Author: mjzenz

The benefits of a two party system

Anyone who complains about how a robust third party would make the American electoral system better need only look to the UK for a quick refutation. First-past-the-post systems (in which the person in each district with the highest vote-total wins that district) do not mix well with coalition-style governments with several major parties. The Conservatives won only 43% of the vote in the UK nationally on Thursday, whereas the three more liberal parties (Labour, SNP, and Liberal Dems) won about 47%. However, the Conservatives won about 58% of the seats. This is because they were the largest party in a large number of district, with the liberal vote in those districts split between the more liberal parties.

Part of the problem in the case of the UK is that Labour has become so radical as to render it incompatible with Liberal Dems (who are most definitely not socialists). District-based first-past-the-post systems naturally tend to two parties, because any parties that can combine will have a significant advantage over those that cannot. Of course, this might be reason to favor proportional systems, where seats are awarded to parties as a function of the overall popular vote, over district-based systems. However, if you are in a first-past-the-post system, then you should embrace a system of large moderate parties. If you don’t, then eventually the other side will…

Political Self-awareness

It is quite stunning sometimes how easily we are drawn into a partisan perspective, and how most of our media sources help us down that trap. The standard liberal message from the FBI Inspector General’s report was that the FBI was largely cleared of wrongdoing. However, the report also revealed some stunning sloppiness, casualness and incompetence in how citizens are legally surveilled. Even if Trump is a dangerous crook (he is), Republicans are right to complain about how the investigation into him was conducted by the rank and file at the bureau.

Such violations by law enforcement would normally be pounced on by civil libertarians, who have also typically dominated the more activist part of the Democratic party. However, rather little concern has been heard from that part of the left. It is to the credit of the New York Times that the problems in the FBI were a front page story today. It is a very strange world indeed when we have to rely upon Republicans to criticize law enforcement (and of course they do so for ALL of the wrong reasons).

A post a day to ring in the ’20s

I have decided to revive this blog. I have thought about doing that many times before, but have often been too ambitious about what a post must look like; I have typically opted for long and substantial posts. This often has the effect of paralyzing my writing in many contexts — the weeds take over. I may as well make the most of the rest of 2019 with a short entry every day, about whatever might be on my mind. 2020 is going to be a terrible, anxiety provoking year for sure…
-Z

Psychological disorder and the dream of Utopia

The view of humanity that we get from the ancients (and by extension the Abrahamic religions) is both deeply deceptive and very influential.  If people are the creation of beings of (more or less) perfection, then it is reasonable to expect that humans are naturally orderly creatures.   Or, at the very least, we are disordered in some sort of systematic way.  According to this view, the psychological and social disorder experienced by all people and societies to varying degrees is a shortcoming.  The behavior and lived experiences of humans fall short of some meaningful ideal, because they fail in some way to reach their full potentials.  Of course, we might think that humans cannot reaching their full potentials without the grace of God or unadulterated contemplation of the good — or perhaps humans cannot possibly reach such a point of perfection — but all of this presumes that there is some sense to the idea of human perfection.

Certainly, we can conceive of what a “perfect” human might look like, but this has little to do with humans as they actually are.  Evolutionary theory in fact is able to provide us with a simple yet profound insight in this regard: the natural state of a human is to be a jumbled mess that gets the job done better than the next local competitor.  The same goes for a community.  We all know this to some degree, but we typically ignore what this means for our lives and society.  The human body and psychology has certainly been “finely tuned” by various evolutionary forces, so that individuals can produce offspring and provide them with various advantages.  We have also been made naturally cooperative in certain ways, so that we can more easily form societies of individuals to provide mutual advantages to each other, but this in no way guarantees healthy psychologies or societies of peace and happiness.

In fact, it is reasonable to think that a society of perpetually unsatisfied humans, who continually seek to compete with one another, will have an advantage over those containing people who have reached a state of inner peace and unconditional love for their neighbors.  This matters, because it seems to call into question the widely lauded goal of promoting universal happiness and social tranquility.  Not only does such a goal take a too optimistic view of the power of social reform, but it also promotes a false vision of human nature.

Many of us also think that finally getting our psychological act together would make us happier.  If we could only take account of all of our disparate (and often maladaptive) motivations and feelings and put them into proper order, then we would finally be living in a virtuous and happy way.  Social reformers often take a similar view of our social ills; if only our institutions were made to function well enough (providing all of the needed resources and incentives) to bring about virtuous and happy lives among the populous, then social order and prosperity would also be achieved.  They of course recognize that such a utopia is not likely in our messy world, but they still think that the ideal is meaningful.

I think we should doubt that the ideal of utopia is meaningful.  This is not simply because humans are deeply flawed.  Rather, it is because human psychology is not the sort of thing that is likely to achieve either internal (psychological) harmony nor external (social) harmony.  Again, this is nothing new, but it is largely ignored by optimistic social theorists and reformers who hope to create environments and education that promotes pro-social motivations and subsequent behaviors.  This includes both social theorists on the left as well as the right.  Some socialists, for instance, think that once the capitalist power structure is removed (or at least substantially weakened) then the motivations of people will be transformed, becoming more pro-social.  An extreme version of this comes form Marx and Engels, but a somewhat weaker one persists among many modern socialists and social-democrats; something about the current economic paradigm makes us slavish and vicious consumers, that once removed will free us from that sort of behavior.

On the right, libertarians have a similar utopian ideals.  They think that when people are left alone to live, create, and trade, they will live cooperative and virtuous lives, because it will be prudent to do so.  When the government’s only role is to provide for public goods and a system of public justice, and it does so rather effectively, then the only way for someone to get by is to be productive.  Cheating and stealing are promptly punished, and begging for subsidies does no good.  Many libertarians seem to have an idea that such a society would be a rather happy place to be, where people are able to safely pursue their own interests.

If people are naturally disordered, then there is little reason to think that non-coercive social systems will bring about a happy and peaceful world.  It cannot be assumed that more just social institutions can automatically lead to a more just and well-functioning public.  It leads us to a social theory more in line with Thomas Hobbes and “classical” conservatives like Edmund Burke than the modern social muses of Locke and Marx.  Cultural norms certainly provide a form of internal control, but these forms of control are typically inadequate, especially in pluralistic societies with weaker cultural norms.  And if many people experience a great deal of psychological disorder, disorder that will never be fully resolved, then their ability to internalize and behave according to a complex set of social norms with any consistency may be limited.  Ultimately, greater levels of social organization may require greater levels of external coercion, or at least the threat of it.  This coercion may be subtle, though nonetheless real and backed by state violence.  It may even be subconscious, like that which comes from messaging and marketing.  Those in marketing have long known that you often need to trick people to buy a product; likewise, you may need to trick people to bring about a good society.

In societies (like the U.S.) with relatively weak social control through culture, promoting greater levels of the public good may require greater degrees of social coercion.  I’m not sure what we should conclude from this.  It may, of course, mean that there are limits to how well the public good can be promoted in free societies.  Some people will always choose private violence in order to settle disputes.  Others will make poor choices about when to start a family or what purchases to make.  Still others will adopt hateful attitudes toward their fellow citizens because of prejudice.  What we can do to get people to change their behaviors on their own may be far more limited that we would hope.   However, it may also mean that we should be open to greater levels of social coercion, at least if we are serious about improving human lives.  I’m not sure which we should choose, but it seems that the disordered character of human nature pits freedom and well-being  against one another.

Progressive Federalism

There are clearly two Americas, and one is holding the other back.  At least this is likely the view held today by many Progressives. To use the terminology of the famous nuclear war strategist Herman Kahn (though obviously in a different context) there is the A-country, and there is the B-country [*See Note Below*].  The A-country is making progress, where the government is involved in creating communities, taking care of the vulnerable, and creating equal opportunity for all.  This is the Northeast, parts of the great lakes (primarily Illinois and Minnesota), and the entire west coast.  These are places that routinely vote for Democrats and have reliably Progressive policy initiatives.  It is also where the most interesting stuff is happening, and where we are most likely to find conditions conducive to a good life (for the Progressive at least).

Then there is what Progressives would likely think of as the B-country; this is all the rest.  Libertarian and conservative politics prevail, the government does far less to provide equal opportunities to all citizens, and the people generally have somewhat “backward” or “traditional” values.  Of course, from the perspective of libertarians and conservatives, much of B-country is preferable to A-country; they see the policies of A-country to be smothering initiative and violating individual rights.  These different ways of life are supported by different sets of values.  

One problem, you might think, with the standard progressive strategy of the past 30 years is that action has been at the national level.  Policies have meant to apply across both A and B countries, even though the people living in those different places have wildly different values.  This has long been the complaint of conservatives who desire for the federal government to stay out of their business, so that they can ban abortion or permit discrimination against minorities.  Additionally, conservative states often want to be left out of various programs that involve the government intervention in various aspects of life.  This preference for strong federalism has been resisted by Progressives who have wanted their policies to apply across the country.  

The resistance to strong forms of federalism makes perfect sense in clear cases of injustice.  Progressives cannot permit the widespread discrimination against minorities or the denial of basic rights to occur anywhere in the country (though there is also conflict about what should be considered a “basic right”).  However, I think there might be a different story for positive programs, like the provision of universal health insurance.  It may be possible for states in the A-country to undertake such programs themselves, much like Massachusetts did in the 2000s, but as a block.  This might be in the form of a single market between states for health insurance (providing more competition) as well as the provision of common regulation and subsidies for that market (providing benefits of scale in implementation), or even a single-payer health system shared by those states.  

The single-payer system may be especially interesting, because it would provide these states (which have a large proportion of the national population) substantial leverage to negotiate prices. It would also seem that this may not violate any constitutional restrictions on limiting federalism (a problem with Trump’s “plan” for the interstate sale of insurance), because it would be formed through the voluntary agreements between states.  Multi-state agreements like this are not uncommon (port authority and transportation authorities, for instance), though this would be far more ambitious.  

There are obvious difficulties to coordinating such a system, but I think it could be done if some of the larger or adjacent states (centered around California and New York, for instance) took the lead.  If large states formed such a block, then the inevitable taxes required to pay for insurance subsidies would not render those states uncompetitive relative to others.  Businesses to not routinely move from California or New York to Texas simply because of small differences in taxes (which already exist).  The benefits of these locations are too enticing.  Such a program could provide the benefits of the Affordable Care Act without the necessity of dragging unwilling states into the mix.  There is a hope that voters in B-country would eventually see the benefits of such a social welfare program and want to be included in the interstate agreement.  This may eventually grow into a truly national program once a critical mass of states agree to join.  Of course, it is possible that majorities in B-country will never come around.  All the worse for them, but it is not the fault of those living in A-country that those living in B-country are backward looking rather than Progressive.

Some will rightly worry that such a program would create a further rift in our country.  Perhaps.  Though in many ways that rift already exists.  People in A-country and B-country already live in rather different worlds.  And voluntary interstate agreements would eliminate the high levels of conflict that exists at the federal level; there simply would be less to argue about.  The hope is that this would lower the stakes of federal policy formation, and thus make our politics more functional.  Progressives will have an easier time convincing New Yorkers and Californians to implement such a program than convincing a block of former slave states.

*Completely unrelated note*: Kahn’s idea (From On Thermonuclear War) was something like the following.  Even if our major cities like New York and LA (A-country) were blown up in the first round of a nuclear war, we might still have a substantial supply of infrastructure, resources, and people left. This “B-country” might include exciting places like Winona or Cedar Rapids.  He thinks that we should plan on a strategy for an extended but winnable nuclear war rather than simply “mutually assured destruction.”  But please don’t tell this to Trump.  Especially because Kahn wrote this before larger stockpiles of hydrogen bombs existed, so his insight may no longer be relevant.

What now? Progressives must speak to the working class, even the deplorables.

Trump has won: the barbarians are inside the gate.  They will undoubtedly destroy much of what we have built.  And I did not sleep last night.  What does this mean for us all?  I’m horrified as any right-thinking person should be.  But I try to be a positive person and look at what we can learn from this.  In particular, I am ruminating on what this might mean for the Progressive movement, or what it should mean for that movement.  At least if it ever hopes to be a successful core of the Democratic Party (in other words, win elections).

First of all let’s get something out of the way. It is certainly on our minds.  Many progressives (almost all I would think) find the fact that someone would vote for Trump to be repulsive and idiotic.  That of course we cannot deny; Trump supporters did a disgusting thing and did not live up to our standards of basic human decency.  They are all deplorable.  But that matters little, because standards of decency change very slowly (often only through what might be politely called “attrition” i.e. death).  We will certainly not convince them that they are indecent.  More importantly, many of them are the very working-class subjects of Progressive policy.  They are who Progressives wish to help.  And for that reason Progressives must understand (and take seriously) their needs, fears, their thoughts.  Otherwise Progressives will not be the ones who will get the opportunity to “help” them, conservatives will.

Below I lay out a few ideas of where Progressives might focus.  Some of this runs deeply contrary to the standard “Progressive” line.  I only ask that you forgive me if I offend your progressive proclivities, for I am light on sleep.

Labor and economic issues must form the center of our policy agenda, and they must be the sorts of policies that aid the lower-middle and middle classes.  Poverty cannot be our only focus.  This undoubtedly means that Progressives must take seriously the sorts of concerns I raised two posts ago about the lack of low skill jobs in the new economy.  Democrats as much as Republicans are seen as allies of those who are bringing about the demise of working-class jobs, and that must change (just look at how David Plouffe is now at Uber, destroyer of working-class driving jobs).  It is unreasonable to think that people with IQs below the mean will be able to train into jobs found in the new knowledge economy, and it is also unreasonable to expect them to live decent lives on the dole.  Stable work that pays a living wage is a basic requirement of a decent life.  It must be at the core of Progressive policy.  Financial support without work is not enough.

Fighting for new social policy in states rather than at the federal level seems crucial for winning white working class voters. Let’s be frank: the white working class (and especially white men) are disproportionately misogynist bigots.  Trump himself is a misogynist bigot, and this is one reason why he appeals so much to working class voters.  One of the great elements of progress during the Obama administration was the extension of gay marriage rights.  But this incredible victory was won through slow social change and not national politics, and the only politics that aided it were at the state level.  I think this must be a model for the future.  

Progressives should push policies in states in which they have the most influence, showing the country how life can be better if policies are made in the Progressive model.  In many ways this has already occurred. Lives are far better for people in places like Massachusetts and Minnesota than they are in Alabama and Arizona; this is in large part due to the sorts of policies people in those states have chosen for themselves.  This will certainly mean that some in backward states will be left behind.  But many of those same people consistently vote for Republicans; you cannot help people who will not help themselves.  It is too bad that many are stuck in conservative states, but at this point progressives can do little to help them.  Help for them must come later, once attitudes change.  We need to accept that.

Frame issues of civil rights and economic justice in terms of class, rather than race.  I think that there is a crucial point lost on many Progressives, that white working class Americans find the concept of “white privilege” to be insulting to their lived experience.  Even if they have benefited in various ways from racial bias, working class whites certainly do not perceive how they have benefited.  And, in fact, I find it plausible that the benefits of this privilege to rust belt working-class whites is minimal.  Therefore, direct racial preference from affirmative action programs create significant amounts of racial animosity.  Very similar effects can be achieved by focusing on class (parents’ income, educational level, etc.) rather than directly on race.  These are highly correlated with the groups who need help anyway.  Progressives may think that there is still tremendous amounts of direct racial bias in American society — and indeed there is — but they must also think strategically.  

I will certainly have more thoughts later.  But I think Progressives must take seriously the difficulty they will have in appealing to working class voters as long as they stay a movement that assumes a college-educated mindset.  We must be more Biden and less Clinton.  

We must also fight.

Your local neighborhood drones…

As autonomous vehicles and drones start to become a reality, various possible uses of the technology naturally come to mind. One of the most interesting possibilities is autonomous drone security and policing. The image goes something like this. In the hopes of having more eyes on the streets, police departments in some cities may eventually start using autonomous drones to patrol high-crime areas and during special events. This would primarily provide added surveillance, essentially (drone) eyes on the street. Drones would be outfitted with night-vision sensors and various algorithms for detecting suspicious behavior. When a drone detects something that is suspicious, it notifies the dispatch so that police can respond and investigate. This is not a “robocop” vision, in which drones themselves respond crime, but merely one that extends current automated surveillance techniques already used in many American cities (for instance, gunshot detectors).

Such a system obviously has significant potential to reduce crime and improve the lives of those living in high-crime areas. Increasing the likelihood that crimes will immediately be responded to dramatically increases the expected costs to criminals. If one expects to be followed by a drone immediately after mugging or shooting someone, and then consequently found by the police, there is little sense to the action. This would also likely make people feel far safer in their own neighborhoods, and might create a virtuous cycle in which greater feelings of safety cause more people to be on the streets, which then further increases community surveillance and reduces crime.

Of course, the above vision is also horrifying. It introduces a prospect of total police surveillance, in which the government has a complete record of everything that goes on at all times. And the likelihood that such a policing strategy would disproportionately affect those in minority neighborhoods makes it even worse. It combines the possible nightmare of a police state with problems of racial discrimination. Consequently, it is a future that will likely be closed off by law, whether conventional or constitutional. For Progressives it goes against their commitments to privacy, civil liberties, and limited police powers.

What about the private use of “security” drones? It is entirely possible that cheap drones could (in the not too distant future) be available to private citizens and community groups as well as the government. A neighborhood watch organization could plausibly buy the sort of autonomous drones that I describe above, to provide extra eyes on the street. They similarly may be set up to call 911 upon seeing a possible crime, just like a nosy neighbor. This sort of (highly effective) “neighborhood watch” might be just as transformative for people living in high-crime neighborhoods as police drones, and produce an environment that is nearly as disturbing. “Neighborhood-watch” drones may buzz around watching one’s every move. It doesn’t seem to matter significantly in this sense that they are not owned by the police.

I think that the Progressive is forced to support such drone programs, and in fact, it may be important for progressive organizations to someday fund the purchase of drones for neighborhood organizations that want them. However, it also presents Progressives with a serious dilemma of values. The fear and violence that so many Americans face on a daily basis is too deplorable to be ignored. Although the root causes of these conditions lie in deeply rooted social and economic problems, those issues are unlikely to be solved before drone technology may be of significant use. Likewise, other than an extensive limitation on handgun ownership, which is unlikely to happen for a very long time (if ever), no public policies of any kind are likely to solve the problems of public safety in the foreseeable future.

The problem, of course, is that the choices of some individuals (in setting loose drones) would be transforming the environment for all. The prospect of outside organizations paying for the drones makes matters even worse. It is entirely feasible that the drones patrolling the far south side of Chicago may be provided (to neighborhood groups) by law-and-order nonprofits primarily funded by rich white suburbanites. How we think about this largely depends upon what priority we give public safety. Conservatives often take the provision of public safety to be the primary purpose of the state. But given how necessary minimal levels of justice and safety are to being able to live a good life, Progressives must also take this more seriously. And we would do well to think about how changes in technology might radically effect policing strategies and public safety in the next couple decades.

Must progressives be so boring?

I’m going to make a bold prediction. Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election. I think we should move beyond this fact. Clinton is very competent but no revolutionary. She might do quite well at protecting some of the gains the left made during the Obama administration, but few are expecting her to significantly push the envelope of the progressive agenda in her first term. What will Clinton be able to achieve by 2020? Probably not much. There is almost no chance that she will be able to achieve (or even make substantial steps toward achieving) some of the bolder goals that are part of the Democratic platform, especially a single-payer health system and free higher education. Of course, perhaps those on the left simply need to work hard and bide their time.

However, those who think of themselves as “progressives” should also wonder whether they even know what the “envelope” looks like. Is it represented best by the policy views of Bernie Sanders. For a very long time Americans on the left have, rather reflexively I think, attempted to make an America in the political image of Europe; there is a spoken and unspoken principle of leftist thinking that Europe is a model society, more civilized and decent. European public policy is in many ways the culmination of a post-war welfare-state program, in which the community is tasked with taking care of all.

Those on the left lament the fact that the construction of the welfare state was never as successful in America, even with its unmatched wealth. The standard story (I take it) is that America is too steeped in conflict and corporate domination to be a fertile ground for an extensive welfare state; or perhaps Europe’s cleansing in the fires of WW2 showed it the way to righteous politics. Though perhaps it has more to do with the relative homogeneity of European countries that allowed generous welfare benefits to remain popular. Americans have a long tradition of despising each other, but this is a relatively new phenomenon in European countries that have thrived on consensus politics. Europe’s current internal struggles with immigration reveals that there might be something to this.

In any case, the ideal of the European welfare state is not transformative in the way progressivism was in the early 20th century, when the sort of abject poverty and powerlessness that characterized the lives of the vast majority of humans for most of human history was all but eliminated in the United States. And in the 1960s the American cultural revolution and civil rights movement did to social relations what the early progressive movement did for physical subsistence, dramatically changing how people thought about themselves and each other.

What I find rather remarkable is how immediately comprehensible the thoughts of ‘60s artists, thinkers, and writers are to us, in ways that those from the ‘50s are not; there is a certain foreignness (for us) to American culture before this time. We don’t often think about how important it is that (many) 18 year-olds today still understand and fully appreciate Bob Dylan or The Beatles, when this music was recorded half a century ago. Even Trump’s veiled racism is little different than Goldwater Republicanism. Truly, our economic aspirations are a century old and cultural aspirations are a half century old. The gadgets of the 21st century nip at the margins of our lived experience, but they have not transformed it.

What goals would be transformative enough to be worthy of the name “progressive”? I’m not sure. But I have a few ideas, and will express some of them between now and the election. I’ll start with an idea that originates, in some ways, in the right’s vision of a radically transformed society: a society of radical personal liberty in a free market.

In many ways the political right possesses the sort of new transformative vision of society that the left lacks. The sort of vision inspired by Milton Friedman and (less cogently) Ayn Rand is one in which the coercive powers of the state have been all but eliminated, and in their place exists a system of free markets and voluntary associations. This is the libertarian ideal. It takes the very old ideas of anarchy and provides a demonstration for why social order can be maintained even absent any sort of significant coercive regime. Its power then – and it really was a powerful idea that transformed conservative political thinking in the 1980s – is in its ability to show how freedom can be made compatible with complex economies and societies.

The reaction of the left, I think, has been largely uninspiring; it is typically argued that this is an unrealistic vision, and that markets will always need substantial government regulation for them to operate efficiently and in the common interest. I think this is true, but rather boring. In particular, it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue of whether the vision offered by the right is one that should inspire us at all. Is there something wrong with the vision, or is it just something we aren’t able to attain? The problem with the latter answer is that it leaves us wondering whether we simply aren’t doing enough the attain the goal. Perhaps we just need to privatize more social programs!

I think there is something basically wrong with the vision of a society composed entirely of free markets and voluntary associations, but I also think this ideal gives us an insight into what might be a progressive ideal. It at least shows us a problem about which we must ponder. The libertarian ideal takes humans to be fully capable of deciding how to act in the market and what voluntary associations to make; in fact, some versions of this ideal take a person’s preferences and values to be identified with the structure of her choices. According to that formulation, there is really no way in which a person can choose poorly in life. If a person chooses to smoke cigarettes, shoot-up heroin, or get serial pay-day loans then she is just “revealing” her preferences for those goods.

The progressive reaction to this ideal brings out an important foundation of progressive politics, and one that stands in tension with the existence of a free society. I think it can be represented by several claims:

  1. There are better and worse ways of living.
  2. At least some of the time, we are incapable of independently making good life choices (leading to a good life). And a substantial number of us are incapable of doing this most of the time.
  3.  We have obligations to care for others.
  4.  A necessary feature of a good life is the liberty to choose how to live one’s own life (personal autonomy).

Most libertarians would deny that the first three conditions are true, and even those who do not deny their truth think that society instantiating the first two conditions (and perhaps 3 as well) is not compatible with one that instantiates the last. In short, they think that any society respecting personal autonomy must ignore (1)-(3) when determining how to design its political institutions. I don’t think the above list would surprise most progressives, but its has important implications for the possible shape of society when put into the context of the 21st century.

The modern welfare state already presumes that (1) is true to some degree; the life of a starving person is worse than that of someone with enough food to eat, and this is why we spend money assuring that everyone has enough food to eat. However, this aspect of the welfare state might be supported by Libertarians as well as those on the left – the provision of cash payments (or vouchers) to the poor is a mainstay of right-wing welfare policy. However, many on the left also promote paternalistic policies, which promote certain ways of living and not just economic goods (like food and housing) that any way of life requires. Paternalism is especially obvious in policies that promote health care and safety; providing incentives for people to get yearly checkups, talk to their doctors about their weight or blood pressure, or wear seatbelts are all perfect examples of paternalistic policies supported by the left and (often) criticized by the right.

And here is where things become more radical, and where serious thought is necessary. Many of the social problems that we see today are due to how people choose (or are forced) to live, rather than their lack of basic necessities. And more importantly, some of the social problems on the horizon cannot be dealt with by the contemporary welfare state, even if benefits are very generous. For instance, automation has drastically reduced the market price of manual and repetitive labor. And AI threatens to reduce the price of even some complex labor. The high unemployment among non-college graduates has in part occurred because the price of manual labor in many sectors has been reduced below the minimum wage that allows workers to obtain a minimally decent lifestyle.

The ready solution to this problem has always been the retraining of these workers, thus increasing their productivity to above the minimum wage. But constraints on fluid intelligence limit the sorts of jobs workers can be retrained to do. It is entirely feasible (as Galbraith argued in the 1950s) that at some point in the future there will simply be no economic use (at a minimally decent wage) for large segments of the population. At some point it may even be more expensive to train those of average (or above average) intelligence to do complex tasks than it will be to develop and maintain a machine to do that same tasks. Of course, there might always be roles for high-level human developers and managers, but very few people are ever capable of being trained to perform those tasks. This leads us to a question that is currently facing some of the generous welfare states of the Europe today: can a life that is not economically productive be as good as one that is not?

In order to answer this question, Progressives must go beyond the 20th century goal of equalizing the consumption of the rich and the poor. It is likely that a life of pure consumption, without a meaningful contribution to society, is not a good life (though this is something that requires thought!). The government could always make positions for people to fill; this was a favorite strategy of the FDR administration. But today this would require the government to not only undertake tasks it might not otherwise undertake, but also undertake them in ways that are dramatically less efficient (utilizing more labor) than could be achieved on the free market.

It is true that the sort of public works projects that employed many during the Great Depression built much of value, but today those projects would certainly be accomplished far cheaper by finding already trained workers from the private sector. In a future in which even construction work is automated, substantial additional funds would have to be spent in order for such projects to employ significant numbers of people. In that case the government might even be able to give the unemployed higher levels consumption by using automation than if they had payed them to do work less efficiently.

This is all rather speculative, but it shows the sort of problem that progressive politics might face in the changing world, problems that I think progressives are in a position to answer. Importantly, I think the left is better able to provide answers than the right. For instance, according to the libertarian ideal if someone isn’t able to successfully compete in the market (meaning no one is willing to pay for their labor at some minimally decent price) then they must rely upon charity. But a society in which vast segments of working-age adults are charity cases baffles the mind; that is not a vision to work toward, but is rather a disaster to avoid.

I will return to this problem in a couple weeks. I admit that I don’t have many answers, but I think that the role of work in the lives of those in the rich world may be one of the defining issues of the 21st century, and progressives must have an answer.

However, in the next post I will ask another question that may be central to progressive politics in the 21st century: what is the role of surveillance and robotics in policing and security? In perhaps not more than 30 years there may exist technologies that will dramatically increase the monitoring and prevention of crimes. They could have live-changing benefits for people living in cities and neighborhoods that are not safe, but raise rather obvious questions about civil liberties. Would the use of, for instance, constant police drone patrols produce a world that was safe but unbearable? This is made more disturbing by the fact that such technologies would likely most often be deployed in minority-majority neighborhoods, increasing the risk of discrimination. Such surveillance techniques have the promise to eliminate much of the intolerable violence of American society, but at serious costs in privacy. Progressives should be conflicted about this prospect, but technological advances are not likely to give us the benefit of decades to deliberate about it.

Being a Democrat in Wisconsin: Winning from the center

Wisconsin Democrats must begin to take more seriously the differences between their base and the political center of Wisconsin.  This is made more difficult by the fact that Democrats are concentrated in a few areas of Wisconsin, giving them very wide margins of victory in those districts but hurting their prospects for winning over many districts.  However, Republican support is rather shallow in many districts, making it feasible for Democrats to win majorities in state government, especially during presidential election years.

Wisconsin is not a progressive state.  As I have argued in a previous post, it would be wrong to mistake the dominance of Wisconsin Democrats in statewide races for national office as strength for the progressive agenda in the state.  The political center of the state is not to be found in Madison or Milwaukee, which many consider to be the base of the Democratic party in Wisconsin.  Of course, these are reliable areas of Democratic support, and Madison is in many ways a model small progressive city.   There are also hopes that Milwaukee could one day be a city possessing similar merits as Minneapolis: a center of political influence that would radiate to all of south-eastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is very different from Minnesota.  Perhaps the most important for its political life, the population of Wisconsin is far more distributed than that of Minnesota.  Whereas almost 2/3 of Minnesota’s population lives in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area, only 1/3 of Wisconsin’s population lives in the metropolitan areas of Madison and Milwaukee.  Much like Illinois, the economic and political life of Minnesota is dominated by its first city; this is clearly not the case in Wisconsin.  It does not help things that Milwaukee is a struggling city that is frequently seen by those living in its suburbs as a drain on the metropolitan area rather than a source of strength.  The antagonism between Milwaukee, which is the only city in Wisconsin with a large African American population, and its suburbs also fuels the racism that is often pronounced in those suburbs; it is not a coincidence that those same suburbs experienced large population booms in the late ’60s during the so called “white flight” from Milwaukee.

The center of GOP dominance extends from the Milwaukee suburbs, especially Waukesha county, down the Fox River toward Green Bay.  This is the old industrial center of state, and is the western flank of the “Rust Belt” that extends through the great lakes region.  This area has traditionally been dominated by heavy industry, especially paper, and remains far more industrial than the western part of the state.  The electoral strength for the GOP in this area is its greatest in Waukesha county and other Milwaukee suburbs and trails off up the Fox river.  Although there is no hope for Democrats to win significant votes in Waukesha, strong Democratic candidates can win in Green Bay and North-East Wisconsin.  An analysis of vote shares in those assembly districts shows that these are the “tipping point” districts where the vote share of Democrats and Republicans approach 50/50.  The battle for the state legislature cannot be won in Madison or the western part of the state, but rather must be won in the Fox Valley.

Wisconsin Democrats are at a crucial disadvantage in this battle, but this is not merely due to gerrymandering after the 2010 census.  A common refrain from Wisconsin Democrats alleges that the Republican majority is in place predominantly because of the way in which districts were redrawn after the overwhelming (and unusual) victories by Republicans in 2010.  One of the primary pieces of evidence for this is the fact that state-wide Democratic candidates for the Wisconsin Assembly typically receive a majority of the votes for office in elections since 2010, but only 1/3 of the seats.  Many take this to be a result of gerrymandering.  However, there is a deeper explanation that gets to the core of how Democrats and Republicans are distributed differently throughout the state.  As the Democratic party has transitioned from a coalition of southerners and working class northerners to the party of collectivists and social liberals, cities have also undergone a period of renewal.  And the sorts of people who have been loyal Democratic voters since Kennedy have taken up urban residences in greater numbers.  Democrats are in fact packing themselves into urban districts.  Given the district-based system of representation that characterizes American government, this has also had substantial effects on the ability of Democrats to win district-based elections.

This can most easily be seen by looking at voting results by assembly district.  In 2014, when Scott Walker won reelection as governor, voters in the most Democratic district (# 16 in Milwaukee) voted for Mary Burke by almost a 10 to 1 margin whereas those in the most Republican district (#99 in Waukesha) voted for Scott Walker by only a 3.5 to 1 margin.  Similar statistics can be found for other election years.  Additionally, this is not limited to a handful of districts.  Democrats have at least a 2 to 1 margin of victory in 15 of the 99 assembly districts, whereas Republicans only have this in 9 districts.  However (using the 2014 data), Republicans have comfortable margins of between 2 to 1 and 1.5 to 1 in another 31 districts, whereas Democrats only have such margins in 5 districts.  This is the strength of the Republican majority in the state legislature; it is relatively shallow but very wide.  Republicans have achieved this while maintaining a relatively rational district map (squarish districts that generally respect local boundaries), absent of the incredible examples of gerrymandering found in states like North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, and other states (you haven’t seen gerrymandering until you’ve seen Maryland’s 3rd district!).

What can be done?  Democrats are at a serious disadvantage in assembly races, though less so for state senate seats.  And this is no excuse for their poor performance in state-wide elections.  Certainly structural problems cannot be blamed for the repeated victories of Scott Walker; this is likely due to the fielding of weak candidates by the Democrats and the lower voter turnout in off-year elections.  But can the Democrats ever hope to control the entire state government as they did between 2008 and 2010?  Maybe.  In 2012 (with the new assembly lines drawn), President Obama won a majority of votes in 42 assembly districts.  Democrats won in 39 assembly races that year.  However, in another 11 districts the margin of victory of Mitt Romney over Obama was less than 1.1 to 1.  If the Democrats were able to win assembly races in all of those districts plus those that Obama won they would have a 53 to 46 majority in the state assembly, something that seems impossible for many Democrats to conceive of at the moment (where they only have 36 seats).  And most of these districts span from Fond du Lac to Green Bay.  Of course, this would not be easy.  But if Democrats can win governor (statewide) races in off-year elections and assembly majorities in presidential years, then the face of Wisconsin politics would be radically changed.

Political scientists have extensively studied the importance of gerrymandering to election outcomes, though the effect of the geographic distributions of political party members on election outcomes has received less attention.  For a recent study of this see:

Jowei Chen and Jonathan Rodden. (2013). “Unintentional gerrymandering: Political geography and electoral bias in legislatures.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 8. pp. 239-269.  (Available at www-personal.umich.edu/~jowei/florida.pdf)