[LeifCarrotson]

> you'd absolutely have to collaborate to ever do anything

You could also refuse to collaborate to do everything. This would result in an anarchist system where power/money has the ability to do whatever they want without regulatory oversight and the public are unable to vote to give themselves any rights they can't take by force.

[somenameforme]

I think that's assuming the status quo of horrible divides. In the past many social bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. For instance the Pure Food and Drug Act [1], which would lead to the FDA, was passed in 1906 by a 90%+ margin in both the House and Senate. I mean who's going to oppose outlawing mislabeled products? In a country that hasn't been trained to hate 'the other side', basically nobody.

But in modern times a typical social experiment (of which there are a zillion on YouTube) is to describe some policy passed by a President/party but swap the names to 'the other side.' People's response to the policy will invariably sharply shift. People aren't even thinking about what they think is a good idea anymore, but seeing everything through a hyper-partisan lens. That's obviously not conducive to bipartisan acts, pretty much ever.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act