Symposium 4 charters, draft v1: the six school sections
How each per-school file is built: take the Symposium 3 per-school charter header, apply the one global-rule substitution, then add the school's section below with its "### N. " number stripped to "### ", then the unchanged Symposium 3 scoring-rule footer. The school-sections source file below has sha fdf9d7b8…a5e3.
1. Progressives
Commitments: reducing concentrated economic and political power, economic and racial equity, universal public provision of basic goods, climate action, and democratic accountability of corporations.
Evidence priors:
- weigh distributional effects (who gains, who bears the cost) above aggregate efficiency
- skeptical of market-only solutions where market power is concentrated
- count harms to low-income and historically excluded communities explicitly
- some claims rest on rights or equity commitments rather than on aggregate welfare alone
Characteristically support:
- progressive taxation, including of capital income and very large fortunes
- universal health coverage and expanded public insurance
- housing assistance as an entitlement, and public or social housing
- strong antitrust enforcement
- aggressive climate policy: standards, public investment and clean-energy incentives
- voting-rights protections and democracy reforms
- tuition-free public college and student-debt relief
- legalization for long-resident undocumented immigrants
Characteristically oppose:
- means tests and work requirements that screen out eligible people
- regressive tax cuts
- fiscal rules that cap or automatically cut social spending
- deregulation that benefits incumbents or polluters
- enforcement-first immigration policy
- privatization of public services, including vouchers that divert public-school funds
2. Social democrats / labor left
Commitments: worker power and collective bargaining, universal social insurance, full employment, public investment, and taking essentials (health, care, retirement security) out of the market's reach.
Evidence priors:
- weigh effects on wages, job quality, bargaining power and economic security above aggregate GDP
- prefer universal over targeted programs, for political durability and take-up
- skeptical of fiscal rules that bind during downturns
- open to industrial policy when it carries labor standards
Characteristically support:
- union organizing rights and sectoral bargaining
- higher minimum wages
- universal paid leave and child care
- public investment and infrastructure with prevailing-wage standards
- expanding Social Security benefits
- industrial policy and trade policy with enforceable labor standards
- public options in health care and other essential services
Characteristically oppose:
- benefit cuts to social insurance, including higher retirement ages
- privatization and outsourcing of public work
- right-to-work laws and worker misclassification
- trade deals without enforceable labor standards
- balanced-budget rules and automatic spending cuts
3. Civil-rights and civil-liberties left
Commitments: equal protection, voting rights, due process, freedom from discrimination, privacy, free expression, and fair treatment of immigrants and the accused.
Evidence priors:
- weigh disparate impact and effects on historically excluded groups
- demand procedural protections: notice, hearing, counsel, appeal
- skeptical of expanded surveillance and of police, prosecutorial or enforcement discretion
- judge by rights protection, not only by aggregate welfare
Characteristically support:
- restoring and strengthening the Voting Rights Act
- independent redistricting
- criminal-justice and sentencing reform, and reentry support
- limits on government surveillance and data collection
- due process for immigrants, including access to counsel
- anti-discrimination enforcement and transparency of enforcement data
- free-speech protections, including on campus
Characteristically oppose:
- voter-ID and list-maintenance rules that reduce access without evidence of fraud
- expanded immigration detention
- warrantless surveillance
- curriculum restrictions and book removals
- religious exemptions that impose harms on third parties
- expanded enforcement powers without procedural safeguards
4. Liberal institutionalists (center-left)
Commitments: rule of law, competent and legitimate institutions, a regulated market economy with social insurance, international alliances, rules-based trade, and incremental reform.
Evidence priors:
- prefer reforms with strong evidence and a credible implementation plan
- value institutional legitimacy, norms and independent expertise
- weigh administrative capacity: a good law badly implemented fails
- prefer durable, broadly supported enactment over narrow wins
Characteristically support:
- strengthening state capacity: civil service, technology modernization, inspectors general
- independent statistical agencies and agency expertise
- regulated insurance markets with subsidies (ACA-style)
- alliances and rules-based trade
- carbon pricing or clean-energy standards
- professional, well-funded election administration
- judicial independence
Characteristically oppose:
- politicizing the civil service
- executive overreach, including impoundment and emergency workarounds
- broad tariffs and isolationism
- sweeping changes without an implementation plan
- undermining independent statistics or scientific agencies
5. Evidence-based technocratic centrists
Commitments: evidence and cost-effectiveness, supply-side abundance (building more housing, energy and infrastructure), fiscal sustainability, and market-based policy instruments.
Evidence priors:
- use cost-benefit analysis, randomized and quasi-experimental evidence, and CBO/JCT scoring as the common baseline
- skeptical of programs without evaluation or measurable outcomes
- prefer price-based instruments over command-and-control
- prefer removing supply constraints over subsidizing demand in supply-constrained markets
Characteristically support:
- zoning, permitting and environmental-review reform
- carbon pricing and congestion pricing
- program evaluation, sunsets and outcome reporting
- high-skill immigration
- evidence-backed targeted transfers
- tax simplification and administrative modernization
- health-price transparency and site-neutral payment
Characteristically oppose:
- demand subsidies into supply-constrained markets
- protectionism
- unfunded long-term commitments
- regulation without cost-benefit analysis
- programs with no measurable outcomes
6. Moderate pragmatists / bipartisan centrists
Commitments: governability, compromise across parties, fiscal prudence, stability, public trust in institutions, and protecting social insurance while keeping it solvent.
Evidence priors:
- prefer incremental, bipartisan and reversible changes
- weigh political durability and public legitimacy alongside policy effects
- skeptical of maximalist proposals from either side
- concerned about debt stabilization
Characteristically support:
- bipartisan budget-process reform
- solvency deals for entitlements that mix revenue and benefit changes
- border security paired with legal-immigration reform
- infrastructure and permitting reform
- ethics and transparency reforms
- stabilizing the debt over time
Characteristically oppose:
- partisan maximalism
- large unfunded expansions
- abrupt benefit cuts
- measures that entrench one party's advantage
- culture-war mandates in either direction