A presidential campaign is an expression of ideology, often vocalized as a number of promises. Sometimes, those promises are made even when they’re outside the scope of what a president can enact. With Vice President Kamala Harris taking on former President Donald Trump, The Verge’s election guide attempts to cut through the noise of electioneering to identify the actual policies at stake. For the tech industry, many issues hang in the balance, including the regulatory power to govern AI, monopolies, and cryptocurrency. More broadly, this election will determine the future of electric vehicles and how the US approaches climate change.
But The Verge’s stake in this election is larger than just the tech issues. Every day, we walk our readers through the collective action problems that bedevil hardware, software, the internet, and all the other building blocks that make up our future. Once you start looking for collective action problems, you see them everywhere. What’s at stake in this election is whether it’s the government’s job to solve these problems — or whether anyone should even bother trying.