Decentralized Beats Centralized

The current uproar around Target and its political contribution that ended up supporting a Republican candidate whose beliefs many disagree with is, I think, very instructive and holds lots of lessons. (CNN info about it here.)

The biggest for me is that it shows how transparency and decentralized action can be a healthier political force in the country than centralized enforcement.

Other than an unfortunate glossing over of some important nuance (more on that below), I think this is playing out exactly as I would have hoped after the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that corporations could make political contributions.

Even though I'm concerned with large corporations unduly influencing our government, I felt the Supreme Court ruling was correct. Previously, the regulations around what corporations could and couldn't do were too difficult to decipher. It's a difficult problem to solve by centralized fiat because there are many subjective dimensions to defining what might be allowed.

But what is important is the requirement for transparency. This puts the information out there to be dealt with in a decentalized way, which is exactly what is happening now. And, of course, there's never been a better time to make information available which could lead to decentralized forces making their voices known.

Basically the Supreme Court crowd-sourced the problem. They essentially said that instead of saying there will be a central definition of what is acceptable, we will require transparency and let the masses do the job of keeping corporations in check. And the masses, unbeholden to "Mainstream Media" and with the tools of social networks and the virality that comes with it, have never been better prepared to do this.

The good lessons for corporations here will be that they can suffer reputational harm by making political donations, even those that might seem innocuous. This should serve as a brake on their making the contributions.

In fact, this is where the lack of nuance comes in.

The reality of the money flow is that Target contributed to a pro-Business group in Minnesota called "MN Forward" (www.mnforward.com). MN Forward then contributed to the ads for the politician in question. Their issues page lists: Tax Reform, Spending Reform, and Education Reform. Noble goals all.

The bad part about this loss of nuance in the story generally is that it means that people are assuming that Target and its principals have an anti-gay agenda. An objective look suggests that they contributed to a pro-business organization, who in turn backed a pro-business candidate who also holds non-progressive social policy positions (specifically, against gay marriage).

Now, the *good* part about this loss of nuance is that it will serve as a warning to other corporations. They will realize that their motivations for making a particular contribution won't matter as they can be undone by the perceptions about a candidate that might ultimately benefit from the contribution (even if at least once removed).

Let's hope we all keep doing our job and using all of the information we can get our hands on to our advantage, and solving the problem of corporate meddling in politics by being more a part of the process that can solve it.