As a thought-experiment, and just because I knew it would be hard, I went about attempting to define a metric that captures well-being...of the kind that Moldbug would want for his CEO-autocrat:
It has to be a weighted average.
It has to include both economic growth and violence measures
It has to disincentivize Kleptocracy.
It has to be realistic (Ethnic swedes get better outcomes on violence and income than ethnic nigerians, regardless where they live)
Current thinking:
mean + median + mode are all important
So is success differential vs. world-average per demographic group.
Measure lifespan and income (in whichever way disincentivizes larger families less)
As a Cartesian product, that's an 8-factor measurement that should capture things.
I haven't captured happiness measures. Autonomy, charity and physical activity, and physical pain (chronic pain is bad juju, and a lot [most?] of medicine exists for this purpose alone) are my best guesses for things to actually measure for well-being beyond wealth, but I'm not sure how to measure any of those well. (% of hours in a year on charity and activity? % of decisions felt to be in my control for autonomy? ).
I haven't captured justice measures, and I think that under my measure self-defense becomes bad because average lifespan reduction dominates crime reduction there.
Do I think I'm right? No. I mostly just wanted to suggest that the problem was hard, and maybe get some of my smart commentariat thinking on it.
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8 comments:
I think Moldbug's method is pretty good:
a) divide the U.S. into 500 metro-regions.
b) each region has its own board of directors, shareholders, and CEO. The initial shareholders are the former citizens/voters, each person given an equal share. The city-state then attempts to profit maximize.
The city will only be able to profit maximize if it can attract productive residents and businesses to come to the city. Thus the city will optimize its legal structure for economic growth and well being. The exact way it optimizes - figuring out the tradeoff between say building parks and building hospitals - will be at the discretion of the city management. But the city that optimizes best will attract the most residents and have the highest profits.
There are a lot of pitfalls though:
a) the current joint-stock form exists in a legal framework that enforces contract. If the joint-stock corporation is the government, who enforces the contracts between the government and the residents, or the shareholders of the company and the management? Potentially this could be resolved by retaining an independent judiciary. But this opens up the danger of the judiciary growing into a power of its own.
b) Shareholder governance sucks right now, it would need to be improved to really make this work well. Moldbug did have some great ideas for improving shareholder governance.
c) In the short run, profit maximizing government is pareto-optimal. Even if the government raises taxes higher than it was under democracy, the profits just go to the former voters. At the conversion time, current welfare programs would be dedicated as shares held by non-profit charities. But in the long term for-profit government might lead to repugnant results. What if some the cities go on slaving missions to Africa? What if some cities open up high tech breeding labs, that grow human beings in mechanical uterus, and then raise them as slaves?
d) For-profit government is not a particularly strong Schelling point for the military, especially if the stock is held by an old aristocracy. There would be too much temptation for the military to simply steal the shares for themselves. Moldbug tries to solve this with crypto-weapon locks. I'm not sure this is a very practical solution.
I hereby declare the OP(top-level post): reductionism to absurdity.
Governing decisions should be more about flourishing than life-span-maximizing, and that goes wide. Yes, that gives plenty of room for leaders to simply impose their own aesthetic preferences on the world. And that's the point! I want some of our 500 city-states (or whatever) to align way more closely with my own aesthetic et cetera values than I think would pop out of such a computation. I'm not nearly so interested in Justifying my government to All Reasonable Men as I am in just finding a Good One (by My preferences!). This, I think, is why Moldbug usually maintains the presence to finish this question at: Find a man, and put him in charge.
(That said, your list is a fine subset of obvious-ish things I'd like to see general understanding of from leaders are other responsible people in life.)
@Andrew,
1. I was responding to Foseti's comment earlier.
2. My big problem with your response is: Moldbug's "Man in Charge" gives us Hugo Chavez or Pol Pot more often than Lee Kuan Yew, or even Deng Xiaoping.
I like what we've got A LOT better than I like Chavez...and even at probabilities like 0.2 Chavez or worse, 0.8 economically literate asian autocrat...I pick current massively flawed democracy.
Until we've got controls / measurements / correct incentives in place, man in charge SUCKS! Aristocracy > Democracy >> Tyrant. Until you can reliably distinguish the Aristocrats from the Tyrants, stick with the Demos.
The success of "man in charge" solution depends on who the man is. With the right man in charge, the chance of getting a bad man in charge is actually less likely than with no man in charge at all.
Let's say it's Germany 1928, and you're trying to figure out who to support politically. Your choices:
a) support a "man in charge" who is Hitler
b) support a "man in charge" who is not Hitler
c) support the Weimar Republic
Choice b) is the most likely to avoid choice a).
Likewise, if there was party formed to put Roissy as the "main in charge" of the U.S., I would not support it. But if the party wanted to put Jeff Bezos in charge, that might garner my support. And putting Jeff Bezos in charge might stop the decline of the U.S. thus ensuring that we never decline so far that we end up with a Roissy or Hitler in charge.
Of course, if the political system is not in terminal decline, then putting any "man in charge" might break a political system that was still quite functional, and lead to factional fighting or even civil war. There is no path forward without danger.
Devin,
As appears to be common, we are again in agreement.
The question we face, then, is whether we are closer now to Weimar Germany or to 1930s America. If 1930s America, we should oppose all but perfect options for "man in charge". If we are closer to Weimar Germany, then an anti-Hitler may be good.
Of course, historically, the most vociferous anti-Hitlers tend to be Communists of the Stalin-variety, and vice versa, which increases the danger. I don't, for instance, think that Hitler the anti-communist was necessarily net worse than the competing Communist option. Once you reach that level, most folks claiming they can fix anything are demagogues who don't understand dynamic systems.
1930s America?? That's actually interesting. If FDR had actually been Man In Charge (instead of just close enough to cause most of the same problems, but without many of the benefits!)...I bet his worst long-term policies (agency creations, constitutional law shifts) would have been easier to undo.
Roissy vs Bezos? Man, I don't know! My instant leaning was and remains Roissy, if only because I know so little of Bezos's politics (wherever that differs from running a business). The best ticket might be Roissy for CEO (since we know he's relevantly principled, smart, tough) and Bezos for COO. Roissy can be trusted as well as most anyone to resist the biggest idea viruses (various egalatarianisms and wishful thinkings) of our times, and that might be what's MOST needed in Chief Visionary right now.
Sorry, Andrew, not here.
Biggest single piece of functionality to make CEO work is skill at managing people. Without long-developed leadership skill, it's all fail all the time.
The big problem with running large organizations is that lots of little details appear to matter more than the broad strokes. Leaders getting said details right is essential.
Obama, for instance, couldn't lead a high-school debate team effectively, though he does talk well...he just appears to have no capability whatsoever for leadership.
As to FDR...if he had been man-in-charge, the worst 2/3 of his policies wouldn't have been blocked, and we'd have been stuck with them. Might have really deepened the depression instead of just moderately deepening it...and with MiC powers, doubled down for status reasons, and then been real SOL.
Sorry, Andrew, not here.
You might have lost me. Do you mean,
No "Roissy/Bezos '12" signs shall be planted on THIS blog's yard!!
(I did distinguish between Executive and Operating for I think right reasons...the same reasons I read you emphaszing now...you're saying again -- like with appreciating growth rate arguments -- that I don't go far enough?)
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