My commentary
the big issue in the usa is that society has lost the policy in politics. People would rather argue about the rat race or abstract political values. The problem of course is that real substance is in the policy details. Abstract value debates are too general to be helpful and people just talk past each other or aren't really disagreeing but think they are.
The devil in the details
The policy in politics
Trust me, I can get deep into policy debates, but even among political nerds I know, not too many people like getting into the weeds
Ai commentary
Yes—I think you’re identifying a genuinely important weakness in American political discourse: **politics has become much better at arguing about principles than at arguing about mechanisms.**
People say things like:
* “We need more freedom.”
* “We need more equality.”
* “Government should stay out of people’s lives.”
* “Government needs to do something.”
* “Capitalism works.”
* “Capitalism is exploitative.”
* “People should take personal responsibility.”
* “We need to help vulnerable people.”
But those statements often don't tell you **what policy should actually be enacted**.
The interesting questions start afterward:
> What law? Who qualifies? How much does it cost? Who administers it? What incentives does it create? What happens at the margin? What happens when people exploit loopholes? What happens during a recession? What happens when a future administration changes the rules? What are the tradeoffs compared with alternative policies?
That's where political disagreement becomes much more substantive.
### And I think your "devil in the details" point is especially important
Two people can agree on virtually all the *values* involved and still reach radically different conclusions because they have different beliefs about how institutions actually work.
For example, suppose two people both believe:
**"Everyone should have access to decent housing."**
That doesn't tell us whether we should use:
* housing vouchers
* public housing
* tax credits
* zoning reform
* direct construction subsidies
* rent controls
* social housing
* low-interest government loans
* some combination of these
And even after choosing one, there are hundreds of consequential details.
A person can therefore be completely sincere when saying *"I support affordable housing"* while having almost no idea whether their preferred policy would actually increase housing supply or affordability.
### The weird thing is that policy nerds are often less ideological than people expect
Once you get sufficiently deep into policy, you start encountering questions where the normal left/right categories become inadequate.
You might say:
> "I strongly believe in X, but this particular implementation of X doesn't work."
Or:
> "I dislike the philosophy behind this policy, but the empirical results are surprisingly good."
Or even:
> "The difference between these two proposals is mostly an administrative detail that almost nobody is talking about."
That's much more interesting than simply debating whether someone is a **liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, populist, etc.**
And I think you're right that **even political nerds often don't want to go that far down the rabbit hole.** They may follow elections, read political commentary, know politicians' positions, and understand ideological theory—but that's different from spending an hour examining the eligibility rules, funding formula, administrative structure, marginal incentives, enforcement mechanism, and unintended consequences of a particular statute.
In a sense, **the actual policy is buried underneath several layers of political abstraction.**
**Values → ideology → political rhetoric → policy proposal → statutory language → administrative rules → real-world incentives → actual outcomes.**
Most political conversation lives around the middle of that chain.
The consequential stuff is disproportionately toward the bottom.
And there's an additional reason this happens: **policy details are cognitively expensive and politically unrewarding.** Saying *"Government should protect freedom"* fits in a tweet. Explaining why a particular benefit should phase out at 40% of earned income rather than 30%, and how that affects effective marginal tax rates, is considerably less exciting.
That's probably why someone can spend hours arguing about **"freedom vs. government"** while never actually discussing the specific government program they're supposedly arguing about.
Your phrase **"the policy in politics"** actually captures the distinction pretty well: politics is ultimately supposed to be about **what society is going to do**, not merely about which abstract conception of society wins a philosophical argument.