FORWARD

by Andrew Yang

those who believe that our politics are broken are wrong. Politics is functioning exactly as our structural incentives demand. The problem is that those demands have nothing to do with improving our lives; more often than not, people get rewarded more for keeping a problem around than for solving it.

Putting people—however well-intentioned—into a corruptive system of personal and political incentives produces nothing but dysfunction and disillusionment.

Right now, members of Congress have a reelection rate of about 90 percent, while Congress’s approval rating hovers around 21 percent.

With ranked-choice voting, candidates would need to achieve majority support from all the voters in their district and not just the party primary voters.

Ranked-choice voting will be the crucial change that unlocks us from stasis and polarization.

What was required was a recasting of our economy to serve human needs instead of capital efficiency.

Over time I’ve learned that they were right. People don’t listen to ideas. People listen to other people.

Instead, many members of the national media feel they have a responsibility to reinforce particular candidates and their “narratives” and dismiss others. They don’t just report on the news; they form it.

The process through which we choose leaders neutralizes and reduces the capacities we want most in them. It’s cumulative as well; the longer you are in it, the more extreme the effects are likely to be over time.

Bureaucratic failures will continue to recur because many of our governing institutions aren’t built for efficiency, urgency, or accountability. They are built for continuity, stability, and the bureaucracy itself. They will fail us during the next crisis, and we will be left crying for answers time and again.

I propose an evolution of our current system of corporate capitalism to one that I call human-centered capitalism, or human capitalism for short. Human capitalism has three core tenets: Humanity is more important than money. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar. Markets exist to serve our common goals and interests.

Ranked-Choice Voting and Open Primaries. Party primaries disenfranchise the majority of voters. In 80 percent of cases the general election is essentially a foreordained conclusion. Non-major-party candidates are regarded as a “waste” of a vote and can never compete. Candidates spend millions trashing their lone opponent, making us all more cynical. Ranked-choice voting better captures voters’ true preferences and enables a more dynamic and truly representative democracy while addressing all of these problems. It is the key to unlocking real reform.

Fact-Based Governance. Politicians today compete in messaging and news cycles. They should compete on results. The only way to know how you are doing is if you agree on facts and if all parties can agree on one version of reality. We should be very concerned about political leaders who don’t accept that measurements of social and economic health have weight and that science is real. Spin must have its limits. Parties can differ on what goals they would most like to pursue, but we need to share a baseline of where we are and how we are doing.

Human-Centered Capitalism. We measure our economic health based on GDP, stock market prices, and headline unemployment rates. Meanwhile, life expectancy is declining, deaths of despair are surging, and millions of Americans are getting pushed aside. Our economic system should be geared to benefit us, with life expectancy, average income and affordability, childhood success rates, mental health, clean air and water, and other measurements of our well-being front and center. We must humanize our economy to work for us instead of continuing to see ourselves as inputs into a system.

Effective and Modern Government. Americans have lost faith in our government at multiple levels because it often seems hopelessly bureaucratic and behind the times. Interacting with our government should be easy and painless—even elevating—instead of something to dread. In many ways, the best way for us to restore faith in our ability to accomplish big things is to adopt higher standards for what we are doing right now. Imagine if a trip to the DMV or interaction with the IRS were as easy and seamless as online banking. You might become more optimistic about our solving big problems. Most important, our government should treat us as human beings and owners.

Universal Basic Income. In a period of unprecedented economic change and technological disruption, we should acknowledge that millions of Americans will need a new way to meet their basic needs and a pathway to stand on. We all have intrinsic value. The majority of Americans are now for universal basic income. Putting money into people’s hands will shore up our economy, create jobs, and improve physical health, mental health, the ability of children to learn, publi...

Grace and Tolerance. Most parties need an enemy. Our enemy is those who would cast our fellow Americans as enemies and an existential threat, and the forces of inertia that make our government out of touch with the people. We all come to the table with different experiences and qualities. We are all human and fallible. We are polarized and tribal. We will give the benefit of the doubt to ourselves and each other and avoid engaging in the politics of personal attack or destruction. If my family member disagrees with me on politics, they remain my family and I love them as much as ever.