Welcome to the season finale of Extra Politics!
If you didn't catch the previous episode, you might want to check that one out first.
It's going to be very relevant.
[Article 11] by Sean and Dean Kiner
In 1935,
the University Of Kentucky and NYU
played a game of basketball.
Due to some issues with the referees, this game got especially physical.
And because of this, the best player in the country at the time,
Leeroy Edwards, was held to just 6 points.
The lowest total of his entire career.
Sportswriters wrote that, if this trend continued,
basketball would cease to be a game of skill, and devolve into something totally different:
a physical, brutish fight.
Hockey, basically.
They needed to fix this exploit if the designer's intent for basketball was to be preserved.
And, so they did.
They patched the game of basketball by adding the three-second rule.
Which forbid players from standing under the basket in their opponent's lane for longer than three seconds
And significantly limited the physical nature of under-the-basket play
This saved the game of basketball from structural collapse.
The patch worked!
So, can we patch the game of US politics?
Is it even possible to do so when the original game designers are all dead, and today's extremely
agenda driven players are the one in charge of patching the rules?
Well, let's talk about it.
Spectator sports are probably the closest gaming analogy we have to politics.
When a sport get patched,
a lot of the time is intended fix some sort of collapse,
but just at often done for another reasons to keep spectator
to keep the spectators happy.
When they added the 3 points shot in basket ball and the 2 points conversion to pro football
It wasn't because those games were broken.
It was to makes the games better for spectators,
it made it more fun to watch.
In the first episode of this series, I said that in politics,
We citizens and our votes acts as victory points during elections.
But that's not all we are,
we are also this game spectators.
And this is especially true during non election times,
even when our side loses,
our trust in the fairness of this system is critical,
governmental systems that don't create that trust,
tend to have a lot of revolutionary problem.
So to keep things running smoothly it is essential that this game be patch for the spectator benefit.
But who's gonna patch it?
The rules writing committee for sports
is a mix of players, owners and referees.
And that works pretty well.
Because all of those folks are gonna lose money if the game stop being enjoyable for spectators.
What's more, those committees also represent a lot of teams,
with no one team having more poll than another.
It's possible that some change to the rules might happen to be particularly bad for one team.
But if it's great for the league as a whole,
that one team gonna be outvoted.
Sadly our political rules writing committee is composed exclusively of the game's players,
so there is gonna be strong resistance to any change that takes
structural power away from those players.
And unlike professional sports,
there are only two teams in our current political systems
and they never hold an equal amount of power.
So there also gonna be strong resistance to any change that's bad for the party currently in power.
To complicate things even further,
there's almost never just one game going on at a time.
After all, each issue,
bill, election
inter party power struggle, and fund raising events
is sorta like it's own mini-game,
all of them are deeply connected,
there's always at least a few happening.
And we're asking the rules commitee to update the rules while many of those games are currently in progress,
something that a real sport never have to deal with.
But don't lose hope,
just like in sports,
spectators have influence,
and it's all about gaining leverage.
In sports, fans gain leverage with their dollars.
Nice and simple.
In politics, fans gains leverage with support
which include dollars but also votes and volunterring
and here the big challenge ahead of us as spectators.
Basically, what this whole series has been building toward
to become the spectator that this game desperately needs in order to thrive,
We have to put our team loyalty aside for the good of the game
we need to be willing to accept the changes that are good for the system
Even if they temporary disadvantage our team,
and we need to willing to work and compromise with people from the other team.
When the game designer hat goes on,
The player head must come off.
Patriotism isn't wearing a flag pin,
it's being willing to give something up
for the good of the country.
And if our rules committees won't do it,
then it's our job.
Here's an outline on how we can do that.
Step one: Isolate the exploit,
we have to find the specific broken elements in the design in order to fix them.
If congress does something that you don't like
but it is within the designer's intend,
maybe they impose some regulations,
or they raise taxes
or they declare a war that you aren't on board with but they did do it through the standard congressional processes.
That's not an exploit, that's just your team losing,
and the nice thing is that you can fight that
by working within the system that exist now
but,
what if bankers are promising current member of congress,
high paying jobs after their terms are over,
in exchange for more favorable banking laws.
Our political system's designers never intended for the promise of future jobs
to be something that would influence the game of passing laws.
That is an exploit, that needs patching
Step two: Learn more
if you gonna change the game's rules, you need to understand the game
and not just at the basic player level but as a game designer.
Knowing that a particular map,
strongly favors one Counter-Strike team over the other is one thing,
actually designing fair and interesting maps for Counter-Strike
requires another level of knowledge entirely
Step three: Figure out where to patch
Simple exploit can be patched with basic regulations,
which is just the catch-all term for when a group of experts are granted the power to write rules
through some binding mechanisms.
For larger issues that need patching, regulations may not be enough
that might take getting a law pass through congress,
which has a lot more authority when it comes to changing rules
and for the really big issues,
you're probably looking for a full blown constitutional patch.
either a supreme court ruling or an amendment to the constitution
Step four: Create the patch
Find a few light minded people to create a general design doc for the patch
and again,
this should be done in a way that ignores your team loyalty
and player mentality to embrace what's best for the game
Step five: Find a light minded patriots
It takes a lot of spectators to convince the rule writing committee to do something.
So, go find some.
Gather support from everybody,
no matter their team,
you may disagree with these people on all sort of stuff,
gun control, educational policy, health care spending.
That's fine, in fact it's better.
Remember, this is about being a game designer,
It has to be about the game's structure. Not the team's objective
and that bit is important because people are almost certainty going to try
to attach your movement to one of the two political parties.
It's just the way our hyperpardonson world tend to frame these things.
This is why it's so critical to work with folks from the other team as you move forward
Step six: Apply pressure persistently
Both in and out of election's cycle
This work is hard and it takes time
You have to stay just as engage even when the bright light of campaign's seasons aren't on
In fact, many believe that the work done outside of campaign's season is actually more effective.
Nobody said being a game designer was easy.
Step seven: Be prepared to compromise on anything but the designers' intend
Every patches have winners and losers.
Your patch might be a great one but be ready to accept one that is a bit different than you in vision
Compromise is a dirty word for some
and in politics it can be dirtier still.
But compromise is what Democracy is all about,
if you are gonna get anywhere you have to make it easy for somebody on the rules committee to vote against
to what they perceive to be their own personal interest
Let's wrap things up with an example,
Let's say we want to fix the largest broken thing in our system
Gerrymandering
I mean, "Hey! Go big!", right?
Step one, we isolate the source of the problem.
Which is gerrymandering congressional districts.
Step two, we learn more.
We find experts, we read and we study.
Step three, we figure out where to patch.
Gerrymandering is a pretty big issue so we probably talking constitution level.
We're gonna need the supreme court on this one
Step four, we create a patch.
An amendment that takes the ability to gerrymander away from political parties
as proportionality and put redistricting duties in an independent party's hand.
Maybe even a computer program
Step five, we find light minded patriots
Not just our friends on the Internet, but also allies within the system
from both parties if possible.
We're gonna need them,
Step six, we apply pressure.
Get voters across the country to bring the issue up at town halls and in newspaper's articles.
Create a clever logo and name for the program.
Make bumper stickers.
And step seven, We compromise.
To get the committee to vote against their own personal interest
maybe we take a pointer from
Article #1, Section 9 of the constitution
and agree that the new amendment won't take affect for 19 years
at which point, most of the people on the rules writing committee will be gone so
it won't sting them as much.
We also agree to a district generating program that makes things way more random than we originally had in mind
way more random than we originally had in mind
It will break up those obvious cultural districts sometimes
which kinda sucks but if that what we have to trade to patch this thing,
so be it.
See how easy it is?
Okay, it's not all that easy but in fairness I did just pick what is probably
the largest exploit currently existing in our politically system.
I think you will find the smaller exploits are a lot simpler
I have very much hope that you have enjoy this series
and I wanna give a special thanks to Luke Peterschmidt for writing all this
and Joseph Maslov for doing all this great art!
Thanks for watching everybody.
Let's patch this game.
[Article 11] by Sean and Dean Kiner