Food for thought: Should the US go multi-party?

Partisanship is, for better or worse, the rule of the day in the United States of America. Polarization is getting worse, not better, as the reaction from both the GOP and the Dems is to dig in their heels, fight the other side tooth and nail, and wait until the other side blinks.

The reason the USA has this problem is, at its heart, structural. The winner takes all system (or first past the post) means that there can be only one winner in any election, and this rarely produces more than two parties. Three parties can be temporarily sustainable, but rarely for more than one electoral cycle. The UK, as I’m sure Kevin will immediately bring up, is different because there were no formal term limits in the House of Commons until 2011. With the ability to react more quickly to changing circumstances, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see one of the three parties fade away. The UK is also an exception because the differences between the parties are fundamental, not issue-based, as they are in the US.

So, what could we do? Well, without an incredibly compelling candidate, a third party will not succeed in the US under the present system. I think, perhaps as an experiment, we ought to see what might happen if we went to proportional representation. I’d imagine we’d see a formal split in the GOP between Tea Party, Libertarian (assuming a difference between the two), and more traditional Conservatives. For the Democrats, I can foresee a center-left faction, perhaps a genuine socialist party, and something between the two, an Interventionist party if you will. So why is this a good thing?

Competition. The American system favors stability and, as of late, stagnation on both sides of the aisle. Each side chooses to double down on their current strategy, to the detriment of the country.

Anyway, that’s my thought on the matter, and I’d like to see how readers (i.e. Kevin) respond.

 

American history and social issues

As you may or may not have heard, Barack Obama was reelected on Tuesday. I was reading this article on the Economist’s website and have to bring something up.

A couple of days ago, I wrote something about Kevin Youkilis about being right vs. being useful. The Economist chalks up Romney’s loss to his inability to pick up key demographics. I find that tremendously unhelpful. Instead, I find this sentence much more important: “For Republicans, that means talking about the social and religious issues that are important to the base.”

Let’s face facts. This is the exact strategy that the GOP has tried the last two elections: firing up the base, then coming up with an unsatisfactory compromise candidate when the base isn’t enough. Here’s radical thinking: ignore the base.

When I look at this election, I see one major thing: gay marriage helped win Obama the day. The smart thing for the Republicans to do would be to pull a Disraeli: take a popular liberal initiative (like the Great Reform Bill of 1832) and put it forward yourselves. Ultimately, and I mean no disrespect to anybody reading this blog, this country will not succeed or fail because gay people can or cannot get married. It just doesn’t matter.

Yes, a Republican proposing a gay marriage bill/constitutional amendment (I feel the latter will be necessary) might piss off the religious right. So what? Are they going to vote Democrat? Call their bluff. The religious right has entirely too much political power as it is, and it’s been hijacking the GOP since 2000. I’d like to see that change.

The “winner” is… Vladimir Putin!

Vladimir Putin is once again President of the Russian Federation, with a startling 60% of the vote.

Zyuganov, the Communist candidate, came in second. However, in Moscow itself, according to RFE/RL, Prokhorov came in second with a solid 20% of the vote (to Putin’s 47%). Prokhorov has announced he will form his own party and will not accept any government post.

That strikes me as very interesting; Prokhorov probably didn’t realize how effective his campaign would be, even with no real platform. If he gets serious, in 2018, he may end up in a much better position to take the Presidency, if he can successfully mobilize a political machine behind him.

Voter fraud was again widely reported. It’s hard to act too shocked.

And you think OUR democracy has problems…

For the first time, some election workers in Russia have actually come out and admitted that numbers were falsified in the recent Duma (parliamentary) elections.

It looks like they use, primarily, three techniques: bribe officials to change results, bonuses for completing elections more quickly, and “carousel voting”, in which you bus a bunch of people around to vote at multiple places.

Perhaps the most troubling question is this: is Putin cheating only now, or has he always been cheating and he’s just now getting caught? My answer would be that his first election was legitimate, maybe even his second. He’s a genuinely popular guy for most Russians. But it’s hard to prove anything. As partisan as our politics have often become, at least the FEC does a pretty good job, most of the time.

Hope for Russia?

It’s almost unprecedented. United Russia (the Putin party) has lost the super majority it once needed to fiddle with the Constitution as much as they like. There’s an actual chance of legitimate democracy breaking out again in Russia!

Hillary Clinton has criticized the legitimacy of these elections (and so has Medvedev, interestingly enough, but for different reasons). Mikhail Gorbachev also did the same thing. Putin is furious. There are viral videos (if you read Russian, the first link has an example of one) of guys voting more than once.

Let’s take a look at the results (note: Yes, I’m sourcing wikipedia, but I checked the Russian page it cited first).

United Russia	238	77	52.88%	32,331,244	49.29%	15.01%
Communist Party	92	35	20.46%	12,594,232	19.20%	7.63%
A Just Russia	64	26	14.21%	8,689,147	13.25%	5.51%
Liberal Democratic Party	56	16	12.45%	7,659,657	11.68%	3.54%
Yabloko	0	0	0%	2,249,990	3.43%	1.84%
Patriots of Russia	0	0	0%	638,735	0.97%	0.08%
Right Cause	0	0	0%	392,507	0.60%	new part

If you aren’t familiar with Russian politics, some of the parties will need some explanation. “A Just Russia” is a Social Democratic Party, along the lines of the modern German SPD. Yabloko (Apple, in Russian) is the more traditional democratic party. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. “Right Cause” is supposed to be a standard free market party, but it’s already been shown to be relatively pro-Kremlin.

So it looks like the two big winners are the Communists and “A Just Russia.” Now, the Communist Party is kinder and gentler than the old CPSU, and most of their vote is honestly the nostalgia vote. That “A Just Russia” is number three is cause for real hope.

What does this mean in the short term? Not much. United Russia can still do whatever it likes, and either the Liberal Democrats or the Communists will probably support Putin in most situations. Putin will probably still be reelected for President next year, since he’s easily the most popular politician in Russia. In the long term, however, it could be something much more significant. If the election results are annulled and international organizations closely monitor the elections (probably the best case scenario)? It’s almost anybody’s ball game, and that’s really exciting.

The TSA is not an American phenomenon

Apparently, Turkey and Israel are using intensive security searches as a way to exert diplomatic pressure on the other. I’m not sure specifically what dispute is in question; Turkey and Israel have been, if not exactly the best of friends, at least benevolently neutral towards one another for years.

Draconian measures in security, for any country, are a matter of diminishing returns. Let’s say that 99.9% of passengers on airlines are simply interested in travel and not terrorism. It’s probably higher than that, but we’ll use that for the sake of argument. Now, that .1% is very bad news. They’d be satisfied with nothing less than complete anarchy all around the globe, Hobbes’s war of all against all writ global. I think this is the secret goal of all terrorism. See, any government that sponsors terrorism, either knowingly or unknowingly, undermines legitimate authority as an international institution. Caving into their demands gradually increases instability around the world. Even if a particular group “only” wants a change in leadership, that new leadership must either use terrorism to further its goals or risk being brought down in succession.

So ultimately, we’re focusing our efforts on capturing that .1%, regardless of motives. The average person is stupid, not a criminal mastermind. Metal detectors will take care of the vast majority of them, maybe 90% of the .1%. So, we’re left with .01% of the traveling populace with bad intentions that can get through security. The millions of dollars wasted, maybe even billions, on ridiculous security measures are to catch the .01%. It’s not cost-effective, and it may not even work. After all, as a five year old kid, I paid $5 for dinosaur insurance. And you know what? I’ve never been attacked by a dinosaur. Not even once. Does that mean I made a good investment?

I’m by no means suggesting that we should let the .01% go nuts, blow up as much as they want, etc. I have two suggestions that would help catch them, very cheaply.

1) Metal detectors for checked luggage. Print on every ticket that checked luggage is subject to search if it sets off the detector.

2) Background checks. After you’ve cut ticket prices since all the stupid body scanners are gone, add a $5 surcharge to every ticket. This charge would set up (ideally) an international center for conducting simple background checks on every passenger. You can conduct them in seconds and do them entirely behind the scenes. Link to the FBI, Interpol, whatever other databases you can. Check for aliases too.

Terrorists will still get through. You know and I know it. Committed, smart individuals can do almost anything and fool almost any security measure, and like it or not, some of them are terrorists. The best defense is the recognition that terrorism is international, not national, and that only by working together can we stop it.

The Daily Show, Civil-Military Relations, and the Economy

Loyal readers know I’m a big fan of the Colbert Report (and to a lesser extent, the Daily Show). Yesterday, Jon Stewart had two authors on his show, discussing the Wall Street financial crisis and how it happened:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera Extended Interview
www.thedailyshow.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:365829
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

[Click where it says "Exclusive" to bring up the video.]

The most interesting thing I took away from the interview was how Stewart kept lashing out at the lack of regulation of the financial system, particularly credit default swaps, and blamed the legality of these mechanisms for the crash.

Now, despite having little economics training apart from rooming with Kevin for two years and a handful of undergraduate and graduate courses, I’m not satisfied with that explanation. There will always be loopholes in laws, as long as they remain relatively complex and humans remain humans. While exploiting loopholes in the law may be ethically wrong, nothing will actually stop people from doing it unless they’re punished. I’m not ripping on Stewart for being mad about how Wall Street manipulated the laws; I’m mad too. However, I’m even angrier that there were virtually no consequences.

Fixing laws by making more laws just creates the potential for more loopholes. The more specific a law is, the easier it is to enforce, but it also creates the potential for more exploitation. In other words, more regulation won’t prevent another financial meltdown; it might even make the next one easier.

Here’s the best solution, although we can’t do it now: punish the crap out of the offenders. Peter Feaver’s book, Armed Servants, creates a model of civil-military relations that tries to answer the question: What variables primarily affect whether or not civilians and the military get along? He comes up with three: intrusive or passive monitoring, the cost of said monitoring, and the likelihood of punishment. I won’t get into the details — the book is excellent and worth a read — but you may see where I’m going here.

Let’s apply this general model to the financial system. More regulation implies more intrusive monitoring. Intrusive monitoring, in almost all cases, is more expensive than passive monitoring, i.e. letting Wall Street police itself, trusting in their professional ethics to do the right thing. Now, passive monitoring is considered ideal for civil-military relations because, particularly in the United States, there is a considerable amount of time spent training officers in professional ethics and making them cognizant of their responsibilities. It’s cheaper by far in the long run, and it works for our military, because even when there are ethics violations, the military takes care of it in-house.

I don’t know whether or not financial professionals receive comprehensive ethics training. Harvard Business School does require an ethics course for an MBA, which is an important step. It’s not sufficient, but it’s a good start. The only way to truly let business communities regulate themselves would be to have mandatory ethics courses for even seasoned businessmen, particularly since ethics regulations do change all the time. Creating an appropriate culture will probably take a very long time, so we’ll probably have to go with intrusive monitoring for the short term.

However, given the costs of careful watching over business transactions to ensure they are ethical, if there is little or no punishment, you’re burning money, and you’re better off letting the business community police itself; it’s much cheaper, and the end result (nothing) is exactly the same. The solution to our problem, then, if it’s still legal, is to punish the living shit out of those responsible.

We’ve lost one method already; letting the banks or businesses fail. This would have been the ultimate signal that unethical business practices are unacceptable — you lose your business. The next best option is to investigate those responsible, freezing their assets while doing so. We can do this for RICO cases; why not in obvious fraud cases? Cripple the businesses. Arrest and incarcerate those responsible. We probably can’t execute them, so let’s put them in jail.

Is this solution realistic? Probably not. I think too much time has passed, and we’ve already essentially rewarded their behavior by bailing them out. Now, we can still (probably; I’m not a lawyer) prosecute them for fraud, and we definitely should try that. Boycotting those responsible is a reasonable step as well. But the best long term solution is to build the business community in such a way as to make contemporary business culture willing to police itself. Make ethics laws simpler and clearer, not more confusing. Increase the punishments for fraud, including mandatory jail time in a maximum-security prison. No more minimum-security country clubs. These people essentially brought down our financial system; they’ve done more damage to more people than any other single person currently in prison. Slaps on the wrists won’t work. Fines won’t work. Hell, I’d love to decapitate them and put their heads on pikes; since we can’t do that, just put them in prison. Maybe we should just divest them of their assets and let them free; maybe trying to find a job in this climate will remind them of what they’ve done.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

A free hint to President Medvedev: when you have to go on television to say you’re in power and that Putin isn’t calling the shot, you aren’t in power. To my recollection, you haven’t said one even mildly negative thing about Putin or his policies. It isn’t like you don’t have plenty of ammo…

The more things change…

I was reading RFE/RL to catch up on the latest Russian news, and found this little gem. Apparently Izvestia*, in order to convince people not to dump on the ruble and buy dollars, has reported that the Treasury Department is taking $50 and $100 bills out of circulation. The joys of a completely state-controlled media! I’m as pro-Russian as the next tovarishch, but as Russia gets increasingly more authoritarian, the US will probably start turning away from Russia, probably faster for Obama than McCain. Russia’s also getting in good with Libya, Iran, and Venezuela by building nuclear reactors. Russia even recently sent their fleet to Latin America just to thumb their nose at the US. While I’m not going to lose sleep over it (the Russian Navy has one aircraft carrier), if Russia starts working with North Korea, well, it’s something to be concerned about.

* There’s an old saying in Russian, “In Izvestia [which means information], there is no truth, and in Pravda [which means truth], there is no information.”

Zombies and Child Molesters

Via G-Mail.

me: Greetings, Senor Jew.

Sent at 2:01 PM on Thursday

Kevin: Greetings, Comrade Atheist.  How go things?

me: Thingish.

And you?

Sent at 2:03 PM on Thursday

Kevin: Fairly well.  I just got finished with a sexual harassment and ethics refresher.  The network administrator and I tried to get the EEO guy to show the Sexual Harassment Panda episode of South Park.

He didn’t.

me: I’m sorry.

Are you, in fact, a sad panda?

Kevin: No.  But I couldn’t remember the episode with the child molestation, so I couldn’t bring that one up.

Not that I am a child molester either…

me: That’s what they all say. Except for the child molesters, who ironically are usually the first ones to point it out.

Kevin: True enough.  That’s usually how you can figure out if somebody’s a child molester.

me: Or an off-the-cuff remark “Say, you want to grab a beer after work? We’ll watch some football, tell some jokes, and molest some children.”

If it gives them pause, they probably aren’t child molesters.

Kevin: Are you secretly a detective?

me: Or they’re teetotaling child molesters.

Kevin: Those are the second-worst kinds.

me: The worst being?

Kevin: Child molesters who get children drunk while remaining sober themselves.

me: The problem with getting children drunk is that you might accidentally kill them. They don’t have much tolerance yet.

Unless you’re a necrophiliac with a preference for children, then that might be a positive.

Kevin: Necrophiliac child molesters who get children drunk may be even worse than other child molesters who get children drunk.

That’s an interesting ethical question:  is a child molester worse than a necrophiliac who doesn’t actually kill anybody?  We can assume that the necrophiliac also enjoys children if it helps.

me: I assume we’re calling our necrophiliac a simple opportunist then?

Kevin: Yes, as opposed to a maker of his own destiny.

me: Excellent.

I would call the live child molester worse.

It’s hard to scar somebody mentally if they’re dead.

Unless he’s molesting zombie children.

Kevin: Zombie children don’t count, I don’t think.

me: Probably not.

What do you think?

Necrophiliac or child molester?

Kevin: It’s really tough.  But knowing that they both belong in the pantheon of evil, I’d go with the child molester as worse.

me: I can buy that.

Sent at 2:13 PM on Thursday

Kevin: Speaking of zombie child molestation, the network administrator here is a big comic book fan and a big zombie movie fan.

He showed me a series called The Walking Dead, about a post-apocalyptic zombie-filled world.

Sent at 2:15 PM on Thursday

me: Given that zombies require brains to survive, wouldn’t a post-apocalyptic world be the worst kind of world for a zombie? Not many people left. The Brain to Zombie ration would be very low.

Kevin: It was actually fairly interesting and because I don’t own them, I do not have the stigma of comic nerd…  Anyhow, a couple of the books dealt with a power-mad town despot whose daughter was a zombie, so he kept her chained to the wall and fed her the body parts of travelers who found their town.

Zombies actually just consume flesh ravenously, but do not require it.

Max Brooks, in his definitive work on the nature of zombies (The Zombie Survival Guide), makes this clear.

me: So would zombies eat each other in a world of no zombies?

Kevin: No.  They would wander around and eventually decompose.

Zombies, in the end, can’t win.

me: The Living Dead movies seem to suggest they need brains.

Kevin: That is just a media conspiracy designed to cover up the truth and entertain the masses with ever-more-impressive feats of zombie action.

Liberals are practically zombie apologists.

me: Joe Biden DOES look like the crypt keeper…

Kevin: You can trust the son of Mel Brooks on issues like that.

Biden is too stupid to be a zombie and has too much agility, at least in terms of walking around with his foot permanently in his mouth.

me: Touche.

Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks?

Kevin: Indeed he is.

me: Intriguing.

Kevin: And considering that Mel Brooks is a noted scholar whose works include History of the World:  Part 1, it makes perfect sense that his son would pick up the mantle of scholarly thought.

me: Quite.

Would an Orthodox Jew Zombie be able to eat flesh?

It would hardly be kosher.

Kevin: It wouldn’t.  But your soul is no longer available when your body becomes zombified.  This is why it’s okay to put a pickaxe through your former parents, lover, or neighbor.

It is one of the few times in which it is socially acceptable to do so.

me: You have enlightened me greatly.

Kevin: The More You Know(tm).

me: Quite. I must be off, as I need to finish my reading on The Peasants of Languedoc. As it turns out, plagues are good, because they kill lots of poor people, thus raising the average amount of wealth per person.

Incidentally, I shall post this on our site.

Kevin: That’s one of the effects.  Because of government (granted, very local and often religious-based) regulations, real wages did not increase nearly as much as you would have figured, so one of the few times in which poor people became much wealthier was when the labor supply diminished considerably.

me: Later.

Kevin: Late-n0r to you as well, sir.