A government of the people by the people and for the people
I just watched a TED talk on happiness and specifically how hard it is to evaluate happiness, and it reinforced something I have been thinking lately.
And that is, I don't think people are very good at governing themselves.
It is no understatement to say that the current political climate is quite polarized. Just this weekend Obama's health plan was voted in, and democrats everywhere were rejoicing. Well, my guess is that on the other side of the coin there were a lot of people out there that were quite bummed by this news.
And this seems like a bad system. How can we celebrate a system where at any given point in time, half the population is extremely unhappy with what its government is doing?
After eight years of President Bush, when Obama was elected, it was proof that democracy works! Finally after the republicans screwed up the country it was our chance to fix it! Yay! It really is a quite simple system: If you don't do well, if the voters don't approve of the job you are doing, then you won't get reelected. But this means in two years, when it is time to elect a new President, there is a very good chance that we are going to hand the controls over to someone that I very much disagree with. This seems like a bad system.
The reason it is a bad system is that I don't trust voters. And I'm not just talking about all those people that tried to elect Sarah Palin. I'm talking about the people that voted in Obama as well. I'm talking about me. I'm most likely talking about you, too. I don't trust any of them to have a properly informed opinion.
What percentage of the population do you think it is that carefully researches all the issues when it comes time to vote? What percentage of the population do you think reads arguments for both sides of an issue?
Or, let me put it another way. What percentage of the population do you think votes the same way their parents do because that is what they were taught? What percentage of the population do you think just reads the recommendations of their local newspaper and votes in accordance them?
And don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that people should be voting differently. Everyone doesn't necessarily have the intellegence or the schooling to be properly informed. Everyone doesn't have the luxary of taking the time to have an informed opinion.
My point is not that we need to improve the citizens of the country but that depending on the citizens of the country to be making choices about the well being of the country is not a very good system. The citizens shouldn't have to be experts in economics and politics and government and science and international relations.
People think of a democracy as The Right Thing because it gives everyone a voice. And that is nice. But (and I'm tying this back to the TED talk I watched) if people can't even properly evaluate their own experiences how can they evaluate what is best for me?
What I think we need in government is more science. Specifically we need more of the scientific method. Controlled variables, rigourous testing and evaluation.
Right now, it seems to me that policy is based primarily on the gut. People vote with their gut. People elect officials with their gut. These elected officials work with their gut. These elected officials depend on getting reelected by people who vote with their gut.
Once again, this seems like a bad system. There is a reason why supreme court justices are appointed for life. It is so that they can make hard decisions without having to question whether their job is at stake.
Anyway, back to science. There is this famous story about Google that goes something like this: when it was designing a new feature for a website it was making there was some debate as to what color the website should be. Instead of just having a designer make the choice, they set up the website to randomly choose one of over 40 different shades of blue. They then, over the course of some time perioud, tracked which different shades had the best success with users. At the end of the time period they chose the color that had the best success rate.
The government needs to do things like this. Health care was a _huge debate._ Well, set up random trials across the country. Actually test what it is going to mean for the people over the course of a year. Have controlled variables. Find the system that works well. Then implement that. Right now it is the democrat's word against the republican's. Which doesn't mean a whole lot.
This way, instead of having the voters choose what system works best, or what elected officials best represent their gut, you have a system that evaluates proposed changes based on how they actually worked in the trials. Never do something without trying it first on a small portion of the population.
Granted, I realize that this does not take the subjectivity out of government, you still need to decide on which variables you are going to control, and how you are going to control them. You have to decide on a way to evaluate the outcome of a trial. Also this wouldn't work very well for issues of human rights.
But there needs to be some way to make decisions where the opinions and whims of the citizens of the country are not the main deciding factor.
24 March 2010 06:40am UTC • 324 views • 4 comments
Tagged with government, democracy, science
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4 comments
The Anonymous Poppy
27 March 2010 07:12pm UTC
I really don't have anything to say about this post specifically, but I just found this other blog post online and I thought that it kind of applied to what you're saying here, and that it also might be relevant to your interests: http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2010/03/26/the-three-lies-of-politics/
Seamonster Mom
27 March 2010 10:22pm UTC
I like that article, Poppy.
Peon Peetie
28 March 2010 09:18am UTC
I got into a long debate with a few of my colleagues about this, and couldn't agree with you more. The system is flawed.
What bugs me, in particular, is that our "two party system", from which we criticize openly China's on party system, has two parties that are nearly identical. On a scale of 1 to 10, republicans are maybe a 3, and democrats are a 2. Why doesn't anyone seem to complain about that except me?
Jefferson thought the best government would be born from one that had a revolution every 25 years (I think he said 25, maybe more, maybe less). We've had the same flawed system for over 200 years, and I'm still allowed to have a dual in Massachusetts as long as a governor is present?
(and I liked that article too, Poppy)
The Anonymous Poppy
3 April 2010 10:33pm UTC
Also, if you liked that TED talk on happiness, you should definitely check out Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It's about -- in large part -- what's going on in our brains that makes us terrible at predicting what will make us happy. Such as how we will make choices (based on our past experience) that we think will make us happier in the future (and sometimes we're investing in happiness that we imagine won't actually occur until a long way into the future), but then we end up not actually being happier because of those choices. It's full of ideas that are great companions to the notion of separating experiential and remembered happiness from one another.