The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7
primary elections for Governor of Tennessee. These impressions are
not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge
I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much
as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is
see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field.
Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm
not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some
unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.
Republican Candidates
Mark Coonrippy Brown
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.)
Brown appears to be a guy running to make a specific point, not to win. I enjoy the video, actually. He seems to be a normal human being, I don't get the usual anger or superiority complex that you get from a lot of candidates, nor do I get the idea that he's trying to make emotional appeals. But without detailed position statements it's difficult to give him a good description. I'm not really convinced he'd make a good governor. "There are simple solutions for simple problems" is a nice phrase. Unfortunately, in my world, for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong. But it's difficult not to like him, for the two minutes you see of a video.
Bill Haslam
The incumbent is running on his record, which I'm not really going to judge right now. For objective information, I can say that he seems to have reasonable organizational skills, can communicate in English, and that the state hasn't utterly collapsed under his administration. He has, however, completely failed to come up with an alternative Medicaid expansion, which kinda screws a lot of Tennesseans. So there's that.
Basil Marceaux Sr.
I can only let this candidate speak for himself.
Donald Ray McFolin
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.)
Another candidate running to make a specific point, this one about special needs education. Again, he seems like a normal person trying to make the world better with whatever platform he can get.
Democratic Candidates
Charles V. "Charlie" Brown
No website, no position statements, no comments from the candidate at all. Just a facebook page full of people asking what he stands for, and with the candidate's name misspelled.
Kennedy Spellman Johnson
Another candidate with no website and no detailed position statements. Well, you can go here, but there's nothing to see. I can't say anything about this candidate.
WM. H. "John" McKamey
An actual website! With positions! Only a few, and they're very vague. (Education is good. People making more money is good.) Nothing obviously objectionable, but it's like a bare-minimum campaign, only one step up from not having a site.
Ron Noonan
This candidate doesn't even have a facebook page, just a twitter feed. Another not particularly serious candidate.
TL;DR
Out of the four Republican candidates, Haslam is the only one with a chance of winning. If you don't support Haslam, either because he's Haslam or because you don't like incumbents, I'd probably go for McFolin.
Out of the four Democrat candidates, the only one that looks even remotely serious is McKamey. I don't know why I'd even consider voting for any of the others, and they're not doing anything to convince me I should.
Slim field.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
August 7 2014 Election: US House TN-5 Candidate Impressions
Ah, TN-5. The office I ran for back in the day. I learned a lot from that experience, but that's for another post.
The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US House of Representatives, Tennessee fifth district. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.
Our incumbent Jim Cooper is running unopposed in the Democratic primary this year. There are four Republican candidates, a much smaller field than 2010. I'm sure there will be several "independent" (including third-party) candidates in the general election come November, but those don't show up on the August 7 ballot.
Chris Carter
Great quote: "Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed such a frightening distortion of Americanism and assault on personal liberty as I have witnessed in the creation and implementation of ObamaCare." Apparently the last two Presidents shredding the fourth amendment, and holding and executing Americans without trial, are absolutely nothing compared to the ACA.
Carter blames the ACA for all the evils of the healthcare world, but doesn't propose any workable solutions. Blames the deficit on Obama's "socialist programs" and waste. (For the record, the deficit reached its current absurd proportions under Bush, and has gone down every year under Obama. Don't believe me? Look up the raw numbers.) He favors a flat tax, even though that would make the deficit vastly worse and hurt the poor tremendously. And worst of all, he uses quotes to indicate emphasis!
Unfortunately this is the typical Republican candidate these days: utterly uninformed, and just repeating the Fox line whether it makes sense or not. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Ronnie Holden
I have zero information about this candidate. All he seems to have is a Facebook page, and on that page all he does is share the latest Fox meme. From that I think we could reasonably expect that he'd be another generic Republican candidate, possibly minus the communication skills.
"Big John" Smith
An interesting candidate. He's clearly very religious, but unlike much of the religious right, I don't get the usual overwhelming impression of self-righteousness from this man. My impression from his words is that he is truly humble. I don't see any specific indication that he wants to consciously impose his religious beliefs on others by declaring Christianity to have special legal status, though he clearly can't separate his policy statements from his religion.
He's also the only Republican candidate I've seen so far for any office that specifically opposes the influence of money in politics, and he seems to understand that the only way out of our deficit mess is to grow the economy. And hey, he references The Twilight Zone, which is big points in my book.
Now, it's still all Obama's fault, even though the economy collapsed two years before he became President. He totally misrepresents the Occupy movement's goals, and doesn't display much compassion for those on welfare. (No outright contempt, though, which is better than most Republican candidates.) He thinks God gave Israel all the relevant land, and opposes the existence of a Palestinian state on those grounds. And at one point he equates all of liberalism, socialism, communism, and the antichrist.
But you can't ask too much, I suppose.
Bob Ries
I'm not analyzing Bob Ries's website this time. See, I met Bob Ries in 2010, when we were both running for US House TN-5. (He lost the primary to David Hall, so we weren't directly opposed.) We spoke for some time about one thing and another, and I came to the definite conclusion that he was not someone I would want in Congress. I won't go into more details; it was four years ago, and there's just no need to pick on the man. But I can't recommend voting for Bob Ries.
Jim Cooper
If you're voting in the Democratic primary, it really doesn't matter what I say here, because you've only got one candidate! But for completeness, his website is above.
He's got a good list of issue statements, including intellectual property, wonder of wonders. (I'm not 100% convinced he's got a good policy, but at least he's aware of the issue, and claims to strive for balance.) And I appreciate the fact that he has links scattered throughout his text; a familiar style! Cooper has a 65% match rating with me on POPVOX, which is twice what either of our Senators get. If Cooper wins, I won't be terribly disappointed.
The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US House of Representatives, Tennessee fifth district. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.
Our incumbent Jim Cooper is running unopposed in the Democratic primary this year. There are four Republican candidates, a much smaller field than 2010. I'm sure there will be several "independent" (including third-party) candidates in the general election come November, but those don't show up on the August 7 ballot.
Chris Carter
Great quote: "Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed such a frightening distortion of Americanism and assault on personal liberty as I have witnessed in the creation and implementation of ObamaCare." Apparently the last two Presidents shredding the fourth amendment, and holding and executing Americans without trial, are absolutely nothing compared to the ACA.
Carter blames the ACA for all the evils of the healthcare world, but doesn't propose any workable solutions. Blames the deficit on Obama's "socialist programs" and waste. (For the record, the deficit reached its current absurd proportions under Bush, and has gone down every year under Obama. Don't believe me? Look up the raw numbers.) He favors a flat tax, even though that would make the deficit vastly worse and hurt the poor tremendously. And worst of all, he uses quotes to indicate emphasis!
Unfortunately this is the typical Republican candidate these days: utterly uninformed, and just repeating the Fox line whether it makes sense or not. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Ronnie Holden
I have zero information about this candidate. All he seems to have is a Facebook page, and on that page all he does is share the latest Fox meme. From that I think we could reasonably expect that he'd be another generic Republican candidate, possibly minus the communication skills.
"Big John" Smith
An interesting candidate. He's clearly very religious, but unlike much of the religious right, I don't get the usual overwhelming impression of self-righteousness from this man. My impression from his words is that he is truly humble. I don't see any specific indication that he wants to consciously impose his religious beliefs on others by declaring Christianity to have special legal status, though he clearly can't separate his policy statements from his religion.
He's also the only Republican candidate I've seen so far for any office that specifically opposes the influence of money in politics, and he seems to understand that the only way out of our deficit mess is to grow the economy. And hey, he references The Twilight Zone, which is big points in my book.
Now, it's still all Obama's fault, even though the economy collapsed two years before he became President. He totally misrepresents the Occupy movement's goals, and doesn't display much compassion for those on welfare. (No outright contempt, though, which is better than most Republican candidates.) He thinks God gave Israel all the relevant land, and opposes the existence of a Palestinian state on those grounds. And at one point he equates all of liberalism, socialism, communism, and the antichrist.
But you can't ask too much, I suppose.
Bob Ries
I'm not analyzing Bob Ries's website this time. See, I met Bob Ries in 2010, when we were both running for US House TN-5. (He lost the primary to David Hall, so we weren't directly opposed.) We spoke for some time about one thing and another, and I came to the definite conclusion that he was not someone I would want in Congress. I won't go into more details; it was four years ago, and there's just no need to pick on the man. But I can't recommend voting for Bob Ries.
Jim Cooper
If you're voting in the Democratic primary, it really doesn't matter what I say here, because you've only got one candidate! But for completeness, his website is above.
He's got a good list of issue statements, including intellectual property, wonder of wonders. (I'm not 100% convinced he's got a good policy, but at least he's aware of the issue, and claims to strive for balance.) And I appreciate the fact that he has links scattered throughout his text; a familiar style! Cooper has a 65% match rating with me on POPVOX, which is twice what either of our Senators get. If Cooper wins, I won't be terribly disappointed.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
August 7 2014 Election: Senate Candidate Impressions
The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US Senator from Tennessee. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.
US Senate, Republican Primary
Christian Agnew
This candidate apparently believes that English should be the official language of the United States, but doesn't have very high standards about its use. Putting aside my revulsion at poor use of language, I like that he actually tries to explain that Common Core is a voluntary state-led program, not a federal mandate. Other than that, his positions are generic Republican: blame our problems on the ACA, illegal immigrants, welfare abuse, foreign aid, and deficit spending. Also, don't take his guns. Nothing particularly interesting here.
Lamar Alexander
Our incumbent has the usual disease of incumbents: they often don't state their ideas or positions, they just run on their record and how much money they've raised.. The specifics of Alexander's record he chooses to point out are wholly unremarkable: balance the budget (how?), repeal the ACA (and replace it with what?), and oppose Obama at every possible turn regardless of what he's actually doing.
Joe Carr
Again, a generic Republican candidate. He'll defend our rights to own guns, number one issue. Makes me feel better, I can't go a week without someone trying to take my guns away. Number two issue, government waste, specifically like ACA and TARP. Reasonable people can differ over whether spending $180 billion a year to provide insurance to the poor is wasteful, but TARP was a loan that was 97% paid back and certainly saved thousands of jobs, so calling it wasteful is just misinformed.
And apparently we need to both lower taxes (specifically on the rich, since he supports a flat tax) and balance the budget. Where does he plan to cut over a trillion a year out of spending? No clue, but you can not do that without gutting at least one of the military, social security, or medicare. There isn't enough spending elsewhere to do it. Carr gives the usual Republican buzzwords, with the usual complete lack of thoughtfulness or detail.
George Shea Flinn
Few stated positions, and seems to focus most of his attention on the ACA, with a little to spare for border security. To his credit, he proposes a semi-detailed alternative to the ACA, and seems to have some clue what he's talking about, unlike most Republican candidates. He does repeat some of the more bizarre talking points, though. (Where in the ACA does it give Washington control of my medical decisions, again?) I find his lack of position statements on other issues unfortunate. One of the few is a statement on Iraq and Israel which, frankly, shows very little knowledge of the history or the situation. Dr. Flinn is clearly capable of some degree of independent thought, which is better than most candidates do, but he's still pretty isolated from broader reality.
John D King
Once again, the usual three or four Republican position statements, though in this case clearly typed by the candidate himself. Quite a bit of misinformation, and there are zero details as to how he would improve the lives of Americans. Except the rich, who of course pay too much in taxes. Entitlement programs (first among which are Social Security and Medicare) are "ridiculous", and clearly to be eliminated, presumably to afford those tax cuts for the rich.
One of his more amusing claims is that a "huge portion" of our deficit spending goes to foreign aid. Try $50 billion out of a $900 billion deficit. Also, he says that much of this money goes to places where "the majority of their population would like nothing more than to destroy us and our way of life". I'd love to know where those places are; most people just want to be left alone, no matter where they are. And $3b of that aid goes to Israel every year. Does he want to cut that? Unclear, but I doubt it.
Brenda S Lenard
Lots of position statements. (The first is on the Constitution, and the text is amusingly copied straight from whitehouse.gov. Not sure what the significance of that is.) She's all about how horrible the economy is, but doesn't propose any particularly novel or useful ideas: lower taxes, reduced regulation, cut spending. (I'm totally unclear how that last one is supposed to create jobs, but it's a talking point, it doesn't have to make sense.) Her education platform says that schools must operate in transparency, but there's no indication of what that means on a practical level, or how it would help anything. On every issue, there are nice little essays, and relatively little misinformation compared to other candidates. But there are no details, and it's all based around the usual Republican talking points. No apparent original thoughts.
This is getting boring.
Erin Kent Magee
Now this guy has original thoughts! He wants to "win the war on terrorism" by "dispatching the National Guard to control crowds of dissidents", and by "designating Radical Islam as a cult (not a religion entitled to protection under the 1st Amendment)". He's all about the second amendment, but the first? Gut it. I suppose the message of this candidacy is that, yes, Republican candidates could be worse.
So there we have it, a wholly unremarkable field of candidates. I don't expect any one of them would act particularly different than any other. Out of them, I'd probably pick Lenard or Flinn. They at least have repeated fewer of the usual lies.
US Senate, Democrat Primary
Terry Adams
Well-written policy statements on a decent number of issues. Many are typical Democrat talking points. But they're real Democrat talking points, not the caricatures Republicans set up. If your only picture of what Democrats stand for is "bigger government, more taxes", look at this guy's site. It's a good example of reality. He's also got some original ideas which, on the surface, make some sense. He supports an amendment to get money out of politics, which none of the Republican candidates mentioned. I'm not jumping up and down saying he's the next Jed Bartlet, but best guess is that I'd feel good with Terry Adams as Senator from Tennessee.
Gordon Ball
This candidate also has well-written policy statements on a wide range of issues. His includes a brief and reasonable statement in favor of the Second Amendment, which is unusual for a Democrat. He both praises and criticizes the ACA, meaning he's capable of nuanced thought. This is another candidate I'd feel good about winning.
Larry Crim
Mr. Crim seems to have a lot of ideas, but his website is almost incomprehensible. I'm not going to lie to you and say I read it all. I don't see anything I strongly object to, but just the fact that his campaign website is that badly organized doesn't speak well to his organizational skills or support.
Gary Gene Davis
Again, this website is very difficult to read, and I don't see much that resembles policy statements or ideas.
The Tennessean provided a decent summary of the Democratic candidates a couple weeks ago.
TL;DR
The Republican candidates are mostly interchangeable, and often frighteningly ignorant. Which candidate you should vote for depends, of course, entirely on your priorities. Unfortunately, our broken voting system doesn't let you express honest opinions due to strategic concerns. If you want to vote for the Republican candidate who I'd be most likely to like, I'd go for probably George Flinn or Brenda Lenard. If you want to defeat the incumbent at all costs, Crim appears to be the frontrunner. And if you're afraid of Crim because he's Tea Party (not an unreasonable position), clearly you should vote for Alexander. For me, I'd probably vote Alexander in this primary.
For Democracts, it's a toss-up between Adams and Ball. I can't tell enough difference between them from their websites to decide between them. If this is your dilemma, I'm afraid you'll need to gather more data. Either seems like they would do a fine job.
I'm disappointed that there is little or no mention by anyone about the abuses of the NSA. One Republican candidate may have mentioned it briefly, but only just. Clearly both parties are completely on board with the destruction of our privacy rights.
US Senate, Republican Primary
Christian Agnew
This candidate apparently believes that English should be the official language of the United States, but doesn't have very high standards about its use. Putting aside my revulsion at poor use of language, I like that he actually tries to explain that Common Core is a voluntary state-led program, not a federal mandate. Other than that, his positions are generic Republican: blame our problems on the ACA, illegal immigrants, welfare abuse, foreign aid, and deficit spending. Also, don't take his guns. Nothing particularly interesting here.
Lamar Alexander
Our incumbent has the usual disease of incumbents: they often don't state their ideas or positions, they just run on their record and how much money they've raised.. The specifics of Alexander's record he chooses to point out are wholly unremarkable: balance the budget (how?), repeal the ACA (and replace it with what?), and oppose Obama at every possible turn regardless of what he's actually doing.
Joe Carr
Again, a generic Republican candidate. He'll defend our rights to own guns, number one issue. Makes me feel better, I can't go a week without someone trying to take my guns away. Number two issue, government waste, specifically like ACA and TARP. Reasonable people can differ over whether spending $180 billion a year to provide insurance to the poor is wasteful, but TARP was a loan that was 97% paid back and certainly saved thousands of jobs, so calling it wasteful is just misinformed.
And apparently we need to both lower taxes (specifically on the rich, since he supports a flat tax) and balance the budget. Where does he plan to cut over a trillion a year out of spending? No clue, but you can not do that without gutting at least one of the military, social security, or medicare. There isn't enough spending elsewhere to do it. Carr gives the usual Republican buzzwords, with the usual complete lack of thoughtfulness or detail.
George Shea Flinn
Few stated positions, and seems to focus most of his attention on the ACA, with a little to spare for border security. To his credit, he proposes a semi-detailed alternative to the ACA, and seems to have some clue what he's talking about, unlike most Republican candidates. He does repeat some of the more bizarre talking points, though. (Where in the ACA does it give Washington control of my medical decisions, again?) I find his lack of position statements on other issues unfortunate. One of the few is a statement on Iraq and Israel which, frankly, shows very little knowledge of the history or the situation. Dr. Flinn is clearly capable of some degree of independent thought, which is better than most candidates do, but he's still pretty isolated from broader reality.
John D King
Once again, the usual three or four Republican position statements, though in this case clearly typed by the candidate himself. Quite a bit of misinformation, and there are zero details as to how he would improve the lives of Americans. Except the rich, who of course pay too much in taxes. Entitlement programs (first among which are Social Security and Medicare) are "ridiculous", and clearly to be eliminated, presumably to afford those tax cuts for the rich.
One of his more amusing claims is that a "huge portion" of our deficit spending goes to foreign aid. Try $50 billion out of a $900 billion deficit. Also, he says that much of this money goes to places where "the majority of their population would like nothing more than to destroy us and our way of life". I'd love to know where those places are; most people just want to be left alone, no matter where they are. And $3b of that aid goes to Israel every year. Does he want to cut that? Unclear, but I doubt it.
Brenda S Lenard
Lots of position statements. (The first is on the Constitution, and the text is amusingly copied straight from whitehouse.gov. Not sure what the significance of that is.) She's all about how horrible the economy is, but doesn't propose any particularly novel or useful ideas: lower taxes, reduced regulation, cut spending. (I'm totally unclear how that last one is supposed to create jobs, but it's a talking point, it doesn't have to make sense.) Her education platform says that schools must operate in transparency, but there's no indication of what that means on a practical level, or how it would help anything. On every issue, there are nice little essays, and relatively little misinformation compared to other candidates. But there are no details, and it's all based around the usual Republican talking points. No apparent original thoughts.
This is getting boring.
Erin Kent Magee
Now this guy has original thoughts! He wants to "win the war on terrorism" by "dispatching the National Guard to control crowds of dissidents", and by "designating Radical Islam as a cult (not a religion entitled to protection under the 1st Amendment)". He's all about the second amendment, but the first? Gut it. I suppose the message of this candidacy is that, yes, Republican candidates could be worse.
So there we have it, a wholly unremarkable field of candidates. I don't expect any one of them would act particularly different than any other. Out of them, I'd probably pick Lenard or Flinn. They at least have repeated fewer of the usual lies.
US Senate, Democrat Primary
Terry Adams
Well-written policy statements on a decent number of issues. Many are typical Democrat talking points. But they're real Democrat talking points, not the caricatures Republicans set up. If your only picture of what Democrats stand for is "bigger government, more taxes", look at this guy's site. It's a good example of reality. He's also got some original ideas which, on the surface, make some sense. He supports an amendment to get money out of politics, which none of the Republican candidates mentioned. I'm not jumping up and down saying he's the next Jed Bartlet, but best guess is that I'd feel good with Terry Adams as Senator from Tennessee.
Gordon Ball
This candidate also has well-written policy statements on a wide range of issues. His includes a brief and reasonable statement in favor of the Second Amendment, which is unusual for a Democrat. He both praises and criticizes the ACA, meaning he's capable of nuanced thought. This is another candidate I'd feel good about winning.
Larry Crim
Mr. Crim seems to have a lot of ideas, but his website is almost incomprehensible. I'm not going to lie to you and say I read it all. I don't see anything I strongly object to, but just the fact that his campaign website is that badly organized doesn't speak well to his organizational skills or support.
Gary Gene Davis
Again, this website is very difficult to read, and I don't see much that resembles policy statements or ideas.
The Tennessean provided a decent summary of the Democratic candidates a couple weeks ago.
TL;DR
The Republican candidates are mostly interchangeable, and often frighteningly ignorant. Which candidate you should vote for depends, of course, entirely on your priorities. Unfortunately, our broken voting system doesn't let you express honest opinions due to strategic concerns. If you want to vote for the Republican candidate who I'd be most likely to like, I'd go for probably George Flinn or Brenda Lenard. If you want to defeat the incumbent at all costs, Crim appears to be the frontrunner. And if you're afraid of Crim because he's Tea Party (not an unreasonable position), clearly you should vote for Alexander. For me, I'd probably vote Alexander in this primary.
For Democracts, it's a toss-up between Adams and Ball. I can't tell enough difference between them from their websites to decide between them. If this is your dilemma, I'm afraid you'll need to gather more data. Either seems like they would do a fine job.
I'm disappointed that there is little or no mention by anyone about the abuses of the NSA. One Republican candidate may have mentioned it briefly, but only just. Clearly both parties are completely on board with the destruction of our privacy rights.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Infrastructure Megaprojects: Introduction
The US economy tanked in 2007, and is still lagging significantly behind where we would all like it to be. Right now, I don't want to bicker and argue about who did what to whom. I don't want to argue about what can best be done about it. I'm happy to do those things, just at another time.
Right now, I want to argue from an assumption, as a thought experiment. It's often said that government spending on infrastructure construction is a good way to kickstart the economy. It puts people to work, and the net gains eventually outweigh the immediate costs. So let's start from that premise. If government spending on infrastructure is good stimulus for the economy, what form should that infrastructure spending take?
Oh, there's the obvious collapsing bridges and dams, things that need fixing. But what new could we do? What one-time projects would make the United States a better place to live for centuries to come, like rural electrification or the interstates did? What can we build that is, in a word, awesome?
I'll be talking about several possibilities in a series of posts. Each post will be one answer to the question, "What do people need?"
Right now, I want to argue from an assumption, as a thought experiment. It's often said that government spending on infrastructure construction is a good way to kickstart the economy. It puts people to work, and the net gains eventually outweigh the immediate costs. So let's start from that premise. If government spending on infrastructure is good stimulus for the economy, what form should that infrastructure spending take?
Oh, there's the obvious collapsing bridges and dams, things that need fixing. But what new could we do? What one-time projects would make the United States a better place to live for centuries to come, like rural electrification or the interstates did? What can we build that is, in a word, awesome?
I'll be talking about several possibilities in a series of posts. Each post will be one answer to the question, "What do people need?"
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
¿Dónde está mi burrito?
I have to take a break from politics to talk about something that's really serious: who is making the menu decisions at Taco Bell?
Like most people, I have a few favorite menu items. But they keep leaving! Cheesy bean and rice burrito, gone! Beefy crunch burrito, gone! Chili cheese burrito, gone! Volcano burrito, gone! Limeade sparkler, gone!
A couple more menu items, and I could start a restaurant just of the things Taco Bell has lost...
Like most people, I have a few favorite menu items. But they keep leaving! Cheesy bean and rice burrito, gone! Beefy crunch burrito, gone! Chili cheese burrito, gone! Volcano burrito, gone! Limeade sparkler, gone!
A couple more menu items, and I could start a restaurant just of the things Taco Bell has lost...
Monday, July 21, 2014
Marsha Blackburn: On Municipal Broadband
Ms. Blackburn issued this press release recently. I'd like to ask the Congresswoman to clarify something. You are defending the states' rights, yes. But which rights, specifically? The rights to override the will of the people of a city or town? You claim to be in favor of small, local government. Yet the policies you are defending seem inconsistent with this. You are, in fact, defending the power of central government over local, and using the power of an even more remote government to do it.
I'd like to better understand how this is consistent. Why is it acceptable for the states to dictate terms to the people of their cities? I understand the legal structures are different, but that's a technicality and a cop-out. As a matter of principle, why should a remote central government be able to override the will of a local government in this one case, but not in others?
Please understand, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal. Others may put me in such boxes, but when it comes to politics, I'm simply an engineer. I want things to work, I want to fix broken things. And like any observer, I can tell you that our broadband market is broken. Internet speeds in Tennessee are slow, service is abusive, and there is no market of competition to drive innovation. This map shows that the majority of the state doesn't even have two broadband options; you need far more than that to drive a free market! Further, Comcast is a clear example of regulatory capture and the continuous legalized bribery of our elected officials. We live in a government-sponsored monopoly, not a free market.
So if we live in a government-sponsored monopoly, what's so wrong with admitting that, and doing it right? It's what we do with every other utility, and they operate quite well. Several municipalities in Tennessee built local fiber networks before 2008, when the state legislature was 'lobbied' into making building such networks much harder. All these networks provide vastly better speeds than the state or national average. Some are among the fastest in the country, literally a hundred times faster than the rest of the state, and remain a point of technological pride for our state.
In short, municipal broadband works. Or at least it has some hope of working. It's perfectly clear that our current corporate ISPs don't, and never will.
So I have to ask, Ms. Blackburn, why are you fighting so hard to maintain the status quo? Right now, most of our state is locked into an unresponsive, dysfunctional monopoly, with no hope of competition to improve our lot. Those cities that have acted to improve the situation have succeeded; their citizens have better lives and more options. Yet your actions work to lock us into the same dysfunctional system. Why? What matter of principle could possibly justify such a hurtful act towards the people you were elected to serve? It's clearly not about central government vs. local government, we've established that already.
So what is it? Even if your constituents don't deserve modern utilities, they at least deserve an answer from you on this.
I'd like to better understand how this is consistent. Why is it acceptable for the states to dictate terms to the people of their cities? I understand the legal structures are different, but that's a technicality and a cop-out. As a matter of principle, why should a remote central government be able to override the will of a local government in this one case, but not in others?
Please understand, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal. Others may put me in such boxes, but when it comes to politics, I'm simply an engineer. I want things to work, I want to fix broken things. And like any observer, I can tell you that our broadband market is broken. Internet speeds in Tennessee are slow, service is abusive, and there is no market of competition to drive innovation. This map shows that the majority of the state doesn't even have two broadband options; you need far more than that to drive a free market! Further, Comcast is a clear example of regulatory capture and the continuous legalized bribery of our elected officials. We live in a government-sponsored monopoly, not a free market.
So if we live in a government-sponsored monopoly, what's so wrong with admitting that, and doing it right? It's what we do with every other utility, and they operate quite well. Several municipalities in Tennessee built local fiber networks before 2008, when the state legislature was 'lobbied' into making building such networks much harder. All these networks provide vastly better speeds than the state or national average. Some are among the fastest in the country, literally a hundred times faster than the rest of the state, and remain a point of technological pride for our state.
In short, municipal broadband works. Or at least it has some hope of working. It's perfectly clear that our current corporate ISPs don't, and never will.
So I have to ask, Ms. Blackburn, why are you fighting so hard to maintain the status quo? Right now, most of our state is locked into an unresponsive, dysfunctional monopoly, with no hope of competition to improve our lot. Those cities that have acted to improve the situation have succeeded; their citizens have better lives and more options. Yet your actions work to lock us into the same dysfunctional system. Why? What matter of principle could possibly justify such a hurtful act towards the people you were elected to serve? It's clearly not about central government vs. local government, we've established that already.
So what is it? Even if your constituents don't deserve modern utilities, they at least deserve an answer from you on this.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Failed States
The modern state is based on territorial integrity. Here's the cartoon version: we divide the world into regions with clear borders, each region with a government. The government of a region are the only ones allowed to use force in that region. If the government of a region uses force on another region, that's called a war.
But what if a government can't control its territory? What if the people of a region use force on another, without the permission of the government? This describes much of the conflict in the world today. Huge swaths of the world are failed states, areas where no government has control.
Think about what that means for a moment. Civilization as we live it is only possible because life is made predictable. The government guarantees my security, unless you do certain pre-defined things. That allows me to gather
wealth without worry about it being stolen by someone with more guns than I have. That in turn allows me to have leisure time, lets me invest, get an
education, and not spend every waking moment worrying about bandits taking everything I have and killing me. Removal of chaos improves quality of life. Failed states lack that guarantee.
Further, what if a group in a failed state wants to attack another state? Terrorists, militias, drug cartels, such entities threaten other states. But the usual means of handling such situations don't apply. If you don't like what the Taliban is doing (and who does?), negotiating with the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan is pointless. They don't control the relevant territory. Similarly, the Palestinian government may not be able to prevent all Palestinians from attacking Israel, and the Mexican government clearly can not shut down the cartels shipping drugs into the United States.
The concept of failed states is one of the great geopolitical problems of this century. Their very existence challenges all the rules we've put in place to deal with states. But how do you change it? If other armed groups can challenge the local government, how can this be resolved? Someone has to end up the biggest fish the pond again. Either the borders are redrawn, or one side defeats the other and takes the whole state. The former is usually the kind of civil war that ends up in tens of thousands of deaths, and the latter rarely ends in functioning democracy. Dictatorship may be stable in the short term, but in the long term you can't deprive a populace of what they want forever. Trying leads right back to violence. So unless your state lucks out and gets a particularly enlightened dictator who can successfully transition to democracy, you end up with a succession of dictators and civil wars. (See the above map.)
Surely there must be a better option.
For a region to be successful, security of the people in that region must be guaranteed in a predictable fashion. That guarantee can only be made by a stable power with definite rules, and sufficient force to take on all potential adversaries. In short, an area needs rules and force. Either can be developed internally or externally. Failed states, by definition, can not control their territory with internal force.
What about external force? Well, if an external force enters your country and starts enforcing its own rules, we typically call that an invasion and colonization by an empire. Frowned upon these days. But what if an external force enters a country and starts enforcing local rules? What if you've got (at least by historical standards) a quasi-benevolent empire? That would be state-building. We've seen this happen in a number of cases, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it's a dismal failure, but it can work.
So take the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany after the second World War, probably our most successful endeavor. I suggest the world should use that example as a base for a long-term project to restore civilization to these chaos regions, one small sliver at a time. It may take centuries, but it may be the only way to build up a failed state into a successful one that can stand on its own. Someone comes in, kicks out all the armed gangs from one city or small region, and secures the area long enough for economy and infrastructure to be put in place.
So how would this happen? If there's enough government to ask, we can go by invitation. ("Hey, we'd like to come spend a hundred billion dollars fixing your country for the next three generations. Good by you?") But if there's no government to negotiate with, it has to be by external consensus. The UN would have to agree that a region would benefit from (mostly) peaceful intervention, and there would need to be evidence that the local populace would respond positively. Only then would intervention be considered.
But who provides the force? There are two prongs to this, after all. You send in construction workers and educators and bureaucrats and whoever else it takes to train a populace to modernize. But you also have to send military force, because security was the original concern. That force could operate under the UN, but they don't have much of an army. The actual force is most likely provided by nearby neighbors able to spare the materiel. This runs into problems with areas the size of Africa, where it would take literally centuries to work from the outside in. But this is envisioned as a very long-term project.
So either we go in by invitation, or the UN gets together, declares some area to not be part of a functioning state, and takes over administration, security, education, etc. How do we get out? There has to be an exit strategy, a definite series of steps towards internal democratization, with more and more being taken over by locals over the years. There have to be definite metrics and milestones, constant improvement every year, or people will stop believing in the goals. It will start to look like an unending occupation.
Now, there are a lot of failed states. How do we pick one? The one with the richest neighbor? The one with the most destabilizing impact on the world? North Korea is an obvious choice by those criteria, being close to South Korea, China, and Japan. But good luck with that! Haiti is another obvious choice, being practically on the USA's doorstep. Or perhaps the US and Europe should go for broke and fix Somalia, which has been near the top of the list since anyone started keeping track.
Okay, so this is crazy. I know it. But think about it this way: we spent over a trillion dollars destroying Iraq, and half that destroying Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, including thousands of our own. And what have we bought with all that blood and treasure? Nothing. We are no safer. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are no safer (excepting Kurdistan, they're almost certainly better off). We could have taken that money and multiplied the GDP of Haiti by a factor of ten, and that's just by throwing money at the problem. Education and infrastructure would give vastly better returns than that. That's ten million people whose lives would be permanently improved, instead of millions ruined.
Here's my point: if we're going to spend that much on another country, let's get something for it. Let's be a force for good in the world. Let's build things, instead of destroying them.
Of course, I'm not saying we should spend that much on another country. I'd sooner see us spend it here. That will be my next series of posts.
But what if a government can't control its territory? What if the people of a region use force on another, without the permission of the government? This describes much of the conflict in the world today. Huge swaths of the world are failed states, areas where no government has control.
Further, what if a group in a failed state wants to attack another state? Terrorists, militias, drug cartels, such entities threaten other states. But the usual means of handling such situations don't apply. If you don't like what the Taliban is doing (and who does?), negotiating with the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan is pointless. They don't control the relevant territory. Similarly, the Palestinian government may not be able to prevent all Palestinians from attacking Israel, and the Mexican government clearly can not shut down the cartels shipping drugs into the United States.
The concept of failed states is one of the great geopolitical problems of this century. Their very existence challenges all the rules we've put in place to deal with states. But how do you change it? If other armed groups can challenge the local government, how can this be resolved? Someone has to end up the biggest fish the pond again. Either the borders are redrawn, or one side defeats the other and takes the whole state. The former is usually the kind of civil war that ends up in tens of thousands of deaths, and the latter rarely ends in functioning democracy. Dictatorship may be stable in the short term, but in the long term you can't deprive a populace of what they want forever. Trying leads right back to violence. So unless your state lucks out and gets a particularly enlightened dictator who can successfully transition to democracy, you end up with a succession of dictators and civil wars. (See the above map.)
Surely there must be a better option.
For a region to be successful, security of the people in that region must be guaranteed in a predictable fashion. That guarantee can only be made by a stable power with definite rules, and sufficient force to take on all potential adversaries. In short, an area needs rules and force. Either can be developed internally or externally. Failed states, by definition, can not control their territory with internal force.
What about external force? Well, if an external force enters your country and starts enforcing its own rules, we typically call that an invasion and colonization by an empire. Frowned upon these days. But what if an external force enters a country and starts enforcing local rules? What if you've got (at least by historical standards) a quasi-benevolent empire? That would be state-building. We've seen this happen in a number of cases, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it's a dismal failure, but it can work.
So take the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany after the second World War, probably our most successful endeavor. I suggest the world should use that example as a base for a long-term project to restore civilization to these chaos regions, one small sliver at a time. It may take centuries, but it may be the only way to build up a failed state into a successful one that can stand on its own. Someone comes in, kicks out all the armed gangs from one city or small region, and secures the area long enough for economy and infrastructure to be put in place.
So how would this happen? If there's enough government to ask, we can go by invitation. ("Hey, we'd like to come spend a hundred billion dollars fixing your country for the next three generations. Good by you?") But if there's no government to negotiate with, it has to be by external consensus. The UN would have to agree that a region would benefit from (mostly) peaceful intervention, and there would need to be evidence that the local populace would respond positively. Only then would intervention be considered.
But who provides the force? There are two prongs to this, after all. You send in construction workers and educators and bureaucrats and whoever else it takes to train a populace to modernize. But you also have to send military force, because security was the original concern. That force could operate under the UN, but they don't have much of an army. The actual force is most likely provided by nearby neighbors able to spare the materiel. This runs into problems with areas the size of Africa, where it would take literally centuries to work from the outside in. But this is envisioned as a very long-term project.
So either we go in by invitation, or the UN gets together, declares some area to not be part of a functioning state, and takes over administration, security, education, etc. How do we get out? There has to be an exit strategy, a definite series of steps towards internal democratization, with more and more being taken over by locals over the years. There have to be definite metrics and milestones, constant improvement every year, or people will stop believing in the goals. It will start to look like an unending occupation.
Now, there are a lot of failed states. How do we pick one? The one with the richest neighbor? The one with the most destabilizing impact on the world? North Korea is an obvious choice by those criteria, being close to South Korea, China, and Japan. But good luck with that! Haiti is another obvious choice, being practically on the USA's doorstep. Or perhaps the US and Europe should go for broke and fix Somalia, which has been near the top of the list since anyone started keeping track.
Okay, so this is crazy. I know it. But think about it this way: we spent over a trillion dollars destroying Iraq, and half that destroying Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, including thousands of our own. And what have we bought with all that blood and treasure? Nothing. We are no safer. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are no safer (excepting Kurdistan, they're almost certainly better off). We could have taken that money and multiplied the GDP of Haiti by a factor of ten, and that's just by throwing money at the problem. Education and infrastructure would give vastly better returns than that. That's ten million people whose lives would be permanently improved, instead of millions ruined.
Here's my point: if we're going to spend that much on another country, let's get something for it. Let's be a force for good in the world. Let's build things, instead of destroying them.
Of course, I'm not saying we should spend that much on another country. I'd sooner see us spend it here. That will be my next series of posts.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
If you could pass one law...
Someone on Quora asked "If you could pass a law, what law would it be?" My answer got into an interesting discussion, which I'm reposting here.
If "law" includes constitutional amendment, I would pass an amendment giving the federal and state governments power to regulate campaign donations and spending. Our democracy collapsed when the Supreme Court ruled that money was speech in the 70's.
Wolf PAC
Someone questioned why I'd want to hinder freedom of speech for groups.
I responded that every individual in that group would have exactly the same rights and influence as every person outside that group. In other words, groups don't have rights. Individuals in groups do.
Our goal is to have a stable society. The most stable society is a functional democracy, wherein the collective will of the people is expressed and executed. This is my premise.
Now, observations. Unlimited political donation gives some individuals and groups more influence than others. Looking at what happened in politics since the USSC legalized corporate donations, the will of the people has been utterly ignored by the federal government on most or all issues. This can be statistically demonstrated.
Unlimited money in politics breaks democracy, thereby making our society less stable. On these grounds alone, it should be disallowed. All other concerns are secondary.
Someone then claimed that freedom was more important than stability, and that the most stable society would be dictatorship.
Dictatorship is not stable. Dictatorships are plagued by violent rebellion, even more violent suppression of rebellion, and then state collapse when the dictator falls. Look at the entire middle east to see how that goes. At best, dictatorships give the illusion of stability in the short term. Let's not be fooled into thinking that actually translates to stability.
As an observation about humanity in all contexts, if you try to prevent people from getting what they want, they will fight. Democracy gives people what they want. That's why it's stable, at least within the bounds of what's possible given uncontrollable circumstances.
"Freedom" is an abstract buzzword that many use without conveying useful information. Drop the language, and look at what actually happens. Okay, so I'm not prevented from buying elections, and some claim that that fact makes me free. But what does it make everyone else? It makes them my slave, because I just bought the government! What you're describing as freedom is actually disenfranchisement and slavery of the poor. There's no freedom about it!
In fact, let's go there. Compare it to slavery. People were once free to own other people. That freedom was removed. Slaveholders were made less free. Was that wrong? Of course not, because in so doing, other people were made more free.
No liberties are absolute. They're all games of balance between one person's desires and another's. I'm suggesting everyone should have equal influence over their government, which is the fundamental concept of America. To suggest that campaign donations should be unlimited is to take that premise and throw it out, so the rich have more influence than the poor.
I understand reverence for the Bill of Rights. But unlike some, I also understand its place. The Bill of Rights is a tool that exists for the express purpose of protecting one principle: government by the people. If it fails to protect that principle, we fix it. The Bill of Rights is the servant, not the master.
If "law" includes constitutional amendment, I would pass an amendment giving the federal and state governments power to regulate campaign donations and spending. Our democracy collapsed when the Supreme Court ruled that money was speech in the 70's.
Wolf PAC
Someone questioned why I'd want to hinder freedom of speech for groups.
I responded that every individual in that group would have exactly the same rights and influence as every person outside that group. In other words, groups don't have rights. Individuals in groups do.
Our goal is to have a stable society. The most stable society is a functional democracy, wherein the collective will of the people is expressed and executed. This is my premise.
Now, observations. Unlimited political donation gives some individuals and groups more influence than others. Looking at what happened in politics since the USSC legalized corporate donations, the will of the people has been utterly ignored by the federal government on most or all issues. This can be statistically demonstrated.
Unlimited money in politics breaks democracy, thereby making our society less stable. On these grounds alone, it should be disallowed. All other concerns are secondary.
Someone then claimed that freedom was more important than stability, and that the most stable society would be dictatorship.
Dictatorship is not stable. Dictatorships are plagued by violent rebellion, even more violent suppression of rebellion, and then state collapse when the dictator falls. Look at the entire middle east to see how that goes. At best, dictatorships give the illusion of stability in the short term. Let's not be fooled into thinking that actually translates to stability.
As an observation about humanity in all contexts, if you try to prevent people from getting what they want, they will fight. Democracy gives people what they want. That's why it's stable, at least within the bounds of what's possible given uncontrollable circumstances.
"Freedom" is an abstract buzzword that many use without conveying useful information. Drop the language, and look at what actually happens. Okay, so I'm not prevented from buying elections, and some claim that that fact makes me free. But what does it make everyone else? It makes them my slave, because I just bought the government! What you're describing as freedom is actually disenfranchisement and slavery of the poor. There's no freedom about it!
In fact, let's go there. Compare it to slavery. People were once free to own other people. That freedom was removed. Slaveholders were made less free. Was that wrong? Of course not, because in so doing, other people were made more free.
No liberties are absolute. They're all games of balance between one person's desires and another's. I'm suggesting everyone should have equal influence over their government, which is the fundamental concept of America. To suggest that campaign donations should be unlimited is to take that premise and throw it out, so the rich have more influence than the poor.
I understand reverence for the Bill of Rights. But unlike some, I also understand its place. The Bill of Rights is a tool that exists for the express purpose of protecting one principle: government by the people. If it fails to protect that principle, we fix it. The Bill of Rights is the servant, not the master.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Moving Borders
Much of modern geopolitics is based on the idea of territorial integrity. A state has these borders, and they are not to be changed. When we invaded Iraq, our stated goal was to ensure a unified country was left behind. When countries try to change the borders of other countries, the international community freaks out, and often lots of people die.
Territorial integrity, like most political concepts, is a nice fiction. There are still border changes. There always have been, and always will be. We're naive to think that the arbitrary lines we've drawn on the map this century will last the rest of time, as if they're different from the arbitrary lines of the past.
Let's look at Iraq for an example. Why is Iraq falling apart right now? Because fundamentally, Iraq has no reason to exist as a single country. There are three major groups, all with their own interests and territory, and none of whom really have a desire to be unified with each other. (Overly broad general statements, obviously.) Iraq came into existence because foreign powers drew the borders, and it's stayed in existence by brute force of the central government. With that force gone, there's nothing holding that country together. The same phenomenon is pulling Syria apart.
Most border changes come about due to war. And war, we would all agree, is an expensive and risky proposition, best avoided. There may be circumstances where war is the best available option, but when it comes to the kinds of wars that lead to border changes, that's not generally the case. We should try to find a better general solution.
(I should say at this point that I am not, with this writing, advocating any particular instance of border change. I am interested in systems that work, and in keeping people alive, not in achieving any particular political end. This should not be interpreted as commentary on any particular revolution, war, or secession movement, past or present. If I choose to comment on those things, I will do so in an unmistakeable manner.)
There's a correlation between war and border change, but which causes which? Does the war cause the border change? Does the desire for border change cause the war? Or is there some third factor that causes both? Clearly, war is a consequence, not the root cause. In many cases, people resort to violence when all peaceful means of achieving their desires have been cut off. (This is one of the reasons why democracy is more stable than totalitarianism; you can't deny people what they want forever.) To avoid violence, therefore, we need some means for people to have what they want. It must be possible for the will of the people to be recognized and executed, even if that means redrawing the map.
Now, redrawing national borders shouldn't be taken on lightly. We can't be talking about a unilateral, simple majority, one-time vote. If secession is too easy, the world becomes unstable instantly. But the barrier also can't be insurmountable, or the pressure buildup leads to the same instability. Wherever we draw the line, it needs to be fixed, so people on both sides know what to expect, and can't complain about the rules being rigged.
Since self-determination is the principle people are typically fighting over, obviously we need to hold a poll. Suppose a part of a state wants to secede. We poll everyone inside the region in question, to find out what they want. But they're not the only interested party; we should also poll the rest of the country. (For multi-sided issues like Iraq, or areas that want to leave one country and join another, we'd need to expand this. Things can get exponentially complex. Right now we'll just address the simplest case.) We have to be sure that the poll is valid, that votes are counted accurately and cast without coercion. Uninvolved international observers are required. There would also have to be some agreement on who gets to vote, age limits, sex, citizenship, that sort of thing. There's going to have to be some serious negotiation going on before the actual vote is held.
But what are the people actually voting on? Obviously if we're talking about redrawing national borders there are an infinitude of possible outcomes, and while only some finite set of them are of interest, it could still be a very long list. There's going to have to be a lot of discussion beforehand about what possibilities are of interest, and the list will have to include the status quo ante.
That means plurality voting won't work; it's fundamentally broken for more than two ballot options. We need either some sort of ranked-choice system, or approval voting. I prefer approval voting for American elections, but in a case like this a Condorcet system might be more appropriate. However, approval voting has one significant advantage over ranked systems: approval can clearly show when no option is acceptable to a majority of the voters. That's useful information in a situation like this.
So we can hold a vote, and gather the opinions of all relevant people in a detailed and accurate fashion. What now? Obviously you can't just treat them as one big vote; the whole point of this is to give the majority in a region a way to win out over the rest of their country without violence. So we need a system for combining the two sets of preferences into a single outcome, in such a way that the votes in the seceding region are equal to the votes outside that region.
The simplest idea is to weight the regions by population. If the main body of the country has ten times the population of the area that wants to secede, give the area that wants to secede ten times the weight. Then combine all the votes into a single count. Unfortunately, the simple idea leads to some absurdities. By this standard, if a region of one person wanted to secede, it would take a unanimous vote of the rest of the country to stop them! Clearly that's not stable. So we reduce the weight by some negotiable factor. This way the people doing the leaving get more weight, but the people being left still count for something. It tends to force people to find an acceptable middle ground.
(This gets more complicated still if the area that wants to secede isn't clearly defined, and that's one of the issues being voted on! Presumably you'd have to evaluate each choice of borders with different weights, depending on who would be on which side of the line. To fully develop this set of rules for every possible circumstance is clearly impossible.)
And this is all theory. It's nice to have a mechanism that could be implemented. Making people accept it, that's a whole different problem. You can hold all the polls you want, but some people don't really care about the outcome of polls. But not everywhere is like that! If such a system were in place, how many secession movements would we see try it in more peaceful areas? How much better would it be for the central governments in those countries? After all, a successful and popular movement that's suppressed by the government makes that government less legitimate. And an unpopular movement that's clearly identified as just being a few troublemakers also helps. There's no downside.
Unless, of course, you're just particularly attached to keeping the map from changing for the rest of time. I, for one, am not.
Territorial integrity, like most political concepts, is a nice fiction. There are still border changes. There always have been, and always will be. We're naive to think that the arbitrary lines we've drawn on the map this century will last the rest of time, as if they're different from the arbitrary lines of the past.
Let's look at Iraq for an example. Why is Iraq falling apart right now? Because fundamentally, Iraq has no reason to exist as a single country. There are three major groups, all with their own interests and territory, and none of whom really have a desire to be unified with each other. (Overly broad general statements, obviously.) Iraq came into existence because foreign powers drew the borders, and it's stayed in existence by brute force of the central government. With that force gone, there's nothing holding that country together. The same phenomenon is pulling Syria apart.
Most border changes come about due to war. And war, we would all agree, is an expensive and risky proposition, best avoided. There may be circumstances where war is the best available option, but when it comes to the kinds of wars that lead to border changes, that's not generally the case. We should try to find a better general solution.
(I should say at this point that I am not, with this writing, advocating any particular instance of border change. I am interested in systems that work, and in keeping people alive, not in achieving any particular political end. This should not be interpreted as commentary on any particular revolution, war, or secession movement, past or present. If I choose to comment on those things, I will do so in an unmistakeable manner.)
There's a correlation between war and border change, but which causes which? Does the war cause the border change? Does the desire for border change cause the war? Or is there some third factor that causes both? Clearly, war is a consequence, not the root cause. In many cases, people resort to violence when all peaceful means of achieving their desires have been cut off. (This is one of the reasons why democracy is more stable than totalitarianism; you can't deny people what they want forever.) To avoid violence, therefore, we need some means for people to have what they want. It must be possible for the will of the people to be recognized and executed, even if that means redrawing the map.
Now, redrawing national borders shouldn't be taken on lightly. We can't be talking about a unilateral, simple majority, one-time vote. If secession is too easy, the world becomes unstable instantly. But the barrier also can't be insurmountable, or the pressure buildup leads to the same instability. Wherever we draw the line, it needs to be fixed, so people on both sides know what to expect, and can't complain about the rules being rigged.
Since self-determination is the principle people are typically fighting over, obviously we need to hold a poll. Suppose a part of a state wants to secede. We poll everyone inside the region in question, to find out what they want. But they're not the only interested party; we should also poll the rest of the country. (For multi-sided issues like Iraq, or areas that want to leave one country and join another, we'd need to expand this. Things can get exponentially complex. Right now we'll just address the simplest case.) We have to be sure that the poll is valid, that votes are counted accurately and cast without coercion. Uninvolved international observers are required. There would also have to be some agreement on who gets to vote, age limits, sex, citizenship, that sort of thing. There's going to have to be some serious negotiation going on before the actual vote is held.
But what are the people actually voting on? Obviously if we're talking about redrawing national borders there are an infinitude of possible outcomes, and while only some finite set of them are of interest, it could still be a very long list. There's going to have to be a lot of discussion beforehand about what possibilities are of interest, and the list will have to include the status quo ante.
That means plurality voting won't work; it's fundamentally broken for more than two ballot options. We need either some sort of ranked-choice system, or approval voting. I prefer approval voting for American elections, but in a case like this a Condorcet system might be more appropriate. However, approval voting has one significant advantage over ranked systems: approval can clearly show when no option is acceptable to a majority of the voters. That's useful information in a situation like this.
So we can hold a vote, and gather the opinions of all relevant people in a detailed and accurate fashion. What now? Obviously you can't just treat them as one big vote; the whole point of this is to give the majority in a region a way to win out over the rest of their country without violence. So we need a system for combining the two sets of preferences into a single outcome, in such a way that the votes in the seceding region are equal to the votes outside that region.
The simplest idea is to weight the regions by population. If the main body of the country has ten times the population of the area that wants to secede, give the area that wants to secede ten times the weight. Then combine all the votes into a single count. Unfortunately, the simple idea leads to some absurdities. By this standard, if a region of one person wanted to secede, it would take a unanimous vote of the rest of the country to stop them! Clearly that's not stable. So we reduce the weight by some negotiable factor. This way the people doing the leaving get more weight, but the people being left still count for something. It tends to force people to find an acceptable middle ground.
(This gets more complicated still if the area that wants to secede isn't clearly defined, and that's one of the issues being voted on! Presumably you'd have to evaluate each choice of borders with different weights, depending on who would be on which side of the line. To fully develop this set of rules for every possible circumstance is clearly impossible.)
And this is all theory. It's nice to have a mechanism that could be implemented. Making people accept it, that's a whole different problem. You can hold all the polls you want, but some people don't really care about the outcome of polls. But not everywhere is like that! If such a system were in place, how many secession movements would we see try it in more peaceful areas? How much better would it be for the central governments in those countries? After all, a successful and popular movement that's suppressed by the government makes that government less legitimate. And an unpopular movement that's clearly identified as just being a few troublemakers also helps. There's no downside.
Unless, of course, you're just particularly attached to keeping the map from changing for the rest of time. I, for one, am not.
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