Craziest idea I've had in a while

The US exported the idea of televised debates to England, and they might have found a way to make for much better political theater. Cleggify them. Not at that national level, but for state and local offices with much lower interest and stakes.

The truth is that our two major parties have a lot more in common than they do differences. However, there's a host of local "consensus" challenging discussions that would be very helpful. Drug laws are the obvious one here, since they turn a potentially valuable tax source into a cost center. However, there are others, like over-broad sex offender registries, zoning laws, tax incentives for new employers and other civic initiatives that don't fit either party's ideological bend.

These issues will not be brought up if the only two candidates in the public eye are looking towards their careers with the parties. However, a flamboyant or pragmatic third candidate who has little or no hope of election can at least force discussion of them, and make for much better television. If the younger GOP and Dem activists have to defend the things on which they agree, that would be better for bipartisanship.

I'm only looking to change local televised and radio debates, not Presidential ones. Igniting interest in local politics would be good for national politics in general, ideally breaking some of the focus on social "wedge" issues. Multi-candidate primary debates are more fun that two-candidate ones, but they are generally only trying reach a narrow part of their party's base. Someone who's only a mild risk to upsetting the system could force a more interesting political scene at the local level.

Official pie loving

To borrow from the Huffington Post: For Reagan, it was Jelly Beans. For Clinton, it was McDonalds. W loved his BBQ. For Obama, it's pie.

Sadly, this doesn't mean I'm likely to end up working at the White House, seeing as they have both an economics advisor and a pastry chef.

Optimism!

These days, the dismal science of economics is producing quite a lot of bad news. If you can find the time to read this 5-part piece, it's a great explanation of what to expect over the next couple of years (full disclosure: I don't own property and have a very cash-heavy portfolio). Meanwhile, Greece has officially gone the Bear Sterns route, meaning the next country up gets to play Lehman Brothers. Oh, and don't forget about this year's Social Security shortfall.

What does this mean? At first blush, it seems like the death of modern prosperity, capitalism and possibly civilization as we know it. It will certainly seem this way for many, and I do not want to minimize the pain that is to come in any way. But does this really mean the beginning of a long, dreary future?

Hardly. We will, as a society, be considerably less wealthy going forward, but also less busy. Easy credit encourages ever-increasing productivity, requiring a constant increase in the time required to work off the debt. A new computer with better editing software lets everyone write a paper or legal brief faster, giving the authors more time to write more briefs. Not surprisingly, the burn-out rate in the creative professions has been growing steadily. Anxiety and depression are now so common among students that faculty know their department's procedures for handling it better than the fire escape routes.

In an easy credit society, every marginal unit of labor competes with any capital or process improvement that reduces labor. When interest rates are very low and the cost of employment, in the form of wages and mandates such as health care and unemployment insurance, grows steadily, automation always wins. It wins out on farms, producing vast amounts of infertile corn. It wins in factories, with fewer people required to operate the robots that do all the machining, assembly and clean-up. It even wins in retail, replacing mom-and-pop clerks with shelves that force customers to do much of the labor.

The coming years of deleveraging will be bad, and despite enormous spare capacity there will not be demand for much new economic activity for several years. The "new normal", however, ought to be a more pleasant place. Mechanics, plumbers and handymen will find plenty of non-tradable work keeping up houses and cars that people cannot afford to replace. Climate and environmental pressures will ease as people replace 300-1000W desktop computers and TVs with 30-100W laptops. Bicycle commuting will rise as more people buy up depressed "urban infill" housing, with accompanying benefits to health, traffic and national security.

The new normal will be smaller, more Aldi than Walmart, and more labor will move from the factory and fast food kitchen to the home. The future may be hot, flat and crowded, but I think we're heading towards a pie-friendlier world.

All politics are national (updated!)

[realized that I've got three arguments tangled together here, so I'll try and unwrap them]

This story brilliantly shows how "cooperative federalism" can co-opt civil society in favor of a central authority:

Court to hear arguments on campus Christian group

Central questions:

(1) Does a group have a right to define its membership?

The issue here is whether the group has the right to demand voting members sign a "statement of faith" declaring that they believe only certain things to be morally right. Failure to include this kind of statement opens the group to the possibility of having its charter overridden by activists who can assemble a crowd in time for club elections.

This approach has been suggested to "tame" the British National Party and helped get McCain the GOP nomination. With both progressive and Tea Party activists able to assemble large, relatively motivate crowds, groups that oppose either would do well to limit access to its membership. Is a statement of political belief fundamentally different from a statement of moral belief?

In pie-centric terms: Should I be required to admit pie cabinet members who don't believe in sustainable homemade pie making? Actually, it's not that hard to imagine such people. They argue for continuing to underfund massive social programs and punishing political cooperation. I am happy to talk to such people, but do I have to open my group's identity to them?

(2) Is this a form of federal "regulatory capture", giving it effective control of civil society?

The implicit imprimature and improved access to potential members that come from recognition and subsidies guarantee that groups that comply with the central authority will grow faster than those that do not. In this environment, control of government means control of the rules of civil society. Once civic groups such as churches and clubs or states and municipalities become dependent on a special subsidy or tax status, they get co-opted by the taxing authority. At that point, a change in tax or recognition rules becomes an existential threat, and so every group must choose between its sense of mission and keeping its lights on. China's ham-fisted censors could learn a lot from this more subtle approach.

Want to see women in the Catholic priesthood? Don't appeal to Rome, appeal to Washington and demand they pay full taxes on discriminatory seminaries. Don't like abortion? Mandate that insurance companies not include such coverage in subsidized plans. Want to make helmets mandatory for motorcycles and bicycles, mandate seatbelt use and force the creation of bicycle lanes? Tie them to highway funding.

Well intentioned efforts to support civil society inevitably result in unhealthy relationships. Internationally, this happens when NGOs get funding from governments and effectively become tools of their sponsor's policy. What are civic organizations supposed to learn from ACORN's demise at the hands of edited video tapes? How about this: if you take federal money keep your group's views as close to mainstream as possible.

(3) How do we make politics local again?

"Values based" politics unite people nationwide who share a sense of identity. Media sources that pander to their audience's ideology. Heavily gerrymandered districts and seniority rules that reward federal and state legislators for long service guarantee that the extremes of both parties make the leadership more nervous than voters in the middle.

I have some ideas for future posts, but that's how I'd like to frame the question. Can we make a more respectful civil society by disaggregating control of it? If so, how? If not, what is the correct path?