U.S. manufacturing is rapidly going away, exemplified by [this story about Apple](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all) which shows the power of scale and cultural advantages in China and other Asian countries. Thus ends a century of American innovation in manufacturing, starting in the days of Henry Ford and the assembly line and reaching its zenith in and after WWII.
I’ve always felt like design is a more sustainable industry for nations, as no one can better design for a culture than its own citizens–and I say that as someone whose current job is to design for other cultures. As Apple itself shows, design “alone” can create huge amounts of wealth for companies and individuals. But it’s still unclear whether a culture can sustain itself by only designing, and outsourcing the manufacturing of, the products and services it uses.
Of course there’s no guarantee at all that the number of jobs in the world will exactly equal the number of people in it. I just hope that the work we’re doing to evolve design practice provides enough fulfilling work for enough people to get us to a sustainable place–worldwide.
[Niall Ferguson explains the key elements that make a society prosperous](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpnFeyMGUs8):
1. Competition
2. The Scientific Revolution
3. Property rights
4. Modern medicine
5. The consumer society
6. The work ethic
Comparing political and economic proposals by how they impact these metrics seems like a good way to keep your society on track. He makes a good point that the West pioneered many of these but has been steadily abandoning them as the rest of the world picks them up.
[2/3 military/national security, 1/3 every single other thing the government does](http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs29/f/2008/140/5/7/Death_and_Taxes__2009_by_mibi.jpg).
This is the best explanation I’ve seen for why people vote against their own interests, seen often in US elections:
“If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.”
I’ve never really considered voting systems other than the representative [plurality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system) and [plurality-at-large](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large) system in the US, where a single person represents all, regardless of whether they received a majority of votes, or the relative proportions of votes for other candidates. Also known as “first-past-the-post” or “winner-take-all” voting, this encourages heavy, expensive campaigning, polarized views, and slate voting, and often produces a winner with 51% of the vote (and 49% of voters angered).
Wikipedia has [a great explanation of many other voting systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system) and [their effect on election results](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_different_voting_systems_under_similar_circumstances). Several of these seem like advances to our current system, and many are in use around the world.
I was particularly struck by the fact that most major democracies elect their representatives using a proportional representation system, “aimed at securing a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates (grouped by a certain measure) obtain in elections and the percentage of seats they receive” ([Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation)). Proportional representation has in the past been used to break up both Democratic and Republican party “machines”, and encourages the formation of smaller parties, who are able to effectively represent smaller groups of people. It also encourages higher voter turnout, since unlike plurality-at-large systems or our Electoral College, votes for second-place winners are still effective (in the 1994 Congressional elections, by comparison, [only 21% of votes actually helped elect someone](http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/globalrights/democracy/abcs.html)).
I also liked former Stanford housemate [Clark Durant’s idea for “turn-taking terms”](http://tclarkdurant.com/Cartoon.html), which proposes to split a term into smaller pieces and have the candidates compete for how many pieces they will govern, and in which order. This, he argues, “creates the incentives for politicians to build broader supermajority coalitions”, and “coalitions are put in a position where they can hold one another reciprocally accountable”. It seems a bit like a shortened version of what we have at a national level today, with most offices carrying 2- or 4-year terms. Already those are at the low end of what is necessary for enacting change, and shortening them further could either paralyze the system or force more cooperation–what Clark calls “government by the golden rule”.
Our increasingly partisan Congress seems ripe for voting innovation. Perhaps one of these systems could break up *both* the Democratic and Republican machines, and start doing something new?