Who gets to decide who gets to decide?
I often think about the choice behind the choice, the individual or group who decides how an influential decision will be made.
The Constitutional Convention, held from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, included 55 delegates representing 12 of the 13 original states (Rhode Island sat it out). These individuals, often referred to as the Founding Fathers, gathered to address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation with a replacement, today’s U.S. Constitution. George Washington presided over the convention, two years into his first term as President. James Madison, often called the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in the document's drafting and promotion, and Benjamin Franklin, whose wisdom and experience were highly valued during the deliberations, were two of the namesake Framers. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock did not attend.
Just 39 of those who attended the convention signed the Constitution. Those who abstained did so because the document lacked a Bill of Rights, an omission that would be remedied four years later when ten of the 14 states would exercise the Constitution’s process of ratification.
The Constitution wasn’t binding until it had been ratified by three fourths of the 13 states. Instead of being ratified by the state legislatures, special ratifying conventions were held. A total of 1,648 delegates participated in the state ratifying conventions, and ultimately 1,160 of them voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution. These state conventions were held between December 1787 and May 1790, with each state holding its own convention to debate and decide on the proposed Constitution. The ratification process required the approval of nine out of the thirteen states for the Constitution to become effective, which was achieved on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
Twelve hundred landed white men. That’s who created and approved the founding documents of America. Their choices now govern how 244 million Americans get to exercise their choice in the forthcoming Presidential election.
My first year of high school, I ran for class president and lost in a popularity contest. Because our school lacked a constitution, our class advisor decided our class council would be chosen by letting everyone vote for any candidate they supported. In hindsight, I can see how this rudimentary ranked choice voting might have seemed fair. But by American standards, it was undemocratic. I spent the next three years spurring our student council to write and ratify a school constitution, so that the whims of one administrator would never again govern an election.
The United States Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government. Switzerland, a country with a population roughly the size of New York City, comes in second, with a constitution signed in 1848 (that’s 176 years old). At the time, it enshrined a form of limited, indirect self-government that was groundbreaking in a world almost universally governed by monarchy. Today, its antiquated limitations enshrine all manner of exclusions and inefficiencies that ensure a small group of (mostly) white men are still the primary deciders of America’s future. George Washington and James Madison would be so proud to know their legacy lives on, undisturbed.
Economics is about choice, how individuals, corporations, and governments allocate resources amidst a plethora of incentives and constraints. Too often, the economics of the future is governed by the choices of the past. Status quo bias rewards choosing to do what you’ve done before. It’s known, and therefore safe.
Status quo bias is antithetical to change. Even raging against the status quo can have the inadvertent effect of strengthening its defenders.
Buckminster Fuller said it best:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
In 1787, 55 brave souls came together to decide to do something that had never been done before. It’s ironic that their courage to defy the status quo that constrained them has in turn become its own sustained status quo bias.
In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Samuel Kercheval, expressing his belief about the redefinition of government, saying: "Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness."
I hope I get to live in an America that supports a Constitutional Convention to create a new form of government that is promotive of our future happiness. But until such time, I’ll settle for proposing ideas that defy the status quo, in hopes of one day making the existing model obsolete.
Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/founding-fathers
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies/
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-samuel-kercheval/
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