Last year, a minor controversy erupted when liberal millionaire investor Nick Hanauer claimed that his TED talk on economic policy had been banned as too “political.” Chris Anderson, the “curator” of TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), replied that Hanauer’s talk had not been censored. Rather, it wasn’t chosen for the TED homepage because it was not among the strongest talks available; and one of its flaws was its “explicitly partisan” perspective.

I am inclined to think that this particular dispute is a classically fruitless one about whether an individual’s work should be published in a specific private venue. But it raises a broader issue about the implicit politics of TED. To be sure, individual TED talks range very widely. Some address political issues, and famous politicians have given them. And yet I think the dominant view goes like this:

Lots of important problems could be solved by better design. One person can explain the core of a new design proposal in ten minutes. If the idea is good, it will be persuasive, and so listeners will share it, invest in it, adopt it, or otherwise support it. A lot of what’s wrong with the world today is stupid design and the failure of better design ideas to be heard. Because the Internet lowers the cost of distribution, better ideas will now prevail.

Contrast this to the conception of politics that began with the ancient Athenian assemblies and that is still seen today in legislatures, courtrooms, and meetings convened by community organizers:

People have conflicting values and interests, and they need a place to air their differences so that the community has an opportunity to make binding decisions. Everyone has a right to express his own interests. Adversaries should meet in public so that they answer each other and can be held accountable by the whole community. Politics will be contentious and emotional, but it’s also important to maintain constructive relationships and a common commitment to the process, because we will have to address many more disputes after the one that currently confronts us.

If this were your idea of politics, you would never think to “curate” selected 10-minute talks without Q&A or rebuttals. You’d build a space–physical or virtual–in which people could interact as peers.

Now, there is room for more than one mode of communication in our complex world. I like TED talks and see their value for public debate. Also, they are not necessarily about common or public problems; politics is not even relevant to all of them. You’d sound like a curmudgeon if you challenged TED’s credo: “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.”

But I have met people who see controversial politics as stupid and wasteful and think that there could be a TED-like solution (an “idea worth spreading”) for almost every problem. I was at a meeting in California some months ago in which every participant except me thought that a better design (broadly defined) could solve any social issue. As an example, one person suggested that Nike had done more that any other organization to fight obesity–by making cool sneakers that encouraged running. This was in Santa Monica, where indeed, people run a lot. But see the US obesity trend (left). Nike hired its first ad agency in 1976 and attained 50% of the US market share in 1980. The correlation with obesity does not look too promising (not to mention those sweatshops).

This was only a stray comment, and no doubt, better examples could be cited. Design does relate to obesity in some ways–for example, better urban planning encourages walking. But to implement a better urban plan, you need more than a good idea. You need power, money, and other forms of support. Some of the groups that have power and money right now are manufacturers of heavily subsidized, high-calorie, low-fiber drinks and snacks. They need to be held accountable by old-fashioned politics.

This post relates to the Obama Administration’s preference for “social innovations” over traditional entitlement programs. To be fair, the Administration wants both, but they are willing to trim entitlements at the margin to fund more social innovation, and that seems consistent with the politics of TED.