The Dismal Science

    I was going to start by saying something like: We all know Malthus.  Nah, no you don't. Thomas Robert Malthus.  Oxford educated, English cleric and seminal economist. 1766-1834.  Look it up.  That'll bore hell outta ya.
    His thoughts on political economy, economics and demographics are the reason Economics has been called the dismal science.  He postulated that any advance in technology or productivity would result in an increase in population that would always outstrip productivity and create and reinforce poverty.  Yeah, that's pretty dismal.  Put him together with Thomas Hobbes and ya got a real laugh riot.  Hobbes is the guy that said, for most, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short.
    His thoughts on productivity and poverty are what most people who have ever heard of Malthus remember about him but what stuck in my mind was something different he said and definitely more pertinent to our current debates.  Malthus said there were things that needed to be done that could never be done for a profit and those things fell into the purview of government.  Now, remember, this guy died more than a decade before Marx and Engles wrote.  He was no socialist.  He was actually an observer of and a contributor to the ideas and ideals of capitalism.  I'd be willing to bet Marx and Engles had read his works.  If you don't know and I'd be willing to bet you don't,  Marx and Engels wrote the "Communist Manifesto". I've read it.  That'll put your ass to sleep.  If you want, I can also tell you a bedtime story about the Hegelian Dialectic.
    The reason I mention this is because for no rational reason I can think of,  Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have decided to proclaim themselves  Democratic Socialists. In reality, they're New Deal Democrats.  That opened the door for republicans to scream, SOCIALISM like they were yelling FIRE in a crowded theater.  Why start a debate with a bunch of ignoramuses?  I dunno.
    So we got the republicans saying, socialist this and socialist that because they hope you're stupid and we have the Democrats trying to say the police and fire departments, the military,   public water and sewer, public health, snow plows and so on are all socialist ideas, apparently, because they're stupid.  Nonsense.
     These are all parts of the Malthusian Equation and both sides had better stop talking like idiots or we're gonna end up with even more Reality TV personalities posing as leaders.  Across the political spectrum, no one is proposing socialism in the United States and our major corporations and the rich, in general, sure aren't proposing capitalism.  You can make the case Dr King was right when he said, we have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.  That's pretty dismal and needs to stop.

Kintsukuroi

    It is the practice of repairing valued if not valuable objects with precious metals. It's also known as Kintsugi. It preserves the functionality and immeasurably enhances the beauty and ultimately the value of the repaired object.  It has become the symbol of philosophies that, if understood, make my banal thoughts inadequate at best.
    Stumbling on this concept made me think of people I've known all my life and people I've known all of their lives. We all have known people who, after some shaking misfortune, have been discarded, sometimes by even themselves, like so much broken crockery.  A tragedy and a failure of faith.  A failure of faith in themselves and others. Failure of belief in a future.
    We've also seen victories if not triumphs of faith in individuals both great and small.  Witnessing the damage done by mere circumstance or even malice can break our own hearts.  Witnessing the precious repair can also repair and advance our own hearts.  In a large way that can become the basis of faith and we see it all around us day after day.
   I'm reminded of the story of a little girl with two apples.  Her mother asked if she could have one.  The little girl bit into one and then, immediately, the other.  In that moment the mother's faith collapsed in herself and in her daughter.  The mother's faith collapsed in all she had tried to do.  Then the little girl held out an apple and said, " Take this one, it's sweeter."  In an instant, the mother's humble bowl was repaired and made more precious than imaginable.

    Then I saw this example of persistence meeting resistance.  Someone planted a tree. Fifty or so years later, someone cut down that tree.  Then ten or so years later, someone cut down the volunteer offshoots from the stump.  Somehow the two photographic images became related in my mind.  The sap and sinew of all life.  Regrowth, renewal and restoration.  I'll be by in the spring just to see that long story continue to work itself out.  Repair can be an instant, a season or a lifetime.

Well, Maybe

    I often think about and sometimes write about things we should do and obviously won't do.

    For example:  https://stillpittsburgh.blogspot.com/2017/02/walk-like-athenian.html.  Boy, I was kinda proud of that.  It's the idea called sortition.  It turns out lots of people have written about that and done a much better job than I did.  It confirms my suspicion I have never actually had an original idea. Oh well.

    People want to abolish the Electoral College.  It's understandable.  The idea was to avoid the  "tyranny of the majority".  That's a real thing and certainly can be a real problem.  The Founding Fathers were right to consider the concept.  I don't think they ever considered their creation made an opportunity for a "tyranny of the minority",  like we're seeing now.  I know they never thought that minority would be composed of every poorly informed lout, led by a poorly informed lout.  I don't think it ever occurred to the  Founding Fathers someone might,  rather than try to elevate the poorly informed, forge them into a voting block.  Didn't see that coming.

    In the last 20  years we've seen that "tyranny of the minority" produce disastrous results.  Jesus! Nearly a million innocent people are dead.  Al Gore never would have invaded the wrong country or mis-waged a war in the right country, the only goal of which turned out to be consolidation of the international trade in heroin.  The whole thing is irrational and was easily avoidable.

    By the same token, Hillary Clinton never would have reinstated Bush's laughable tax cuts for the wealthy.  Nor would she have immersed the Pentagon in a hot tub full of borrowed money.  That's a financial disaster we're going to wear like an albatross for generations.  There's a lot of things being done  Mrs Clinton wouldn't have done because she knows better.  She doesn't seem to listen to AM radio much.  I suspect she reads. 

    The Electoral College has been called racist in conception.  That's outright bullshit.  The idea is tangentially related to the idea of slaves being 3/5ths of a person but just not the same thing.   Both concepts addressed the reality at the time.  The concept of crying 'racist'  just proves a little racism goes a long way.  People don't like racism much. You don't have to endorse or tolerate much to earn a life-long label.  That's as it should be.  Even racists don't like being called racist because they know racism is wrong.

    However, the Electoral College is not what we don't like much.  We don't like the asymmetrical outcomes. Since 2000, the Green Party has thrown the elections to the republicans a couple notable times.  If you look at their party principles, that's an unintended consequence.  We'd like to avoid that and we're searching for ways to not do that.  

    We have a dyed in the wool, two-party system but third party candidates have a habit of emerging in and twisting the results of presidential elections.  You could say Teddy Roosevelt made Woodrow Wilson President.  Wallace made Nixon President and certainly, Ross Perot made Clinton President. Following that reasoning, Nader made GW President and Jill Stein made Trump president.  That's a little simplistic but it does make the point.  We don't like the Electoral College much but what we really don't like is the effects of these 'stalking horses'.
    My idea to deal with that is to just hold run-off elections.  It's not new or unusual. Over 30 countries do it worldwide.   When Trump seemed to have won, about 60% of the population said,  " I'll be damned."  Had a run-off been held a week, month or year later, excluding the 3rd party candidates,  Mrs Clinton would have won in a walk-over.  Hell, Donald Duck would have won in a walk-over.  We're not going to do that.  It would involve amending the Constitution and that's just not going to happen.
    Maine has what seems to be a better idea. They have voted in  'Ranked Choice".  You simply vote for your first and second choice.  If no one reaches a simple majority the least popular are eliminated and the second choices are counted until someone does reach a majority.
    My first thought about that was, 'That's a good idea'.  My second thought was, 'Boy are they gonna get sued.'   It seems to be holding up in court.
    So, is it something we should do but won't do or is it a good idea that will gain traction over time.
    We'll see.  It is better than my idea.
    Until we reach a long term solution we have to avoid the effects of these   'stalking horse' candidates.  That starts with acknowledging that, at least for now, we are most certainly a two-party system.