Steve Harvey
for House District 28
Blog
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Policy, Not Politics
Posted Aug 10 at 9 AM
For me, there is something a bit amiss when our political conversations become focused on individuals, and not on the purposes that they serve. There are really two fundamental questions all of our political discourse should be ultimately anchored in: What are we trying to accomplish? and, How can we best accomplish it?
The first one, in broad terms, should be fairly easy to answer: We're trying to keep refining our social institutional landscape in ways which improve the quality of life, increasing 1) the robustness with which we produce the things (both material and non-material) that facilitate a higher quality of life, 2) the sustainability of our processes for producing them, and 3) the fairness with which opportunity to benefit from that production is extended ever more broadly.
This involves continuing to discover what "a higher quality of life" really means, and what it is that really does contribute to it. So, such considerations as work/life balance, opportunities for personal and spiritual growth (however one chooses to define them), and the aesthetic qualities of our shared space and the pleasantness of our shared existence, all figure into the mix.
Of course, many of our disputes, and our most fundamental ideological chasms, are defined by the relative weight we assign to these different components, and how we define what best contributes to a higher quality of life. But understanding that helps those who choose to be reasonable people of goodwill do a better job of more effectively addressing those differences and discussing them in productive ways.
The second question is far more difficult to answer, because it involves understanding the complex systemic dynamics of the world we live in. The obvious answers are rarely the most effective ones, and often particularly counterproductive due to the unintended consequences that had not been considered. But politics is not driven by systemic-understandings; rather, it is driven by successful marketing strategies.
More than any other thing we ever discuss, this is the fundamental obstacle we face. The ultimate challenge we must confront is: How do we most effectively liberate and mobilize our collective genius in service to the broad goals described in answer to question number one?
There are some clear answers concerning how not to do it:
1) Do not advocate for government by plebiscite. This aggravates rather than mitigates the problem of policy being captured by marketing strategies rather than guided by reason. As in any other information-intensive endeavor, the principal (which is the people, in this case) hires agents to dedicate themselves to those information intensive tasks. And in many others, the stakes for the principal are certainly comparable: After all, when you employ a surgeon to perform a life-or-death operation on your child, the stakes are as high as they get for you personally.
A representative democracy has two demands placed on it: a) to hold the agent accountable to the principal, so that the agent is acting in the principal's interests. This is best accomplished by most effectively aligning their interests, such that the agent's interests are as identical to the principal's as possible. And, b) to ensure that the agent is not only motivated to act in the principal's best interest, but is also equipped to do so effectively. This involves mobilizing the greatest degree of expertise possible in service to the agent's mission.
2) Promote open-mindedness rather than ideological entrenchment. We benefit most from a robust discourse, fueled by a combination of humilty (after all, even the smartest of us recognizes how dumb we really are), and commitment (I may be dumb, but I sure want to keep dedicating myself to becoming less so, and to mobilizing what knowledge and understanding I do have to maximum public benefit).
We should not assume that what we think we know is the incontrovertable truth. That is the stuff of Crusades and Jihads, of theocracy and totalitarianism, not of progress. When we catch ourselves arguing implacably with others who are not arguing indefensible positions, then we are probably not contributing as well as we might to the discovery of wisdom. It is not the robust commitment to a position that is dysfunctional, but rather the inability to ever sway or be swayed. Whatever good the debate itself might produce, there is no way to harvest it if no party can be moved. A court requires a judge or jury; the academy requires peer review; and the people require something that does more to settle the truth of our disputes, for our elections only settle the crude popularity of competing positions.
In other words, we need to work at better aligning what is popular with what is right, and that is something more, and more useful, than merely working to convince everyone else of our own positions.
This is a discussion I think we need to be having, including all who are willing to have it. It's not really about whether Romanoff or Bennet is the more honest or more corrupt. It's about seeking subtler understandings, and the means of implementing them, together.
Yes, of course, that's not the way it is, and that's not the way it is going to be. But that is what we should be moving toward, every time we try to move in the direction of progress.
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The most basic service our republic demands of us
Posted May 02 at 2 PM
In a recent column in The Columbine Courier, Republican former state representative Rob Witwer asks, "[I]f our votes aren't informed by an understanding of issues and candidates, are we carrying forward the duties and privileges of living in a republic?" As Rob goes on to state, "[w]e're at no loss for political messages...." But we are at a grave loss for the kind of well-reasoned and well-informed discourse that characterized colonial and post-revolutionary America, in which the Federalist Papers, printed one-by-one in the newspapers, were discussed in barber shops and on street corners. This country, and its founding concepts, were born from thought, and discourse, and debate. We emerged as a deliberative society, and have become, to far too great an extent, a blindly ideological one, on both the Left and the Right.
As a political candidate and political blogger, I am constantly admonished by those who agree with my positions that I should reduce them to sound bites, to pithy slogans, in order to succeed in the race to the bottom of political contests stripped of substance and reduced to strategically perfected form. I refuse to do so, not because it doesn't work (tragically, it does), but rather because it defeats my purpose for running for office in the first place: To improve our discourse, to improve our collective commitment to reason and goodwill, to become wiser and more thoughtful in how we govern ourselves. The evolution of our republic into a competition of marketing strategies makes one wonder, sometimes, whether we have, indeed, "managed to keep it."
Whatever the answer to that question is, there is no doubt that we are overdue for recovering and reinvigorating our republic, not by shouting slogans and fetishized buzz words, but by engaging in thoughtful discourse, each reaching beyond his or her current understanding, toward a deeper and richer one. To do that, we not only have to speak, but also to listen. We not only have to have the strength of our convictions, but also the wisdom of our humility. And we not only have to emulate our Founding Fathers, but also to be willing to carry their (our) project forward, adapting to changing circumstances and evolving social institutions, as Thomas Jefferson himself admonished us to do ("laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times").
Let's all take a deep breath and renew our commitment to being thoughtful citizens working together to confront the challenges and grasp the opportunities of a complex and subtle world. May our disputes increasingly be defined by the limits of our reason and goodwill, rather than by the extent of our false certainties and easily ignited antagonisms. The health of our republic, and the future we bequeath to our children, depends on it.
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Reflections while the helicopters still hover overhead
Posted Feb 23 at 7 PM
As the helicopters continue to hover over our house in the Stony Creek subdivision of South Jeffco, and the last children are ushered by police in small huddles from Deer Creek Middle School to their parents waiting at nearby Stony Creek Elementary School, like everyone else who hears this news, I can't help but recall the Columbine shooting that occurred just a couple of miles from here. On the 10th anniversary of that tragedy, less than a year ago, I wrote the following essay for The Denver Post:
The tragedy at Columbine ten years ago should neither be exploited nor forgotten. It should remain etched into our consciousness as a reminder of where we, as a community, as a state, as a nation, have fallen short in our responsibility to keep our children safe, and as a reminder that we must forever renew and reinforce our commitment to strive mightily to do better.
For me, there is one iconic fragment of that day which wrenches my heart whenever I recall it: The young lady who, huddled under a desk or table, left a message for her father via her cell phone, pleading, "Daddy, I need you. Please come, now."
As the father of a little girl myself, I can't help but imagine my own daughter, a few years in the future, in a similar situation, desparately needing me to be there, and my hearing her pleas too late. The thought terrifies me more than anything else I can possibly imagine.
It is not enough to feel rage, or outrage, or compassion, or despair. It is not enough to make speeches and write op-ed pieces and pray that we do better.
It is not enough to dismiss this as an isolated event that no social policy or collective effort on our part can do anything to prevent from reoccurring.
It is not enough to cling to our tired old platitudes, and sing our tired old refrains. We are all the father, and mother, of that teen-age girl, who heard her pleas too late. We are all the father, and mother, of the next one, whose pleas we can anticipate and prevent from ever needing to be uttered amidst the horror of such a tragedy.
With freedom comes responsibility. Our freedom to bear arms comes with the responsibility, at the very least, to ensure that they are never used to massacre our children.
Effective legally mandated responsibility accompanying the ownership of firearms is not the only, and perhaps not even the primary, problem we must address, but it certainly is one essential component. Clearly, we also want to improve our ability to identify children, and adults, at risk of committing such acts, and intervene before they ever come close to carrying them out,
This should be one aspect of a larger commitment, the commitment to live together as a people, as harmoniously as possible, each enjoying the liberties of his or her own beliefs and values and aspirations, while also striving together to facilitate and accommodate the welfare of all.
We want, I believe, not to be just a collection of atomized individuals jostling each other in the exercise of freedoms untempered by any concern for the rights of others, but to be a community of free people, whose liberty is the well-spring of our vitality rather than the justification of our mutual indifference.
The most vital role of government is to protect the security of each from the violence of others, and never is that duty more sacred and imperative than when it comes to protecting our children. We can, we must, and we will do better.
We owe that to the children we failed to protect, and to the children who count on us today not to fail again.
In this most recent school shooting, a mere block from my home, a mere two hours ago as I write, no one, thank God (and Dr. Benke), was fatally wounded. This time, the heroic teacher who put his students' safety above his own did not pay for that heroism with his life, but instead managed to tackle the gunman and disarm him. But this time, I was the parent walking to pick my child up at her school when I heard the sirens and the commotion, when a neighbor suggested that there might have been a shooting at one of our neighborhood schools, when I broke out into a trot and a sweat not born from my exertions, that little spark of panic blossoming in my gut.
I am not going to use this incident to talk about guns; I know that that is not an issue that the people of my district are ready or willing to confront. Instead, I'm going to talk about community. I'm going to talk about the need for all of us to know all of the children and adults in our communities; for all of us to be role models and mentors and, to whatever extent possible, friends; for all of us to form a net of adult guidance and responsibility that will detect those in trouble, and help them to avoid the tumble into violent answers to the inner-torments of children and adults who fall through the cracks of our disintegrated society.
It's time to make our communities strong again, and our children safe again. That's something that we should all be able to agree on.
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The Challenge at Hand
Posted Feb 15 at 9 AM
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
Thomas Paine's words aren't just a call to arms in time of revolution, bucking up dispirited soldiers. They are also a constant call to duty to the civic minded, to those who do not want to let the least rational and least kind among us shout us down and dominate our public policy.
Our souls have been tried by what has happened to health care reform. Our souls have been tried by the confusion by some of "liberty" with "mutual indifference." The struggle to define who we are, what kind of a people we are, is a perpetual crisis that demands of us a public service that we must not shrink from.
Having interned at the state capitol, I know that one of the obstacles that reasonable people of good will face is the volume and vitriol of blindly ideological opposition, by email and by telephone, to pending legislation, no matter how well conceived and well designed, that serves the public interest. We need to match, and exceed, that voice of our baser nature every time a bill like SB 10-076 comes up for a vote (prohibting insurers from offering financial incentives to adjustors to deny claims), telling our legislators that as a state and as a people we believe in reason and good will.
Every civic minded resident of this state should mine his or her social networks, in person as well as through Twitter, Facebook, and email, rallying others of like mind to support every well-conceived piece of legislation that serves the public interest. And we should mine those networks in the interims as well, organizing, mobilizing, ensuring that we are a people defined by reason and good will rather than by irrationality and vitriol.
Just as the 2010 election will be a battle for turn-out (and, if I might add, for getting people to vote all the way down the ticket), every day of every year is a battle for degree of engagement. Engagement makes us both more effective and better informed. The person who listens to and reads well-reasoned analyses applied to reliable data becomes a representative of well-reasoned policies. The party, the ideology, the point-of-view that succeeds in rallying the most people, and motivating them to action, is the one that has the greater influence in defining who and what we are.
One lesson of history that is unambiguous is that there really is so very much at stake. All of the great tragedies of mass human cruelty, and all of the great triumphs of mass human achievement, and everything in between, were the result of how well both reasonable people of good will, and irrational people of ill will, managed to rally and motivate people to thought and action.
The sad fact is that we are all too quick to blame the individuals who represent and express the results of this on-going struggle (our elected, and other, officials), and too slow to blame ourselves for failing to do enough to turn the tide.
The buck stops with each and every one of us. It's time, it's always time, to step up to the plate and get the job done.
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The Value of Compromise
Posted Jan 22 at 10 PM
To those who oppose compromising with your ideological opposites, please recognize that this is a diverse nation, with diverse views. Deep convictions may be noble, but inflexible insistence on their exclusive inclusion in public policy is not. We can and should strive mightily to advance the ideas that we believe best serve the public interest, the policies that we believe are most fair and reasonable, but we should not seek the satisfaction of dying in agony on crosses lining the Appian Way, wondering if the moral victory of having shouted "I am Spartacus!" was really the best of all deals to cut. Rather, we should get on with the business of enjoying lives made slightly better by our best efforts, while we continue in good humor and good faith to endeavor to improve them yet more.
Compromise doesn't just allow us to coexist without being polarized into a perpetual, alternating condition of those in power and those out. It also allows us to move past the ideological disputes and into the detail-laden practical business of solving problems. Ideological purists at both ends of the political spectrum reduce a truly complex world to a handful of platitudes, from which they derive their respective prefered policy sledge-hammers. But, in reality, the challenges we face require a more diverse set of more precise tools.
We need to be a nation more like the NASA engineers and scientists depicted in the movie "Apollo 13," pouring everything onto the table to figure out how to solve the critically important puzzles posed by modern life. How do we continue to fuel our energy-hungry society, in ways that are sustainable, preserve our energy independence, and prevent the by-products of combustion from dangerously contaminating our environment and altering our climate? How do we fund and staff and manage excellent schools that deliver on the promise of providing equality of opportunity to all Americans willing to work hard and be responsible citizens? In general, how do we maintain and improve our social and material infrastructure, so that we can pursue our lives, our liberty, and our happiness secure in the belief that we are doing so on firm foundations?
Governing ourselves isn't fundamentally an ideological challenge. It's a practical one. Sure, there are genuine ideological differences that can't just be wished away. And we can and must continue to work together to find common ground on those issues, to agree to disagree and then find a way to reach a middle ground whenever possible. But that middle ground should define the beginning, not the end, of our political efforts, for it is within the context of that common ground that we can roll up our sleeves, pour everything onto the table, and tackle the problems and challenges that confront us.
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Progress is Process, not Prejudice
Posted Jan 14 at 7 PM
I don't agree with every decision that every elected official I support makes. I don't even agree with every decision that the elected officials I support most strongly make. If I demanded that of them, I would be demanding, among other things, that they be no wiser than me (because I would be demanding that, at least on policy matters, they not be different from me, as we so often do). And, frankly, it is very clear to me that that would be a very dysfunctional demand to make. Yet, it is how we tend to do things in this democracy of ours.
Yes, we must evaluate our political leaders and representatives, but if we do so by asking if each one has done what I think should have been done, then we are imposing a reductionism on our evaluations that doesn't reach beyond our own understandings of the issues. Rather, we should ask whether each one has followed a process, with intelligence and skill, that I would have followed, even if they came to different conclusions than I have come to. You don't have to believe that you are somehow deficient to recognize the difference between being completely emersed in every facet and implication of every policy option currently on the table, and being merely an intelligent and engaged commentator.
We are at our best when we focus on sound processes rather than prejudged outcomes. Science hasn't unlocked such abundant knowledge into the complexities of our universe by insisting on the conclusions beforehand, but rather by adhering to a process which takes you where it will. The rule of law doesn't frame the most just and robust of societies by insisting that everyone who we "know" is a criminal get punished, but rather by insisting that we follow a procedure that guarantees liberties, protects against injustices, and pursues just and reasonable outcomes. Similarly, representative democracies are not at their best when the electorate demands certain competing prejudged decisions, but rather when we demand that reasonable people of good will apply the best analyses to the most reliable data motivated by the highest degree of good will.
Sadly, some of our leaders are not reasonable people of good will, and too few, even if they are, actually follow the procedure that I have outlined, of applying the best analyses to the most reliable data in service to the general welfare. That is what we should be holding them accountable for: failing to adhere to that process, not for failing to agree with one or more of our own inevitably fallable conclusions. The latter is as often proof of our own error as it is of theirs. Let's encourage the integrity to apply reason to facts in service to the public interest, and focus on a process that works, rather than on assumptions and prejudged conclusions which may not.
Vote for reasonable people of good will with the talent and integrity to work hard and effectively on the public's behalf, rather than for whoever happens to agree with you. Our democracy will benefit from it.
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Campaigning in Poetry...
Posted Nov 22 at 5 PM
(Adam Schrager of 9News referred to the following campaign email as "hands down, the most creative fundraising pitch I've seen in 20 years of covering politics"):
Land of ruddy red rock and river,
Of ores and lores and scores from thither,
Of fruits of the mind left on the vine to wither,
Of too many who stand but too few who deliver;Now it is time to at last leave behind
The politics bereft of reason and rhyme,
The poisonous fruits of ideologies blind,
Which seek to exalt the crude and unkind;It's time, instead, to be well-advised,
To examine the systems of which we're comprised,
To derive our policies from thought well-apprised,
And become harmonious, healthy, and wise;I humbly offer myself to this cause,
To help fight the good fight to pass the best laws,
To pull ourselves back from these Hobbesian jaws,
Holding out helping hands, not self-serving claws;I need you now to help me help us,
To be your agent and earn your trust;
To do what we can and to do what we must,
Please keep my campaign from going flat bust!
As we approach a day when we celebrate the idealized story of a shared feast, let's remember that we are all gathered around a single table, partaking of a single meal. Politics, at its best, and as I seek to engage in it, is nothing more or less than the provisioning of that table around which we are all gathered. Please take a minute to contribute any amount, no matter how small (even just one dollar will help out!), to my campaign at (click the blue "contribute" link in the upper right corner of this window), or by mail to: Committee to Elect Steve Harvey, P.O. Box 271085, Littleton, CO 80127. Thanks so much! And Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
-steve. -
My Campaign Kick-Off Speech
Posted Oct 11 at 10 PM
I am running for office because I believe in the human enterprise. I believe that we can do better. I believe that reasonable people of good will can and should work together to create an ever more robust, sustainable, and fair social institutional framework.
It's not just about getting good candidates elected to office. That is just one thread in a much larger tapestry.
It's about all of us working in a variety of ways to make the world a slightly better place.
It's about being good parents and good neighbors and good citizens.
It's about engaging people in respectful conversation about issues of importance to us all.
It's about writing letters to the editor and participating in public forums.
It's about rebuilding a sense of community, a sense of common purpose, a sense of mutual responsibility.
One would think that this would be uncontroversial, that it would be uncontested. One would think that it would be a basic shared value of our society. But we are faced with a fire-breathing dragon of blind ideology. We are faced with a dogma of mutual indifference, even belligerence, wrapped in a flag that was never woven for that purpose.
We must douse that dragon's flames with unrelenting reason and good will.
We are not the party of extreme individualism. We are not the party of unfettered greed. Society has not failed us if we cannot afford an 80 inch plasma screen television set.
Society has not failed us if we cannot afford a late model new car.
Society has not failed us if we cannot afford 1000 square feet of floor space for each member of our family.
But society has failed us if any one of us dies because they couldn't afford health insurance.
Society has failed us when the tragedy of serious illness is compounded by the devastation of financial ruin.
Society has failed us when it sacrifices our children's education to an unimaginative assembly-line paradigm that completely neglects to confront the challenge of inspiring and nurturing young minds.
Society has failed us when it denies a loving and committed couple the same rights and privileges accorded to other loving and committed couples simply because they happen to be of the same sex.
Society has failed us when it complacently permits the greatest polarization of rich and poor of any developed nation on Earth.
Society has failed us when it has the highest number and highest percentage of its population incarcerated of any nation on Earth.
Society has failed us when it fails to put into place checks on our collective destruction of the planet on which we depend.
Don't get me wrong. It's a complex and subtle world. It's not enough to just get together and hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." We must apply the best analyses to the most reliable data, always in service to reason and good will.
We must understand the systems that are implicated in social policies, both the social systems and the natural systems with which they interface: The economic, political, cultural, and technological systems; and the hydrological, geological, atmospheric, ecological, and physical systems upon which we draw and which we in turn affect.
We must be pragmatic, realistic, and strategic, not just in designing good policies, but also in devising effective strategies for getting those policies implemented.
We must negotiate and compromise.
We must never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
There is only one thing on which we should never compromise, and that is that we steadfastly remain reasonable people of good will doing the very best we can.
I'm proud to stand among people who believe that it's more patriotic to lift one another up than to knock one another down.
I'm proud to stand among people who believe the words in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, that we are forever a work in progress, constantly challenged to create an ever more perfect union.
I'm proud to stand among people who strive for the day when our disputes will be defined by the limits of our reason rather than by the extent of our bigotry.
We are all in this story together, both characters and authors at the same time. We'd better make damn sure we write our story well.
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A Framework for Political Analysis
Posted Oct 09 at 7 PM
(warning: this entry becomes extremely academic in the middle!)
Conservatives who argue that more and bigger government isn't the solution to our problems are absolutely right: Government is just one agent of our will, with strengths and weaknesses that delimit the scope of its efficacy. Whether we address the challenges and opportunities which confront us through government, or churches, or civic organizations, or just individually, nothing supersedes the importance of personal responsibility.
But what is personal responsibility? We generally consider, for instance, not abandoning one's children to be a personal responsibility. We consider obeying the laws, caring for one's elderly parents, perhaps even taking adequate care of one's home and property, all to be personal responsibilities. At the limit, some might use the term to refer to the need that each individual take care of him or herself, so that the rest of us won't have to. All of these have one thing in common: They involve responsibilities to others. And we understand that those others bear reciprocal responsibilities in turn. Personal responsibility, in other words, is synonymous with mutual responsibility. It is a social obligation we owe to one another.
Something as vital to our collective welfare as mutual responsibility shouldn't be treated as a casual wish, something we dearly want to see exhibited by others, but feel powerless to affect beyond meekly encouraging it. We should, instead, strive to cultivate it, to instill it in people, something we understandably implore parents to do. But imploring parents to instill it in their children is as weak and insufficient as imploring people to exercise it in the first place. We need, rather, to make the exercise and cultivation of mutual responsibility in people's individual interest. We need to incentivize it. And, of course, we do.
There are four basic tools for incentivizing socially desirable behaviors: Hierarchies, markets, norms, and ideologies. In hierarchies, codified rules are officially enforced through formal rewards and punishments. Examples of this method of incentivizing behaviors are legal and penal systems, employment contracts, church leadership structures, and formal organizational frameworks in general. The strength of this method is that it facilitates the pursuit of intentionally formulated goals through very direct means. Its weakness involves the rapid accumulation of bargaining, monitoring, and enforcement costs as the goals become increasingly complex, the interests of the parties increasingly varied, and the population involved increasingly large.
Markets operate by facilitating multi-lateral mutually beneficial exchange. The easier it is for me to focus on one thing I do well that others require or desire, and offer it to others in return for the things they do well that I require or desire, the more organically and robustly we are each incentivized to act in one another's interests. The strength of this method is that, for many purposes, it is the most efficient way to align individual and collective interests, and thus coordinate human efforts in mutually beneficial ways. The weaknesses largely revolve around transaction costs and externalities, creating problems such as the robust production of environmental pollution and depletion along with the robust production of wealth, and the ability of some to off-set certain costs of their enterprises by imposing them on others not involved in, or not profiting from, those enterprises, sometimes quite catastrophically.
Norms are unwritten rules diffusely and informally enforced through the social approval and disapproval of other people. They are particularly effective in small, permanent or long-enduring groups with a high-degree of interaction and interdependence, a low degree of anonymity, and when addressing visible or easily discoverable behaviors. Their weaknesses include that they become decreasingly effective as circumstances diverge from those described in the previous sentence, and that, when most effective, they tend (even more so than hierarchies) toward "overcontrol," intruding more than necessary on individual autonomy and self-expression.
Ideologies, as I use the term here, refer to all cognitions: beliefs, values, thoughts, anything held to be true by the individual. In a sense, ideologies are norms internalized through socialization, rules that we enforce internally by the self-imposed reward of pride or the self-imposed punishment of shame. Their strength is that we can never hide from ourselves. Their weaknesses are that they generally form a relatively flimsy bulwark against the temptation to act in one's own crude self-interest, and that, unless one is very careful in how their own ideology develops, they tend toward rigidity rather than forming a robust foundation for continuing cognitive growth.
One weakness shared, in different ways, by hierarchies, norms, and ideologies is that, while they generate in-group cooperation, they often do so in opposition to out-groups similarly organized and motivated, thus reinforcing lines of conflict on a larger scale even as they reinforce bonds of solidarity on a smaller one. Norms often accomplish this very locally, while hierarchies can accomplish it on scales of all sizes, ranging from the very small (such as a small but very formally organized business) to quite large (such as nation-states), though norms almost inevitably are more prevalent for very small scales of social organization. Ideologies, meanwhile, reinforce whatever levels and types of organization the individual most closely identifies with, from the absolute egocentrism of a sociopath to the all-inclusiveness of global humanism and environmentalism, and everything in between.
A particular variation of the in-group/out-group dynamic involves concentrations of power, which can implicate any and all of these institutional modalities in various combinations: Hierarchical control of the means of enforcing formal rules; economic control of vital resources; ideological control of "legitimate authority;" and disproportionate normative control in the hands of those most influential in the community (sometimes due to "charismatic authority," sometimes to influence imported from other modalities). These can interact in self-reinforcing nuclei of political and social power or, in some circumstances, separate out to some extent into competing camps.
When examining the world through the lens of these social institutional modalities, it is crucial to understand the salience of their interactions. They are, in most situations, tightly intertwined, sometimes almost dissolved into a single solution. Hierarchical organizations, laced with embedded normative and ideological informal infrastructures, are major actors in market economies. Hierarchically organized churches compete in the marketplace of ideas (and sometimes the marketplace of profitable goods and services as well), often with a large moral, or ideological/normative, component to their mission. Families are largely normative, though can have traces of a not-completely-formalized hierarchical framework overlaying that normative structure.
One traditional focus in the debates between the right and the left is the relationship between hierarchies and markets, and what combinations of the two provide for optimal economic efficiency This also happens to be a major focus of Institutional Economics (and of Oliver Williamson, one of the 2009 Nobel Prize winners in Economics). But for a more complete understanding of the implications and potentials of different policy alternatives, one must also include norms and ideologies (and emotional reactions) in the mix, and consider how these too are tangled into the complex dynamics that comprise the field of human endeavors. (The inclusion of normative arrangments was the focus of the other 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Elinor Ostrom).
Understanding the nature of the human social field, to as great an extent as we are capable, is a necessary prerequisite to devising effective social policies, often by applying a light touch in particularly system-sensitive ways.
In conjunction with my campaign, I have two projects on the drawing board that seek to utilize, for the purposes of improving our collective existence (rather than simply for winning an election), the two somewhat neglected social institutional modalities: 1) the creation of a non-partisan, issue-centered, hostility-free (through moderation) political blog, which will seek out and provide the best analyses, from all perspectives, of the contentious and important social issues of the day; and 2) the creation of a network of non-partisan community organizations, from the block level on up, drawing on and augmenting all of the various kinds of community organizations that already exist, but dedicated to achieving a higher degree of inclusiveness. Anyone interested in either or both of these projects should please contact me.
The world we live in is complex and challenging. But simply agreeing to be reasonable people of good will doing the very best we can, with both humility and determination, would take us a long way forward in our on-going attempt to address that complexity and meet that challenge. As we've proven time and again, we're capable of doing great things together, when we're inspired to do so. Let's keep inspiring one another to make this the most robust, sustainable, and fair society we are capable of making it: That's a project worth getting excited about.
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The Tyranny of Blind Ideology
Posted Oct 09 at 12 PM
America is bedeviled by misguided political generals not merely fighting the last war, but endlessly fighting our first war. Every act of government, and every attempt to fund government, whether federal, state, or local, is greeted with a "patriotic" opposition to "tyranny," even though our own Founding Fathers not only saw a need to create a strong federal government, but also viewed state and local governments as vehicles for, rather than threats to, our individual liberties.
More importantly, we have resoundingly won our first war: Americans are more free today than they have been at any previous moment in American history (except in one ironic sense mentioned below). Not only have we extended the original grant of liberty won in the American Revolution to the vast majority who were excluded from it at the time (African Americans, women, Native Americans, and, to varying degrees, other non-white or non-propertied or non-protestant people), but even propertied, protestant white males are more free today than they have ever been before. There are fewer legal and actual constraints on our freedoms of belief, expression, religion, and action than ever before. There are more, and more vigilant, protections of our civil liberties. And there is more access to a host of liberating educational, informational, and organizational tools than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of.
To the extent that our liberty is currently threatened, it is threatened most by those on the far right who claim to be defending it. There are two forms of "big government," that which encroaches upon the constitutional protections of our liberty and that which acts as a vehicle of our collective will without encroaching on our constitutionally protected liberties. Ironically, those who shout "liberty!" the loudest tend to support the former type of big government and attack the latter type, justifying this inversion of priorities (as it is always justified, in all times and places) with the imperative of preserving our domestic tranquility and national security. Equally ironically, it is the latter form of "big government," when implemented wisely, that is most effective not only at facilitating our collective welfare, but also at maintaining our domestic tranquility and national security in the long run.
But more than our "liberty," it is our well-being that is currently under attack. We rate abysmally in comparison to other developed nations on measures such as poverty, crime, percentage and absolute number of people incarcerated (by which measure we are literally the most unfree people in the world), infant mortality, educational achievement, and access to health care, to name a few. The primary reason for this comprehensive failure of The United States government effectively to "promote the general welfare" (a principal purpose of our government identified in the preamble of the United States Constitution) is the degree of success of the blind ideological opposition to the use of government to accomplish that task, one completely unmatched in other developed nations.
Rather than continuing to fight the ancient war we have long since won, maybe it is time to start fighting the current battles we are so tragically losing.
To be sure, this opposition to the growth and use of government for our collective welfare has been only marginally successful, though with the devastating effects listed above. Our federal government has grown, by necessity, to deal with the challenges of managing a technologically advanced industrial society in the modern era. But an honest survey of the impact of this growth in size of our federal government is that, not only has it done much to increase the health, welfare, and prosperity of American citizens, but it has also augmented rather than curtailed our individual liberties. Tyranny is not a function of how "big" a government is, but rather of how well or poorly its constitutional and democratic mechanisms function.
This is not to say that there are not real issues involving how best to balance and articulate government, markets, and other social institutional modalities in order to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of necessary and desired services. But those are issues that require the finely honed tools of informed analysis applied to reliably derived data, rather than the sledge-hammer of intransigent false certainties. The tyranny that threatens us is not the tyranny of a large government that imperfectly addresses the needs of a modern society, but rather the tyranny of highly motivated ignorance and irrationality constantly trying to undermine that government as our agent, and augment it as our overlord, imposing horrifying costs and dangers on all of us in the process.
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The Politics of Consciousness
Posted Sep 07 at 6 PM
Political discourse habitually loses the forest for the trees, because too rarely do we discuss human consciousness in political terms, though consciousness is both the soil from which all of our other endeavors grow, and the essence of the fruit which those endeavors strive to bear.
Consciousness is both political and evolutionary: It is fought over every step of the way, but carved on a lathe of trial and error such that it transcends, over time, the battles that comprise it.
British Biologist Richard Dawkins framed this process in terms of "memes," cognitions which, like genes, are packets of information which self-replicate (through communication), mutate (through interpretation, synthesis, and innovation), compete for reproductive success (in individual choices of what to believe and what techniques to utilize, which aggregate into social institutions and technological regimes), and thus evolve.
American Philosopher of Science Thomas Kuhn, at about the same time (the mid-1960s), framed the process as one invigorated by the emergence of dominant paradigms (from the chaos of competing views), thus allowing focused investigation within that paradigm, the subsequent accumulation of anomalies (findings that are incompatible with the paradigm), and an eventual paradigm shift through attention to and resolution of those anomalies.
Nested within these progressions are bitter battles over what is and is not true. Scientists might discern a heliocentric solar system, but inquisitors can obstruct and punish the dissemination of this knowledge. There is, however, no a priori reason to assume that either the heretics or the defenders of the faith (whether religious or secular), in any given instance, are on the side of truth or utility: Either can be right, and either can be wrong. History is defined by the accumulation of victories of innovative memes over established memes, but this belies the vaster number of innovative memes that did not prevail, often due to their relative superficiality or naiveté. Just as in biological evolution, in which the vast majority of mutations are disadvantageous to the reproductive success of that gene, so too the vast majority of radical new ideas are less useful to human welfare than their well-established counterparts honed by the genius of time and numbers.
Of course, that genius is forever skewed by concentrations of political and economic power, such that existing memes may disproportionately favor those already materially favored, and new ideas that may produce less human welfare (usually by destroying existing institutions) may be at least momentarily popular if they promise to distribute that which is produced more fairly. Many, if not most, marginal extensions of the franchise, on the other hand, have historically led to a more robust rather than less robust production of human welfare, enriching the rich as well as the poor. The lessons of history, therefore, suggest that increasing distributional justice generally increases total wealth, increases social justice, and contributes to the social stability that is conducive to both.
Modern political struggles are defined by these dynamics: Conservatives (in theory) defend the tried-and-true wisdom of established institutions, while progressives (in theory) strive to extend the franchise. To the extent that we can all acknowledge the wisdom and utility of both agendas, and devote ourselves collectively to their simultaneous realization, we will have increased the efficiency of this evolutionary process, wasting less time and effort on disputes, and devoting more productive energy to cautious innovation. This is not to suggest that we are capable of eliminating partisanship or of living by a happy consensus, but rather that reasonable people of good will can be drawn toward a center defined by the application of careful analysis to reliable data in service to human welfare. Let our disputes be increasingly defined by the limits of our reason rather than by the extent of our bigotry.
More than anything else, my own efforts have always been, and continue to be, focused on human consciousness, and on the goal of ushering in a paradigm shift in how we predominantly perceive and address this inevitable political-evolutionary process. In one sense, the paradigm shift I hope for is the mere continuation of an historical trajectory long underway, passing through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the political revolutions (including our own) informed by the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the accelerating stream of social, technological, political, and economic innovations that have ensued ever since.
History, Social Theory, Science, and Philosophy all conspire to impress upon us that change is, in a sense, the only constant. Certainly, the human mind reaches beneath that frothing sea of change, and looks for the constants that underwrite it. But those underlying relative constants, too, like the laws of physics, change, at least as far as our awareness of them is concerned, and we must reach further down still, as Thomas Kuhn and Richard Dawkins (and many others) did, to find the relative constants that underwrite those rules of change. As the Taoists understood thousands of years ago, whatever we can reduce to words or equations is not the immutable truth. It is essential, therefore, that while we admire the brilliance of our founding concepts, and respect their power and sophistication, we honor them by understanding that they, like those that preceded them, are meant to grow richer and subtler under the patient lathe of historical experience.
It is in this spirit that I suggest that it is time to recognize that "Liberty," that most precious and fundamental of our values, should not be treated as the ossified talisman that it has become for so many, but should be appreciated for the living concept that it in reality is. "Liberty," to too many, merely means "freedom from government." While that was the core of its meaning at the time of the American Revolution, it has evolved, as good memes do, to embrace the mobilization of our consciousness, of our entire social institutional and technological landscape, to actively augment freedom, to produce and distribute a wealth of sustainable opportunities through which human beings, and the human spirit, can more effectively and enduringly thrive.
For those who find this suggestion heretical, consider the words of Thomas Jefferson himself: "[L]aws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
Even in Jefferson's time, the government that defined and enforced property rights was seen to augment rather than interfere with individual liberty. With the growth of the discipline of economics, we have come to understand that the government that reduces transaction costs and internalizes externalities in order to facilitate a more robust and efficient market economy augments individual liberty and human welfare as well. Who now doubts that the government that amended the U.S. Constitution to abolish slavery and to extend the franchise to women, and that passed legislation to protect civil rights even from private infringements, augmented individual liberty and human welfare by doing so? And who does not recognize that the expansion of government more "socialist" than any before or since in American history, the institutionalization of free and compulsory public education, is not absolutely necessary to the individual liberty and life-long welfare of all of those who benefit from it?
If the state were to be removed from the equation, people would band together for predation or defense, violent gangs eventually coalescing into local governments, in a sense pressing the reset button on political history, and leaving us with an undoubtedly more tyrannical government than the one it replaced. The state is an inherent part of the formula, for good or for ill. The challenge of using it for good is the one we must face. The threat to liberty is not state action, but rather failure on any level to ensure equality of opportunity and diffusion of political and economic power: A government captured by any faction is tyrannical, but a government effectively designed to act as the agent of the people is liberating.
Of course, the latter challenge is never fully met. The disparate ideologies and interests of the people ensure that some will never feel that their government is acting as their agent. But this country has laid a brilliant foundation for addressing the challenge, by combining representative democracy with constitutionalism, thus enabling the many to prevail, with constitutional limits protecting minorities from their tyranny. Within this context, government is far more our agent than our enemy.
Doing the best we can with the materials we have is the essence of the human endeavor, to which all reasonable people of good will can and should dedicate themselves. Neither obstinate obstructionists clinging with ideological purity to historical memes unadapted to changing circumstances, nor rash radicals dismissing and disdaining our rich and highly sophisticated social institutional heritage, are contributing most effectively to this enterprise.
Let's join together in common cause, rational people of good will striving to do the best we can. We will continue to debate the details, and form parties around our differences. But let's leave blind ideology, whether of the Right or of the Left, on the dust heap of history, and instead, with eyes and minds wide open, use our accumulated wisdom, our historical experience, and our improved techniques, to wear a coat that fits us now, rather than be straight-jacketed by the one that fit us as a child.
