Heroes they’re not. But when profits and progressive policies align… POW!

Tech companies come out against restrictive immigration laws. Disappointed CEOs abandon their seats on a national business council as the government walks away from climate accords. The normally corrupt NCAA moves a basketball tournament from a state looking to impose discriminatory bathroom laws.

More recently, large retailers have decided — of their own accord, without any law imposed upon them — to raise age minimums and stop selling military-style assault rifles. Even on a micro scale, after incidents like Charlottesville, employers have fired people after being notified of those employees’ hateful online speech.

To be fair, it’s not all rosy. Some businesses have fought for their right not to provide birth control as part of employee health insurance, or their right not to serve LGBT customers. And of course, there’s Citizens United.

But the trend does seem to be toward (most) companies coming down on the side of (mostly) progressive issues. In part, as this article reminds us, because:

Politics is competitive, but the competition is constrained—by time (e.g., elections only happen every two, four, or six years), by geography (e.g., the gerrymandering of districts), and by partisanship, in which every issue often boils down to “the other side is worse.” Many companies cannot rely on time, geography, or negative advertising to save them. Every week is a primary for a consumer brand; the global nature of business exposes companies to more rivals; and no company can thrive by making nothing and investing exclusively in hostile marketing. “Politicians assume they can wait out the outrage, but national companies have to respond to the immediacy of demand.”

So what role can corporations play in creating social change? Should they be doing this more, or less?

What issues are they best suited to affect? What issues do we want them to stay out of completely?

What pressures can people put on them to be better “citizens”?

Above: list of cities where houses “with good schools, but you know, still near cool restaurants” are about to get annoyingly expensive.

This week, Amazon announced its shortlist of cities being considered for “HQ2”, their second giant corporate facility bringing tens of thousands of supposedly good-paying tech jobs.

Plenty can be argued about the vast tax incentives being given away to one of the richest businesses around, the propriety of a private company making municipalities grovel to be blessed with precious new-economy jobs — and we should have those conversations too!

But today I was struck by a more tangential thought about demographics. Several of these cities are in places that young, educated, progressive people (a.k.a. voters) are leaving in order to move to coastal urban centers that are already filled with other young progressive people like them — because that’s where the good jobs are. That migration is what’s throwing off the traditional balance of urban/rural, (a.k.a. progressive/conservative) in the states whose major cultural centers are on the decline due to industries shrinking or consolidating (particularly, say, Indiana or Ohio). One big company keeping more of those people in-state theoretically breeds other off-shoot companies, and helps keep the urban vs rural percentage in a state with only mid-size cities bluer.

Essentially, where Amazon places its second headquarters could literally swing a state, electorally.

Should progressive people be encouraging big companies to move jobs to red-to-purple states to drive more urbanization in smaller US cities?

Does this give more power to corporations, or politicize economic decisions, in ways we should be wary of? Or is this all power and political will corporations have now, that we the people should exert more influence over?

Like any car crash, it’s hard to look away.

Hello there. Been a while.

If you’re like me, in the last year you spent way too much time reading about politics. Some more time spent reading about politics can be useful and educational. The amount I — and I suspect many of us — spent gawking at the disaster that has been the last year was probably unhealthy.

One of the things that suffered most in my life was the time I spent reading other things. More substantial, wide-ranging or thought-provoking things that, say, might spark new ideas or even motivate one to write something themselves. Case in point, you may notice the last week this site was updated. Mostly I stared at the burning wreckage.

But hey, new year, fresh start and all that.

What have you spent less time doing than you used to, now that the world is a never-ending political circus you can’t stop watching and talking about?

Are you better for it and going to continue? If not, what are some of the things you’ve sacrificed to follow the nonsense that you’re looking to get back to?

The battle of the sexes is over; they are clearly smarter than men.

A quick, if loaded, topic as we approach the election: FiveThirtyEight posted data (above) showing that if only women vote, Clinton wins in a landslide. If only men vote, Trump becomes president. And this Atlantic piece shares data that the old truth that households, particularly married couples, tend to vote together is becoming less and less true.

How important is it for you to agree politically with your significant other?

What degree of difference is acceptable, or even beneficial? Where do you draw the line?

Is the trend of politically diverse households good or bad for society?

We can’t blame one crazy man for a system helpless to stop him.

Only a fool would attempt to summarize an entire Atlantic cover story on “How American Politics Went Insane” in a sentence or two. You should read (or at least skim) the full piece; even if you don’t agree, it’s eye-opening.

But one of the key premises does jump out as counterintuitive and worth considering: when the parties were more entrenched, hierarchical, and in a way, closed off, they actually did a better job of serving the larger goal of governing.

Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for self-organization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.

Which is all very counter to what we think of as our modern values of transparency, equality, free speech, and other purely democratic principles. Provocative stuff. Maybe there was more value in some of the old-fashioned stuff than we realized as both the right and left were tearing it down?

Does a functioning democracy (or representative republic) require at least a little bit of hierarchy and closed-door, back room party power brokering to function?

Looking at today’s political chaos, how might we get back to that better working model, or alternately, push through this chaos into something new and improved?