When it is Broke

There is a very real possibility that the state of Minnesota will be shutting down this week. It’s easy to get caught up in the particulars of today’s politics that have led up to this reality, but there is a fundamental question that seems to be largely ignored.

Why does the current system have such dramatic built-in consequences?

The answer seems pretty obvious to me. It’s clearly a deterrent. The idea was to have a punishment so severe that no rational group would ever come anywhere near this close to evoking it. The problem of course being that the Minnesota State Legislature is elected in part by the same people that elected Michele Bachmann to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why is it that my laptop installs regular updates when it works fine while there continues to be customs in this country that were clearly intended to serve functions that were appropriate in a different time and aren’t at all appropriate presently?

This archaic shut-down clause is not unlike the Electoral College. The Electoral College doesn’t make sense to most Americans, and that’s largely because it’s inconsistent with what many people seem to think that the United States is about. The Electoral College was a safeguard put into place to essentially limit the power of common people to elect the President. The idea was that Presidential candidates would all be respectable people that would split the Electoral College in most elections. Instead running for President is all about selling out enough to afford an outrageously expensive campaign. Instead we live in the world where George W. Bush got elected over the immensely more qualified Al Gore. Instead we live in the world where John McCain wasn’t stoned to death for so much as considering Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The founding fathers were a group of individuals whose wisdom exceeded that of most if not all living politicians. Even still their first idea for the U.S. government, the Articles of Confederation, was a complete failure. What set them apart was their ability to admit that they were wrong and to get back to the drawing board.

Today there is a stigma attached to changing one’s mind. To being a flip-flopper. It’s almost as if having an open mind is a sin. Reversing this paradigm is of paramount importance. As human beings it’s foolish to think that we won’t make mistakes. More so to assume that just because something has been working that it will continue to do so. Times change and rules only work as a function of context.

It should not only be accepted, but rather encouraged that politicians (and people in general) change their minds. I believe that a well-designed system involves mandatory evaluation on a regular basis. For some reason Facebook feels the need to reinvent itself every couple of years, so why doesn’t the government?