The Human-Centered Economy

Hello, I hope that you and yours are holding up in a difficult time for the world. 
 
This past week, I spoke on a panel about AI.  I was asked, “How do we build a prosperous economy for everyone in an era of Artificial Intelligence that can do a lot of work faster than most people can imagine?” 
 
This was actually the central theme of my presidential campaign in 2020.  If anything, the trends have picked up steam.  You can see the proportion of repetitive cognitive jobs – those most likely to be replaced by AI – already starting to decrease.  44% of U.S. jobs are either repetitive manual or repetitive cognitive and thus at least somewhat subject to automation. 

Let’s say that you agree this is a concern – indeed many parents are increasingly anxious about what field to suggest to their children as tasks that were viewed as extraordinarily secure – like coding for example – may be performed by AI in the not-so-distant future. 

I answered, “The economy is going to get more difficult and punitive for everyday Americans.  Only about 35% of the country is comprised of college graduates.  The other two-thirds are in industries like retail and manufacturing that have already seen disruption due to both automation and globalization.  The question is, how do we share the bounty of all of the value that AI will generate to assist in what will be a generational transition?” 

This will be familiar to many of you who followed my presidential campaign.  I’m still chasing the same problems I wrote about in my book “The War on Normal People.“

We went through a massive disruption during COVID.  The U.S. government printed and issued $5 trillion over 2020 and 2021 to keep states and cities and the economy afloat.  This led to inflation that we are still dealing with through higher interest rates that will in turn force a revaluation of many assets in the weeks ahead, particularly commercial real estate and housing. 

Many mistakenly equate the $5 trillion with stimulus checks.  $5 trillion is about $15,000 per American.  The average American got maybe $2,000 in stimulus checks, or less than 14% of that total.  Where did the rest go?  It went to the financial system, COVID infrastructure and treatment, large corporations like airlines and cruise ship companies, state and municipal budgets, the payroll protection program for small businesses and on and on. 

When people ask me about UBI, I refer them to the enhanced child tax credit of 2021, which lowered child poverty rates in the U.S. from about 11% to 5% and had positive effects on millions of families in terms of health, education, lack of domestic abuse and every other indicator.  We discontinued the enhanced child tax credit in 2022, and child poverty shot back up to 12%.  It worked, but soon fell prey to political dysfunction. 

I still have people in D.C. working on reviving the child tax credit – if you want to help them they’re at https://humanityforward.com/. 

I’m now convinced that we will never be able to address the economic and social challenges of AI unless we first overcome our political polarization – I wrote about this in Forward.  That’s why I started the Forward Party, which is now active in 48 states with tens of thousands of volunteers and dozens of affiliated elected officials.  This week we announced a merger with the South Carolina Independence Party, which will immediately give us ballot access and recognition in a key state.  The path to a human-centered economy will not occur through either of the current major parties, but only through a political realignment that makes solving our problems necessary to stay in power. 

To the question I was asked about AI, I responded, “Look, there are a few steps.  First, make the American political system rational and focused on actually solving real problems.  Second, channel our collective resources to get the boot off of people’s throats and move us toward a mindset of abundance not scarcity.  Our economy’s now $25 trillion, or $75k a head, which is enough to address extreme poverty, and AI could make abundance real.  Last, move the economy beyond capital efficiency – where we will have more and more trouble competing - toward things like caring for others, or arts and creativity.  In other words, make the economy work for us and measure it accordingly.  Our problem now is that our economy is growing but most people are not thriving in terms of wellbeing or ability to be excited about their future.” 

My questioner liked this.  He asked, “Okay, I understand that the stimulus checks were overblown in terms of inflation.  But how do you implement a whole new human-centered economy without it being inflationary?” 

I responded, “You’d want multiple currencies.  Imagine a currency for arts and creativity that you earn every time you produce a mural or perform at a public event.  And then another one for caregiving, nurturing and tutoring.  People who pursue these activities would earn a new currency that they could trade for goods or services.  You could create whole new economies and connections that encourage people to do things that many of them would prefer to do anyway, and the inflationary effect would be limited to whatever is redeemed in a particular period.  Accruing these new currencies could be something you’re proud of publicly in a way that you wouldn’t be with dollars.” 

Some people got very excited about this, as there were a lot of creatives in the crowd.  It is, in my opinion, one of the only ways to produce human flourishing as AI performs more and more work. 

This is a difficult time.  Even in very difficult times, it’s vital to imagine what a brighter future could be and how we get there.  Without that, how ever will we get there? 

This week on the podcast I sit down with futurist and founder of the X Prize Peter Diamandis to talk about the path to UBI, democracy reform and more.  For that conversation, click here.  To be part of the realignment of our politics around solutions like Ranked Choice Voting, join Forward Party here.  

Uncanceling the American Mind

This week on the podcast I interview Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott on their new book, “The Canceling of the American Mind:  Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All – But There is a Solution.”  Greg Lukianoff co-wrote “The Coddling of the American Mind” with Jonathan Haidt and leads a foundation while Rikki Schlott is a columnist for the New York Post. 

“The Coddling of the American Mind” described three great untruths that have been plaguing young people in recent times:

      1. The Untruth of Fragility:  What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
      2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning:  Always trust your feelings.
      3. The Untruth of Us Vs. Them:  Life is a battle between good people and evil people. 

To this, Greg and Rikki have added a new great untruth:

       4. The Untruth of Ad Hominem: Bad People Only Have Bad Opinions.  If you can show someone to be ‘bad’ by any measure, you don’t have to listen to them anymore. 

This has become an – unfortunately – popular way to attack arguments you might not like, by categorizing the speaker as representing the political opposition (e.g. “conservative” or “woke.”)  Associated to this are sometimes adverse professional and personal consequences to the undermined and canceled. 
 
Attempts to cancel individuals on college campuses have surged in recent years.  In 2020 the number of speaker disinvitations, attempts to fire professors, and other on-campus responses shot up to 1,500 from 500 in 2013.  There have been 946 attempts to get professors punished during the last 8 years, which have completely shifted the culture of being a professor. 
 
This isn’t restricted to campuses.  84% of Americans think it’s a problem that some Americans don’t speak freely in everyday situations due to fear of retaliation.  And 62% of Americans did not personally feel comfortable expressing their opinions in public.  The media, non-profits, corporations and even public health authorities are all subject to pressures to conform.  “Cancel Culture is happening at such a scale that historians will be studying it in fifty to a hundred years, much like we study the Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts,” Greg and Rikki write. 

They go on, “In our all-consuming culture war, fighters have two methods of attack.  The first is going through the process of engagement and persuasion – and accepting the possibility that you might not succeed in convincing most people.  It’s a long and arduous road.”
 
“The second tactic is attacking your opponents on an ad hominem personal level – digging up things to discredit them, making them fear for their jobs, and ‘winning’ arguments simply by making too scared to say what they really think.  This latter route is much quicker.  Although it won’t actually change minds, you can surely intimidate enough people into pretending they agree with you.” 
 
So what can be done?  Greg and Rikki delve into solutions, from raising kids to be more nuanced in their thinking and treatment of others to reforming schools to reflect intellectual diversity and curiosity to keeping companies from becoming political environments.  But the essential message is to treat each other like human beings.  Indeed, Greg and Rikki detail some of the stories of people who had their lives upended by an accusation who suffer from it for years afterwards, well after most of the online mob have long since moved on.  On the other end of the social media avatar is a living, breathing human being with a family and a livelihood, which itself is a lesson worth remembering. 
 
For my interview of Greg and Rikki click here.  For their book “The Canceling of the American Mind” click here.  To get beyond political polarization check out Forward Party.  

War in Israel

It’s been a terrible time in the world as Hamas viciously attacked Israel this weekend killing hundreds of civilians in brutal fashion. Watching the videos unfold was nightmarish, a grotesque display of violence and callous indifference to human life.

The conflict will only grow as Hamas has taken over a hundred hostages and Israel has mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists in preparation for a ground operation. The U.S. has sent an aircraft carrier to the region in order to support Israel and discourage other hostile actors.

Hamas’s attack came on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and was clearly planned for months. That conflict decades ago resulted in tens of thousands of casualties and wounded in less than 3 weeks.

I fear that this conflict will extend well past that length of time and incur even greater human cost.

President Joe Biden gave an impassioned speech about America’s continued commitment to Israel. At the same time, House Republicans are engaged in a contest to determine the next Speaker and key military appointments – including two picks for the Joint Chiefs and officers leading US forces in the Middle East – are stalled in the Senate for political reasons. American institutions are sputtering and our dysfunction may hurt our ability to help a close ally in its time of need.

Lost in the shuffle right now are continued aid to Ukraine and making sure the government can pay its bills in mid-November, priorities that seemed very serious before the prospect of war in the Middle East descended and put everything in a different perspective.

The human suffering is devastating. I know people who are close to the conflict and the personal toll is clear and heartbreaking. Parents looking for family members and frantic calls that sometimes go unanswered. The comparison has been made between this attack and 9/11 22 years ago, and I think the comparison is apt; the unthinkable has been made real and the world is changed in a way that will never again be the same.

Prayers for the families affected and a safe journey home for those who are now apart from their loved ones,

American Dysfunction

This week, history was made as Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker of the House. He was voted out by a combination of 8 conservative Republicans and all Democrats at a count of 216 – 210. No Speaker has ever been removed before.

As usual, there is a Republican point-of-view, a Democratic point-of-view, and then the reality the rest of us live in.  From the Republican point-of-view, this is a small clutch of hardliners using their leverage to oust a Speaker who was insufficiently ideological for doing such things as funding the government’s continued operations.  From the Democratic point-of-view, this is casting out a political opponent and exposing the Republican Party as incapable of holding a true majority. 

For the rest of us – it’s wondering what it means and what happens next.   

Again, this has never happened before.  Anyone who says they know what happens next is simply guessing. 

Here’s the math – there are 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House (2 seats are presently vacant).  A majority has to vote in a Speaker – so 217 votes.  That means that any Republican candidate can only afford to lose 4 votes. 

It took Kevin McCarthy 15 ballots and four days to get elected and he was nearly unopposed.  How will it go this time?  It’s hard to imagine any Republican getting to near-unanimity in today’s Republican caucus.  We could be in for many days of political spectacle. 

It’s possible that if no one can get to 217, Democrats extend a lifeline to a particular candidate to get him or her over the hump.  That hasn’t been in the cards – and would obviously be a turnoff to some Republicans – but it might be the only resolution if the process drags on long enough. 

The new deadline is November 17th, when the government again runs out of money.  We need a Speaker who can pass a spending resolution by then – bearing in mind that passing a spending resolution is what got Kevin McCarthy booted.  Investors now are beginning to factor in political risk into their evaluations of America’s ability to meet its obligations. 

I’ve been asked what this means for most Americans.  We don’t have a functioning legislature until further notice – the House of Representatives doesn’t have an organized majority. It means that American institutions continue to run aground in whole new ways that seem implausible before the fact and then obvious afterwards.  For those hoping our leaders find common ground and bridge the divide, this is a powerful signal to the opposite, that political incentives are now more powerful than governing incentives.  It also means a more uncertain business environment. 

There are many people celebrating Kevin McCarthy’s fall because they didn’t like Kevin McCarthy.  I’m not a fan of his – but I remain a big fan of his country.  His country deserves better leadership than this.  I think Democrats made a mistake in siding with his ousters, even if it seems like a short-term political win by making Republicans look incoherent.  Because it also makes America look – accurately - polarized and dysfunctional. 

Perhaps the House will elect a new leader and business will continue on as usual in a matter of days.  It’s more likely though that those who toppled McCarthy have developed an appetite for power, even negative power.  The real question is if a Speaker can be booted by 8 extremists and his political opponents, who will be safe in the same seat? 

If you can’t even take the basics for granted anymore, that’s a frightening place to be. 

To join Forward to provide a new pathway in our politics and change the incentives, click here.  We are needed more than ever. 

What Has Zach Been Up To?

Hello, I hope that you’re having a great week!  I spent last week at the American Democracy Summit in LA, which was a blast with tons of folks from Forward. 
 
Many of you know my campaign manager Zach Graumann, who wrote the book Longshot about the presidential campaign.  Prior to that, Zach worked on Wall Street and started a nonprofit for underprivileged kids called SuitUp. 

“I realized the limitations of the non-profit space,” Zach said.  “I mean, they do great work.  But I had a hard time shaking the feeling that the problems are still there.”  This misgiving was amplified by his day job advising philanthropists on how best to give to charity.  “Even people with incredible wealth struggle to figure out how to give enough to make progress on a particular problem.” 
 
He also noticed that companies saw philanthropy as an add-on.  “A lot of the time, a company will give to a cause or an organization, but then spend more money telling the public about the nice thing they did.”  They also had a tough time engaging their employees; it’s one reason why his organization, SuitUp grew so fast:  “We offered high-quality volunteering opportunities to employees, which was unusual for a lot of them.” 
 
Meanwhile, for individuals who want to find a way to help, non-profits aren’t always set up to receive their efforts.  “For some orgs, like a soup kitchen, the way you help out is very straightforward.  But a lot of them don’t really know what to do with you.  And if you show up once, you don’t show up again.  That’s why only one-quarter of people volunteer each year, even though three-quarters of people say we want to.” 
 
Zach is a lot like me, in that he is always looking to both help people and solve a worthwhile problem – it’s why we connected in 2020.  Now, he’s started a company to address all of these problems:  Samarity.  
 
What is Samarity?  In Zach’s words, “Samarity is a way to channel more corporate dollars to charities by giving them something they want – consumer intelligence.  Companies right now spend billions a year on market research.  You know who knows a lot about us?  We do.  And would we share some of that information to benefit our favorite charities?  Imagine if you could just fill out a survey and your favorite charity gets between $1 and $5, maybe more.” 
 
Samarity is now piloting this with 100 non-profits.  “The non-profit sends out a survey to their supporters, and we pay them for each response.  We then turn around and package the insights – anonymized – to corporations.  Some of our non-profits are already receiving thousands of dollars for doing something that a lot of them want to do anyway; the great thing is that the non-profit can ask any questions it wants to so they actually get better information about their own supporters.  Companies win because they get better consumer insight more cost-effectively.  And non-profit supporters win because they get to help their favorite cause with just a little bit of their time.” 
 
This first product is just the beginning.  “We want a world where anytime someone does something good - volunteers, tutors a kid, does something positive – they get recognized and rewarded.  Right now it’s filling out a survey, but eventually it might be helping your neighbor.”  I love how Samarity is trying to solve a big problem in a way that benefits everyone.  Its success would drive millions of dollars to non-profits and maybe move us one step closer to an economy that is centered on people doing good. 
 
For my interview with Zach click here.  To get involved with what Zach is building, you can email their team at hello@samarity.com.  You can also sign-up any nonprofit you love here, so they can start earning new donations.  Lastly, you can even take a quick survey yourself to unlock some charity donations here if you want to do something good today. 😃  Most importantly, Zach got married this summer so feel free to congratulate him!    

The Identity Trap

Hello, I hope all is great on your end!  I visited Pittsburgh and Houston this week for Forward, including endorsing a local candidate and visiting a night market in Houston.  I also continued doing interviews for my new novel “The Last Election” with Stephen Marche, which we’ve been getting great feedback on. 

This week on the podcast I interview professor and writer for the Atlantic Yascha Mounk on his new book, “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power In Our Time.”  For those of you who have been following me for a while, Yascha’s book tackles similar ideas as John McWhorter’s “Woke Racism” and Tim Urban’s “What’s Our Problem?” both of whom I’ve had on the podcast.  
 
Yascha describes what he calls “The Identity Synthesis,” a worldview that puts race, gender and sexual orientation above other considerations. “In this view, even situations that seemingly have nothing to do with identity, like a run-of-the-mill dispute between two friends, need to be analyzed through the lens of the relative social power each of them enjoys by virtue of the respective identity groups to which they belong.  Because of this focus on identity as a way of interpreting social reality, parts of the left are now more likely to invoke new concepts like ‘microaggressions’ and ‘implicit bias’ than they are to invoke older concepts like social class.”

The recommendation of the identity synthesis is to treat people differently based on which group they belong to.  “Because neutral rules like nondiscrimination laws are supposedly insufficient to make a difference, the advocates of the identity synthesis insist that we need social norms and public policies that explicitly make how the state treats its citizens— and how we all treat each other— depend on the identity group to which they belong.”  
 
Yascha describes this approach as very alluring and often well-intended.  “The identity synthesis calls attention to real injustices. It gives people who feel marginalized or mistreated a language in which to express their experiences. And it affords its followers the sense of being part of a grand historical movement that will make the world a better place. All of this helps to explain why it is so alluring, especially to the young and idealistic.” 
 
Unfortunately, Yascha writes that the identity synthesis will “ultimately prove counterproductive . . . it undermines progress toward genuine equality between members of different groups. In the process, it also subverts other goals we all have reasons to care about, like the stability of diverse democracies. Despite its allure, the identity synthesis turns out to be a trap.”  
 
He goes on:  “The identity synthesis is a political trap, making it harder to sustain diverse societies whose citizens trust and respect each other.  It is also a personal trap, one that makes misleading promises about how to gain the sense of belonging and social recognition that most humans naturally seek,” Yascha writes.  “Progressive separatism is a dead end.  Its vision of the future is neither realistic nor attractive.  And partial success – a world in which whites do come to define themselves by their ethnic identity yet fail to dismantle the advantages that have historically flowed from it – may transport us into the worst of all possible timelines.”  In other words, we should be very careful about getting everyone in America to think of themselves along racial lines, because the results could be disastrous. 
 
So what’s a better approach?  According to Yascha, numerous studies have shown that intergroup interaction can diminish bias if a number of elements are in place: 

1. Equal status.  Members of different groups are regarded as in the same boat, as for example teammates or colleagues. 

2. Common goals.  The groups have a goal in common, such as a project or winning a competition.  

3. Intergroup cooperation.  Members of different groups work together, as in passing the ball to each other or dividing up responsibilities.  

4. Support from authorities and customs.  Members are encouraged to get along by the leadership, such as a supervisor or coach or authority figure.  

In these environments, people start to feel better about people from different groups.  Well-run companies, teams or military units are examples of places where bias diminishes because you work alongside someone every day toward a common goal.  
 
These are the kinds of organizing principles that give us a better chance as a society.  Yascha writes of universalist goals, e.g., “everyone should be treated fairly, equally and free of discrimination” as the kind of unifying message that bore real results during the Civil Rights Movement, even if the progress hasn’t been as complete as many would like.  
 
I agree with Yascha on making universal appeals.  When I ran for President, I talked about giving everyone a certain amount of money as a foundation.  Poverty afflicts every community.  I thought that it was the kind of unifying vision that would give us a chance at a better future.  
 
Can we form common, unifying goals that span our differences, including the political divide that threatens to tear our society apart?  The future of the country rests on our answering that question positively by bringing different groups together.  We’re all American, whatever our background.  Let’s start there.  
 
For Yascha’s book “The Identity Trap” click here and for my interview with him click here.  To check out what Forward is doing to overcome divisions in your area, click here.

Launch Week

Hello, I hope that all has been great!  

I had a busy week launching “The Last Election,” the new novel I wrote with Stephen Marche about a campaign manager of an independent presidential candidate, a journalist with a big story and how American democracy’s last days unfold. 

First I went down to D.C. for a book talk, a launch party and a flurry of press.  Then I came back to New York for another set of events and interviews.  CBS, CNN, ABC, FOX, TMZ – it’s been quite the media tour.  

The best part has been getting feedback from people who have already read the book.  Some of my favorite quotes:  

“I couldn’t put it down.” 

“It scared me, but in a way that made me feel more prepared.”  

“I was surprised by it, in a very good way.” 

“I do politics for a living and I learned a lot.”  

It’s also heartwarming to see so many people come out to support the book.  Having your Mom at your book launch party is a wonderful feeling.

I’ve written 3 non-fiction books and each of them represented years of work.  This has been different on several levels because it’s a story with a message.  It’s also my first collaboration, which I enjoyed more than I’d expected.   

I’ll admit that my mind has started to move to what could happen next in the world depicted in “The Last Election,” so close to our own.  Could we visit these characters again?  I’d like to, and I have some ideas for what happens next.  Maybe there's room for optimism.  

I’m excited to have “The Last Election” out in the world – get your copy today!  Click here for an excerpt.  And thank you to those of you who have bought the book or spread the word – it means the world to me.  

The Last Election

When I was running for President, my team would often say to me “Bio” before I spoke at a rally or did a press appearance.  What they were saying to me was “Use your biography” because people didn’t know who I was and your trust and interest goes up if you feel like you can relate to someone. 

Human beings tend to operate in stories: stories that political figures tell about themselves or stories that include us.  Narratives are very powerful, more naturally powerful with most audiences than, for example, facts or statistics.  It’s a lesson that I need to constantly relearn. 
 
A while ago I interviewed Stephen Marche, the author of “The Next Civil War,” and we connected on our shared concerns for the future of American politics.  How could we get people to see, and perhaps do something about, the dangers that lie ahead?
 
We needed a story. 
 
We decided to write a novel about the next election, or the last election, which could be the same thing.  And we wanted it to be entertainment, to engross people who aren’t likely to care about the latest Op-Ed.  In many ways, the book is meant to answer the question, “What happens if a major independent presidential candidate decides to run?” 
 
The writing process was a lot of fun.  Stephen would interview me, my campaign manager Zach Graumann and others for hours on end.  He would draft pages based on interviews that delved into painstaking detail.  I would read what he produced, edit, respond and suggest changes or additions.  We would repeat this process until the pages felt like a version of the future I recognized. 
 
“I’d say this book is the most accurate depiction possible of the inside of a campaign during the last election, where American democracy actually collapses under the weight of distrust and the weight of a collapsing electoral system.  It’s a paranoid political thriller that’s accurate,” says Stephen.  “It’s a very unusual book.  I don’t think there’s another book like this one.  It’s a straight thriller that also contains intimate information about political life, and that’s a fun read.” 
 
I’ve run for President, written three non-fiction books, put out countless social media posts, interviewed dozens of thinkers and write a weekly newsletter that you’re reading right now.  Will a novel – a story -  get a message out to people who wouldn’t understand it any other way? 
 
“The Last Election” is my attempt to find out. 
 
To buy the Last Election from the publisher click here – the code LASTELECTION will get you 30% off.  For my interview of Stephen Marche click here. 
 
Never forget. 

The Rally

Hello, I hope that you are doing great on Labor Day! 

The novel that I wrote with Stephen Marche – The Last Election - arrives next week!  It’s about the campaign manager of a third-party presidential candidate, a journalist hunting a massive story, and the near future of American democracy.  Here’s an excerpt below describing a campaign rally for Cooper Sherman, the Maverick Party presidential candidate.  Hope you enjoy it! 

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February 7th, 7:43 pm, Target Center, 600 First Avenue North, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Topeka bodega topeka bodega topeka bodega topeka bodega,” Cooper is saying over and over again. Mikey and Cooper have been chasing each other around the green room throwing and catching whiffle balls. Cooper just imbibed a cocktail of Nyquil, sugar and nutrients.  Cooper is shirtless and Mikey can’t stop giggling. Above them, as random as thunder, comes the boom of twenty-five thousand strangers cheering.

The opening act was Stipe Miocic, UFC fighter and Cleveland firefighter. Now Jesse Ventura is talking about independents and Minnesota and Minnesota as a state for independents. The laughter is huge. The applause is even huger. Ventura is killing. He always does. 

Nellie has been watching Mikey and Cooper roughhouse like an amused au pair. The message comes to her headset and she passes it on: “Showtime.” 

Mikey towels down Cooper’s sweaty chest, and they throw on his shirt and jacket, pin the mic to his lapel and then tuck the cord into his jacket pocket, and they head up through the backstage area. 

Cooper stops Mikey on the stairs. They embrace. Then there’s the hot first staccato beats of Call Ticketron from Run the Jewels, and the crowd is howling wildly by “Kumbaya” as Cooper strolls up beaming into the spotlight. Mikey goes down, underground, to the control center. Above him the roar of the crowd fills the air, the stomping of tens of thousands of feet. Just before Mikey plunges down the corridor, he hears the opening line: “They told me I’m not supposed to swear.” There’s a huge laugh, then he is alone. He makes his way underneath the stadium as secretive and determined as a Jesuit on a mission. The sounds of the wider world, the muffled ecstasies of the crowd, are distant. He is too far underground to hear them, climbing back and forth up stairs used to the heavy treads of tens of thousands of Minnesotans. 

Sarah Ren is monitoring a bank of screens in the control booth. “How we doing?” Mikey asks. 

“Look at this drone shot,” she says. Sarah is happy; Mikey’s never seen her happy.

The shot passes over a massive crowd all waving Maverick party signs towards Cooper’s beaming face. The cold made the air clearer, emptier, and he looks defined, imperturbable, feeding off and feeding into the great wave of mass love. It’s going to look great in ads.  

Cooper’s speech is majestic, rapturous. “The reason I started down this path,” he is saying, “the reason we began the crazy adventure that is this campaign is that I see what you see. The system isn’t working. The country works but the system doesn’t. This great country, the most productive country in the world, a country built on openness and frankness, is turning into a country where only guys like me have a shot, where everyone wants to close down the other guy, where our words have been caged in shame. Enough. Enough. It’s time to take a risk, because in politics, just like in life, the real risk is not taking a risk.”

Thirty-six seconds of applause by Mikey’s watch.

“And let’s be real honest here. OK, we got one party that has stopped believing in democracy, and you got another party that will be pointing at the rulebook as the world burns. And you know as I used to say on television ‘Do the math.’” 

The crowd begins to chat “Do the math. Do. The. Math. Do. The. Math.” 

“This won’t do anymore, man. This isn’t going to work out.”

Sarah is holding Mikey’s hand, gripping it, twisting it.

“You feel it?” she asks.

“I feel it,” Mikey answers. 

They are feeling the rush of the crowd’s ecstasy overtaking them, spreading through them from this stadium to the world. They can feel their reach extending. They can feel the onset of power. 

“We need to be clear. We need to be clear about our successes as much as our failures. The problem isn’t the American people. The problem isn’t the American spirit. We are, today, as much as we ever were, a nation of strivers, a nation of liberty-lovers, of fighters for a cause. We’re the country of innovators. Why can’t we innovate our system of government? We’re riding into the twenty-first century on a dying horse-drawn carriage.”

The crowd laughs at this lame joke. They now await his cues.

“And I’m going to tell you something. The moment we get a system that works, we will be unstoppable.”

Cooper coughs. Somebody from the crowd shouts out: “Say it!” And Cooper looks at him, smiles. There’s enough time to throw a whiffle ball. 

“You want me to say it?”

There are a few more shouts. “Nah, I can’t. There’s a fine.” He’s smiling now. The crowd is calling for him to say it. “All right, you know what? I’m going to say it. The time has come to unfuck America.”

The roar overtakes them all, and it overtakes Mikey and Ren in their booth. Maybe they’re going to win. Maybe the Republic isn’t going to end. Maybe they’re going to build a new America out of the Maverick Party. And there is nothing like American politics for a rush of tribalism, a crowd overwhelmed by a vision of themselves and their country, and by its neverending dream that a new world is possible.

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I hope you enjoyed this – you can pre-order your copy today!  If you use the code LASTELECTION you can get a pre-signed copy directly from the publisher! 

Recoding America

I talked this week to a military veteran who was frustrated by the level of service she receives for a health condition.  
 
How are we going to solve our problems and make government work better for us?  One of the foremost experts on this subject is Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America and former deputy CTO of the US.  Jen wrote an excellent new book: “Recoding America:  Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.”  I interview her on the podcast this week.  If you want to understand why many of us find government to be so ridiculous and frustrating, you should read her book. 

Jen has spent over a decade trying to speed up our government, both among cities and states and in DC.  “For a long time I thought of our government’s lack of digital competence as an unhappy mishap, a mistake to be corrected . . . I eventually realized that many others inside the Beltway regarded it more as the natural order of things – inevitable and immutable.”  
 
Jen shares the story of improving the intake form for veterans to apply to the Veterans Administration (VA) for healthcare benefits.  The catalyst was a video of a military veteran, Dominic, trying and failing to use the webform which only worked on Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader.  A senior official upon seeing the video said, “This is unacceptable, let’s update the form so it’s more usable.”  They replaced the form, and applications for services shot up to 10 times the previous levels.  People within the VA started saying, “Bring back the old form!” because they weren’t used to getting such high volumes.  Happily, the leadership stuck with the new form.  
 
In another story, a VA web page struggled with latency in loading – it took up to two minutes to load a document or new web page.  So they defined latency to mean anything less than two minutes instead of the more standard few seconds; they solved the problem simply by changing the definition. 
 
Jennifer catalogues a number of reasons why government struggles with technology.  First, all of the energy and focus is on crafting or arguing about policy; actually delivering the policy to citizens is considered implementation and not deserving of attention.  “We want to talk policy and leave implementation to the mechanicals.  That didn’t work out well for the White House [rolling out healthcare.gov] and it’s not going to work out for the American public.”  Meanwhile, the website, whether it works or not, becomes the policy to Americans.  “No one reads the legal code, they just go to the website to apply for benefits.”  
 
Second, there are layers of policy that get added, but never subtracted.  “It takes 25 years for someone to become expert in processing unemployment benefits in California because they have added rules and workarounds and never taken anything away.  Someone after 17 years said that they were only partially expert.  It’s like archaeology how some of these systems work; it’s layers and layers of legal code causing complexity, before you even get to the software code.”  
 
Third, the policies tend to err on the side of completeness rather than user-friendliness.  Jen cites a foodstamp questionnaire of 212 questions that included questions like “Do you own a burial plot?”  When Jen explored the rationale behind that question’s inclusion, the drafter said, “Congress asked for a list of assets, and a burial plot is an asset.”  It’s safer to follow the letter of the law rather than to use common sense. 
 
Fourth, career civil servants and bureaucrats operate in a culture that makes sticking to process safer for their career – if they deviate from the rules, they could be punished.  If they stick to them they’re fine, whether or not the service works or ‘makes sense to people.’  “They’re in a job for twenty years and see taking criticism as simply part of the job.”  Jen describes many well-intended people in government that feel constrained by a thicket of rules and bad incentives.    
 
Fifth, tech products are designed using a waterfall development process – you figure out what it’s supposed to do from the policy down and then can’t go backwards/upwards to make changes.  Everything flows down from policy.  “This results in building something over ten or more years that no longer makes sense at very high expense,” Jen observes.  Most companies now use something called agile software development where you get feedback from users and iterate and improve.  Jen’s colleague coined a new law – “Byrne’s Law” - that most government tech products could be developed at 85% efficacy at 10% of the current cost; unfortunately no one has the authority to determine which 15% you could leave by the wayside.  
 
Sixth, there are major actors that prefer the current mode because they can bill the government enormous amounts of money with little accountability.  A VP at Oracle wrote that “Government’s expertise should be procurement, not technology itself,” in part because Oracle has become expert in government procurement practices and delivering an effective technology product becomes secondary.  Jen writes, “When I told her I thought the [new $600 million IT project] would likely fail, she replied, ‘Do you think I don’t know that?  The last seven IT projects in this state have all failed.’” 
 
Seventh, there is a cultural attitude that government is bad at tech and techies should head to private industry to solve the real problems, make money and develop their careers.  Meanwhile, Jen helped form the US Digital Service, which employs hundreds of coders and engineers to help modernize government.  “Victories aren’t always easy to come by, but when they do they are immensely satisfying because you know your work impacts millions of people in a very important way.” 
 
Jen’s book is a compelling insider account of why government often doesn’t work as well as it should.  Unlike others, she doesn’t just throw up her hands – she is grinding away to change things.  “It’s easy to complain about government but more satisfying to help fix it.”  She also thinks that the mission is critical as Americans are losing faith in our own ability to solve problems.    
 
“When systems or organizations don’t work the way you think they should, it is generally not because the people in them are stupid or evil.  It is because they are operating according to structures and incentives that aren’t obvious from the outside,” Jen writes.  “The bewildering assumption is that more of what came before will get us different results.”  
 
Truer words are hard to find.  
 
For Jen’s book click here and for my podcast interview of her click here.  To join Forward to help improve our government’s incentives to deliver for us, click here.  For my upcoming book, “The Last Election” about how the next election could turn out, click here – it comes out in two weeks!