Last week Matt Yglesias had a great post offering his recommendations on what citizens can do to support their political preferences. He first offers the typical advice to contact your Congressional representatives. But his second suggestions is far more interesting:
— Be personally annoying about your political views when they’re relevant to your interactions in everyday life. I, being a jerk, will absolutely not allow someone to make a remark about the high prices, crowding, and mediocrity of DC bars without subjecting them to a discourse about the DC liquor licensing regime. Lots of people who think they’re not interesting in the DC liquor licensing regime are interested in its consequences. If you are in a car with me and we’re in a rush hour traffic jam, you are damn well going to listen to me talk about congestion pricing. This generally doesn’t work in Washington for national politics, but whatever it is you do, I’m sure you interact with lots of “apolitical” or moderately conservative people who remark now and again about things in their life to which politics is relevant. Point this out to them. Tell them who the bad guys are. Recommend some good blogs. Your friend Bob probably thinks he doesn’t care about monetary policy, but does care about the state of the labor market. Explain it to him. Be bold. Be annoying.
I endorse this. It’s a bit tricky, as you have to find that line between being annoying enough to get people a bit outside of their comfort zone and being so annoying that they tend to dismiss your arguments. After all, the messenger matters in politics. Even with your friends, colleagues, and broader social network.
But while Yglesias mentions congestion and liquor licenses as good examples, I want to offer an issue that I think offers a great opportunity to use this strategy, at least within certain networks. It’s patents. Here’s Reihan Salam at NRO, passing along this study:
(1) As if you needed any more reason to oppose patent trolls, they’ve looted half a trillion dollars over the last two decades from the productive sectors of our economy.
Some of my own thoughts on patents are here. But here’s the gist: we give out too many patents, especially in areas like software that probably shouldn’t be patentable at all. More specific to patent trolls, there is a whole industry sprouting up around a business model that secures patents in order to hold innovation hostage. For me, this is a prime issue on which to be annoying.
One of the biggest reasons is that, not unlike those Yglesias mentions, this issue isn’t yet ruined by partisanship. It’s not a big enough issue that Republicans and Democrats have instinctive views on the subject, as they might on healthcare, taxes, etc.
The second issue is particular to my network, so it may or may not apply for you. For whatever reason a lot of my friends touch on technology, law, and innovation. Do you know any corporate attorneys? Entrepreneurs? Software developers? Ask them what they think about patents. Particularly for attorneys (and potential attorneys) I think this is important. There is a lot of money in IP law. Should there be? Arguably, no. If you have friends who work in and around IP, don’t be afraid to get a little annoying. Ask them what they think about patent trolls, and how they would get rid of them. Ask them if they think patent terms are too long. Ask them if they think software should be able to be patented. Remind them that the point of IP is squarely to incentivize innovation, and NOT AT ALL to reward inventors. If we’re ever going to fix the myriad of issues with our current IP policy, we’re going to have to be annoying.
(Most of this is equally applicable to copyright. So if you know content creators, many of these same lines of annoyance/inquiry can also be beneficial.)
beyond the times 