-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Home
Social Credit Rating is a working name for this project. It is intended to be:
An always-on coach to help your daily economic decisions reflect both your social values and the realities of your life.
In December 2016, progressive electoral politics is in crisis. The prospects for Democrats in 2018 are doubly grim; it is a non-presidential year which depresses Democratic turnout and the Senate map is so bleak that a filibuster-proof Republican Senate majority is a realistic possibility. More broadly, the U.S. electoral system is structurally unsound, with a wide array of failures and weaknesses up to and including allegations of direct manipulation.
Much has been written on the U.S. political situation and will not be repeated here. The starting point for this initiative is how things got to this point, and it is economic and financial. The book Dark Money is essential background reading. The policy preferences of the wealthiest Republican donors is considerably to the right of even mainstream Republicans. In short, money buys power and the billions of dollars concentrated in the hands of extreme interests led directly to the situation that we find ourselves.
One can argue whether increasing inequality and political tyranny are inevitable outcomes of capitalism, or just the variation of American capitalism we face. I’m agnostic on this topic. The pressing question is one of strategy and action. If right-wing billionaires are taking control of our political democracy, is there some way to reduce their economic base of power?
The progressive movement is not without assets. I believe that a large majority of intelligent, educated people in the United States are aghast at the current situation and fearful for their families' future. This represents a considerable base of intelligent, motivated individuals with both talent and considerable economic surplus at their disposal. The problem is that, other than the electoral system, the avenues for collective action are fragmented into a wide array of interest groups. These groups can be effective on point issues, but (since the decline of the labor unions) there has been no broad-based, countervailing, general-interest force outside of the Democratic Party.
According to Wikipedia, the U.S. economy is currently $16.78 trillion, of which roughly 70% is consumer-driven. This represents a massive leverage point. Indeed, "vote with your dollar" is an old concept and, while boycotts have occasionally been effective tactically, as a strategy it has not to my knowledge resulted in structural change. However, I believe that a number of factors may be converging to increase potential effectiveness of a progressive, consumer-driven approach to eroding the power of the extreme, wealthy Right.
I propose building a state of the art platform based on social media, mobile technology, and data analytics, using current neuroscience and behavioral economics, to help people guide their everyday financial choices in an integrated fashion.
Think about the potential. If millions of people were being nudged on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make even marginally better decisions for the sake of the planet and society, that would start to add up into real impacts. Mid-level managers struggling for a quarter-basis-point increase in their product line market share would see that number go down unexpectedly, along with the company’s stock price, because their company’s ties to Koch Industries are too close. We start to exert continuous, sustained pressure on the economy itself, and hit the Right where it hurts, through the daily decisions of millions of consumers who need to do nothing more than seek guidance from one, easy to use app.
This effort would be run with modern digital product development techniques, focusing on value, usability, and feasibility. It may well be that there are fatal flaws. After thinking about the idea for about two years and discussing it with a wide variety of intelligent and credentialed people, I have yet to find any.
The current situation is grave. We owe it to ourselves and our families to explore all options. Please have a look at the more detailed approach discussion in the remaining pages, and let me know what you think.