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Tim Lee

The Long Tail of Politics

Via Mike Linksvayer, I see that Nick Gillespie has a new interview with Chris Anderson. Anderson “laments that national politics has yet to become part of the Long Tail,” to which Mike responds:

The real long tail of politics isn’t about elections at all. Even if I can vote for my ideal candidate, or vote directly on every issue, at the end of the day I will still get policies approximating those of George W. Bush and John Kerry. That’s like being able to order any of millions of books at Amazon but always getting the current #1 best seller delivered regardless of your order.

The real long tail of politics is decentralization and arbitrage. Lots of people say “Bush isn’t my president.” Why can’t that be true? Declare yourself Venezuelan, Hugo Chavez is your president. It should be (almost) that easy. If that seems extreme and disruptive, at least executive power should be curtailed, for surely it is the antithesis of long tail politics. And being able to live and work in any jurisdiction should be a given.

Now, I don’t think this would work exactly as he describes it. If Mike declares himself Venezuelan and steals my hubcaps, I still want the American police to arrest him, rather than waiting for Venezuelan police to fly up and deal with it. But this is an interesting way to think about federalism. One of the great virtues of the American political system is that left-wingers can move to San Francisco or Boston and get policies they generally like, while right-wingers move to Salt Lake City or Birmingham to get the kind of government they want. To some extent, federalism allows us to have the same kind of diversity in government that we’re used to getting from the market. We don’t all listen to the same music or eat the same food. Why shouldn’t we have the same kind of choice in politics?

Of course, no matter where we Americans live, we all have to put up with the decisions of the bozo in the White House. Which is why I think it’s so important to move as much power as possible away from Washington, DC. That way, I might not be able to get the entire country to adopt my preferred political views, but I at least have the option of moving to a state or city where the majority shares my values.

In any event, Anderson’s interview is definitely worth reading.

September 24, 2006 | Comments |

  • Venezuelans do live in the U.S. and must abide by U.S. laws (unless perhaps they're diplomats). I intended "(almost) that easy" somewhat wryly, in lieu of an earnest, incompetent and irrelevant exposition of polycentric law.
  • The problem is that in our modern world, there's lots of problems that simply can't be localized.

    One of the deep problem with Libertarianism is that it has yet to internalize the Civil War, on many levels. One of those lessons: It doesn't work to have half a country where some people are regarded as *property*, and half where they have human rights. And the Founders tried very very hard to make that work, because it was such a deep division. But it tore the country apart.

    To spell it out: You can't declare yourself a Confederate, so that you can own slaves. You can't have some market choices, like whether or not to have a market in slaves.
  • Seth,

    This isn't an all-or-nothing issue. I agree with you that it's a good thing that the 14th Amendment empowered the federal government to protect individuals against violations of their rights by the states. But the fact that the federal government has a role in protecting basic rights doesn't mean that we should federalize everything. There no reason that we need a national retirement system, a national welfare system, or national education standards. Nor is there any particular reason for national laws about medical marijuana, euthanasia or marriage.

    These are subjects about which people have legitimate disagreements, and so it makes sense that they should be made at a level closer to the people affected.

    I also think it's a mistake to see this as an issue that would primarily benefit conservative or libertarian causes. To take one issue at random: in many ways, I think environmental laws would be stricter if they hadn't been federalized. California would like to have stricter clean air rules than the federal government's rules, but the federal government preempted state law when it enacted federal standards. And, of course, the Federal Marriage Amendment is an attempt to usurp the sovereignty of states in the area of marriage.

    The issue is how the right balance should be struck, and I think it's pretty clear that things are presently tilted toward too many decisions being made at the national level.
  • Seth, Tim:

    As someone working on many projects in which sustainability is an issue, not all of them in US, I will simply say that to avoid the problem of the free-rider, as some term it, or the tragedy of the commons as Jared Diamond puts it in his super excellent book Collapse certain environment laws must be international, because that is the scale of the ecosystem we all need to protect. Certain items certainly can be dealt with on a local level, but many cannot.


    Getting back to the subject of this post,
    I just got the Pirate stuff I had ordered from Sweden, to help support the Pirate Party. I know of course that they couldn't (and certainly shouldn't) win, but I couldn't resist showing those who were strong-arming Sweden into heavy-handed raids on the Pirate Bay that there were those who had had enough of things like that. A midwestern Architect makes a donation to a small Swedish political party--that must be the long tail, right?

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