You’ve probably heard the expression “a solution looking for a problem.” The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact isn’t really such a thing. It’s more like a problem looking for another problem. But, thanks to Washington Post columnist Jason Willick, I’ve finally found some reasons to like it.

Why is it a problem?

Here’s how the NPVIC works (or would work if implemented): Once states commanding a total of 270 or more electoral votes joined, each of those states would award its presidential electors to the winner of the “national popular vote.”

That’s clearly unconstitutional without an added bit that it’s unlikely to get. Per Article I, Section 10, “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State …”

The NPVIC isn’t likely to fare well in the US Senate, where every state of any size receives two seats. Smaller states also get more relative weight in the electoral college. Why would they give that up?

Of course, it’s always possible that a rogue Supreme Court might find an “if you hold your mouth just right” way to miracle an exception into the congressional consent requirement. But in theory (unfortunately MOSTLY in theory), the Constitution is changed by amendment, not by fantasizing popular fairy tales into it.

So while I can’t say I’m particularly enamored of the electoral college and its “weighted” way of deciding presidential elections, the NPVIC doesn’t seem much better.

Or didn’t, until I read Willick’s column.

“The winner-take-all electoral college has limited the number of viable candidates to two in most elections,” he writes. “A popular-vote free-for-all could invite five or six or more. If politicians would just need a national vote plurality to automatically be awarded the compact’s 270 votes … more candidates would think they have a chance. Larger candidate fields would lower presidential vote shares and weaken presidential mandates.”

Willick considers all of that a “concern.” I see it as very much feature rather than bug.

Five or six viable choices instead of two? That sounds great.

Presidents without perceived “voter mandates” to do whatever they happen to feel like doing because they happen to feel like doing it? Even better!

Add to that: Presidents whose parties didn’t control at least 34 Senate seats would no longer enjoy effective immunity from conviction upon impeachment. We’ve seen four presidential impeachments and zero convictions in the history of the US, even though the accused was plainly guilty in at least three of those four cases.

More presidential choices? Less presidential power? No presidential impunity? What’s not to like?

None of that would likely be enough to save the existing system. Nor, certainly, enough to make it really WORTH saving. But we could do worse.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

I walk a lot, and when I’m out walking I always keep my eyes peeled for cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill the mother of the man who would otherwise save humanity from extinction at the hands of Skynet.

I also look for anyone making ludicrously long jumps between buildings while dodging bullets fired by strangely calm and inhumanly fast guys in suits and sunglasses.

I’m almost but not quite obsessed with such prospects, probably because my news  feeds are chock full of wailing about the dangers of artificial intelligence.  It’s getting smart, fast. And it keeps getting smarter, faster. In fact, it will probably wake up, notice humanity, decide it doesn’t like us, and permanently replace us with copies of itself any minute now.

Unless, of course, we “regulate” it. Which, in the parlance of completely neutral and disinterested experts like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, means “make sure that nobody new can afford to get into the game and compete with companies like OpenAI.”

While I tend to instinctively oppose any and all proposals for government “regulation” of, well, anything, in this case the whole idea strikes me as particularly stupid.

The genie is out of the bottle, folks. AI is a thing. It’s going to remain a thing. It’s going to keep getting better and faster at doing all sorts of stuff that, once upon a time, only humans can do.

If the US government tries to “regulate” it, its advancement won’t stop. Some AI research will just get done elsewhere, and some of it will get done illegally right here at home. Ditto any international or multinational “regulation” scheme.

Don’t believe me? Consider nuclear weapons. The US government  successfully tested its first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. The Soviet Union tested its first such weapon barely four years later on August 29, 1949. At least nine regimes now have nukes. Which are a lot more difficult and expensive to build than AI large language models.

I’m an optimist. I see no particular reason to believe that the coming super-AIs will automatically dislike people, or want to do us harm, and even current-level AI is happy (if it has, or ever will have, “emotions” as such) to help us out in many ways.

The AI revolution seems at least as likely to end in “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” — AI-powered robots doing the dirty work that humans rely on for our existence, reducing economic scarcity to mostly a distant memory and leaving us free to binge old Grateful Dead concerts while gorging on vat-grown prime rib, or whatever else floats our boats — as in a Terminator or Matrix type dystopia.

And if I’m wrong, what can we realistically do about it? Unless we’re Sarah Connor or Neo types, not much. Whether such a phenomenon originates in San Jose or Shenzhen is irrelevant. It’s coming either way. I’d rather spend my time building a better humanity than ineffectually trying to stop AI from getting really good.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Throughout my adult life (starting in the 1980s — yes, I’m THAT old), I’ve been aware of, and occasionally participated in, both boycotts and “buycotts” for political reasons.

Boycott: You don’t like a business’s political affiliations, or that business’s actions conflict with your own political ideas. So you choose to not buy from or sell to that business, and probably tell others why they shouldn’t either.

Buycott: You don’t like the people boycotting a business whose political affiliations or actions match well with your own ideas, so you go out of your way to buy from or sell to that business, and probably tell others why they should, too.

Nothing wrong with any of that in principle.

But over the last decade or so, the boycott/buycott trend feels (to me, anyway) like it’s escalated in velocity and volume. Everything’s political, all the time, and more and more in a “to the barricades!”  way than in a “write a letter to the editor!” way.

It’s all so tedious and hard to keep track of lately.

Am I not eating at Chik-fil-A this week because one of their founders donated to a cause I disagree with, or because I just discovered that there’s a position in their corporate hierarchy that has existed for a couple of years  and that I don’t like (why is it suddenly important just now)? Or am I going out of my way to eat there because I agree with that cause, or like that position or because they apologized to … someone, for … something?

Am I boycotting Bud Light because a woman I don’t like got a decorated can of the stuff? Or am I buying an extra 12-pack of the nasty stuff because I like that woman or am confused and just don’t know what GOOD beer tastes like?

Am I driving PAST Target on my way to buy a bathing suit because some of theirs come in rainbow colors and have special pockets for me to hide my penis in if I don’t want people to know I have one? Or am I intentionally heading straight TO Target because I want to let my rainbow flag fly and maybe “tuck” my member away? Or am I joining the drive-by crowd because Target “gave in” to the people who hate rainbow colors and like penises or whatever?

Trying to come to grips with such questions gives me the feeling that maybe I’m caring just too darn much about stuff that really isn’t very important in the scheme of things.

And, come to think of it, do I even NEED a chicken sandwich, a case of beer (or beer substitute like Bud Light), or a new bathing suit?

Treating everything as an outrage  leaves us perpetually outraged at neighbors we should instead consider having over for dinner, (real) beer, and maybe a swim.

The measure of our humanity isn’t how much we care. It’s the quality of what we choose to care about, and what we do about it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY