What is politics?

Like I said, I like to start at the ground level with first principles.

What is politics about?

To me, politics is the art and science of negotiating a shared understanding of reality, shared values and desired outcomes, and crafting strategies to achieve those desired outcomes, as efficiently as possible, while adhering to our agreed-upon values.

That’s a big task, but that’s what is required.

We call the strategies “policies,” but they’re also known as laws, regulations, institutions, and more.

Entrepreneurship to me is the art and science of affecting change with limited resources.

The job of government is similar, but on a societal scale, and with a crucial difference.

With private business, we can have lots of them, and people can choose who they want to buy from. Except when there’s a monopoly, which is why we have antitrust laws.

A government is a monopoly in its geographic area, most critically a monopoly on violence.

The government is the only entity in its geographic jurisdiction that’s allowed to use violence to achieve its objectives. Everything the government demands of you, like paying your taxes, having a valid driver license when driving, and not breaking the law, is backed by a threat of violence: if you don’t do what we demand, we will show up at your door with guns and put you in jail until we decide that you’ve been punished enough.

Everything the government does is backed by the threat of violence. Everything.

And the government is the only entity that’s allowed to do this. People outside the government who use violence to achieve their goals are called criminals.

So with government, because it’s a monopoly, we better get it right. We have to compromise. We have to do our very best together.

It’ll never be perfect. Our best bet is to keep approximating. And we can only do that by working together.