The Blacklist (2013–2023)

James Spade and the show's writers have created a character that has outgrown the show and, ultimately, has outgrown the show's finale. The writers have ceded control.

Reddington is loyal to the people who are loyal to him. Loyalty is the bedrock of cooperation, which is the bedrock of civilisation. Even though, to a large extent, markets have replaced long-term relationships that used to demand loyalty, loyalty---albeit in a different guise---is still called upon. Equally important as loyalty to people is loyalty to principles: the principles that make markets functional by protecting basic freedoms and enforcing contracts. What Reddington had perfected was loyalty to people and loyalty to a constitution---the Constitution, perhaps, if constitution has the uniqueness property. The show does not say whether it does.

Oh, the Places You’ll Glow!

(The Second City, 27 July 2024)

The cast are at their best when they interact with the audience. The rest of the time, they are philosophers' philosophers, at best. Their sketches are about the unseen process, not the product. The product, too rough and too puerile to delight, shows how far one can get by simply trying and playing along, the lack of acting skills and talent notwithstanding.

The generous interpretation of the Second City is that, just like democracy itself, it is mediocre but robust. One could remove or replace any cast member, and the sequence of tolerable sketches would still keep coming. This democratic arrangement can be appropriate in families, organisations, and firms. The arrangement will not deliver beautiful art, though, except by the accident of nature selected through vigorous and brutal competition, which Chicagoland appears to be incapable of furnishing.

"Reagan: An American Journey" by Bob Spitz (2018)

While those who are good at something are usually good at most things, a person who is capable of rising to the top in one field need not be capable of rising to the top in all fields. The search for one's calling may take one on a path not lined with triumphs. That's OK. Indeed, such a path may be the best preparation for success in the field of one's calling. For Ronald Reagan, this field of calling was presidency.

Reagan's style as president was consistent with his convictions. He believed that the Constitution described the rules of the political game as it ought to be, and the market economy described the rules of the economic game as it ought to be. As a result, his job was not to redesign, to reengineer, or to regulate: neither the liberal democracy prescribed by the Constitution nor the free market beg to be micromanaged 

Reagan's job was to inspire fellow Americans to coordinate on the good equilibrium of the game that was the American project he wholeheartedly endorsed. His experience in Hollywood had equipped him well to inspire. The comfort that he habitually found in being good gave him the confidence in the existence of an equilibrium that was good, too.

"Tyranny of the Minority" (2023) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

The book complains that minority candidates win office thanks to the minority-bias in the electoral system. What the book fails to acknowledge is that candidates' campaign strategies respond to the electoral system. If one changes the game, players change their play. If a president who has won electoral college but has lost the popular vote had to win the popular vote instead, he would have likely changed his strategy and would have won the election anyway. As a result, the book's counterfactuals are unpersuasive.

The book acknowledges that liberal democracies combine two ingredients: the liberal one (which protects minorities) and the democratic one (which protects majorities). This is an easy (but valuable) observation to make (over and over again). What is hard is to determine the optimal proportion in which the two ingredients ought to be mixed. The book makes little progress on that front and instead argues for the majoritarian extreme.

By examining a series of case studies, the book argues that the current balance between liberalism and democracy must be wrong simply because the policies that the book's authors favour end up being blocked by minorities. This is not a principled argument.

The book argues that the rules of the game must change, but it fails to persuade why doing so would make any difference. Games with different rules can lead to the same outcomes. Games with "nicer-looking" rules can lead to "worse" outcomes once one takes into account how players adapt their play to the rules. Amending the Constitution to suit the political sentiment of the moment in a small town in Massachusetts could erode the legitimacy of the Constitution while delivering precious little in benefits from purportedly superior outcomes.

The electoral system in the U.S. is biased in favour of representing places and away from representing people. (The bias towards places has also been noted by urban economist Ed Glaeser, who bemoaned the fact that urban policies are often designed to revitalise places where no one lives instead of focusing on helping people move wherever they might flourish.) There ought to be a normative argument for over-representing empty spaces, but it is nowhere to be found in the book. Perhaps, by over-representing a place, one somehow takes into account the welfare of the future generations who will inhabit this place.

The book claims, without proof, that proportional representation is the only true form of democracy. This idea is controversial. (The Supreme Court rejected it in its deliberations on gerrymandering.) The idea requires a justification that would go beyond "Europeans do it."

The book claims it ought to be easy to vote, but, once again, does not argue the case. Do not barriers help to ensure that only those who care deeply enough about the outcome bother to vote and are heard?

Here is a possible argument for making it easy to vote: Today, political candidates waste too much time and money trying to turn out voters in ever greater numbers. If voting were easy, then, instead of competing in the zero-sum (negative-sum?) game of turnout, the candidates would compete on policies. Policy competition, presumably, is a positive-sum game.

The book's strength is in putting present-day politics into a historical perspective. But of its conclusions, the book will not persuade anyone who is not already a convert.

"How Democracies Die" (2018) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

A good constitution defines a game that is fun for players (politicians) to play and is fun for spectators (voters) to watch. If the game is more fun to play by following the rules than by breaking them---if peer esteem and spectator admiration depend on the rules being followed---then the players will follow the rules.

A good constitution defines a game that is interesting.

Players may be more likely to care about peer esteem if they all come from the same social class, or if they all reject class divisions and derive their shared identity from a collection of common values instead. What kind of play spectators find it fun to watch is likely a moving target. Figuring it out is the art of politics.

What is probably universal is the spectator taste for a show of skill and grit. If a player stands a better chance of signalling his skill by following the rules rather than breaking them, he will follow the rules. If the game rewards grit, and grit is what spectators would like to see, the players will keep playing the game.

A game whose outcome is determined by the player characteristics that are easy to see at the outset is not a fun game to watch. In this sense, hereditary monarchy sans court intrigue is not fun. Similarly, meritocracy when merit (e.g., an advanced degree from a top university) is easy to observe is not fun either.

Some randomness in the outcome of an otherwise meritocratic game may add to the fun by forcing the players to employ skill and grit in order to overcome the handicap imposed by chance. Chance can be replaced by seemingly gratuitously complicated rules, deciphering which would require skill.

If politics is not boring, it stands a chance of being healthy.