A Better Way

October 10, 2022 | Balsa Research

What would one do differently, if one’s focus was not on who got the credit or which side was helped in a partisan struggle, but instead focused on what would improve people’s lives?

We think it might look like a full stack approach:

1. Model the situation and figure out what would actually improve things. Use public writing both as an impetus to understand and to pass that knowledge onto others. Bring together a team, working partly in public, to understand the dynamics involved. Red team proposed solutions both politically and practically.

2. Find solutions that balance improving things with the need for political viability, and for the likelihood a proposal survives political compromise while remaining effective. Assemble them into the Official Policy Binder (first draft currently in progress), and post sufficiently robust sections of it to the Official Solutions Website. 

3. Quantify the gains (or avoided costs) in a way that is legible to the congress and to the media, in part via Proper Scientific Studies in the Proper Journals in the Proper Scientific Font by Credible Sources. Use as much officialness as is efficient and necessary in each case. Rather than doing this internally, reach out to and commission the right academics to do it, giving them a mission to find the real answers and publishing any negative results you find. They, too, are trapped by bad incentives, the need to publish or perish and ensure the flow of grants. The prices here are quite reasonable - one estimate for a comprehensive study on a key piece of harmful legislation in need of repeal, that has still somehow not been done, was only $75,000. 

4. Collaborate during this process to figure out what else we can learn and quantify, and look for alternative approaches. I have found that often the most important implications of such work are not stated directly but instead need to be extracted and reasoned out, or require follow-ups, which reduces their punch greatly. Where feasible, this process should include running true experiments. One should not only rely on polls and focus groups and theorizing.

5. Simultaneously, legislative language must be professionally drafted, red teamed and ensured to do what you want it to do. All congressional staff are massively overworked, you need to do this for them, and you need to ensure you get the thing you think you are getting. Plan ahead for how they will inevitably make it worse.

6. With studies in hand, one is in a much better position to spread the word via the media and to pitch members of congress on the proposal and argue for it. Quantification via properly credible sources is a big game. One must play by rules of evidence. 

7. To make it stick will require not only a lobbying effort but the ability to offer campaign support and good incentives. Lobbying effectively and ultimately helping support campaigns are more expensive than the previous steps, but still remarkably cheap compared to what is at stake and relative to potential funding sources. With a selfless positive agenda and a willingness to get involved in primaries the dollars will go farther, and ultimately even most politicians do want things to be better rather than worse. Do the work, find champions to do the work only members can do, support them. 

8. Thus, the whole operation needs to be backed up, at some point, by a willingness to coordinate support, especially in primaries and also in general elections, to candidates that share the general agenda. 

9. Wins beget wins, building momentum, as the coalition for good things is emboldened, learns to coordinate and gets more positive vibes. Thus it’s fine to start small.

To be most effective will require coordinating and implementing this full stack, but the individual steps are valuable on their own. Each represents an important missing piece and multiplier. In some cases some of the steps are done for us, and we can provide complements. In any case, we keep things focused on cutting the right enemy.

It is up to you to decide how much of that you agree with, based on the track record.

For the parts that are not Balsa’s comparative advantage, which ultimately will be most things, we are not only willing but eager to build a team and pass as much as possible off to them, including the credit. The goal is to do something, not be someone.