Basement Whatever

An interesting theory for better government?

…we should vote for a party based only on our values. The winning party is responsible for choosing an explicit mathematical function that represents how well the country is doing on its values. For example, this function might be “GDP”, or “percent of the population employed,” or “global happiness ranking,” or what have you. Probably, it will be some combination of these things.

The government’s only job is to define what success looks like, and how we’re going to measure it. That’s all the government does. They don’t get to raise taxes, or allocate spending, or appoint judges, or anything like that. They are responsible only to pick the utility function, and to create any agencies that might be required to measure it

The author recommends betting on whether metrics will be succeed or fail based on proposed policies. More here.