Complicated or Uninteresting
it’s complicated.
In this post I plan to lay out the first draft of the platform of a new political party I’ll probably never do more to form than writing this post. My working name for it is the It’s Complicated Party, or ICP.
All political issues are either complicated or uninteresting.
Uninteresting political issues include the day-to-day of keeping things running and the detail work of wording things clearly without loopholes. I’m not saying that these interest no one, but they are not generally able to interest the body politic.
All other issues are complicated. Complicated enough that no policy is clearly correct: there’s always another side to consider, a risk of unintended consequences, a reason to move slowly and entertain many viewpoints and alternatives.
It’s complicated. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Being uncertain about things is the normal state of all people. Certainty is the the privilege of the under-informed or those who can afford to focus on just one viewpoint and issue, ignoring all others.
Because uncertainty is normal and a healthy state for anyone considering multiple constituents and multiple aspects of a life, action under uncertainty is correct, expected behavior. Make the best decision you can with the information available, and if possible in a way that lets you easily revisit the decision later once you see what the unanticipated consequences of the first decision are.
Change has a cost. Thus, while no optimal decision is ever made and a change that will make things better can always be designed, rapid changes are discouraged as disruptive to peace and stability.
Expecting a change of uncertain nature can inspiring people to postpone good action until after the decision is announced and can creating an incentive to gamble on the outcome of things to be. To counteract these negative behaviors, changes should be announced well in advance of the date when they become active, provided that such lead time does not introduce its own larger costs or perverse incentives.
On issues where our stance is based on our sense of morality and ethics, those arguing against us are also moral, ethical, rational people. On issues where our position is based on the economic and political stability of the people, those arguing against us are also earnestly seeking our prosperity. And so on.
Remember, it is complicated. Truly, irreducibly complicated. Differences in perspective, experience, and outlook cause different people to better see and focus on different aspects of that complexity. Overruling the dissenting voice is willfully abandoning the insight the have that we lack.
A bad compromise occurs when parties refuse to accept options that further their opponents’ ends and settle on something that pleases now one. It is an act of fatigue and attrition.
A good compromise occurs when parties understand what their opponents dislike in their proposals and create a new proposal that lacks those pain points. It is an act of creativity and growth.
The job of a politician is to make decision on many, many issues. The job of a constituent is to support a politician that will do so with a reasoned, wise approach. During a campaign, issues should be used as examples of politician’s approach; presumably once in office they will have access to considerably more information than they do before they are in office and hopefully that increased information will cause their unchanging approach to reach different positions on some issues. If that does not happen, if a politician has the same stance on all issues as proposed on the campaign trail, then either the politician is inept or the information provided to politicians is inadequate.