Impulse

There’s a guy stand­ing out­side the cof­fee shop I’m typ­ing away in.  He’s can­vass­ing our very blue neigh­bor­hood, rais­ing money for Democratic can­di­dates in bat­tle­ground dis­tricts through­out the coun­try.  I know it’s legal and that every­one seems seems to be doing it nowa­days (moveon.org and the DSCC are con­stantly at it) but I don’t like it.  I don’t think it’s my place to put my thumb on the scales of another district.

Here’s an exam­ple:  Across the lake from me, Darcy Burner is run­ning for US Congress from Washington’s 8th dis­trict.  I really like Darcy.  Instead of just talk­ing the talk about pulling troops out of Iraq, Darcy went and talked to a retired gen­eral who had over­seen troops in Iraq to get his opin­ion, and that of other experts.  She put this all in an analy­sis paper she pub­lished on the web.  That’s ballsy, thought­ful, and proac­tive — all good traits I’d like to see more in Congress.  But I won’t donate to her cam­paign.  I don’t live in her dis­trict (I live in WA-7th), and I don’t know if she rep­re­sents the 8th district’s thoughts and values.

I pointed this out to the can­vasser.  He thought it didn’t mat­ter: in DC, they make deci­sions on a national level, and not deci­sions spe­cific to a par­tic­u­lar dis­trict.  That’s true — they make national deci­sions by rep­re­sent­ing the val­ues of local dis­tricts.  Each rep­re­sen­ta­tive applies their local val­ues to national prob­lems.  It’s the diver­sity of opin­ions that makes a plu­ral­ity work.  It’s what makes the wis­dom of crowds work. 

Once upon a time, there was a very opin­ion­ated man named Sir Francis Gaulton.  Sir Francis believed that crowds just mul­ti­plied the igno­rance of its indi­vid­u­als, thus pro­duc­ing hor­ri­bly bad deci­sions.  One day he was at a fair and stum­bled upon a con­test to guess the weight of an ox.  Sir Francis thought that these unin­formed peo­ple couldn’t pos­si­bly guess accu­rately.  The guesses ranged across the spec­trum and a few were close enough to award prizes.  After the con­test, he took all the guesses and did some math: he found that the median of all the answers was fright­en­ingly close to true answer.  Since then, count­less class­rooms of stu­dents have guessed the num­ber of beans in a jar and, despite class clowns and earnest over-achievers, the median is always incred­i­bly accu­rate.  The diver­sity of opin­ions makes this work.

So, back in D.C., if you actu­ally want Congress to work well, you want a broad array of opin­ions.  You get many opin­ions by mak­ing sure that rep­re­sen­ta­tives actu­ally rep­re­sent their home dis­tricts.  Anything that gets in the way of that rep­re­sen­ta­tion — lob­by­ists, Party dogma, and yes, out­side cam­paign donors — gets in the way of demo­c­ra­tic decision-making work­ing at its best.  I really don’t see any dif­fer­ence between my donat­ing to a cam­paign out­side my dis­trict, and big oil pour­ing money into campaigns. 

(Special thanks to the always fab­u­lous RadioLab for the ox-weighing anec­dote above.  Listen closely to the episode, and you’ll make out Oliver Sacks in the back­ground doing all the voices.  There’s noth­ing quite like hear­ing one of our most cel­e­brated con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tists doing goofy voices).

Related posts:

1. Technology and democ­racy hand in hand
2. Installing Democracy v1.0
3. Hello, Senator Kerry