Fixing Congress

Despite all the hullabaloo about Trump, the really broken part of US governance is congress. That is easy to establish, but hard to fix. Even if steps can be identified to improve its performance, congress is unlikely to implement many of them, at least until we have turkeys up and down the land voting for Christmas.

The US has been underperforming as a nation since at least 1980. Mainly this is because its laws have not kept pace with the times and do not match the will of the people nor the interests of the nation. Results include declining life expectancy, mass incarceration, homelessness and inequality, unsustainable personal and national debt, rampant addiction and mental illness, failing foreign policy, and weak education. Before long the Chinese will be richer, the Europeans happier and everybody else anxious to stay away.

There are bright spots in the form of universities and tech companies, and it is true that more people want to come to the country than leave it. But for a nation with such a lead militarily and economically two generations ago and with such abundant advantages as its geography and its constitution, the performance has been stunningly poor.

The fault lies squarely with congress. It is true that there have been some woeful presidents, many unhelpful religious and corporate leaders, and some legacy attitudes to hinder progress, such as the gun culture and racial mistrust. But these persisted even while the US was doing well, and could all be circumscribed by an active and effective congress. Meanwhile, congress passes few laws, and many of the ones it does pass are either irrelevant or tend to make matters worse.

There are several causes. Around 1980, the executive made a power grab over congress and have continued that trend since. In 1994, Newt Gingrich essentially hijacked congress on behalf of a small minority, subsequently maintained by right-wing talk-show hosts. Around 2006, a well-intentioned decision to outlaw earmarks had the unintended consequence of blocking many compromises. From 2008, Mitch McConnell declared the sole aim of his party in congress to be blocking Obama. The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in 2010 introduced a flood of money and rich interest groups to congressional elections. Since 1980, media has become more partisan and splintered, while technology enabled scrutiny of individual voting records, leading to pressure on members of congress to pander to uncompromising positions. Meanwhile, geographical divides between coast and heartland and city and country only hardened, cementing many states and districts as red or blue.

From this list, it is hard to separate root causes from symptoms, and also hard to identify remedies. Many of the factors flow from one another, while reversing some factors would not halt the flood of inadequacy. Some factors are simply societal trends that cannot be reversed.

A good place to start is in the mind of a member of congress. I assume most start out with the intention of serving the public and reflecting the interests of their constituents. This is not where they finish up, so it will be useful to establish why that might be.

I can imagine the life of a congress-person to be pretty compromised. Mostly, it is about money. It helps to be independently rich or have the backing of wealthy groups. Then, life is one long fundraiser, mixing with people of extreme views and a strong sense of entitlement, just like all those lobby groups in Washington. There is not much chance of returning to a normal life after this so-called service, even if there aren’t any legal skeletons that might land you in jail, so you had better stay in the job for ten or twenty years. The only way to achieve that is constant pandering to those donors and lobbyists, and keeping your nose clean with your voting record. Keep that head down!

Then there is the party. You might consider yourself pretty independent, but your choice from the two parties will consume you soon enough. How do you get any influence at all? How do you maintain an organization? How do you ally with others to keep some semblance of control over all the lobbyists? How do you retain your nomination when the boundaries of your seat change? In return, the party expects absolute loyalty, whatever the madcap views of the current president may be.

In most cases, the real threat to your position comes not from voters but from a primary challenger from your own party. So the people to watch out for are those same extremists and lobbyists that pay your bills, but might choose to pay somebody else’s instead tomorrow.

Scarily, or perhaps handily, most voters don’t even know who you are. If it is not a presidential election year, maybe only 30% will vote at all, so pandering to the extremists is a sound strategy. If it is a presidential year, you are just an invisible surrogate of that candidate, so you had better not stray out of line. All publicity is good publicity? Not for you, my friend.

I almost feel sorry for them, until I see their inflated egos, hear their pathetic hypocrisy and imagine their dodgy trust funds. But I think is fair to accept that they are mainly the inevitable product of a broken system.

So what can be done? Of course, very little is likely to be done, because the ones who would need to initiate change would be the same spineless people I have just described. But I suppose we can dream.

There are some obvious steps. Citizens United is not set in stone – it is an interpretation by judges of current law. But the law can be changed! Similarly, it is time to end gerrymandering. In 1992, I arranged a reorganization of business geographies by buying a simple piece of software. I think that 27 years later it should be possible to solve this one.

For this type of problem, I often look for single steps that would unlock many advances. How about term limits, say one six year term for senators and three two year terms for the house? Read the travails above, and think what this could achieve. Less wealthy people could apply and maintain their passion. Independents would have more chance. Lame ducks do not have to consider the lobbyists and extremist donors, just their legacy (and maybe even the interests of their voters).

I also think congressional elections could move to odd years, so that they are separated from presidential ones. It is disheartening to watch the democratic debate and realize that most of what they argue about does not lie within their responsibility. Split elections, and we can talk about policies that are relevant to each election. Then there are other good ideas, such as open primaries (rather than party ones), multi-member constituencies, and single preference voting – all designed to reduce the stronghold of the two parties. 

Finally, it would really help to have more people voting. Voting can be early, electronic and at weekends. There is also a case for compulsory or heavily incentivized voting.

I have tried to avoid being too partisan in this analysis. I do believe it is the systems of congress that are broken, not just individuals from one side. But I also believe there are acid tests. Generally, there is only one party consistently trying to make it harder rather than easier to vote. That is simply unforgivable.

It is Congress that is broken

We read a lot about the decline of democracy. Commentators look at how China can bring half a billion people to prosperity, develop winning industries and build up reserves of dollars and influence, all the while maintaining some social cohesion, albeit at a cost of a million or so Uighurs in concentration camps and a little local difficulty in Hong Kong.

We compare that enviously with the dire straits that American democracy has reached, and the way autocrats have managed to hijack democracies in Hungary, Poland, Italy and even Britain, somehow bringing along a large minority of the population with them.

Look further afield, and Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and other so-called democracies have been laid low. In Russia, the promised renaissance from the fall of communism only led to state capture followed by more autocracy – at which point things seemed to function well again, albeit with horrible corruption.

So have we reached a state where we can no longer even defend Churchill’s limp defence of democracy as the worst form of governance, except for all the others? What is wrong with our democracies, and is there anything that could stop the decline?

Mainly we can see this as a cyclical thing, or as a great race with humanity progressing, but in a rather haphazard way. Institutions develop at one pace, wisdom and education at another, technology at a third. If one gets out of step with the others for a time, democracy becomes more vulnerable than usual until that is fixed, and may well perform worse than the least corrupt forms of autocracy. But over time things get better, even if it needs a war to set things back onto positive paths.

I think that is where we are at the moment in many countries. Technology is marching ahead. Wisdom and education is doing quite well, but not well enough to make all the new technology an unalloyed benefit. Institutions are way behind. Every country has its own story, but currently we are out of balance in many places.

So that makes it worthwhile to explore which institutions are failing and how they might be induced to catch up. Surely that is a better response than trying to stifle the technology?

The US is a wonderful case study for this. We love to blame the current president for all the ills in the US, and to dream that if we get rid of Trump, then everything will be well. But that ignores many realities. Recent presidents, including Trump, have been limited in what they can do (rather than say) to a few executive orders and a free hand on foreign policy. Often, executive orders are limited too, usually to undoing the executive order of a predecessor. Even those are subject to a barrage of attacks in the courts.

The US constitution is a beautiful thing. The statement of goals is wonderful – even if it took a while to realise that women and slaves had rights too. The division of government into executive, legislative and judicial was a work of genius in design and execution. The hierarchy of powers at federal, state and local level is also excellent.

And until recently, the track record has been excellent. There is more than slavery and natural resources and (partially) sitting out European wars behind the powerhouse that the US became. The US is not a simple place to govern. The geography is immense. That and the different waves of immigrants have led to a nation of multiple conflicting cultures. Some of its legacy was poisonous. Yet somehow the place has stayed together and moved forward.

Until now. Since about 1980 the US has gone backwards in most respects. True, it still dominates business, using scale and colleges to lead the internet revolution. But what else? The military still underperforms while its rulers still embark on crazy follies. The debt rises relentlessly; that and persistent deficits lead to a nation with declining share of the world’s assets. Real incomes have stagnated and quality of life worsened, with appalling health, welfare, housing, education and criminal justice outcomes – life expectancy is even going down! Gaping divides persist along gender, racial and geographical lines. The USA usually lags Europe in social progress.

We can’t blame all that on Trump, nor on George W or even Reagan. The real culprit is congress.

Under the constitution, the president sets the tone and leads execution. It is congress that works through issues to come up with smart laws, which the judiciary can then referee. It is a good design, but since 1980 we have almost no meaningful legislation, and what there has been has often not reflected the will of the people or the interests of the nation.

There are countless issues where the law is woefully out of step with public opinion, for example gun control, abortion, parental leave and environmental policy. There are others where the law has not responded to new challenges, for example competition policy, health care needs, welfare, immigration, housing or trade. Congress is even supposed to contribute to security policy, but its only meaningful bill in 20 years was of one sentence giving the president carte blanche after 9/11; finally it started to grow up last year by challenging Saudi Arabia. In other areas, congress passes bills by stealth that benefit only entrenched vested interests, such as the wealthy, unions or traditional industries.

In all of these areas, which, lets face it, amount to a rather full description of public policy, congress has passed virtually no legislation since 1980, and the trend is even worsening, with each successive congress underperforming its predecessor. There are rare glorious exceptions, such as the criminal justice reform bill passed last year, but these are also getting rarer.

One poignant indictment of congress is to compare its effectiveness with the European commission. Now, the US is hard to govern, but Europe is much harder, with its long suspicion and short history of integration and its immature institutions. Yet in many areas Europe is streets ahead – look for example at competition policy or regional policy.

What we are left with is a series of inadequate patches and dangerous power vulnerabilities. The states are largely functional, and can lead federal change, for example with marijuana and hopefully eventually with environmental action. But one result if that is to sharpen the geographical chasm. The president can try to set the law himself by executive order, but that is dangerous and easily reversed. Many issues get resolved by the Supreme Court; that only serves to further politicise that branch and leads to delayed and partial conclusions.

There are even more ridiculous outcomes. Wealthy individuals, such as the Koch brothers or Bill Gates, increasingly define public policy and even its execution. It was weird to read last week of 500 or so CEO’s writing about corporate social responsibility. That is the ultimate symptom of a vacuum of regulation or law reflecting the interests of their staff. Businesses have also led in other areas, for example in moderating the religious extremism of Pence and his ilk.

So far, there is surprisingly little direct action by the most dangerous group of all, the people. We see protests and campaigns, some with a real effect. But I wonder if the breakdown in law making might ultimately portend serious social disruption and rioting. I think it could be the next logical step.

I was going to try to explain how the breaking of congress came about and how it might be put together again. I have some ideas, but I fear congress might be like Humpty Dumpty and beyond repair, at least for another generation. But now that will have to wait until next week.

The Great Race

Last week’s musings about temptations and human frailty led me down a different thought path. Rather than considering this at a micro, individual level, we can also use temptation to explore the macro level of a society or even humanity as a whole.

Ants are wonderful creatures. Despite having tiny brains and flimsy bodies, they achieve great things. Their concept of society might even be considered as superior to humans, since I am not aware of dysfunctions such as mass shootings or anxiety among ants.

How do they do it? Well, they have evolved in such a way that they develop and retain collective wisdom, and they find a way to collaborate, with common goals, roles, signals, leadership and learning. It is a wonderful miracle, a testament to evolution. But it also carries the clear lesson that collaboration can beat individualism, given the right structures.

The main difference between humans and ants is that we have evolved to consciously think as well as do. Ants know their roles and goals, but we can think about ours. We have some hardwiring, thanks to evolution, leading to primary goals of reproducing and nurturing. But we all make conscious choices all the time.

What a mixed blessing this is! This huge brain that we have accelerates our evolution, so much that we can almost feel it happening. But evolution is known to be a process of trial and error, and it hurts us to witness the errors. It hurts us even more to feel that we could reduce the errors, if only… Well, we all have our own set of “if only” statements, many of them blaming other people. I think we can argue that most of the mistakes come from our temptations. Given that those temptations are part of our evolutionary make up, we are doomed to some mistakes. Our challenge is to reduce them.

Or is it? What defines a mistake anyway? Unlike ants, we can also choose our own goals and our own roles. We have sensations of happiness, anxiety, empathy, fear, and many others, all linked to our evolution but somehow individual as well. Among many other things, we all have to decide, consciously or not and riddled with execution errors, how our personal goals can overlap with those of our family, our tribe or the whole of humanity.

Oliver Burkeman had a wonderful story in the Guardian weekly this week – indeed he has most weeks. It was in the context of task orientation. A new Yorker goes on holiday to Brazil and meets a local who whiles away his time fishing, drinking and playing music with friends. Never short of an opinion, the New Yorker offers a lecture about the potential to make millions from building a fishing empire with staff and assets. That way the local can retire, and then while away his days fishing, drinking and playing music with friends.

As well as being a funny reflection on the New York character, the story speaks to our different goals and how we see time. It can also be linked to the famous experiment with marshmallows: would we rather have one today or two tomorrow?

This is how humanity progresses, through fits and starts, errors and brilliant discoveries, using our scale and diversity to grow wisdom. Our complex brains can achieve everything the ants can, and much, much more.

We can see this as a race. We can either be like the ants, with set roles and goals and steady progress, or we can go faster, but with pitfalls. We progress when we can collectively grow our wisdom more quickly, so long as our systems and structures are able to keep pace and so long as our temptations don’t get the better of us.

When we all lived in villages things were simpler. We hunted for food, sought sexual partners and nurtured our young. There was some specialisation, we learned to look after the old for their wisdom, and we devised some rules and hierarchies. Superstition became religion, and some people used religion to embed structures advantageous to their own type. The structures helped to keep temptations in check, but at the expense of slowing the growth of wisdom.

As we developed, things became more complicated. Communications and technology and all the other drivers of development expanded our scope to accelerate. The village became a town and then a tribe and then a nation, all enabling more specialisation and teamwork, but requiring more sophisticated structures to be effective. Our various goals drove forward our collective wisdom, competitiveness being among the double-edged drivers, a spur and a temptation.

Systems have evolved in response. Village councils became influenced by priests and kings, then parliaments and autocrats. Laws developed for property, companies and misdemeanours. Now we even have a series of challenges that a global in scope, notably climate change and nuclear weapons.

Through this story we can be broadly divided into those embracing some risk in the interests of progress, and those preserving existing structures to prevent chaos (or more likely in practice to protect privileges). Embracing risk involves including more and more of humanity to solve larger and larger challenges, but sometimes invites chaos or disaster or unintended consequences.

So, just two hundred years ago, kings had real power and only wealthy, male, landowners could vote. Everybody else was a worker ant. In some respects now, we are all kings.

A good example for how this can develop is the use of referenda. The Swiss have fine-tuned a system for these to be more often a driver of progress than of chaos. In theory, referenda are a wonderfully inclusive, empowering tool. Social media and other communications advances offer a future in which we can all contribute to collective governance in real time.

What could go wrong? Well, in the great race, our wisdom has not yet caught up and our temptations get in the way. I saw this in a related context, in a company that I sometimes work for, where smart software enables many people to share and compare ideas in real time. It is brilliant and always insightful, but without a strong moderation it usually fails. Our team has to work behind the scenes to make sure questions are asked and followed up in a smart way. Otherwise, the output is usually banalities such as “we must work better together”.

That links to a common failing in political situations, the confusion of goals and plans. A plan with no goal is an aimless mess. A goal with no plan can be inspiring and a good starting point, but will only lead in a positive direction if people can respond independently to the goal. You need a goal and a plan. Make America Great Again is a goal, but can be worse than worthless without credible steps to head in that direction.

Similar failings doom many a worthy cause. We are either not smart enough to take advantage of a potential advance, or our structures let us down, or our temptations get in the way. Communism started as a strong idea. Chavez was once a powerful leader. A Brexit referendum might have been a good idea in different circumstances.

I find two major takeaways from all of this. The first is that it is not hard for me to choose the progressive side. The potential of humanity is unleashed if we strive for progress, accepting some failures along the way. It is usually easy to spot the selfish arguments on the other side. Black people are not inferior. Women can do better than men at most human undertakings. M5S in Italy started as a worthy endeavour, focussing on input from the people at every stage. The only valid arguments against innovation are practical. Can we make this work within our structures? Does it risk falling foul of our temptations? If the answer is yes, which it sadly often is, then the honest challenge is how to fine tune the idea or the structures, not to abandon the whole project.

The second takeaway I find inspiring. It comes back to those pesky temptations. If we accept this model for human progress, then pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, envy and anger really are our limiting factors. If we could find a reliable way to moderate those temptations, that could be a true game changer for progress could accelerate. Yet each succeeding generation is doing a much better job of handling temptation, and the science of the brain seems on the verge of achieving huge breakthroughs.

What an exciting thought that is for humanity