This week, I published a piece with my friends at Teachers Going Gradeless. It’s about my old nemesis the College Board and their gatekeeping function in university admissions. In researching the piece, I learned a bit about the organization’s founding. The College Board’s role as a third party between high school students and universities is not something that anyone in government or in states necessarily planned; it just ended up that way. Like so much of the dumb stuff we do in the US, policymakers couldn’t be bothered to actually make policy. It fits a pattern that I’ve been thinking about recently. Due largely to the dysfunctional nature of Congress in policymaking and the decentralized nature of the US’ system of federalism, much of our most important national practices are really accidents of history:
Why are Iowa and New Hampshire the first caucus and primary?
Why do we vote on Tuesdays rather than weekends?
Why are there nine judges on the SCOTUS?
Why do we treat dental care as something separate or distinct from health care?
Why are 401ks the primary vehicle for retirement saving?
Why are interest rates on student loans so damn high?
There was never a meaningful national debate about any of these—we just ended up like this and we all live with the consequences because of inertia and the inability of our leaders to imagine alternatives.
In the piece, I looked at one of these accidents, the system of employer based health coverage in the US. We’re basically the only country that does this and if you think about it for more than thirty seconds you’ll see why no one chose to follow our lead. For the unfamiliar, here’s where the system came from (from the TG2 article):
It’s an unintended consequence of domestic policy in World War II. During the war, the federal government imposed wage controls which made it difficult for employers to attract workers by offering higher salaries. To compete, many companies began offering health insurance as a benefit. This became more popular in the post-war period as labor unions began negotiating health benefits as part of collective bargaining agreements.
We stumbled into a system that is inefficient, keeps potential entrepreneurs stuck in jobs they hate to maintain their benefits, and makes life nearly impossible for small business owners. This was never the plan, it just happened but a bunch of politicians treat the model like some immutable sacrement handed down by Hamilton & Madison. It is not. It’s only been with us as long as air conditioning. Tangentially, understanding the employer health care schemes helps us understand why some unions have opposed a national healthcare system like Sen. Sanders’ Medicare for All.
Another example of this is the state of cannabis laws. We first visited Thailand in 2018 and can see a shift. In 2022, the Thai government legalized marijuana and dispensaries have popped up in major cities, increasing Thailand’s already powerful tourist draw. The government thought legalization was the best policy, they created legislation to enact said policy, said policy was put in place—that’s how governance is supposed to work. Compare that to the sloppy patchwork in the US. Weed is legal in Washington State. It is sold, consumed, and taxed. Meanwhile in neighboring (and deeply inferior) Idaho:
“Possession of three ounces or less of marijuana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year imprisonment and/or a fine up to $1,000. If the quantity possessed is more than three ounces but less than one pound, it is a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment and/or a fine up to $10,000.”
But in both states, it’s illegal under federal law and at any time the feds could bust in the door of every dope shop in Washington, sending everyone working and shopping to prison. The feds choose not to do so because they know the drug laws are idiodic but they can’t be bothered to remove them. Meanwhile, roughly a quarter million mostly poor Black and Brown people are locked up every year for marijuana possessions largely in Southern States [Texas (of course), Tennessee, and North Carolina lead the pack].
If you think about any of this for more than a moment, you’d see red. But most of us don’t think about it at all.
One of the gifts of teaching young people political science is that they aren’t burdened down with the weight of lived experience. They violently question or openly reject things that we take for granted because “it’s always been that way.” When I explain the extent to which the entire system is made up of historical accidents and held together by norms rather than laws, they give me the most dumbfounded and “WTFAYTATDMNS*” faces. I love them for that. They aren’t jaded or beaten down by the stupidity of it all like we all are. That’s why they’re our best hope.
*WTFAYTATDMNS: What the f*** are you talking about? That don’t make no sense!