The Anticommons

Columbia law professor Michael Heller, in his new book, “The Gridlock Economy,” [writes about] the “anticommons.” We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off. But Heller shows that having too much ownership creates its own problems. If too many people own individual parts of a valuable asset, it’s easy to end up with gridlock, since any one person can simply veto the use of the asset. The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste.

That's from the New Yorker. The article primarily deals with economics, and has very good examples relating to art and wind power. But I feel this also illustrates a key public policy dilemma: how many checks and balances are ideal?

In the United States, it is very difficult to pass truly meaningful legislation, because it has to pass the muster of at least four different bodies - the House, Senate, Presidency, and judicial branch. In all of those bodies, it is possible for one key person to stop the legislative process altogether. There are literally dozens of choke points a bill must pass through in order to become law. This results in the power of government to change laws being "underused and wasted," regardless of how obvious the change may be.

But removing those check points would create different problems: overuse. Rapid changes from administration to administration and from congress to congress would be likely and the chances of stupid legislation passing due to political pressure would be higher.

"The Reporter's Worldview"

Ezra Klein nails one of the problems of contemporary journalism (emphasis mine):

Oddly enough, it's not really considered reporting to read Anthony Cordesman's latest report on Iraq. It is considered reporting to call Anthony Cordesman on the phone and ask him what he thinks. It's not considered reporting to read through Barack Obama's speeches on nuclear proliferation and emerge with a coherent understanding of his stated policies. It is considered reporting to land an interview with Barack Obama and ask him what he thinks, and it would be considered ace reporting -- A1 level reporting -- to unearth a copy of Obama's college thesis on nuclear non-proliferation and publish his conclusions....

In part, this is due to the competitive pressures of journalism. The journalist's job, in theory, is to learn things that other people can't learn, so work conducted largely by analyzing documents and information in the public domain isn't journalism...

An underlying worldview in journalism (is): That politicians are all bullshit artists, that politics is all artifice, and the reporter's job is to cynically expose it as such and then peer behind the curtain to uncover the moments of spontaneity and honesty. Within this rubric for journalism, there's no reason to read speeches or policy plans or interview transcripts, no reason to stick in the public domain because it's all crap anyway. Better to try and trigger moments of surprise -- when truth might slip through the cracks created by shock -- then take seriously a politician's stated plans for the country.

This is partially because editors consider it "lazy" to just rely on information in the public domain. Adam Nagourney could easily just rewrite Obama's policy papers, stripping them of glittering generalities and bureaucratic BS, call one or two outside experts, then go take a long lunch. I have no doubt he would prefer to do this. But he also feels the need to show editors he is working. So he has to call Obama's press office and ask them to put him in touch with Obama's policy advisers and because most press officers are fucking useless (the most underreportered story ever, because reporters can't afford to piss them off), he has to sit around and wait 3 hours for them to get back to him, while repeatedly telling his editors he has "calls in" and doing nothing.

Basically, aggressively pursuing stuff like Obama's college thesis also makes it look like a reporter is working hard. Note: if an editor thinks a reporter is not working hard, he will undoubtedly assign the reporter a story idea the editor has. The idea will be either a. dumb or b. impossible to report. There is nothing reporters hate more than story ideas editors come up with.

The false hope of wonkery

Like Hilzoy, I am a wonk. I love policy. Love reading about it, love writing about it, love analyzing it, etc. However, I am even more loath than she is to put much into the candidates' position papers and websites. Why?

Because, to a certain extent, it doesn't matter what the President wants. It matters what Congress wants.

Ultimately, it is up to Congress to write and pass laws, with all the compromise and squabbling that entails. While presidents can and do use the bully pulpit, congress can decide to shit or piss all over any proposal a president can make. Because Democrats are likely to retain or expand their congressional majority in the fall, this makes President McCain's plans, in particular, pretty irrelevant because none of them will be enacted. There's no way Pelosi and Reid will allow McCain to stack the courts with right-wing judges, pass massive tax cuts, etc.