Policy Adjoinment

Most third parties support at least some policy ideas that are in some way relatively radical, requiring a complete deconstruction or reconstruction of some number of political institutions. Indeed, that's why most third parties come into being in the first place, because one or more of their ideas prove to be simply too radical to fit within the framework of the traditional ruling parties.

Most third parties also fail to realize their goals for the same reason: their radical vision simply exceeds the imagination of an appropriately wary public. Even institutions which generally enjoy uniform public disdain, such as the Federal income tax, have proven to be incredibly resistent to change in spite of the existence of intelligent, credible alternatives that have found their way to the public forum.

Secondly, our history shows that it is far easier politically to build an institution where before their was nothing than it is to reform an existing institution. Part of this has to do with constituencies that coalesce around legal regimes and institutions which tend to oppose any reform that challenges their special interests, but even uninterested voters tend to reflexively resist change, nearly always giving any benefit of the doubt to the status quo. To this extent, the vast majority of Americans have demonstrated themselves to be conservative in practice if not philosophy time and time again.

With this in mind, the Liberal Capitalist Party will take a different tack with the reform agenda it proposes. Instead of compromising our policies to the point of ineffectiveness as is so often done in American politics, we will, when politically necessary and feasible, seek instead to erect new legal structures alongside existing laws instead of changing or replacing them, thereby introducing competition between the old and the new. Leaving existing institutions intact will take much of the steam from the arguments of special interests while also relieving the political anxiety so often expressed by the public when facing questions of fundemental reform.

For instance, any attempt to alter the current structure of privileges enjoyed by labor unions would be met with stiff political resistance to say the least. The people these institutions employ enjoy the legal influence bestowed upon them by the current system and seek more privileges over corporate employers, not less. But the truth is that the current pardigm of organized labor was conceived long ago to protect workers in a transitioning agricultural economy that no longer exists in any way, shape, or form today. The result has been insolvency in unionized industries brought about by union inflexibility and over-reaching, and thus an institution invented to protect workers in their jobs is now a driver of American unemployment.

Still, in spite of the fact that union membership has now fallen to less than ten percent of the private sector workforce, what are the political chances of reforming organized labor to be more consistent with today's economic reality? Somewhere in between slim and none most likely.

But what if, instead of seeking to reform the current structure of organized labor, we simply created a new type of labor union alongside the current one? A liberal capitalist arrangement would resemble a for-profit labor corporation with a majority of its stock owned by its own "employees," sort of like an employment agency owned by the workers themselves. Workers would then be free to organize themselves under either model, free to choose without any type of bureaucratic or legal coercion. Assuming the law of unintended consequences doesn't dash the new project, gradually the old paradigm will give way to the new as traditionally organized workers recognize the benefit of doing so.

Another example is capital punishment. Millions of Americans are disturbed by the fallibility and seeming arbitrariness of the death penalty process, but for better or worse capital punishment enjoys enormous political support in most states. This being the case, the liberal capitalist approach to reform wouldn't be the abolition of the death penalty, but rather the creation of a "death in prison" penalty, where those convicted of the most heinous crimes are imprisoned in high-security, solitary death row conditions for the remainder of their natural lives. Juries would then be free to impose either sentence as seen fit, and thus an opportunity to reduce the irreversible imposition of death by due process would be created.

One can certainly imagine some policies where such adjoinment simply doesn't make sense or is otherwise too costly to pursue, but with a little imagination, a surprising amount of reform can be approached in this manner, making progress once again politically possible in America.