10 ms·

Why competition in the politics industry is failing America [pdf]

94 points by gpvos 9y ago

netsec_burn 9y ago
Paper: DISCLAIMER The views expressed in the paper are the sole responsibility of the authors and are not meant to represent views of Harvard Business School or Harvard University. Title: Harvard Business School: The U.S. Political System Has Been 'Hijacked' Thanks for fixing the misattributed title, it comes across as sensationalist.
- gpvos 9y ago
  I just copied the title of the original article at themaven.net that I submitted ( https://www.themaven.net/theintellectualist/news/harvard-business-school-the-u-s-political-system-has-been-hijacked-mj-X8WUfskapGULM6GEKVg?full=1&full=1 https://www.themaven.net/theintellectualist/news/harvard-bus... ). I see the URL has been changed to the paper, which is probably better indeed.
addHocker 9y ago
Let me guess, they need billion dollar incentives for correct behaviour- and some gratious donations to the mba factorys?
velodrome 9y ago
> The duopoly controlling today’s political competition has no accountability for results. Sums it up perfectly...
- SkyMarshal 9y ago
  Not really, it's that the country as a whole can't decide on the results it wants. Both parties are roughly equally split between moderate and more extreme wings, so even within each party they can't agree, and then when the two parties are pitted against each other in campaigns or in the practice of governing, they again can't agree. Double whammy. It shouldn't be any surprise that under these conditions not much gets done. Also, controversial opinion here I'm sure, but imho that gridlock is mostly good thing. The less the government is able to do, the more of a stable and predictable state the country is in, making forecasting and planning more reliable. The one exception is the government's inability to reign in deficit spending, and perhaps their longer term inability to ensure solvency of social programs.
  - TheCondor 9y ago
    This last election is a poster child for the gridlock system being a good one. When things go your way, they never move fast enough, when they go against your wishes, it’s always too fast.
  - yock 9y ago
    > the country as a whole can't decide on the results it wants Which will always be true of sufficiently large groups of humans. The more we insist that we all share common goals, the wider the schism between us becomes.
    - theseatoms 9y ago
      The system of federalism is helpful on this front, as it allows a higher degree of self-governance, since policy decisions can be made more locally.
  - dsjoerg 9y ago
    Not so; on many issues, the country as a whole (its citizens) knows what it wants but the parties and duopoly can't deliver it because of how they're structured. For example there are improvements to healthcare, taxation and financial regulation which a supermajority of citizens would agree with, but the current system cannot/will not deliver. These improvements do not particularly align with either party's agenda. Another example, closer to people here on HN; merit-based immigration. Support among citizens is broad and I am guessing it would be a supermajority; however more politically active and powerful people in the US on the left and right oppose it.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The supermajority of Americans would decrease or keep the same the level of legal immigration. So you’d be talking about shifting more of the existing immigration quotas to merit away from family reunification. Americans don’t like that either.
      - 9y ago
- adolph 9y ago
  Seems the problem may be a lack of competition.
  - metalliqaz 9y ago
    I think we can take it to mean that more competition would lead to even less individual accountability for results. But perhaps if there was a parliamentary system where one party wins leadership, then they would have to take the blame for bad results.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    In the past presidential election in the U.S., there were 22 candidates, including a socialist, a libertarian, borderline theocrats, establishment politicians, and whatever you classify Trump as. There's usually a ton of competition, but most people simply don't care. Ask people who they voted for in the last primary for state legislator, and the reasons they voted for them over their opponents. In my experience, people often have a hard time remembering who they voted for the next day, and it's extremely rare for someone to have a good reason why they voted for them. I've seen a lot of reformist candidates run against corrupt incumbents and lose. It's depressing, but even more so when you see that almost no one bothered paying attention to the race. And then you see the same people complain later - "Why's the government so bad? How come there's no choice and all candidates are the same?"
    - notfromhere 9y ago
      it's because in a winner-takes-all system like we have, voting for anything but the top two parties is a waste of a vote. Voting third party in our system just means that the opposing side has a better chance of gaining office
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - OtterCoder 9y ago
        That's a fallacy. If neither party is on your side, then voting third party is absolutely the correct decision. Both parties believe that a third part vote is a vote for their opposite number, but it really, genuinely isn't. Winner take all doesn't change that. Third party votes harm both major parties equally, by showing visibly a reduced voter confidence in them in the polls, and the only way to escape the deadlock is to erode their support over time. If you're staunchly Democrat, and you vote that way in an overwhelmingly red state, is that also a wasted vote?
- theseatoms 9y ago
  Which is why I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out: https://ivn.us/2017/03/08/breaking-fec-wont-appeal-ruling-debate-commission/ https://ivn.us/2017/03/08/breaking-fec-wont-appeal-ruling-de... Of course, we'll eventually have to change the voting system to an automatic runoff, to prevent the least popular of three candidates from winning due to the other two splitting the vote. And I'm sure there are other electoral specifics that maintains the two party equilibrium. All things said, like other commenters here, I'm not entirely displeased with the current gridlock. Edit: see dforrestwilson's comment below to see the update
- pjc50 9y ago
  No, there's definitely accountability for results. It's just that the results are delivered to the donors rather than the voters. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network-piggy-banks-closed-republicans-healthcare-tax-reform https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network...
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    It's more complex than that. Trump ran against better funded opponents throughout the campaign. Sanders put on a very good showing despite worse funding. I guess you could argue that it's a winner-take-all system for donors, but maybe that's better phrased as "the winning donors" or "the donors in power" instead of "the donors" to show that it's not just some monolithic group playing I-win-you-lose with American elections.
- georgeecollins 9y ago
  The problem is not that there are two parties, the problem is that there are two brands that most Americans have an unquestioning loyalty to, like a sports team. If the parties were strong, they would be able to use their influence to make legislation happen and govern effectively. This was how things used to work in the LBJ era. Powerful people in either party could get members with diverse opinions to vote to get things done. They could even offer favors to members of the opposing party and get them to come along. Bi-partisanship was always transactional. But because we oppose "deals" and favor ideological purity (on both sides) nothing gets done. Now the power is with donors, not parties.
- JakeAl 9y ago
  Bi-partisan does not mean non-partisan.
transverse 9y ago
The problem is our obsolete voting system which effectively prohibits a third party from winning. Range voting does not have this problem.
- velodrome 9y ago
  > The problem is our obsolete voting system which effectively prohibits a third party from winning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Debates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb... Multiple lawsuits have been filed by third-party candidates challenging the CPD's policy of requiring a candidate to have 15% support in national polls to be included in presidential debates. While the lawsuits have challenged the requirement on a number of grounds, including claims that it violates Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules and that it violates anti-trust laws, none of the lawsuits has been successful.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    I'd still say FPTP is like 80% of the reason why third-parties can't rise to power in the U.S. and elsewhere, but yes, the two main parties have added further obstacles to make the rise of third-parties in the U.S. from almost impossible to virtually impossible (save for a country-wide "wake up" and a huge rally behind a "surprise" new party, etc)
    - matttproud 9y ago
      Want to see it rid itself of first-past-the-post? Support and donate to these folks: http://www.fairvote.org/ http://www.fairvote.org/ They are — as best as I can tell — the only group aiming to reform the electoral formulas used across the country. The U.S. can't keep kicking its defective cans down the road. Duverger's Law will hold it hostage otherwise: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
      - twobyfour 9y ago
        > The U.S. can't keep kicking its defective cans down the road. Of course we can. Especially if they happen to primarily benefit the people already in power and in charge; especially if nobody runs on an election reform platform; especially if most of the electorate doesn't understand or can't/doesn't want to make the mental effort to understand what's wrong with FPTP; and especially if people keep getting distracted by other (admittedly very important) issues during campaigns.
clarkevans 9y ago
This paper outlines the problem (capture of our democratic process by a business/political elite) quite well. Most of the solutions (fixing gerrymandering, money in politics, primary access) presume a reasonable amount political leverage in order to enact. The paper proposes http://www.centristproject.org/2018plan/ http://www.centristproject.org/2018plan/ as a fulcrum. The Centrist Project’s plan includes strategically identifying a small number of states with a political climate favorable to candidates from “the sensible center,” recruiting promising candidates, and supporting them with a campaign infrastructure, as we discuss further on. The genius of this plan is that, while challenging, it is eminently doable because the number of seats required to deny either party a majority is small.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I'm not sure "centrist" is really a thing because I'm not sure voters fall on a simple left/right spectrum. I thought this was especially clear in 2016 with strong populist sentiments giving strong showings in both the Republican (Trump) and Democratic (Sanders) parties. In other words, many forms of populism are neither Republican nor Democrat, does that make them part of the "sensible center"? EDIT: Do downvoters care to explain their objections?
  - pchristensen 9y ago
    I think of "Centrists" the non-negotiable principle is cooperation and successful operation of government for the dignity of the most people, and other policy principles have to compete within that framework. As opposed to the Republican and Democratic parties, which have identified no-compromise principles that divide people as effectively as sporting alliances or religions. Example (of my own, not from any Centrist literature): charging a commensurate fee to pollute a river rather than strictly allowing or outlawing it. The business would prefer to be allowed to pollute for free (Republican Party principle) while the environmentalists would prefer that the pollution not be emitted under any circumstances (Democratic Party principle). But a structure that accurately prices the impacts and externalities of the pollution respects the environmental and health values, and the business can choose the most beneficial option for them: prevention, change of product or process, or just paying the fee.
lend000 9y ago
More like the lack of competition. See the recent lawsuit by Gary Johnson that was dismissed against the CPD, which is essentially a monopoly on voter information. Even with the Internet making alternative views increasingly accessible to younger generations, the real flaw lies in our voting system, the biggest oversight of the founding fathers. First Past the Post inevitably leads to a duopoly / 'team' mentality, whereas approval voting could possibly solve many of our nation's woes.
ivoras 9y ago
More generally speaking, it seems that the faster society in general changes, the shorter its institutions last - it's like too much baggage and cruft accumulate up to the point of breaking. The new generations demand a different way of life, and they want it faster than the old ones. The Roman empire lasted a couple of thousand years, the medieval empires up to a half a century, the British empire a bit more than a a quarter, the American, well, almost a quarter (with a violent change about right about the middle of the period, so...). Interesting times, and all that. I've sometimes thought that the rigidity of the US Constitution (i.e. it's not revised completely ever 50 years) is both its biggest benefit and its weakest side. If only the founding fathers made a clause like "and thou shall revise whatever we've written every 50 years in the light of new facts, because we are just men, and fallible."
squozzer 9y ago
The common failing of these reforms, as admirable as they may be, is their reliance on the very same people who depend on the current rules for their position. IOW, politicians don't change the rules because they suddenly grow a conscience. It has to be presented as an existential choice. The only other bone I have to pick is with the term "centrist." Meaning what, exactly? Predisposed towards compromise? Absolute neutral in the D&D sense? Unabashedly quantitative utilitarianist? The way HBR defines it, to be a centrist, one would have to know the extreme positions on a topic and programmatically move towards a middle or compromise position.

94 points by gpvos 9y ago

Paper: DISCLAIMER The views expressed in the paper are the sole responsibility of the authors and are not meant to represent views of Harvard Business School or Harvard University. Title: Harvard Business School: The U.S. Political System Has Been 'Hijacked' Thanks for fixing the misattributed title, it comes across as sensationalist.

gpvos 9y ago
I just copied the title of the original article at themaven.net that I submitted ( https://www.themaven.net/theintellectualist/news/harvard-business-school-the-u-s-political-system-has-been-hijacked-mj-X8WUfskapGULM6GEKVg?full=1&full=1 https://www.themaven.net/theintellectualist/news/harvard-bus... ). I see the URL has been changed to the paper, which is probably better indeed.

addHocker 9y ago

Let me guess, they need billion dollar incentives for correct behaviour- and some gratious donations to the mba factorys?

velodrome 9y ago

> The duopoly controlling today’s political competition has no accountability for results. Sums it up perfectly...

SkyMarshal 9y ago
Not really, it's that the country as a whole can't decide on the results it wants. Both parties are roughly equally split between moderate and more extreme wings, so even within each party they can't agree, and then when the two parties are pitted against each other in campaigns or in the practice of governing, they again can't agree. Double whammy. It shouldn't be any surprise that under these conditions not much gets done. Also, controversial opinion here I'm sure, but imho that gridlock is mostly good thing. The less the government is able to do, the more of a stable and predictable state the country is in, making forecasting and planning more reliable. The one exception is the government's inability to reign in deficit spending, and perhaps their longer term inability to ensure solvency of social programs.
- TheCondor 9y ago
  This last election is a poster child for the gridlock system being a good one. When things go your way, they never move fast enough, when they go against your wishes, it’s always too fast.
- yock 9y ago
  > the country as a whole can't decide on the results it wants Which will always be true of sufficiently large groups of humans. The more we insist that we all share common goals, the wider the schism between us becomes.
  - theseatoms 9y ago
    The system of federalism is helpful on this front, as it allows a higher degree of self-governance, since policy decisions can be made more locally.
- dsjoerg 9y ago
  Not so; on many issues, the country as a whole (its citizens) knows what it wants but the parties and duopoly can't deliver it because of how they're structured. For example there are improvements to healthcare, taxation and financial regulation which a supermajority of citizens would agree with, but the current system cannot/will not deliver. These improvements do not particularly align with either party's agenda. Another example, closer to people here on HN; merit-based immigration. Support among citizens is broad and I am guessing it would be a supermajority; however more politically active and powerful people in the US on the left and right oppose it.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The supermajority of Americans would decrease or keep the same the level of legal immigration. So you’d be talking about shifting more of the existing immigration quotas to merit away from family reunification. Americans don’t like that either.
    - 9y ago
adolph 9y ago
Seems the problem may be a lack of competition.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  I think we can take it to mean that more competition would lead to even less individual accountability for results. But perhaps if there was a parliamentary system where one party wins leadership, then they would have to take the blame for bad results.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  In the past presidential election in the U.S., there were 22 candidates, including a socialist, a libertarian, borderline theocrats, establishment politicians, and whatever you classify Trump as. There's usually a ton of competition, but most people simply don't care. Ask people who they voted for in the last primary for state legislator, and the reasons they voted for them over their opponents. In my experience, people often have a hard time remembering who they voted for the next day, and it's extremely rare for someone to have a good reason why they voted for them. I've seen a lot of reformist candidates run against corrupt incumbents and lose. It's depressing, but even more so when you see that almost no one bothered paying attention to the race. And then you see the same people complain later - "Why's the government so bad? How come there's no choice and all candidates are the same?"
  - notfromhere 9y ago
    it's because in a winner-takes-all system like we have, voting for anything but the top two parties is a waste of a vote. Voting third party in our system just means that the opposing side has a better chance of gaining office
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - OtterCoder 9y ago
      That's a fallacy. If neither party is on your side, then voting third party is absolutely the correct decision. Both parties believe that a third part vote is a vote for their opposite number, but it really, genuinely isn't. Winner take all doesn't change that. Third party votes harm both major parties equally, by showing visibly a reduced voter confidence in them in the polls, and the only way to escape the deadlock is to erode their support over time. If you're staunchly Democrat, and you vote that way in an overwhelmingly red state, is that also a wasted vote?
theseatoms 9y ago
Which is why I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out: https://ivn.us/2017/03/08/breaking-fec-wont-appeal-ruling-debate-commission/ https://ivn.us/2017/03/08/breaking-fec-wont-appeal-ruling-de... Of course, we'll eventually have to change the voting system to an automatic runoff, to prevent the least popular of three candidates from winning due to the other two splitting the vote. And I'm sure there are other electoral specifics that maintains the two party equilibrium. All things said, like other commenters here, I'm not entirely displeased with the current gridlock. Edit: see dforrestwilson's comment below to see the update
pjc50 9y ago
No, there's definitely accountability for results. It's just that the results are delivered to the donors rather than the voters. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network-piggy-banks-closed-republicans-healthcare-tax-reform https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network...
- humanrebar 9y ago
  It's more complex than that. Trump ran against better funded opponents throughout the campaign. Sanders put on a very good showing despite worse funding. I guess you could argue that it's a winner-take-all system for donors, but maybe that's better phrased as "the winning donors" or "the donors in power" instead of "the donors" to show that it's not just some monolithic group playing I-win-you-lose with American elections.
georgeecollins 9y ago
The problem is not that there are two parties, the problem is that there are two brands that most Americans have an unquestioning loyalty to, like a sports team. If the parties were strong, they would be able to use their influence to make legislation happen and govern effectively. This was how things used to work in the LBJ era. Powerful people in either party could get members with diverse opinions to vote to get things done. They could even offer favors to members of the opposing party and get them to come along. Bi-partisanship was always transactional. But because we oppose "deals" and favor ideological purity (on both sides) nothing gets done. Now the power is with donors, not parties.
JakeAl 9y ago
Bi-partisan does not mean non-partisan.

transverse 9y ago

The problem is our obsolete voting system which effectively prohibits a third party from winning. Range voting does not have this problem.

velodrome 9y ago
> The problem is our obsolete voting system which effectively prohibits a third party from winning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Debates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb... Multiple lawsuits have been filed by third-party candidates challenging the CPD's policy of requiring a candidate to have 15% support in national polls to be included in presidential debates. While the lawsuits have challenged the requirement on a number of grounds, including claims that it violates Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules and that it violates anti-trust laws, none of the lawsuits has been successful.
- mtgx 9y ago
  I'd still say FPTP is like 80% of the reason why third-parties can't rise to power in the U.S. and elsewhere, but yes, the two main parties have added further obstacles to make the rise of third-parties in the U.S. from almost impossible to virtually impossible (save for a country-wide "wake up" and a huge rally behind a "surprise" new party, etc)
  - matttproud 9y ago
    Want to see it rid itself of first-past-the-post? Support and donate to these folks: http://www.fairvote.org/ http://www.fairvote.org/ They are — as best as I can tell — the only group aiming to reform the electoral formulas used across the country. The U.S. can't keep kicking its defective cans down the road. Duverger's Law will hold it hostage otherwise: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
    - twobyfour 9y ago
      > The U.S. can't keep kicking its defective cans down the road. Of course we can. Especially if they happen to primarily benefit the people already in power and in charge; especially if nobody runs on an election reform platform; especially if most of the electorate doesn't understand or can't/doesn't want to make the mental effort to understand what's wrong with FPTP; and especially if people keep getting distracted by other (admittedly very important) issues during campaigns.

clarkevans 9y ago

This paper outlines the problem (capture of our democratic process by a business/political elite) quite well. Most of the solutions (fixing gerrymandering, money in politics, primary access) presume a reasonable amount political leverage in order to enact. The paper proposes http://www.centristproject.org/2018plan/ http://www.centristproject.org/2018plan/ as a fulcrum. The Centrist Project’s plan includes strategically identifying a small number of states with a political climate favorable to candidates from “the sensible center,” recruiting promising candidates, and supporting them with a campaign infrastructure, as we discuss further on. The genius of this plan is that, while challenging, it is eminently doable because the number of seats required to deny either party a majority is small.

humanrebar 9y ago
I'm not sure "centrist" is really a thing because I'm not sure voters fall on a simple left/right spectrum. I thought this was especially clear in 2016 with strong populist sentiments giving strong showings in both the Republican (Trump) and Democratic (Sanders) parties. In other words, many forms of populism are neither Republican nor Democrat, does that make them part of the "sensible center"? EDIT: Do downvoters care to explain their objections?
- pchristensen 9y ago
  I think of "Centrists" the non-negotiable principle is cooperation and successful operation of government for the dignity of the most people, and other policy principles have to compete within that framework. As opposed to the Republican and Democratic parties, which have identified no-compromise principles that divide people as effectively as sporting alliances or religions. Example (of my own, not from any Centrist literature): charging a commensurate fee to pollute a river rather than strictly allowing or outlawing it. The business would prefer to be allowed to pollute for free (Republican Party principle) while the environmentalists would prefer that the pollution not be emitted under any circumstances (Democratic Party principle). But a structure that accurately prices the impacts and externalities of the pollution respects the environmental and health values, and the business can choose the most beneficial option for them: prevention, change of product or process, or just paying the fee.

lend000 9y ago

More like the lack of competition. See the recent lawsuit by Gary Johnson that was dismissed against the CPD, which is essentially a monopoly on voter information. Even with the Internet making alternative views increasingly accessible to younger generations, the real flaw lies in our voting system, the biggest oversight of the founding fathers. First Past the Post inevitably leads to a duopoly / 'team' mentality, whereas approval voting could possibly solve many of our nation's woes.

ivoras 9y ago

More generally speaking, it seems that the faster society in general changes, the shorter its institutions last - it's like too much baggage and cruft accumulate up to the point of breaking. The new generations demand a different way of life, and they want it faster than the old ones. The Roman empire lasted a couple of thousand years, the medieval empires up to a half a century, the British empire a bit more than a a quarter, the American, well, almost a quarter (with a violent change about right about the middle of the period, so...). Interesting times, and all that. I've sometimes thought that the rigidity of the US Constitution (i.e. it's not revised completely ever 50 years) is both its biggest benefit and its weakest side. If only the founding fathers made a clause like "and thou shall revise whatever we've written every 50 years in the light of new facts, because we are just men, and fallible."

squozzer 9y ago

The common failing of these reforms, as admirable as they may be, is their reliance on the very same people who depend on the current rules for their position. IOW, politicians don't change the rules because they suddenly grow a conscience. It has to be presented as an existential choice. The only other bone I have to pick is with the term "centrist." Meaning what, exactly? Predisposed towards compromise? Absolute neutral in the D&D sense? Unabashedly quantitative utilitarianist? The way HBR defines it, to be a centrist, one would have to know the extreme positions on a topic and programmatically move towards a middle or compromise position.