This is the nature of ‘ethical treatment of customers’ in today’s marketplace. It’s become innovative and optional to ‘do the right thing’ for the customer and see whether she even realizes it. Along with seeing if the customer recognizes it there is still the ‘bottom line’ and that will trump all. If the customers fail to ‘flock’ to the right thing (many can’t because the ‘weaselease’ of their current plan makes it too expensive to escape to the better deal)than ‘why should we do the right thing?’ the corporation brain trusts will argue.

‘Weaselease’ is the corporate language of the 21 century. Unfortunately it’s become so ubiquitous in the marketplace that when it’s avoided folks won’t trust or believe it.

1) My ideal representative of the median voter would propose policies that cater directly to that worldview, rather than cobbling together existing proposals. Right now, we get a democrat supported bill and (occasionally) a republican supported bill. Moderates then set about combining them and/or watering them down. Alternatively, if you had Independents that took the policy initiative, I think you would get better legislation because it would be anchored in the middle, and you can play the parties off of each other so that you end with the least deviation possible.

2) On today’s political continuum, median voters are more alike each other than like either extreme (because the extremes are quite far out there). Our current party structure only caters to the politically insane. On a personal level, I can agree much more with the typical median voter than anyone on the way right or way left. I think less government action is preferable to more, but that some is better than none. I think a lot of existing government action was poorly designed/implemented, which has caused a lot unintended consequences and systemic instability. This opinion is most at home in the middle. The assumption I am making is that an Independent catering to the median can implement a lot of my ideas, while still meeting the median voters principals better than either party, resulting in success. It’s a practical consideration, but taking the side of the median voter (the good and the bad) are the best chance I have at seeing my principals become policies.

However, I disagree with your faith in independent voters and the “median voter”. My hunch is that most independents basically want to take a mix of Democratic and Republican proposals, just like you argued against. There is no reason a priori to think that the mix that independent voters (or “median voters”) choose is better than the mix that centrist politicians choose. In fact, centrist politicians likely already cater to the “median voter”, thereby reflecting a lot of their preferences.

Bottom line: Why is catering to the median voter a good thing? Besides, medians vary in time and across the world. The median isn’t good simply by virtue of being the median.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124752462689735243.html#mod=rss_whats_news_us

Great posts, Joel. Making me think!