A thesis for an ideal government

[McGraw]

The Problem

As established in The Big Al's thread, governments exist to serve their own needs (to remain in power) above those of society (to improve living standards and reduce welfare loss). Like you or I, they function in response to incentives, and they have every incentive to ensure that they remain in power; be it financial benefits, future individual career prospects, political influence, gaining high profile contacts, creating a legacy (who cares about a single term president?), self satisfaction or maintaining egos.

Few of the same incentives are directly available from serving society, notably only reputational ones. It is a derived incentive that if governments perform well, they may remain in power, although arguably, it is unnecessary for them to do so. A government does not need to convince all of the people that it is doing a good job, only the right people; the swing voters and influential demographics. Pander to the beliefs of large sects of the population (read: Christians) and a government can get away with murder, and continue to in the following term.

That is what all democratic governments are like, regardless of whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans, or wear a blue hat or a red hat. It is obvious that we as the public, are being shortchanged, so how do we actively improve the situation?

A solution?

There is of course no easy solution, and some ideas cross the reality line into idealism. However, I can hopefully identify some practical possibilities;

1) Information symmetry: this is simply a fancy way of saying the population needs to be educated, and need access to relevent information to make an accurate decision. People need to know how the political game works, and the flaws within, before the system can change for the better. We have the internet, so the information should be readily available to the masses, but it is obscured by enormous amounts of background noise, misleading articles and political spin. Further, politicians have an incentive to prevent people from learning how the world works, because it would undermine their position. I remain optomistic that over time, circumstances will improve, but it may take generations before the information chasm is bridged.

2) Vote, vote, vote: one vote is unlikely to make a difference, but if all the cynical, knowing and quietly grumbling individuals voted, they will overpower the swing voters and ignorant masses to topple a government. This is not to back one party as being better than another, but if the government recognises this new voting demographic of educated people who will not tolerate shoddy, transparent, vote winning policies, they will be forced to act. Ultimately, we would notice a transition where serving society rises higher and higher on the agenda until hopefully (though unrealistically) it will be the first topic of discussion. The impact of this is largely dependent upon the successfulness of information symmetry.

I open the floor to all constructive responses.

 

[Roses Ablaze]

Maybe there should be a tax incentive for people who vote (or attempt to vote), but you have to read a short document summarizing each political party's sides to the major issues and then take a short test over it in order for your vote to count.

This probably has a lot of holes in it since I'm not a political science person, but eh *shrugs*

 

[McGraw]

Maybe there should be a tax incentive for people who vote (or attempt to vote), but you have to read a short document summarizing each political party's sides to the major issues and then take a short test over it in order for your vote to count.

This probably has a lot of holes in it since I'm not a political science person, but eh *shrugs*

I think it is a plausible idea, but there needs to be more to it. For example, the document must be written by an independent third party and must provide an objective analysis of each policy. The problem here is that people have little tolerance for red tape and little patience for such documents, especially if it is in any detail. Further, it must not be written in the "law style" that is used in everything official and is notoriously difficult to understand.

 

[smog]

1) Information symmetry: this is simply a fancy way of saying the population needs to be educated, and need access to relevent information to make an accurate decision. People need to know how the political game works, and the flaws within, before the system can change for the better. We have the internet, so the information should be readily available to the masses, but it is obscured by enormous amounts of background noise, misleading articles and political spin. Further, politicians have an incentive to prevent people from learning how the world works, because it would undermine their position. I remain optomistic that over time, circumstances will improve, but it may take generations before the information chasm is bridged.

That would be excellent, but it would also make the system somewhat obsolete. The main advantage of having a government is to make up for the general population's incompetence. If everybody is educated, you could just ask the population to solve most important questions and in the end the government would be a mostly empty shell handling details of little importance. No, really, if you want a great system you have to expect general incompetence and work around it.

I'll just present the system I talked about in the chat:

Let's say you have 100 people who are talented at finding great solutions to the various problems in their country. In other words, if any of them were the president and truly worked for the good of the people, things would be improve (or be maintained if everybody is already happy). Surely, with this base material, we could have an excellent government. Now, I will try to solve each problem in order:

1- We have to find those people.
I do not think this is very hard to do. You could start with successful businessmen or presidents of smaller groups, look at academic worth, etc. As I will explain just after this, it does not matter if those people are honest, and if we have 10-15% of those people who turn out to be incompetent, it should not matter either (do not worry, it should be clearer by the end of my post).

2- We have to make sure they cannot do anything else than work for the greater good
Here, some may say that human nature makes it so we cannot trust those people to truly work for the good of people, even if they would do it well. After all, they would rather work for their own self. Be glad, however, that there is a solution.

Let's say you have one person who takes decisions. There is no way, short of playing the same role as that person, that you could ensure that the decision that goes through is for the greater good. Indeed, the person can follow either of two obvious threads: the greater good (because that's what she's told to work for) or her own good. Somebody could supervise and filter the decision, but the same problem applies, so why bother...

Let's say you have two people and you put them together. The same problem applies. They can either work for the greater good or the good of them two. Now, let's say you don't put them together. You separate them with a wall of concrete. Now that is interesting: not knowing each other, they cannot collude and it results that the only common thread between the two is the greater good. Hence, if they take similar decisions we have better confidence that they are for the greater good.

Having established this, we can go back to our set of 100 competent people. All we have to do to solve problem 2 is to be reasonably sure that the second most common thread can only touch, say, 10% of the people at a time. Isolating them from each other is extremely good because it eliminates the possibility to create new threads. It is not enough, however, because if you get everyone from the oil industry, obviously, the risk of bias is way too high. I think it is feasible, though, to pick people from enough different backgrounds so that the condition is satisfied.

Anyhow, by doing this, we drastically reduce the possibility that decisions are taken that are not for the greater good! Having collected 100 decisions, we know that if there is a good percentage (and by good I mean as little as 20-30%) of common decisions, they are probably for the greater good. If we see no trend at all, then problem 3 occurs.

3- We have to make sure that they do actively work for the greater good instead of doing nothing
A simple way to solve the problem would be via a reward system:
- If other people take the same decision as you, you get a reward. Your best bet is to work for the greater good (I'm not saying you'd have to figure that out yourself - obviously, you'd be reminded that fact as many times as needed).
- If you had a good idea nobody else had and eventually others catch on and/or it becomes obvious it is a good idea, you get a greater reward (that way the best elements won't dumb themselves down)
- Feedback can also be gathered from the population, and good feedback may yield rewards. That might cause problems, though, because the feedback from the population is probably out of phase with the greater good.


At first glance the system may seem complex and farfetched, but it would probably work. The idea is to drown all possible lines of thought but the one leading to the greater good, and then use statistics, machine learning, etc. to pick up the right signal. The method is to pick competent people from different backgrounds, isolate them, ask them for their opinion and advice on various topics and make it obvious to them that we can figure out when they're bullshitting because it's really unlikely that everyone bullshits in the same way.

The most beautiful consequence of this system is that the most profitable actions a "decider" can do are to educate herself, become more rational, put herself in other people's shoes to understand them, because if everybody in the system does it, the decisions will yield better results and will be more similar, hence everybody will get bigger rewards.

Note: I simplified a lot, there are many more problems to solve before it is truly viable.

 

[McGraw]

That is majestic, and much clearer to me in prose. I did not follow entirely in the channel though I figured it would be statistics related. Yes, it looks theoretically plausible, but how is isolation practical? Surely if the system is to be entirely efficient, the individuals must not only be isolated from each other, but all external contact, to avoid any collusion (it is unfortunate that humans are so responsive to incentives that they will readily cheat). Moreover, it is difficult to see the motives for anyone to agree to such a career if such isolation must be implemented.

 

[evkl]

Without reading any of this, it's ironic that we had precisely this topic in my gov class. Later tonight I'll actually read and respond. But whoa.

 

[smog]

That is majestic, and much clearer to me in prose. I did not follow entirely in the channel though I figured it would be statistics related. Yes, it looks theoretically plausible, but how is isolation practical? Surely if the system is to be entirely efficient, the individuals must not only be isolated from each other, but all external contact, to avoid any collusion (it is unfortunate that humans are so responsive to incentives that they will readily cheat). Moreover, it is difficult to see the motives for anyone to agree to such a career if such isolation must be implemented.

Yes, that's an important problem. I believe an individual should not be in charge for a long time. The longer people are in charge the more likely it is that they will eventually find each other, or use covert channels to convey information. If they don't stay active for long, they always have to start over. Nonetheless, the system should account for the possibility that some percentage of the deciders know each other. It's not too difficult. Unless most know most others, some statistical tricks can be used - if you observe that 30 people always decide similarly, you can suspect they are not working for the greater good because normally you expect every element to contribute equally over time, not the same subgroup of 30 people over and over again. This means perfect isolation is not needed.

Anyway, I think you could let them live their life as normal. During, say, one year, they have to do some work with no possibility of disclosure (they'd be followed and bugged to ensure this), in addition to what they would be normally doing. With enough mass it needs not to be a full time job.

It could be good, too, to have clusters of people who can communicate, so ideas can circulate and evolve faster. Each of them would count as one.

 

[McGraw]

What do you call it... Brainism? Also, what you are suggesting is turning government into a ruthlessly efficient machine. I like that.

However I would say that generating statistics is one thing, and interpreting them is another. Human beings are very intuitive and our subconciousness is remarkably active. Modern advertising techniques can skew the judgement of even the greatest minds. A 25% statistically significant result could turn out to be clever product positioning. So the next level would be to introduce a government watchdog, how do you propose that would function?

Edit: haha, we're dealing in dreams now... this is never happening

 

[Girafarig_Magcargo]

Maybe there should be a tax incentive for people who vote (or attempt to vote), but you have to read a short document summarizing each political party's sides to the major issues and then take a short test over it in order for your vote to count.

This probably has a lot of holes in it since I'm not a political science person, but eh *shrugs*

A short test? While that might sound plausible, we have to remember that that'll remind people of the days of literacy tests which were designed exclusively to disenfranchise black voters.

 

[McGraw]

I have given "Brainism" some further thought, and I found a small hole in it... a liberal assumption you made that the 100 candidates will be chosen easily. Initially, I skipped this without thinking, but now I realise it poses a problem... how are they chosen? There are three options as I see it:

1) Selection based upon mental agility and intellectual excellence; seemingly the most fair option, it potentially excludes certain backgrounds. For example, there is a far greater likelihood of a high white representation, while the black community in general have worse living standards.

2) A head of state chooses the candidates; how is the head of state chosen? Democratically? There are loopholes everywhere to cheat the system, we have gone full circle. The integrity of any chosen individual may be questionable, potentially a classic "I'll rub your back if you rub mine".

3) Voted for by the public; it would be like voting for senators, which is a microcosm of the race for presidency; so it would fail to deliver as above.

Edit: and I agree with the post below, apart from the 95% figure. Inserting precise unproven numbers into a point is a bad habit to get into

 

[Fig]

The notion of keeping politicians isolated for their entire term would simply terminate democracy. People would refuse to be politicians under those conditions. And doing it non-democratically, ie forcing the people in the position (and who choses them?), would simply not be an acceptable form of government to 95% of the population.

I'd say short repeatable mandate are just as troublesome as lengthy ones ; perhaps even more so.

Short mandates means that the politician will be focusing on their future after the mandate (ie, reelection, or if they can't be reelected, their bank accounts) for much of their term. This is no more desirable than people who think they are not accountable until a few years off.

 

[The Dude]

The best governments, as Plato said, are those ruled by people who do not wish to hold power. Those with the ambition are nearly always unqualified, unethical, or incompetent. Granted, there are those with personal ambition who can do great things, but those are extraordinary people, and such people are very small in number.
Those we know of now were almost all in scientific and artistic fields.
Socrates, Newton, Cyrus l, and a handful of others.
It is nearly impossible to find such a person, and many amount to nothing due to circumstance. So, it's safe to say that personal ambition must be reduced in importance, if not entirely eliminated.
I would advocate a meritocracy as an alternative to democracy. Those who show the most capability would go into government service.
But this idea is only yet a seed in my mind. I may find the words to express it later, but for now it is a mere thought.

 

[Misty]

You can't force someone into something they don't want. At worst they'll do a crappy job on purpose to be kicked out - at best they won't work up to their full potential.

 

[smog]

What do you call it... Brainism? Also, what you are suggesting is turning government into a ruthlessly efficient machine. I like that.

However I would say that generating statistics is one thing, and interpreting them is another. Human beings are very intuitive and our subconciousness is remarkably active. Modern advertising techniques can skew the judgement of even the greatest minds. A 25% statistically significant result could turn out to be clever product positioning. So the next level would be to introduce a government watchdog, how do you propose that would function?

Ideally, you'd split tasks logically and use the same redundancy mechanism for every task. Most of these tasks can be organized as pipelines, each task producing the input of the next one. I'll give a mostly improvised view of what it should be like (yep - I added a lot).

Policy: create policies; calculate their cost; project them in the future to see what results they would yield; evaluate the results to see if they are good; deploy the best policy

Feedback: gather information (statistics, opinions) about the current state of the country or world; evaluate what's better and what's worse than before; link the changes to the policies chosen; revert detrimental policies, penalize the people who let them pass through and reward for the policies that worked

Regulation: create N policy/feedback pipelines, each with subtle differences; split the country in M parts, each of them overseen by a certain subset of the N pipelines (maybe N=M, but maybe not); rearrange the decisions so all parts of the country get to share all policies but a few that are contentious; observe results, see what wins in practice, and deploy everywhere; see what system works best, deploy it in more places than the others

As you can see, this model is more fleshed out. In total, you would have tens of thousands of people in the system distributed in many roles, and it would be able to regulate itself. Also, to introduce further checks, everything should be made as public as possible.

I have given "Brainism" some further thought, and I found a small hole in it... a liberal assumption you made that the 100 candidates will be chosen easily. Initially, I skipped this without thinking, but now I realise it poses a problem... how are they chosen? There are three options as I see it:

1) Selection based upon mental agility and intellectual excellence; seemingly the most fair option, it potentially excludes certain backgrounds. For example, there is a far greater likelihood of a high white representation, while the black community in general have worse living standards.

Good point, but there is no reason to give proportional representation. Ideally, you would like to normalize and choose as many black people as white people. Because of several social factors, there are fewer black people who we can pick, but it's only a problem if there aren't enough in total to meet our quota

2) A head of state chooses the candidates; how is the head of state chosen? Democratically? There are loopholes everywhere to cheat the system, we have gone full circle. The integrity of any chosen individual may be questionable, potentially a classic "I'll rub your back if you rub mine".

I don't like that.

3) Voted for by the public; it would be like voting for senators, which is a microcosm of the race for presidency; so it would fail to deliver as above.

We don't want that either. Such proportional voting would make majorities majorities and minorities minorities. We don't want any minorities. Therefore, we would actually have to normalize vote for all aspects that do not matter - black, gay, atheist votes would be worth more. White, straight and religious votes would be worth less, etc.

Not to mention we'd rather have anonymous candidates!

The notion of keeping politicians isolated for their entire term would simply terminate democracy. People would refuse to be politicians under those conditions. And doing it non-democratically, ie forcing the people in the position (and who choses them?), would simply not be an acceptable form of government to 95% of the population.

There is no democracy in my proposition. Also, I clearly said in my reply to McGraw that they would live a normal life, albeit with some additional responsibilities. We want to have several deciders and isolate them from each other, not from everything else.

I'd say short repeatable mandate are just as troublesome as lengthy ones ; perhaps even more so.

Short mandates means that the politician will be focusing on their future after the mandate (ie, reelection, or if they can't be reelected, their bank accounts) for much of their term. This is no more desirable than people who think they are not accountable until a few years off.

You know, I'm confused as to whether you are talking about democracy as we know it today (in which case you would be right), or the system I'm proposing, which is designed to be resilient to any other interest than the greater good.

 

[Fig]

If they're not isolated from everyone else, then by nature they will be able to contact each other.

Even if you try to keep their identities completely secret, rumors are going to run around, and you WILL have to have a list with the names somewhere - and it is a very safe bet that someone, somewhere, will hack his way into getting a copy.

 

[Fig]

If they're not isolated from everyone else, then by nature they will be able to contact each other.

Even if you try to keep their identities completely secret, rumors are going to run around, and you WILL have to have a list with the names somewhere - and it is a very safe bet that someone, somewhere, will hack/bribe/steal/blackmail his way into getting a copy.

 

[smog]

If they're not isolated from everyone else, then by nature they will be able to contact each other.

Even if you try to keep their identities completely secret, rumors are going to run around, and you WILL have to have a list with the names somewhere - and it is a very safe bet that someone, somewhere, will hack/bribe/steal/blackmail his way into getting a copy.

If a rumor runs around about person X, it's straightforward to solve the matter. You demote and replace X. No harm done. Indeed, the more it spreads, the more likely a "rumor" is to be caught by the part of the system that checks for isolation.

Besides, let's say you have 365 people with a one year mandate. The best strategy is to replace a member every day, so the "list" could never be fully accurate for more than 24 hours. That's a rather small window.

Now assuming such a list is made, what could possibly happen next? Naturally, the members of the deciding force would be bugged (and they would know it as part of their contract). If the list holder contacts one of the people on the list, it will be caught and the safety policy kicks in: demote and replace every single decider. Could communications be encrypted? They could, but it's suspicious as hell and enough for safety measures to kick in. Could they be subtle enough to not get caught? They could, but even then they are only two! They would have to repeat the process many times and in that case the odds are very much against them.

Seriously, how do you suggest that hundreds of bugged, isolated parties that do not know each other can come to collude in a matter of a single year? Worse yet, assuming you could do it, assuming you could make such a web, the fact remains that a single mention of its existence to the authority is sufficient to trigger a massive replacement wave that will pulverize it. Any member could use that as leverage: "I don't care either way, so do what I want or the whole system will be renewed". Not so subtle.