I can’t get away from games/sports analogies when discussing democracy and economics and friends have told me it leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

“This isn’t a game.”

Honestly, I think it IS a game, and that’s not a pejorative. Games are really, really important.

What is a constitution or a set of laws if not rules for a game we can agree that we’re playing to cultivate or lose power and influence without resorting to brute force violence?

Even animals have games. Games are foundational.

Certainly, games can be terribly designed, like this current type of capitalism or like a government run completely by private campaign donations and a revolving door of hard regulatory capture and soft corruption, but that just means the rules need to be amended.

In a representative democracy, it’s critical that voters (the fans) are invested in the game. The rules can be dumb, the Yankees can have 10x the money as everyone else but when THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES (the representatives) can’t be trusted, the fans lose all interest in the game.

One of the reasons sports are so popular everywhere is because it’s the one place where everyone is playing by the same rules and where even underdogs can win. For too long our democracy has been an opaque box where popular things never pass and unpopular things pass unanimously.

There are some real opportunities ahead to reform this game (I really do believe that) but one thing we can start doing now, without any permission whatsoever, is simply play the game better. Draft better players, win more votes, meaningfully change lives, and then do it again.

There’s no way to win the game if we’re just distracted by our hatred of the other team’s fans. We need to remember that they’re not in the game and neither are we. They can do what they want to hold their team accountable. The only team we have any input on is our own.