Scott Adams' BlogTweet Me
I’ll be doing a live Tweet @GoComics on Friday 1/25 at 2:30 PM EST.
Use the hashtag #DilbertLIVE to submit questions and/or follow along.
Obnoxious questions are especially welcome. Any topic you like.
I hope you can join in.
The Unhappiness Motivator
I wonder how much of a role unhappiness plays in peoples’ ability to plan for success. I was thinking about this lately because I know a lot of successful white-collar types who had unpleasant manual jobs when they were young. In my case, I worked on my uncle’s dairy farm in upstate New York. And let me tell you, nothing makes you want to avoid farming as much as actually doing it. When I studied for a test in school, I was keenly-aware that it meant something.
Where I live now, in the San Francisco bay area, most kids either don’t have jobs or they have the easy indoor kind, as in scooping ice cream or handing out towels.
During the school year, most college-bound kids in my area have no time for jobs. If you play a school sport and have four hours of homework per night, which is typical for college-bound kids, there’s no room for anything else. Weekends too are packed with sports and more studying.
So what happens to a kid who has never experienced a truly shitty job? Will those kids have the same amount of career drive as the folks who have?
I realize every generation has asked the same question. But what is different now is the amount of homework kids are getting. When I was in high school I never took a book home. I could polish off my meager homework during study hall. And while I didn’t love schoolwork, I never had so much of it that I developed any kind of deep hatred for mental pursuits.
But I imagine how different I might have felt if I had never experienced unpleasant manual labor - and lots of it - and instead was tortured with several hours of homework every night. I think I might have longed for a simpler future with no books and not so much thinking. In other words, I think the homework would have redirected me away from seeking a career in law or engineering and toward something that didn’t require so much damned studying.
Obviously no two kids are alike. You’ll always have a Mark Zuckerberg or a Bill Gates who are born into good situations and have the success gene in them. Apparently some people are naturally motivated and some are not. But for average kids, do their childhood experiences make much of a difference to motivation?
Research tells us that piling on the homework doesn’t make kids smarter. Schools do it anyway, because although schools teach science, apparently they don’t believe in it. We know that too much homework is bad for family life, and we can observe that it keeps kids from more fully enjoying their youth. What I’m wondering is whether homework makes it impossible for kids to experience genuinely shitty jobs that would motivate them to achieve something more comfortable.
I put the question to you, my unscientific sample. Did you ever have a truly unpleasant job as a kid, and if so, did it motivate you toward a career that promised an easier life?
Life of Pi - Movie Review
I resisted watching Life of Pi because the trailer made it seem as if the entire movie would involve a kid in a lifeboat with a tiger. I figured a plot that thin would be a waste of two hours of my life. But the movie won some awards, and friends said I should see it, so I took a chance on it. And now I don’t mind admitting that I was wrong. Very wrong.
And by that I mean the movie did not waste two hours of my life; I walked out after 45 minutes. So technically I’m only reviewing the first 45 minutes of the film.
I have four absolutes when it comes to movies. I won’t watch a movie that has any of the following elements:
- Prison theme.
- People at risk of drowning.
- Animals in jeopardy.
- Someone gets tied to a chair and tortured.
Life of Pi came close to including all four of my absolutes. Watching a kid trapped in a lifeboat with a tiger is a lot like a prison theme. Spoiler alert: I assume that by the middle of the movie the tiger turns Pi into his lifeboat bitch and trades him to a porpoise for a pack of cigarettes. That’s how I would have written it.
The movie also has plenty of drowning, and risk of drowning, and plenty of animals in jeopardy. And as I watched the movie, I felt as though someone had tied me to a chair and tortured me. I literally walked out of the theater shaking. I didn’t feel right for about an hour.
I won’t say Life of Pi (first 45 minutes) is the worst movie I have ever seen. But that’s only because I have also seen Les Miserables, Titanic, The English Patient, and I love You Phillip Morris. There’s a lot of competition for the worst movie of all time.
Just to be clear, I think Life of Pi is extraordinarily well-made in the filmmaking sense. That was no surprise because director Ang Lee also made my favorite movie of all time, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That accomplishment was largely cancelled out by his next award-winning movie, Brokeback Mountain. But still, the man knows how to make a movie.
The natural problem with reviewing movies is that every moviegoer has a unique set of preferences. To be fair, I can easily imagine Life of Pi appealing to certain types of people. For example, serial killers are known to enjoy watching animals get injured. If you’re a serial killer, or you just hate animals, this is definitely the film for you.
Sadists and sociopaths will also enjoy this film. The 3D technology is used so effectively that it’s like you are right there watching people and animals suffer. The only way it could be better is if you were causing the suffering yourself while making the loved ones of the victims watch. So on that level, Life of Pi is a great film.
The movie isn’t as unpleasant to watch as it could have been. If Steven Spielberg had directed it, the film would have been three hours long and Pi would have needed to surgically remove his own infected eye using nothing but saltwater and an oar. Spielberg likes to include at least one scene in every movie that makes me never want to see another movie as long as I live. I call it the Schindler’s List scene.
A recent exception to the Schindler’s List scene is Spielberg’s movie Lincoln. I highly recommend Lincoln. But be advised that the film is more like the best documentary you’ve ever watched than a typical movie. If you aren’t interested in politics and history, it might not work for you. Personally, I loved it. It has no prison theme, no drowning, no animals in jeopardy, and no one tied to a chair to be tortured. That’s what I call a movie.
[Note: I realize that many of you will say I should have stayed to the end of Life of Pi because that’s where the payoff is. For those of you who would recommend that approach to moviegoing, you should try banging your head against a brick wall because when you stop, WOW, it feels terrific.]
0 Comments
Digital Hats
Our current justice system is based on superstition. I don’t say that as a criticism; the system works fairly well, give or take some warts. The superstition that underpins the justice system is called free will, as in the magical ability to make choices independent of your brain’s wiring. Society needs to believe criminals have the supernatural ability to ignore their own brain architecture. Otherwise it would be difficult for any jury to convict a perpetrator who, from a scientific perspective, had no choice in the matter.
Science has long understood that a specific brain in a specific environment will always act the same way. Cause and effect are not random beyond the quantum world. Science is the realm of facts, whereas the justice system is more like theater. Society collectively pretends that free will exists so we can feel right about dispensing legal punishments. And while the system is absurd on some level, it still works quite well. The fear of jail presumably causes some criminal brains to commit fewer crimes. And law-abiding citizens are comfortable with the superstition that jailed criminals have chosen their own bad luck. “Serves ‘em right” is the common view.
But what will happen in the future when our brains are being controlled by third parties, such as machines or doctors? Will we still put criminals in jail? Or will we have sufficient knowledge by then to tinker with the brains of perpetrators and “fix” their criminal tendencies?
Consider the fact that young males commit most of the violent crimes in this world. That tells you that body chemistry, and probably testosterone levels in particular, are part of the cause. We already have the ability - but not the legal right - to chemically transform a violent personality into a non-violent one. We can literally rewrite entire personalities through prescription meds. At the moment, science isn’t advanced enough to give an individual criminal a chemical “fix” that is reliable, lasting, and without serious side-effects. But there is no doubt in my mind that science will get to that point.
As science learns more about the architecture of the brain, and portable brain sensors keep improving, I would expect someday we will have digital “hats” that will literally keep our brains tuned and running smoothly by applying stimulation to parts of the brain that need a boost.
For example, I can imagine my digital hat stimulating the creative part of my mind during my morning work hours and stimulating another part of my brain when I exercise.
I could also imagine my digital hat modifying my food preferences so I eat healthier. When I look at cake, my digital hat will stimulate a part of my brain associated with revulsion. When I see leafy vegetables my digital hat stimulates my pleasure centers. Your hat could make you love your spouse more, spend more time with the kids, get more sleep, and so on. In other words, the hat could make you a better version of yourself. Who wouldn’t want that?
At some point in your future, the programmer of your digital hat will be more responsible for your actions than you are. Left to your own choice you would have decided to take a nap on the couch. But your digital hat knows you need some cardio, so it stimulates your brain in just the right way to make you want exercise more than a nap. When technology reaches that level of capability, and I think it will, no one will cling to the superstition of free will. We will understand our brains to be the moist part of a programmed system that includes our digital hat, the Internet, and probably some tech support in another country.
You might be thinking you would never wear a digital hat that manipulates your desires and therefore takes away your illusion of free will. But I’ll bet the digital hat would make you feel so great that it would be physically addictive. The moment you put it on, it starts stimulating your pleasure centers. Before long you won’t be willing to take it off.
Eventually humans will all become mindless slaves to whoever owns the patents for the digital hats. And that’s not a bad thing because each of us will be delighted with our lives every minute. We might come to understand that in the past we were mindless zombies to the randomness of our brain chemistry and environment. In the future we will be improved versions of mindless zombies, programmed to be productive citizens who enjoy every minute of life. Being a mindless zombie won’t be such a bad thing.
My prediction is that smartphone technology will migrate into hats, and at that point we will start to see technology that allows your phone to communicate directly with your brain. For example, you might have seen reports that scientists can produce grainy pictures of your dreams by reading your brain with external sensors. When that technology becomes portable and built into your hat, all you need to do is think about calling someone and your phone will start dialing. At some point I predict the hat will be able to apply small electrical stimulation to different parts of the brain to create different effects. That’s when the hat becomes responsible for your actions more than whatever is left of “you.”
Would you trade your illusion of free will for a life of continuous satisfaction?
You say you won’t.
But you will.
Your choice in the matter is an illusion.
Les Miserables - Movie Review
The movie Les Miserables just won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy. If you haven’t seen this movie, you might be tempted because of its award-winning ways. As a public service, I offer you my review of Les Miserables.
In a pivotal scene in Les Miserables, one of the main characters finds himself in a sewer, up to his nostrils in human waste, with a bullet in his torso, while being pursued by the authorities who have just killed all of his friends. This was my favorite scene in Les Miserables because I could relate to it. Watching that fucking movie feels exactly like being up to your nostrils in human waste, with a bullet in your torso, after the government has killed all of your friends. The main difference is that the movie is longer. Much, much longer.
I usually fall asleep during movies. If you put me in a darkened room for more than thirty minutes, it doesn’t matter how good the entertainment is; I’ll be off to dreamland before the opening credits are done. I tried hard to sleep through Les Miserables but I was continuously thwarted by something they call “singing.” This movie was full of singing. And by singing, I mean the sad wailing of filthy, miserable people. If you would like to hear the entire soundtrack of Les Miserables without paying for a ticket, try punching your cat. But whatever you do, don’t let your cat watch Les Miserables because that would be cruel. I don’t care if your cat shredded your mattress and ate your wedding ring. The punishment would not be proportional to the crime.
Ann Hathaway played the part of a whining, mud-caked, Halloween skeleton who blamed the system for her problems. Typical liberal. Hugh Jackman played Wolverine, I think. I didn’t catch a lot of the details because it’s the sort of movie that makes your mind try to crawl out of your ear hole in search of anything that isn’t the movie.
Les Miserables is such an unpleasant experience that it would make a great practical joke on people you don’t like. If you have a coworker that you hate, suggest that he or she should see Les Miserables because it is so awesome. You might need to practice in front of a mirror before you can say it with a straight face. Mention that the movie won several Golden Globes. And be sure to say the movie trailers don’t capture the magic of the film. Remember to call it a “film,” not a movie, because it sounds more substantial that way. I suspect that 80% of Les Miserables audiences are the victims of this sort of prank. I’m thinking the Golden Globes might be in on the joke too.
If you want to see the best movie of the past year, check out This is 40. Judd Apatow knows how to make a frickin’ movie, and this is his best work to date. I laughed so hard at a scene involving a hand mirror that I thought I would need medical attention. Comedies don’t usually win the big awards, but this one is a true masterpiece. The writing, directing, and comedic acting are superb.
If you try the Les Miserables practical joke on a friend, let me know how it goes.
Luck Distribution
I realize that everything I say in this post can be explained by confirmation bias and selective memory. But that’s the part I find interesting. So here we go.
I have a hypothesis that everyone is born with the same amount of luck, possibly because we are a computer simulation, but that’s not my point today. My point is that luck doesn’t appear to be spread evenly across a person’s life. Some people use up all of their luck early in life and die young. Some people start out life in bad circumstances and finish strong.
For example, Lance Armstrong had an amazing life until the doping allegations. Steve Jobs was on top of the world but died young. Magic Johnson was frickin’ Magic Johnson until he got infected with HIV. John F. Kennedy was the fornicator in chief until someone shot him in the head. If the pattern holds, I give Justin Bieber a year before he lands in jail.
On the flip side, Halle Berry slept in her car at one point in her early life. Later she won an Academy Award. Oprah had a rough childhood but finished strong. And so on.
You can probably think of lots of people who violate my hypothesis, apparently experiencing continuous good luck or continuous bad luck throughout their entire lives. But my observation is that people who have consistently bad luck with money, for example, are often having more than their share of sex and/or love, and vice versa. And famous people have more than their fair share of depression and mental illness. According to researchers who study happiness, money doesn’t change your enjoyment of life that much. People who look extraordinarily lucky might be a lot less lucky than they appear to be.
Further complicating my analysis is the fact that people don’t always grab the opportunities that luck provides. Some struggling folks might also be the luckiest, but it won’t show if they don’t take advantage of the luck when it wanders into their lives. Other people might be aggressive about exploiting the crumbs of luck they find, making it seem as though they have extra luck. Serial entrepreneurs come to mind.
Personally, I’ve been unusually lucky in my career, but if you factor in my childhood, and calculate the average, my total lifetime luck would be about average.
I’m curious about whether you perceive luck the same way. Taking into consideration your entire life, professionally and personally, has your luck been about average?
Robot Doctors to the Rescue
One of the many future benefits of robots will be a dramatic reduction in healthcare costs. In the near term, medical robots will be little more than search engines with excellent eyesight. They will look at your wounds, ask questions about how you feel and then use the Internet to determine a diagnosis and treatment strategy, just as a human doctor does.We’re already in the early part of that era. I handle the majority of my medical questions on the Internet now. Last week, for example, when my friend had a bad encounter with a sea urchin, I texted him a link about how to treat it before the spines were even removed. Ten years ago, before my smartphone was so smart, that injury might have required a trip to the emergency room just to be sure we were doing things right. Instead, he self-treated, with some help from the Internet, and the local healthcare system avoided the expense.
Now imagine a future in which household robots are the norm. Your personal robot has far better eyesight than you, incredible pattern recognition for diagnosing problems, and potentially more manual dexterity than you. Your robot might have a keen sense of smell, and it might hear so well that it can detect your pulse. I can imagine all household robots coming equipped with medical sensors as standard equipment, including everything from blood oxygen sensors to shock paddles. Someday the household robot might be capable of handling 95% of all medical problems.
I can also imagine a time when the typical home has a medication printer, meaning it can print medicine on demand. I can imagine - and this is the interesting part - that properly certified robots might be able to operate these machines whereas humans would not be licensed to do so. The robot could be programmed to only use the medication printer for legitimate reasons whereas humans would be more inclined print Oxycontin for recreational use. I predict that someday robots will have superior rights to humans in specific areas of life because robots can be trusted (programmed) and humans cannot.
I’m assuming in this scenario that future robots are more hack-proof than computers today. Perhaps someday robots will recognize hack-attacks by noticing changes in their own behavior, the same way a human feels a cold coming on. And while I accept the truism that anything can be hacked, I think robots will still be safer than humans when it comes to controlling dangerous drugs.
So far I’ve only discussed health problems that can be handled at home. But I can imagine a day when robots are the only working surgeons because of their superior knowledge, speed, skill, and dexterity. If a robot can perform a surgery twice as fast as a human, I would think the trauma on the patient would be much less. In the long run, I can’t imagine human surgeons competing with surgical robots.
The first surgical robots might cost tens-of-millions. But if a robot can work 24-hours per day without breaks, and robot prices drop with volume, robot surgeons will quickly become competitive with human surgeons who earn big paychecks while working only a third of the day. The biggest savings from robots might be an end to human errors and the resulting reduction in medical insurance premiums, assuming robots make fewer bad decisions.
I will go so far as to predict that someday it will be illegal for a human to practice medicine because robots will be so much more reliable. In the long transition period, which has already started and will last another twenty years, humans will be in charge of what the technology does. Eventually those roles will reverse because technology will be so much more reliable than humans. Future generations will be appalled that humans were ever allowed to perform invasive surgery on other humans.
Robots are the budget wildcard for the next generation. There’s a good chance it won’t matter how much national debt we pile up today so long as robot technology keeps improving. At some point the real cost of healthcare, energy, construction, transportation, farming, and just about every other basic expense will fall by 90% as robots get involved. It would be absurd to assume we know anything about the economy in thirty years. Nothing will look the same.
Another wildcard in healthcare is nutrition science. I think we’ll reach a point in which we cut medical problems by a third just by improving our food choices. You can already see a movement in that direction. And once your house robot starts handling your meal preparation, expect big improvements in your nutrition.
I also think we will see a more aggressive application of what you might call doctor-assisted suicide via pain suppression. It will probably remain illegal in most of the United States for a doctor to help a patient kill himself directly, but it won’t be illegal to aggressively treat pain, and a side-effect of high levels of morphine, for example, is that it speeds up the inevitable while rendering the patient unconscious. For all practical purposes, aggressive pain treatment and doctor-assisted suicide has become the same thing. Your doctor can legally flip the kill switch on your brain via pain meds. And so long as the patient has a medical directive in place that specifies no feeding tubes, the body will follow. End-of-life medical costs will come down without much media attention or fanfare. Society’s perfect balance is to keep doctor-assisted suicide technically illegal while at the same time it is commonplace. Legal loopholes aren’t always bad.
So don’t worry about medical costs in thirty years. By then the phrase “going to the doctor” will sound like a quaint phrase from the past, like churning butter.
0 Comments
Things That Feel Ancient
I feel as if I live in two different time periods. One of those periods has cool technology that works just right, such as my iPhone 5 with Google Maps, operating in satellite view mode, at 4G speeds. It feels as if I’m living in a futuristic sci-fi movie.
Other times, such as when I use my laptop with Windows, I feel as if living I’m in a time from long ago. Windows and its third-party software pals interrupt my writing flow so often with pleas for software updates that I find it almost impossible to construct a sentence. And there’s no such thing as doing a little work when I find myself with an unexpected ten minutes. By the time I open my document and start to write I’ve been distracted by all sorts of little software side streets.
Do I really need to update my virus program every two days? How much risk am I accepting if I don’t? Does my laptop manufacturer’s software really need updating when I haven’t noticed any problems? That requires some investigation. Should I reboot now as one of the updates insists, or can I put that off for later. How do I make that free-trial pop-up stop bothering me?
Realistically, it’s not the amount of time that is the issue but the sidetracking of thought. For creative work, mental detours are killers.
And suppose I want to do something simple such as load photos from a camera. That should be easy, but somehow a different piece of software jumps in to handle the job every time. And by “handle” I mean store the uploaded photos in some sort of secret hidden folder that I can never find. I’m not sure it has ever worked the same way twice.
Windows is just one example of something that feels ancient. Recently I was filling out some paperwork that required me to sign my name over and over and over. Why do they need so many signatures for the same process? It’s because someday someone might need to prove that I had to an opportunity to read some legalese that hasn’t ever been read by anyone but the bastard who wrote it. I’ll bet even the guy who paid the bastard to write it didn’t read it.
Speaking of lawyers, do we really need a completely different and customized set of contracts for every transaction? It seems to me we could handle 90% of all contract situations with a few standard forms that allow you to fill in the blanks.
Yesterday I watched a good friend open a leather binder she carries around to keep her credit cards and various loyalty cards organized. I think there were about forty cards in that thing. She told a story of almost losing the binder at an airport and how panicked she was before finding it. The bag-o-plastic-cards system feels about as modern as dragging your goat to market to pay for some mead.
Let me tell you the system that I want. I’d like my phone hardware to be totally generic, and only the software to change as needed, up in the cloud, without asking me. If I drop my phone in the toilet, I want to grab another generic phone off the shelf, speak my name as my identifier, and have it load my phone software from the cloud. I’m up and running in minutes.
And I want my phone to be my computer too, or at least the gateway to my computer function in the cloud. If I get near a desktop with a monitor and keyboard, it should recognize my proximity and turn into my computer via software on the cloud.
I never want to identify myself in a retail establishment. Let their cameras snap a picture of my face then match it to a common database of faces and cross-check it to the unique signal from my phone that is in my pocket. That should be enough to know it’s me.
And I never want to enter a password again, or spell my email address letter-by-letter over the phone, or even know my own phone number.
As much as I don’t like government interference in markets, I’m happy as hell that I have HD television, and GPS, and wireless frequencies that are orderly. Now I wish the government would mandate an end to pen-based signatures, physical money, plastic cards, software pop-ups that beg for updates, and lawyers.
I’d be okay with a constitutional amendment making it a basic right to have Internet access and a smartphone by the year 2020 or so. It worked for landline telephones and the energy grid. It’s time to get everyone on the Internet so we can climb out of the goats-for-mead world we are in. Long term, I think universal Internet access saves the government more money than it costs because the economy would be so much better for it.
Rant complete.
Backwards Interface
In the olden days of personal computers it made perfect sense to open your application first and then start working. The application you needed was usually just a word processor or a spreadsheet. There wasn’t much to choose from.
Fast forward to today. Now I have dozens of apps on my phone. And my phone is very smart. I think it’s time to turn the interface model backwards. And by that I mean I would prefer to start entering text first and let my phone figure out which application I intend. I’m impatient. I want to start doing my task right away; I don’t want to search for my app icon first.
Imagine a smartphone that presents a blank text-entry box as your home screen. And suppose you type the following:
Henry
Project meeting
The room changed to the Zebra conference room. See you there.
Scott
Your phone can guess from the text you entered that you mean to send an email to someone named Henry on the subject of the project meeting. If you had intended this to be a text message there would be no subject line. If you intended to enter a search string for your browser there would only be one line of text in total. Your phone can almost always figure out the app you intend by the content you enter. And if there is more than one possibility, a list of apps pop up automatically after you enter your text and click the DONE button.
Let’s say you want to enter a calendar entry. Your smartphone could easily recognize your intent because calendar entries have dates and times.
If you wanted to use your map app, just enter an address and the phone guesses you want to see it on the map.
If you intend to set your alarm, just type “wake up 6:30 am”.
If you enter a valid URL, the phone knows you want your browser to go there.
If you want to use your flashlight app, just type “fl” and the flashlight app opens. “st” would bring up my stocks. “w” would give me weather, and so on. If there are two apps that start with the same letters, both choices appear for you to pick.
With the current smartphone interface model I have to play Where’s Waldo and search for my preferred app icon before I can start working. I estimate that I tap the wrong app about 20% of the time which is just enough to bug the living shit out of me and make me dream of a better system. My smartphone interface miscues are only partly my fault. My Phone icon and my Text icon both have identical green backgrounds and white symbols. When I’m in a hurry, they look the same to me. And I’m always in a hurry. I can’t train my brain to recognize my icons by reflex. I have to actually think about which one I want every time. I also often confuse my Text icon and my Email icon because they are somewhat similar in function. I use my phone all day long for texting, calling, browsing, and emailing, so the frustration accumulates. I prefer using my limited brainpower for more interesting tasks than searching for icons.
The app-picking step probably bothers me more than most people because I so often need to capture an idea for later, and in those situations a few seconds of delay is enough to forget the idea, or to be sidetracked by an interruption. Case in point, the topic of today’s blog has occurred to me and vanished at least a dozen times before I had a chance to capture it on my phone.
If you prefer your phone just the way it is, let’s say you have the option of keeping your Classic interface. All I’m suggesting is that I can change my phone settings to give me the Backwards Interface option if I want it.
The Anti-Incumbent Party
I’ve decided to form a political party in the United States with the sole purpose of voting against all incumbents whenever certain benchmarks of government performance are not met. For example, if the United States drives over the fiscal cliff without a deal, that would trigger a vote against all incumbents for national office. But if a budget deal is reached, and other benchmarks of basic competence are also achieved, members of the Anti-Incumbent Party would be encouraged to vote for anyone they liked.
The fiscal cliff is the most glaring example of a broken government. But I’m sure we could come up with other benchmarks for performance that are equally non-partisan. The Anti-Incumbent Party would only insist that the government make decisions that are backed by data and some degree of intellectual integrity. We won’t micromanage beyond that level. If the government makes timely decisions and clearly explains its reasoning, that’s all we ask. We’re looking for basic competence in the system, not specific outcomes.
We probably only need about ten percent of current voters to join the Anti-Incumbent Party to control the outcome of most elections. That seems fairly doable at the moment because most voters agree that the current system isn’t working. And let’s agree that the Anti-Incumbent Party will only exist as a psychological phenomenon and not a legal entity. That cuts down on a lot of paperwork and expense. To be a member of the Anti-Incumbent Party you simply have to want in. That’s it. You can even continue to be a member of whatever other party you are in. The Anti-Incumbent Party doesn’t mind your dual membership because we won’t be holding any primaries or conventions.
We probably need a website. The site would be designed to solicit opinions and manage voting on the benchmarks of competence. The top five most popular benchmarks will become the platform and change as often as circumstances require.
In our current system, we vote for individual candidates based on what we perceive as their competence. But we don’t get a chance to vote for the team of elected officials that form our government. The Anti-Incumbent party allows voters to actively manage the government’s collective team performance. No matter how awesome the individual politicians might be, if they work poorly as a team, they need to be rotated out so we can try a new team.
Imagine how bad professional sports would be if coaches of losing teams couldn’t make major lineup changes between seasons. Keep in mind that most losing teams are packed with world-class athletes. Sometimes great individuals just don’t work well together.
I Googled “Anti-Incumbent Party” to see if someone already started such a thing and discovered a Super PAC dedicated to anti-incumbency. That seems like a step in the right direction. But I think we still need an Anti-Incumbent Party to get more traction.
The main stumbling block to this idea is that voters don’t like to waste votes. The Anti-Incumbency Party only works if it attracts enough supporters to influence elections. So I suggest building the website and collecting names for the party on a provisional basis. Members would not be expected to voting against incumbents until there were enough party members to make a difference. That way no one wastes a vote until The Anti-Incumbent Party reaches a critical mass and starts voting as a group.
Do you think you could vote against your preferred party (Democrat or Republican) if you really liked your candidates’ positions but the government as a whole wasn’t working well as a team?
