The Los Angeles Times has their annual Festival of Books. This year, of course, the discussion panels are being held online. That's my favorite part of the book festival so I have a list of 7 panels I plan to watch online. Hopefully, I'll get to watch all of them. The first one was called, "People Have the Power? Electoral Politics and Democracy." There were three panelists who discussed the following:
Paul Adler - Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology, and Environmental Studies at USC
He sees us in six crises at the moment: economic irrationality, workplace disempowerment, government non-responsiveness, environment unsustainability, social disintegration and international conflict. He sees these crises as inevitable as long as we have a capitalist system where companies don't cooperate with each other.
The reason he doesn't think the current democracy-capitalism system will work is that to address his six crises, taxes need to go up and would destroy the business sector. Corporate America would rebel against this and prevent the necessary change. His solution to deal with this business rebellion is for democracy to expand from government to the business sector. His end goal is for a planned economy. To take the strategic management structure of corporations and scale that up to the economy as a whole.
He admits that the prospect of this change is really slim and doesn't claim to be an expert on how to get from here to there. He believes that we need a significant crisis to convince people to shift to this type of model.
He appeared to be opposed to referendums and initiatives as these wouldn't make the correct choice for the future of society. So he is more into representational democracy versus direct democracy.
Opinion: It really sounded to me like his goal is for a Soviet type rule over the business community, but via democracy versus dictatorship. I really wonder if there would be room for start-ups in his society. If someone had an innovation in mind, would they need approval from higher up to pursue it?
Jane Junn - USC Associates Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies
Sees us in a situation where some people have power and others don't. For example, when it comes to women, she sees them as the most important part of voters in America. The mode voter is a divorced white woman who lives in the suburbs and owns a gun. Even with this power, women only make up 30% of California's legislature and around 25% in both the Senate and House in Washington DC.
Though women are the most important voters, they do change preferences. And not all women are the same as white women support Republicans and she even believes that this year white women will vote for President Trump. Women can be split into two groups: those who believe in gender consciousness and those who support the patriarchy.
She hopes to see a revolutionary change. People at the top might regret the outcome, but others won't.
Every generation thinks it is in the worst of times. They're wrong. We all just face a different set of problems. For example, racism has been persistent throughout American history. In the 1920s, there was racism towards Italians and Jews. The question is are we making progress. She believes that the answer for this period of time will depend on who gets elected: President Trump or Joe Biden.
Opinion: even though Paul Adler was perhaps discussing the most radical change to societal structure, it really sounded to me that Jane Junn was the most radical of the group: the fact that she hopes to see revolutionary change and that people at the top might regret the outcome. Kind of sounded like support of the Cultural Revolution. Honestly, I'm not sure I understand her belief that women are the most important voter especially if she splits them into two: white women and non-white women who vote differently.
John Matsusaka - Professor of Finance and Business Economics at USC
People feel they've lost control of their governments across Western democracies. This has fueled the rise of populism such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It is a reality that the people have lost control. Government has evolved from a system where laws are made by those elected to one where laws are made by courts and regulators. He admits that due to the complexity of society, this might be necessary.
His solution is to add an additional layer of democracy above the courts and regulators. He points to Europe as supporting his idea. The Brexit vote being an example: experts might want to be in the European Union, but the British voters got to decide in the end.
Though he believes in this type of voting, he doesn't approve of propositions going to the national level. So it sounded like he was more for politicians to come up with laws and that some of those laws would be sent for a national vote for approval. So he wants to integrate direct democracy into our representational democracy. A reason for this is the belief that citizens are far more in the middle than politicians who are on the extremes (both left and right).
He is dubious that people would want Paul Adler's solution to Corporate America. Also, believe that wanting a crisis to occur to force change may result in change that is unwanted.
His national votes could result in outside money attempting to sway the vote, but believes that this is a problem in everything related to politics.
Like everyone, he sees us being highly polarized, but doesn't believe this will last forever. Once polarization has subsided in the United States, he see's some of his ideas being integrated.
In the end, he believes that no one can determine where society will be in 10 years. Would anyone have predicted COVID-19? He does say we live in a prosperous society and an educated one. He believes that Americans are fed up with the polarization and that we can defuse it. Politics shouldn't be about my side winning, but what can we change together.
Opinion: Well, he obviously was opposite of Paul Adler and Jane Junn. He wants compromise while the other two wanted revolutionary change. I kind of got the sense that Jane Junn had issues with him beyond philosophical. I actually kind of like his idea of national votes, but he didn't give any examples of laws he thought should have gone up for votes in the United States. Obamacare? Trump's new NAFTA deal? Wish he had as the Brexit example is really just a European issue.
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