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Now that the election is over, I can speak more candidly about my own candidacy, and how the amateur punditry of the blogosphere consistently fails to distinguish the substance from the ritual of politics. It is, in fact, a classic error, involving the distinction between substantive and functional rationality, between pursuing a rational goal and pursuing a goal rationally. Though some may misinterpret this post as an “apology” for a “failed” candidacy, its real purpose is to point the way toward a political discourse that looks beyond the horse race and remains cognizant of the ultimate purpose of politics: Not to run a race better than others, but to stop running in circles altogether, and actually move toward a destination, whether quickly or slowly.

Substantive rationality must always take priority over functional rationality: We must always first ensure that the goals we are pursuing are the most rational goals possible, before ensuring that we are pursuing them in the most rational ways possible. Sometimes the answer is obvious, such as in how best to use my candidacy (explained below). Sometimes it’s more complex, and involves more weighing out of costs and benefits, with less certain results.

For instance, would it have been more rational for the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats during the past two years to pass as much progressive legislation as they could while they had the chance, or more rational to try to move forward in a way which might be more sustainable? How much political capital should be invested in trying to make marginal deep structural improvements, and how much in trying to make immediate legislative improvements?

Regardless of whether a simple or a complex calculation, we must always examine both our goals, and our means of pursuing them. And we must consider both long-term and short-term goals, and how the balance struck between them affects the means by which we pursue them.

My candidacy for the Colorado House of Representatives this year provides a good example of what I’m talking about, and of the institutionalized pressures to focus on functional rationality at the expense of substantive rationality, to perform the rituals of electoral politics faithfully even if it is not the most useful thing to do.

When I agreed to run, I knew that I was running in a district that no Democrat had won in almost half a century (and even then, before redistricting made it even harder), and whose numbers of registered Democrats, Republicans, and Independents were far worse than any of the seats formerly considered “safe Republican seats” that Democrats managed to orchestrate surprise victories in (generally with the help of funding from a well-organized netrork of 527’s targeting the most winnable races). I also soon realized that even the core Democrats in my district, for the most part, were resigned to losing, and were strongly disinclined to invest any significant amount of time or money in what they perceived to be an impossible task. Finally, it became increasingly clear that 2010 wasn’t going to be a year in which a Democrat could buck those odds and overcome those obstacles.

The Jefferson County political blog Jeffco Pols (off-shoot of Colorado Pols), wrote of my candidacy that “few candidates have done less.” I responded with the following:

Respectfully, I’m going to add my completion of your statement, without which it is not quite correct: “Few candidates have done less fundraising….” In a context broader than the one to which you limit yourself, (yours) is a dramatically inaccurate statement.What I’ve done a lot of is communicating with constituents, discussing public policy issues, learning about and analyzing public policy issues, and actually working on public policy issues (currently on braiding and blending funding streams for children and families in need, as well as lobbying Jeffco Schools to implement a robust school-community partnership). I manned booths the entire weekends at Jeffco Rodeo and Fair, and Summerset, with a political toss game and “good citizens maze” that I created for kids, talking with constituents, and have walked my district as much as I have been able to. I also founded and preside over a local community organization.

Prior to and during all of that, I’ve spent my life studying social institutional dynamics and public policy issues, with the ultimate end of affecting them for the better….

I used my candidacy in what I considered the best way it could be used to advance the progressive agenda. That’s what I intended to do, and that’s what I did, with a great investment of time and effort. I did not run to engage in a ritual devoid of a realistic calculation of what I could accomplish and how best to accomplish it; I ran to have what effect I could have. And my choices were based on that calculation.

I’ve attended numerous events in which I can talk with constituents, interest groups, and those who are involved in public policy formation, was on Mike Zinna’s television and radio political talk shows (exposure that few if any first time, long-shot state house candidates manage to get), on a Spanish language radio political talk show, had three feature spreads in The Columbine Courier, and a few op-eds in the Denver Post….

Voters should vote for whom they consider most qualified to legislate, not whom they consider to have done the best job marketing himself, or who they think  (between two candidates in the general election) has the best chance of winning. I encourage the voters in my district to make their own decision based on an assessment of the relative talents and qualities of the candidates, and not have it made for them by the self-annointed gate-keepers of democracy.

Following Jeffco Pols repetition of their insistence that none of that is relevant, I continued:

What I did was to state clearly what I have done a lot of, for what purpose, a purpose directly related to running for office, though not limited to winning an election….

You say “few candidates have done less,” and I say, “well, it depends on what kind of ‘doing’ you want to emphasize….” You want to emphasize what wins elections, and I want to emphasize what serves the public interest….

To you, politics is the competition to win elections. To me, politics is the effort to have a positive influence on the world….

You equate working on developing a robust community-school partnership in Jefferson County, and working to create more effective delivery of services to children and families, and working to create a better understanding of some of the social and economic challenges that face us, (with) “driving up and down I-25,” because, to you, if I prioritize serving the public interest, using my candidacy as a platform from which to do so, rather than marginally decreasing the overwhelming odds against me in an election I had almost no chance of winning…, that is tantamount to “doing nothing.” To me, it is the most rational strategy to make some marginal improvement in the quality of our shared existence. And that, not the ritual of electoral politics, is the real goal.

There are activities a candidate can engage in that only have value, vis-a-vis the ultimate goal of improving the human condition, if the candidate wins, and other activities that have some value vis-a-vis that goal win or lose. The more improbable an electoral victory is in the candidate’s particular jurisdiction at that particular time, the more rational it is to shift the balance of investment of time and energy toward those activities that have value win or lose, such as persuasive substantive communication, community organizing, and actual policy work. Those are the activities I have emphasized, and have done so with energy and commitment. Mathematically, it looks like this:

Let’s say the goal is to produce as many units of X (public welfare) as possible. And let’s say there are various means of contributing to it: W (winning an election); O (community organizing); R (public policy research); and P (effective persuasive communication).

Let’s say that there are 10 units of time to spend on all of these means (since time is finite, this just means dividing however much can be spent on political activities by 10). Let’s say that W produces 100 units of X if successfully completed, and zero if not. Let’s say that there are four ways to contribute to the success of W: M (raising money), C (canvassing), and E (attending events). Let’s say for every unit of time spent doing M, the odds of success in W go up 4%; for every unit of time spent doing C, the odds go up 2%; and for every unit of E, the odds go up 1%.

Let’s say that each unit of time spent doing O produces 3 units of X, each unit of time spent doing R produces 5 units of X, and each unit of time spent doing P produces 4 units of X. But let’s say that when a candidate spends a unit of time doing O, it also counts as a unit doing C; and when he spends a unit of time doing P, it also counts as a unit doing E. And let’s say that no more than 4 units of time can usefully be spent on any one of O, R, or P.

Under these circumstances (which roughly reflect reality), the most rational way to maximize production of X is to run for office, and distribute your activities among C (O), E (P), and R, completely ignoring M. In other words, to do exactly what I’m doing. (The expected value of each time unit of M is 4 units of X; of O, P, and R as a non-candidate 3, 4, and 5 units of X, respectively; while the value of each time unit of O, P, and R as a candidate is 5 units of X). The issue becomes a little more complicated if by running you are displacing someone else who might have run instead, who wouldn’t have been able or willing to do O, R, or P in lieu of running for office. But that’s not the case in HD28 (no one else wanted to run, and I have always offered to step aside for anyone who did).

The value in this model that is probably least realistic is the 4% rise in probability of X per unit of M, suggesting that full time fund raising would have given me a 40% chance of winning the election. In reality, nothing would have given me a 40% chance of winning. I inflated the chances of winning in order to make it a closer calculation; in reality, it wasn’t a close call at all. The best way for me to contribute to the public interest was to be a candidate who spent my time doing things other than those that would have maximized my (inevitably slim) chances of winning.

Recognizing this allowed me not to sacrifice the real objective to the “goal displacement” of over-emphasis on trying to accomplish an intermediate goal.

(I want to emphasize, though, that many circumstances have already changed, and will continue to change, the odds of my winning in 2012, if I decide to run again. I will start out with more name recognition, with a bit of a foundation to work with, competing for an open seat, in a different political climate. If, with the assistance of others, I determine that my district’s seat in the Colorado House of Representatives is winnable in 2012, I will do everything in my power to win it).

As we all work together, here in South Jeffco and the Denver metropolitan area, throughout Colorado, in the United States, and around the world, to improve the quality of life for all people, now and in the future, we will have to balance many considerations: What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most local to the most global of our concerns and our efforts? What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most short-term to the most long-term goals? What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most superficial (and therefore, generally, most tractable) challenges to the most deeply structural (and therefore, generally, most intractable)?

These issues of balancing the focus of efforts across levels and across time, combined with the necessity of negotiating conflicting interests and ideologies, and the complexity of the natural, technological, and social institutional systems we are working with, together define the dimensions of our on-going political challenge. Understanding this, and understanding it with ever increasing clarity and precision, is part of what it takes to meet that challenge most effectively.

Buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards

Colin Powell spoke out on immigration reform recently (http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_16119612). He said what every reasonable person knows: That we have to provide a road to legal status for the roughly 12 million who are here illegally, and that we have to recognize that fairly massive immigration is still part of the life-blood of this country.

As Powell recognizes, leaving intact an underground undocumented population that constitutes over three percent of the entire population is simply untenable. Identifying, detaining, and removing a significant portion of that population is prohibitively costly, inhumane, and destructive to our own economy. The only reasonable course of action, by any measure, is to provide a path to some kind of legal status, and to make it more attractive than remaining undocumented.

Also, as Powell realizes, those millions of undocumented immigrants are fully integrated into our economy,  into our culture, and into our society. Simply removing them, even aside from the incredible inhumanity involved, would send shock waves through all three. It would undermine our economic vitality, disrupt our social systems and networks, and impoverish our culture.

Virtually everyone agrees that some kind of immigration reform is necessary. The argument is over what form it should take.

A few quick facts to keep in mind:

1) The United States has historically exploited the permeability of our southern border, and the relative poverty south of it, to create a membrane through which cheap disposable labor can pass (sometimes assertively imported) when it is convenient for us, and can be blocked and removed when it is inconvenient for us.

2) The true economic impact of illegal immigration is far more complex, and far less large, than the xenophobes contend. Most analyses conclude that there is either pretty much a net nation-wide economic wash, or a small net nation-wide economic gain due to illegal immigration, though the distribution of costs and benefits does lead to real strains on local social services. Illegal immigrants pay far more taxes, and are far more obstructed from collecting the benefits funded for by those taxes, than some people realize. Most importantly, they are paying into social security to support current retirees, but are not accruing social security benefits upon which they can draw. 

3) Human beings have always migrated away from poverty and toward opportunity, and always will. Any responsible parent would place greater weight on their children’s future than on the prohibition to cross a line drawn in the sand by historical (and opportunistic) military conflicts. To villify people for doing so is simply reprehensible.

4) The more factors of production can flow freely, which includes how open borders are, the more global wealth is produced, and, in this case, the less inequitably it is distributed.

5) We rely on massive immigration demographically, with a burgeoning retired population and a shrinking working-age population supporting them. Immigrants come to work, redressing that imbalance.

Here’s my analysis:

From a global economic efficiency and distributional justice point-of-view, the ideal is the free flow of people and goods across borders. From a global leadership and fairness in distributing the burden point-of-view, the US should be in the lead on moving the world in the direction of that ideal.

I’m both a global humanist and a realist: I recognize the ideals we should be striving for, and the current realities that force us to compromise our efforts. One of the realities of the world is that people are locally and immediately biased: costs and benefits closer to home and closer to the present are weighted much more heavily than costs and benefits farther from home and farther in the future.

I’m less sympathetic to the reactions of people who resent (though are only marginally burdened by) the unstoppable flow of people from poverty and destitution toward opportunity than I am cognizant of its inevitability. For that reason, more than any other, we need federal laws that are enforceable, and that are a reasonable compromise between who and what we should be, and who and what we are.

The history of immigration law in America is a lot uglier than a lot of people realize, more often racist than not, and still somewhat brutal in the fierce protection of what’s ours, even against the most innocent and vulnerable victims of a cruel world. It’s hard to admire that, when the vast majority in America are walking around with i-phones, and pay cable subscriptions, and live comfortably and eat well. And here’s one of my objections to some in my own party: the branch of American labor that does not recognize any international responsibility beyond protecting our own wealth against foreign intrusion is as odious to me as any aspect of right-wing ideology.

Furthermore, we are capable of restructuring our priorities, and investing in our future, in ways which will provide native-born Americans with better opportunities to fill higher-paying, more information-intensive positions in our national (and the global) economy, leaving those eager souls from beyond our borders with the opportunity to fill the lower-paying, unskilled positions that Americans no longer want. This is, to a limited extent, the nature of illegal immigration today; in reality, the demand for low-paid foreign labor exists because Americans want, and can usually find, better opportunities (and the demand for highly paid, highly skilled foreign labor exists because we are failing to educate our own children to be able to satisfy it). But to the extent that there still is some competition for jobs between those born here or here legally, at the bottom of our economic ladder, and those who are newly arriving illegally, a greater commitment on our part to robust and effective public education, and provision of affordable, varied higher educational opportunities, will mitigate this problem, by moving those already here up the economic ladder, and leaving the rungs at the bottom to those newly arriving. 

Even so, the use of immigrant labor to depress wages and to displace higher paid American labor still exists. Despite our relative wealth and comfort, the pressures and anxieties of an uncertain economy, of an uncertain future, of family responsibilities and assumptions about what we will be able to give to our children, all make our protectionist reflexes understandable, if neither ideal nor admirable. I’m not unsympathetic to the worker whose livelihood is made less secure by the competition of desparately poor people elsewhere, nor to the folks in border states and communities whose local resources are strained by undocumented waves of humanity pouring in.

But I’m a human being first, and an American second. The problems and stresses of Americans are nothing compared to the problems and stresses of those against whom we are protecting ourselves. And our mythologies and rationalizations with which we reassure ourselves that that is just and right do not in any way actually make it just and right. Furthermore, our own long-term interests are best served by including massive immigration in the equation, and creating a context in which those who enter fill positions that those who are here no longer need to settle for.

So that’s the nature of the challenge, as I see it. How do we negotiate all of those imperatives, all of those needs, all of those legitimate concerns? I don’t know. But the first step is to achieve a higher degree of honesty about the nature of the world in which we live, and the nature of the role we play, and could play, in it.

Buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards

The Denver Post published an AP story about Obama’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren, “an aggressive consumer advocate and Wall Street adversary,” as de facto head of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_16106784). This appointment is significant for two reasons: 1) It marks a continuation of the process of concentration of power in the White House to avoid increasingly difficult and lengthy senate confirmation processes associated with appointing regulatory agency directors, and 2) it is an expression of the Democratic Party’s wise commitment to preserve and continue to develop the sophisticated regulatory architecture necessary to manage the modern market economy.

David Brooks commented on the first aspect on The News Hour last night (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec10/shieldsbrooks_09-17.html). According to Brooks, this is a trend that has been growing over the course of the last five administrations. For good and for ill, there has been a gradual concentration of political power in the executive over the course of American history. The rise of the administrative state since the New Deal had led to some limited dispersion of that power (since Congress created each administrative agencies and confirmed the director appointed by the President), but, if Brooks’ assessment is correct, even that small moderating influence on presidential power has been eroded by the executive reaction to contentious confirmation hearings (not only by removing Congressional oversight, but also by shifting the power from semi-autonomous agency secretaries to, in this case, a “special assistant to the president”).

However, while many pundits and politicos are most concerned about the distribution of power, I am most concerned with the efficacy of its use. As long as enough separationof powers exists to prevent any slide into dictatorship (and it does, despite the perennial overheated rhetoric on the Right), the distribution remains an issue of the means to our ends, and the salient question becomes whether the power thus exercised accomplishes goals which serve the public interest. Since neither our individual liberties are in any actual danger as a result of the concentration of power in the White House, nor, for the most part, is the functionality of distributed competences, the question really is whether increased regulatory oversight of financial markets serves the public interest.

And the answer is: Yes. The combination of the complexity of the modern market economy and the consequences of “information asymmetries” creates an indispensable need for an increasingly sophisticated regulatory architecture. The reason for this is that in information-intensive market sectors, where some minority of market actors are close to information that is remote and inaccessible to the majority of market actors, that minority of market actors will tend to manipulate markets to their advantage and to the public’s disadvantage, often with disastrous results. Examples of this abound, including the recent financial sector collapse, the Enron-fabricated California energy crisis of 2000-2001, and even Bernie Maddoff-like ponzi schemes (which exist in abundance). The challenge, indeed, is creating and running regulatory agencies capable of keeping up with those who are closest to the action.

This is not to say that there are not defects and downsides associated with the administrative state. Certainly, it is possible for market regulations to fail a cost-benefit analysis, and impose burdens on business more onerous than the benefits warrant, costing jobs and stifling wealth production. Agency rule-making processes, however, are highly attuned to this consideration, and make necessary  assessments that offend less pragmatic sensibilities, such as placing price tags on the value of human life (since regulations that consider individual human lives infinitely valuable would inevitably lead to the complete shut-down of the economy).

The bigger problem is the phenomenon known as “agency capture,” in which regulatory agencies become “captured” by the industries they are supposed to regulate, and make rules that serve the industry’s rather than the public’s interests. This happens both as a result of political ideology and allegiances (mostly conservative presidents sympathetic and beholden to particular industry interests appointing agencies heads who represent and advocate for those interests), and organic processes (finding individuals competent to regulate information-intensive  industries generally requires recruiting from the pool of people who have worked within those industries, and thus have friendships and loyalties tied to those industries).

But the challenge of effectively regulating our complex modern market economy does not counsel a retreat from the attempt to do so; rather, it counsels renewed vigor and assertiveness in the attempt to do so. The creation of this absolutely essential, and long overdue, new regulatory agency is a step in the right direction.

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