Sol Erdman and Lawrence Susskind had a great post  in the Harvard Business Review blog last week.  Their topic was about how to solve a problem that is destroying our political system and as a result our economy/environment/social safety net/insert your priority here.

The problem is that we have a system that rewards short term (the current election cycle) behavior even though we have long term challenges.  As a result, our politicians pass laws that look good in the short term but can have really negative outcomes in the long term.  We shower people with benefits and pass the bill on to our kids and grandkids.

So here is the three step process that they discuss (based on this book)

1.       Each camp (and for most domains there are many) is represented by someone they trust.

2.       All relevant camps are represented.

3.       No camp has enough power to make headway on its own.

This means that each camp has to negotiate, even to get their short term solution.  But since they have to negotiate, they can’t pursue the short term solution that makes them look good and the other camps look bad.  They have to compromise.  And because it was a trusted representative, their constituency would trust they got a decent deal.

I think this has a lot of promise except for one thing.  We learned after Simpson-Bowles that unless the group has some kind of authority, the short term thinkers will simply ignore the plan they come up with, paying it some lip service and moving on.  We need it to have teeth also.  Kind of like the sequestration situation we are in now with the budget.  You can bet your retirement that the pols will come up with something before year’s end.  Had we done this with Simpson-Bowles, we would have a deficit reduction plan already passed into law. 

Of course, the pols can always turn tail and repeal the plan later.  But that takes a majority and is subject to filibuster in the opposite direction.  So we are more likely to keep the plan.