US politics isn't broken. It's fixed | Katherine M. Gehl

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The "broken" US political system is actually working exactly as designed, says business leader and activist Katherine Gehl. Examining the system through a nonpartisan lens, she makes the case for voting innovations, already implemented in parts of the country, that give citizens more choice and incentivize politicians to work towards progress and solutions instead of just reelection.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hugh. This is TED Talks Daily. Political innovator Catherine Gale discovered something when she asked a simple question. How come politicians don't serve the citizens, the regular everyday Americans, but continue to stay in power? In her 2020 talk from TEDx Mile High, she focuses on what she says is the root cause of
0:22.6	political dysfunction and offers fixes that aren't the ones we hear about very often.
0:29.7	Everything I need to know about politics, I learned from cheese. For the last decade of my
0:35.8	business career, I ran a $250 million food company in Wisconsin, and yes, we made cheese. For the last decade of my business career, I ran a $250 million food company in Wisconsin.
0:40.2	Yes, we made cheese. If customers liked my cheese, I did well. If they didn't, they bought
0:46.6	cheese from someone else, and I did less well. That's healthy competition. Healthy competition
0:52.8	incentivizes businesses to make better products.
0:57.0	Better products equals happier customers and happier customers equals successful businesses.
1:03.0	Win-win. Now, while I was running Gale Foods, I was also deeply engaged in
1:09.0	and increasingly frustrated by politics.
1:14.0	The more frustrated I got, the more I wondered why competition in politics didn't deliver the same kind of win-win results.
1:24.9	How did the Democrats and the Republicans keep doing so well when their customers,
1:31.5	that's us, are so unhappy? Why is the politics industry win-lose? They win, we lose. The answer?
1:41.8	It turns out that one thing almost all Americans agree on, Washington is broken,
1:50.2	is also one thing we're all wrong about. Washington isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do.
2:04.1	It's just not designed to serve us, the citizens, the public interest.
2:09.5	Most of the rules in politics are designed and continuously fine-tuned by
2:15.6	and for the benefit of private gain-seeking organizations.
2:21.3	That's the two parties, a textbook duopoly, and the surrounding companies in the business of politics.
2:30.3	And they're all doing great, even as the American public has never been more dissatisfied.
2:40.3	Said another way, politics isn't broken. It's fixed. This is a guiding principle of politics
2:48.6	industry theory, the nonpartisan body of work that I originated and have championed over the last seven years.
	...

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