The Tyranny of the Status Quo

We live in a time of extreme political division and every day the apparent polarization grows. For over 50 years the approval rating of the United States congress has averaged less than 30%, meaning a super majority does not approve of how things are. Aside from a brief moment after the September 11 attacks, approval has never been above 50%. I suspect that, retrospectively, after the emotional distress wore off, the actions taken by Congress during that time are largely disapproved of.

It seems to me that a legitimate government would trend toward a 70% approval rating or more. The question becomes why has it been so bad for so long and what can we do about it? How did we get where we are? If we are going to consider something new, we must first understand the problems with the status quo so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

Presumed Purpose of Government

The preamble of the United States Constitution declares the supposed purpose of the United States government:
 

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
      - Preamble of the United States Constitution
 

Many people will argue that this Constitution represents what we have all agreed to and therefore should define the purpose and limits of government. This appeal to the status quo is an attractive fallacy because it relieves one of the responsibility of justifying the Constitution. For those who favor the theoretical limits the Constitution places on government, the idea of redefining the basis of our government is terrifying because there is a legitimate fear that a constitution drafted by modern politicians would decimate the rights they believe the existing Constitution protects. On this point I agree; modern politicians cannot be trusted to have the philosophical integrity to draft a new constitution.

The mere fact that many people fear a new constitutional convention is evidence that they believe their values are not held by the masses or that the politicians they elect are irredeemably corrupt. If politicians are irredeemably corrupt, then the governance structure defined by the Constitution is the structure that enabled corrupt people to gain the reins of government. If instead the politicians actually represent the people, then the Constitution is a minority opinion imposing itself on a majority. Either way those who resist building a new consensus aim to impose a tyranny of the status quo.

Lysander Spooner observed, "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist."

Given a long-term average 30% approval rating, the conclusion is obvious: our Constitution and the system of government it has established have failed. Entire books have been written documenting the failure of the United States Constitution in achieving its stated purpose. If we were to wipe the slate clean, erase all laws, and unwind all existing government organizations and start afresh with just the Constitution, how would things go? Would we not end up right where we are right now and in record time?

Given this situation it is clear the Constitution must go and with it our entire structure of government. The government no longer represents and serves the people, if it ever really did. But why did it fail? What should we replace it with? How will we agree?

The Political Party Folly

The failure of our system was predicted in the farewell address of the very first president of the United States, George Washington.

"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
-George Washington

I think it is clear from observing modern politics that Washington was right. The country has been divided in a winner-take-all system. We don't have a body of independent congressmen making personal judgments; we have a system whereby most congressmen are beholden to a political party and unable or unwilling to exercise independent discernment.

The 2020 presidential race has devolved into "orange man bad" vs "orange man good". It has become a race between dumb and dumber and between bad and worse. It could hardly be claimed that the choices presented to the people represent the most studied, thoughtful, honest, rational, impartial, and well-spoken people in the country. Given these false choices something is obviously fundamentally broken.

A political party represents a parallel private government comprised of individuals colluding to gain control of the constitutional government. Such collusion undermines the separation of powers intended by the framers of the Constitution.

One of the lessons easily observed within the cryptocurrency space is that people are tribal to the core and these tribes can form around anything you can place a label on. At a certain point everything devolves into "us" and "them". Anyone attempting to bridge the divide is suspected of disloyalty to both tribes (parties).

Politicians naturally end up more loyal to the tribe that put them in power than to the country. This is true whether they are conscious of it or not. A single tribe places people across all branches of government and the semi-autonomous bureaucracies. The effect is that the political tribes undermine the intended checks and balances put into place by the founders to protect the liberties of the people.

This is another thing we learn from governance in cryptocurrency communities: there is no such thing as a closed system. People will coordinate outside of the blockchain governance process to take control of the blockchain governance structures. They will create fake accounts, vote with other people's tokens, and collude to redistribute money from the community purse. Regardless the spirit of the laws a community creates, people will attempt to exploit holes in the algorithmic letter of the law (computer code) for private gain.

Game theory is a branch of mathematics that analyzes strategies for dealing with competitive situations such as governance. Mechanism design leverages game theory to design systems that produce the desired emergent outcome. This book is derived in part from my experience applying and testing mechanism design in global blockchain communities. A good design must not assume a closed system free from outside cooperation. You cannot "outlaw" political parties; you must design a system that makes them impossible to form in the first place.

Let's take a moment and consider some of the irrational consequences of the party system. In the early years of the United States, the vice president was the runner up in an election. Could you imagine a Trump/Hillary ticket? Since the party system polarizes the population the implied archetypical outcome would be either Lucifer/Christ or Christ/Lucifer and every couple of years it would switch. Because this was intolerable we now have a system where the president/vice president run as a team.

But why should we limit the team to the president and vice president? Why not replace the whole government with the loyal lapdogs of the winning party? Do the people really intend to put a president in charge of a disloyal bureaucracy? The common belief is that this creates "checks and balances" and forces the two parties to compromise. One has to wonder how can Lucifer and Christ compromise? How can "good" compromise with...