In America, is fixing democracy possible? This article will look at the difference between whether PeopleCount’s approach to fixing democracy “can work” versus “will work”, and explore the “can” question. A lot of people mix these two together and in error, conclude it’s not possible.

To answer this, we’d have to analyze the political system and see what it would allow, and then analyze PeopleCount’s plans and the market. To be more certain, we’d have to do testing. While I’ve done all this, there’s always more testing to do.

Is this “Can” Question a Usual Question for a Startup?

For a lot of startups, confusing these questions is not a problem. A lot of startups tackle standard kinds of business or services, so it’s obvious that they can work if the execution is done well. The marketing especially must be done well, the market analysis and product positioning as well as the messaging and outreach. For these startups, this can all be thought of as execution. It can work, but execution will decide if it’ll work.

In fact, a lot of investors only evaluate the chance the company will execute well. They want to see the marketing analysis and tests, and they’ll check they’re sound, but these are just check-off items. Mostly, these just tell investors whether this first stage of the business has been executed well. Mostly, investors want a team that can execute.

But for a project like PeopleCount, the Can-it-work question looms large. PeopleCount proposes to fix problems that many think are intractable. Many people have tried to solve, or lessen, many of the problems that PeopleCount says it’ll solve, usually with little or no effect. Joshua Tauberer has been working in this field for 15 years and recently wrote an article in which he gave his perspective on why a solution is not possible. He’s very forthcoming in saying most of his efforts have failed.

Why does the “Is it Possible” question loom so large for PeopleCount?

Most people are negative about anything to do with our political system. And they are even more negative about our chances to fix it. It seems impossible. At the same time, many think we know what needs to be done to fix it.

Many people believe we can fix our democracy by changing some laws or by changing the Constitution. The laws people think need to be changed are mostly about money, such as campaign finance and corruption. Some think imposing term limits will help. Even if these could work, they require using the political system they’re trying to change. Most would require a political fight. In our current political system political divisiveness is a central cause of its dysfunction. Our political system is very resistant to political solutions. People know this, so oscillate between gearing up for a fight and being resigned to a broken system.

Think about this cycle of needing to use the system to change it. To get around this, we’d need some sort of outside-the-box solution, some sort of shift in the status quo to fix our democracy. We’d need a paradigm shift. But most people evaluate what’s possible by reasoning inside the status quo, where the change seems impossible. This is what makes the “can” question loom large.

In summary, for most people, the “Is it possible” question is a big one for PeopleCount. We’ll look more at this question in the next article.