
But in short: I have told you how it works, obeying that principle of transparency and loyalty towards you that I have always adopted, since before my parliamentary experience.
Then, you do …
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2022/08/come-non-usare-lemail-di-un.html on Thu, 25 Aug 2022 06:58:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.