Back in the waning days of the Second Millennium, politicians used to talk about “The Third Way” in politics:
[S]omething different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state. The Third Way is in favour of growth, entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealth creation but it is also in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about. So in the words of ... Anthony Giddens of the LSE the Third Way rejects top down socialism as it rejects traditional neo liberalism.[30][3]
Great description, Tony. For a regular normal citizen - like you or me - who lives in the real world, it seems very reasonable to chart some centrist compromise path between the first two ways: a prescriptive philosophy that tells us what we should do in order to achieve better outcomes than either socialism or “neo-liberalism” could achieve on their own.
But all that stuff is bullshit in the mouths of politicians though, because they are “the state” and they want to have “a major role” - it’s not just an ivory tower debate for them! There is no way that your politicians (or economist/philosophers who are in charge of intellectually supporting them) would promote an ideology that said that “yeah, looking at the Soviet collapse, the economy gets screwed up in proportion to how much idiots like me intervene in it, so we’re gonna do that less” because that’s an ideology that gets them replaced by politicians who promise that this time they’ll brilliantly manage the economy and everyone will get a pony.
In their heads, the real post-hoc justification definition is “I am part of (or aspire to be) the government, and I would very much like to wield its power in order to enhance my own power/prestige, but the recent titanic worldwide collapse of the ideology most associated with wielding power over the economy for politicians’ benefit has made that embarrassing. So I will pre-emptively make this fake grand compromise in order to maintain some shred of legitimacy.”
Remember, the great battle between capitalism and socialism (the two older Ways) was not over little things like “how much of the economic surplus should be redirected to which important societal goals?” it was over “who should actually control the economy?” If your compromise Third Way says “the free market is gonna do their Economy Stuff and make lots of growth and entrepreneurship and wealth, but then we’ll take some of the tax revenue and fund good non-market stuff!” then intellectually that is not a compromise between the two Ways, that is a decisive, knock-out victory for Capitalism Way, and you’re trying to hand the losing Way some symbolic scraps so it doesn’t throw itself off a bridge.
Communism (and socialism) said “the government will literally own the most important industries, employing all workers in them, and directing their goals for the benefit of the state. They did not say “oh, we’ll just redirect some tax revenue to social programs,” because they would have considered that a total loss. Rhetorically, in the political realm, yes, it is more of a compromise - politicians accepting that directly trying to control major industries is bad, but still wanting to control some stuff - but it is still one imposed by the objective victor, rather than some Westphalian acceptance of an unresolved conflict.
But today, that conflict - and the lopsided compromise that ended it - none of that matters, because the politicians who kept saying or embodying “Third Way” didn’t actually commit to the thing that regular citizens actually want: results. The key problem was the asymmetry in how you create growth and justice. “Growth” was assigned to the free market, which makes sense - the point of free market capitalism is that citizens will go about generating (and valuing it) that all by themselves, and that acknowledgement was the basis of the Third Way peace treaty. The government could mostly wash its hands of responsibility for it. So far, so good.
For the second half: justice (“social” or otherwise) - it would be provided by the rump state of the otherwise-defeated Second Way. The difference was that work would actually have to be done by politicians, either through wise policymaking or judicious executive action. The entire definition of the public good “justice” is that your citizens just “doing their thing” won’t actually create the optimal level. So it’s your job, where “you” are Third Way politicians. And that’s where things broke down, because politicians did not uphold their part.
This is not to say that modern Third Way social democracies are objectively bad places to live - they are obviously heavily outperforming the rest of the world - but the key issue is that millions of their citizens specifically can see very credible, easy-to-imagine counterfactuals where things could better, and they reasonably demand to know why they aren’t.
I can’t repeat this enough: citizens in the first world do not compare their country to others, they compare their country to what they can easily imagine their country could be. If their roads have potholes or their bodies have diabetes, it is not a rebuttal to say “but Bulgaria has worse potholes and worse diabetes, so shut up and be grateful” because your angry citizens are not voting for Bulgarian politicians - they are (considering) voting for native ones who are at least implicitly promising a hypothetical-but-reasonable world where America has less potholes and less blood sugar. You may perhaps be able to think of a certain politician (or two) who has made “the status quo is bad, vote for me instead - light on details” his calling card.
That betrayal itself has a second part, where incompetently executed (ostensibly “pro-justice”) government policies actually ended up impeding growth as well, undermining public faith in the first half of the compromise, but because government technically isn’t in charge of it, they could pin the blame on the free market. For the stereotypical example, think of highly restrictive zoning, regulations and permitting that have made building sufficient new housing (or power plants, or, or…) nearly impossible, driving costs/rents up, crippling the growth that depends on them - and most people instead blame the market or “the system" because we all still buy into the Third Way formulation of Who Is Responsible For What.
For an even better example, think of the American HealthCare System. Almost everyone believes - in contrast to the state-run European versions (yeah, there’s a huge range of actual structures in Europe, but that’s the point: Americans don’t know that) - that it is some kind of free market wild west where citizens regularly suffer and die because unregulated greedy doctors won’t treat them unless they pay ludicrous sums. Here is where normal people would show some ridiculous $30,000 medical bill for treating a runny nose and demand an end to capitalism.
But every single feature of our medical system (HealthCare is a stupid word) is regulated, controlled, subsidized, throttled or directly owned by our government. The only free market in medicine is if you see a Direct Primary Care doctor and let’s be honest, you don’t, because that’s something only weirdos do. But every time someone sees that 30k bill whose every line item (including literally, the codes in the line items and the way they’re listed on the paper) is regulated by the government, top to bottom - they blame the free market. Because there’s a dollar bill sign there, don’t you see? Whether you prefer the First or Second Way, this is obviously a violation of the Third Way deal.
I could (obviously) rant about such things for a long time, but figuring out who to blame is rarely productive. The real question is: what do we do now? Well, what did Bill Gates do when Microsoft got tired of selling Windows 3.0? He released Windows 4.0, of course! And, as well all know, that new version fixed all the problems in the old ones. So we should do the same:
Behold: the Fourth Way. It’s - uh - the blue quadrant. Maybe our branding people should make it stick out a bit more. The old two Ways are obvious with the hammer/sickle and dollar sign, but I really like how the Third Way (in yellow) turned out: a guy shaking your hand while picking your pocket. To be honest, like new versions of Windows, it is a bit… unoriginal, and doesn’t actually change much - but it definitely has backwards compatibility! But like all good software updates, it fixes a major bug: specifically the one where government not only screws up its own job, but that of regular citizens as well. The old Third Way had nothing to say about effectiveness, it just assumed that whatever methods you had for ensuring good governance in the past would continue to be applicable. But those methods have broken down, and it is primarily a communications failure. This is the failure mode in first world democratic governance. Every time you see some moronic government policy, or some failure that would be so easy to fix - this is the bug you’re encountering. This is what the Fourth Way is designed to fix.
The way democracy is supposed to produce good outcomes - going all the way back to Athens - is very simple: the government knows what voters want, they know (or find out) the best ways to accomplish those wants and then they do them to the best of their abilities so that voters see it and vote for them in gratitude. This process is so obvious and boring that no one really thinks about it any more. As you may have guessed from above - the breakdown is around the communications pathway: how the politicians or voters communicate those preferences/actions to each other. Now, you might guess “the media” is the problem, but they’re just one part of it - and indeed, one that’s more of a symptom due to our (the voters) lack of interest in having an efficient, effective voter-to-policy pipeline.
The simplest, almost-no-communication-needed version of this process is: war. If China invaded Anchorage tomorrow, everyone would want the government to stop them. Everyone would know this - all the voters, the local Alaskan National Guard, the regular soldiers of the army sent to fight them, the governor of Alaska, all the way up to the president. Everyone would also know what should be done - sure, maybe not the specific military tactics, or which weapons to use, but they would know that the general concept would involve men in US Army uniforms going to Alaska and shooting at the invaders. It would also be completely obvious that voters would judge the success of that effort and vote accordingly. We (and most other countries) have a history that led to a culture that makes this process (and the process of informing everyone about it) almost automatic - mostly because nations who didn’t acquire that kind of culture ended up getting invaded and replaced by ones that did. We don’t even really have a specific word for it - other than as part of “culture.”
Why doesn’t it work with everything else? Because on other things, we don’t have the web of culture that automatically connects the knowledge, judgement and awareness and provides the incentives to our leaders to produce results, but we do have a web of culture that incentivizes symbolic posturing about intangible feelings. So we do not get results. And that is not an accident - it is capture of the cultural problem-solving mechanism by people who want political power so that they don’t have to uphold their side of the deal.
Take the previous example: if you, the politician, can influence the culture so that you get tons of votes by just expressing an opinion on the recent invasion of Alaska - and no one withholds their votes if those opinions are wrong, or lead to losing the war - that seems way easier for you! Think of your favorite political culture war issue - doesn’t it seem like that’s what everyone’s doing, instead of actually fighting to achieve the good outcomes they claim to support? This is why politician uses concepts like “the war on drugs” because “war” carries with it all that cultural baggage of what we’re supposed to do - listen to them and give them huge budgets, mostly. But they’re wrong to say that - we don’t need to declare “war” on drugs or whatever it is we don’t like, we need to have a culture that identifies problems, their solutions and incentivizes politicians to execute them. Sometimes the problem will be “invaders” and the solution will be “declare war on them” but there are lots of other kinds problems that demand effective solutions. The part of “war” that we actually want is the part where everyone automatically demands that our government fix it effectively and quickly, and it does.
If we want to get those results, we must create the culture that demands those results ourselves. So what does the Fourth Way actually do? I’ve been writing lots of stupid words, but let’s be very simple, short and… probably just a bit silly: found a new organization. Good news: this step is already done - just now. Turns out that with culture, you can just say “I’m founding a new organization” and it’s true, like a magic word. Even in America, the regulatory apparatus can’t stop you from doing that. So, Step One: accomplished.
Step Two: a charter. This organization is half think tank, half news agency, half medieval military order, half school, half Kiwanis club, half the Government Accountability Office and one quarter reality TV show. Yes, I recognize that adds up to 325%, but that’s just because we’re three hundred and twenty-five percent committed to our goal. And what is that goal? Allow our democratic institutions to actually work, and actually deliver good (and freedom-respecting) governance.
Step Three: How? That’s all very vague, so let’s use one simple example of how it would work:
Right now lots of people are very concerned about immigration, and demand their government do something about it. Conveniently, other than a few fully-open-borders zealots or xenophobic total restrictionists, almost every American holds an actual policy opinion on immigration that is generally compatible with all the others. Yes, lots of them hold mutually-contradictory secondary moral judgement opinions like “Democrats have allowed too much immigration because they’re trying to import more voters!” or “Republicans hate immigrants because they’re racists!" but those are just partisan opinions. We aren’t going to pass a law in Congress that says “[Democrats/Republicans] have been wrong on immigration and are bad people,” but certainly that question animates a lot of the debate! But we are in the business of doing, not whining about our enemies.
So what does an effective immigration policy that appeals to the vast majority (ably outlined by the video above) of Americans actually look like? And how would this Fourth Way organization accomplish it? I’m glad you asked.
First, the think tank part: what does workable, agreeable policy look like? Incidentally, I’d be curious to know what set of “keyhole” solutions that
thinks would be most effective at preserving the benefits of immigration while simultaneously defusing antipathy towards immigration in general.Reduce illegal immigration to zero: even pro-immigration people would vastly prefer that good types of immigration occur legally and officially.
For illegal immigrants currently in the country, they present themselves and apply under the new rules below after paying a reasonable monetary fine (for violating proper bureaucratic process) that will go to border security.
Impose filters to accurately select the immigrants who will provide the most mutually beneficial exchange, with the criteria being simple to understand and available to apply to from the comfort of your home country, so that you know ahead of time if you’ll be able to emigrate, and therefore not embark on a long trip if you won’t.
Increase funding to border security to reduce unauthorized border crossings AND to detect actual threats (criminals, terrorism), and accurate placement/job matching to avoid
Enhanced guest worker program for people who simply want to work, and have no desire to become citizens, get entitlements.
Enhanced rules for citizenship-immigration, determined by democratic vote:
required to have a job, or be in a household with one
ineligible for most costly entitlement programs
some level of cultural assimilation on major issues (women’s rights, etc…)
can’t vote in elections for X years
a period of higher local/state level of taxation upon entry
Targeted acquisition of high priority professions: doctors, AI researchers, engineers, people who can help build housing. If everyone agrees that medical or housing costs are too high - then we should definitely be importing doctors and construction workers.
Second, the news agency part: evangelize the above policy, emphasizing that it appeals to the majority of Americans’ views on immigrations, AND because it’s coming from a non-partisan organization does not require having to admit that [Democrats/Republicans] were right. Then, create a website that lists that policy, uses the “think tank” data to outline the benefit, allows every citizen to post their “vote” for it, with wording attached of “… and I will support whatever local/state/national politician who ensures it’s passage”, and finally a list of those national politicians and their “on record” commitment to passing it. Then browbeat those pols with the data until it’s passed AND effectively executed.
Third, the service order part: actually assist with executing the new policy. There are lots of people out there who “want to make a difference” either with time or money, but we funnel them all into charities, foundations, internships or other - frankly, often pretend - things. We can do better, and almost all good new policies (like the above) require manpower to actually deploy. Do you care about immigration? Lots of people do. So join up, and we’ll either employ you to help you join the agency that does. Are you pro-immigration, and want people to come to the US and have happy and prosperous lives? Then we’ll get you a job working to make sure immigrants get matched with those jobs and places. Are you anti-immigration, and think we need to do more to keep out criminals? Then we’ll get you a job with CBP, doing exactly that.
So that’s it. In one sentence, it’s just taking voter wants and pushing them as quickly as possible through the democratic process, into reality. Super-Democracy, if you will. Oh crap, someone beat me to the name.
No, not them either. But it would be fun.
So how about it? Are you tired of our democratic process not working? The only way to fix that if the basic building blocks of “democracy” make it happen: you and me.
I am certainly happy to indulge in highly accurate cynicism about our political system. And I recognize that what is above sounds incredibly naive and ludicrously optimistic.
But remember, again, most things in our society actually work. If the method of making them work didn’t exist already, you’d say (likely correctly) that it would be naive and optimistic to think that it would work. But it did, via the only method for fixing anything that’s every been invented: some people sitting around saying “hey that’s a problem” and “maybe we should fix it ourselves” and “hey, this looks like a good method to do that!”
So help me be naive and ludicrously optimistic today, so that we can get solutions whose vast benefits will be ubiquitous and ignored by future generations. Okay, that was… less inspirational… than I’d hoped, but it’ll have to do. I can’t force something to be important or meaningful. You have to choose to imbue a thing with meaning; to imbue yourself with purpose. Or not, you can do that too.