Life in the United States has hardened into a blue-versus-red identity contest. Cooperation is treated as weakness, alternating majorities impose their agendas, and the result is predictable: sharper polarization, constant grandstanding, fewer durable achievements, and a public that despises the system yet remains loyally tied to their side.
Americans quarrel endlessly about what has gone wrong with their political system. The suspects are familiar: corruption, misinformation, social media, money, or unappealing candidates. Each of these facets undeniably contributes, however they themselves are symptoms of our current predicament. The root-cause is that the American political system rests atop a series of structural incentives which push the system towards a state of stable dysfunction.
Many assume democracy would work if only today’s actors behaved ethically, cooperated, or returned to the norms of a bygone era. This is false. The dynamics of the system not only fail to engineer the common good, but actively work against it. Concerns that this could be the case have been raised since the founding of democracy, but believed to be less of an issue than it has become. While no political structure can perfectly achieve the ideal of the common good, reforms can meaningfully improve how closely government aligns with it.