Introduction
In this article I want to discuss what the optimal government would look like. Albeit this quest is highly idealistic and arguably unrealistic, it is nevertheless a crucial question to ask, because even imperfect answers could provide some of the most important ingredients to building a better world. The main challenge with this task is the sheer complexity of the world and that it is exceptionally challenging to find what is right, beneficial or better, especially as people have countless different opinions on what is true.
George Orwell once described this dilemma in this beautiful analogy:
However, just like how we have found definite truths in science or unequivocal engineering designs of how things like airplanes work, I think we can get close to a similar level of precision in politics. Here’s how.
Towards A Unifying Logic
As always, everybody has their own opinions as to how they think a country should be run. There are countless ideas of what should be done, and on any issue, virtually every single person has their own view (read about the science compass). Should the government increase taxes and ensure equality or let the economy run more freely? Should it focus on decreasing debt, securing borders and strengthen the military or prioritize gay and animal rights as well as protecting the environment?
At least these are important questions that if we get right would genuinely make our lives better. Most discussions in politics carry much less potential value and revolve around immediate issues people can get excited about in the moment.
For example, right now in Austrian politics some of the main topics are whether to employ police horses, if head scarves should be allowed in schools and to increase the speed limit on high ways from 130km/h to 140km/h.
As if these changes would make a serious, positive contribution to improving life for 8.7m Austrians.
For thousands of years humans have debated such issues, 99% of which either make no real difference or even harm people. Now is the time to change that. What we actually need is a unifying logic or blueprint that guides us on what to prioritize (i.e. what creates the most value (a) out of the millions of opinions or ideas and then how to implement the resulting, necessary changes.
The Starting Point or Goal
The first step in establishing what an ideal government would look like is to agree on one ultimate goal instead of fighting over thousands of different ones.
The only true ultimate goal of any government has to be to maximize the wellbeing while minimizing the suffering of society as a whole (i.e. all people (b)).
I addressed this in more detail in the starting point, but in a nutshell, it is about the maximization of value instead of just 1% or 10% etc.
This is the one thing we can all agree on, because it describes the sum (or lowest common denominator) of what we all want.
And while we as individual members of society pull into our own directions (e.g. work for our own benefit and advantage) the role of the government is to be the coordinating force that builds the framework for the needs and actions of everyone. That becomes possible when we have this one goal or dependent variable (as explained in the science article) of maximizing progress (or: improvement; wellbeing; happiness) and connect the right dots or independent variables. When we do this really well – and I mean spend millions of work hours on getting the connections right – then we know what to prioritize (i.e. the biggest multiplier effects) and what not as well as how to implement the necessary changes.
The Government’s Role in Value Creation
As explained throughout my work (especially in STEPS), value (whether in small or big instances) is created by first building an understanding (e.g. of a problem, our world in general), applying this knowledge as solutions to problems or making improvements, but finally depends on people to take actions (e.g. social acceptance and change). However, in this process governance has to act as the coordinating force and build the framework for all actions (inputs) to lead to the best possible returns (output). Therefore, to refer to my cake analogy again, the government essentially makes the best possible recipe and work structure while the rest of society just focuses on their individual tasks (inputs) to make the cake as big and yummy as possible (output).
The most obvious examples of why we need a central, coordinating entity include some of the most valuable systems such as health care, education and transport. If these industries were left solely to individuals, it is very likely that irregularities, inequalities and unnecessary imperfections will occur. We can all agree, for instance, that we should get the best possible health care (output) with the given resources (input). The only way this can work is with a central logic and management, otherwise individuals with more power could charge unfair prices etc.
This actually comes down to a so-called game-theoretical issue (as described in other articles) where if everybody does what is best for themselves (or at least think they do) it can lead to an overall outcome that is sub-optimal for everybody. The result is a situation called a lock-in where we cannot rely on individuals to change or design a better system, because it would precisely be against what is best for them (described in more detail here).
Therefore, government is crucial in order to circumvent the limitations of us individuals, i.e. pulling into each of our own directions over-proportionally. It is not just that citizens are all selfish, but they cannot be expected to have the perfect understanding (perception, attitudes) of the entire system (and actions). The government, however, is paid (with tax dollars) to do exactly that.
Thus, a government has to create institutions, laws and taxes that create the framework in which everybody’s actions (however selfish or uninformed) contributes as much as possible to towards maximizing the wellbeing of all citizens. How exactly I address later.
For example, governments can create laws (based on careful research) in the construction industry, which every construction company has to follow so that we all live in safe, high-quality buildings. Here, firms themselves would naturally not apply such stringent measures considering their main concern is profit-maximization (their own direction).
Finally, the government is not just needed to ensure maximal value creation, i.e. making the cake as large as possible, but to also distribute this value in the fairest way possible so we all get a fair piece of the cake.
The Underlying Principles: On Ethics and the Veil of Ignorance
The question now is what the words progress, value or happiness mean and how we know that we maximize it, e.g. how do we know that when we are making the cake bigger that people are also happier? The key to answering these questions lies in ethics. The modern form of ethics that approaches these issues in a scientific, rational, and objective manner is humanism, and its principle is also the maximization of happiness and minimization of suffering. Hence, one cycle closes on what the goal of this project and my work is as well as what the objective of a government should be.
Having answered the ‘what’ and anchored this work on the strong foundation of humanism, the question is now ‘how?’. We need to establish what happiness and suffering entail, what ‘good’ or ‘beneficial’ mean and lastly create an objective, quantifiable measurement of what the maximum ‘value’, wellbeing or happiness for all mean. While this can perhaps never be a precise undertaking, we can indeed establish approximations of these terms, through science at that. Indeed, the scientific method can and must be applied to ethics. Countless scientific studies (c) have and can still be made about what people value and want; what makes them happy or suffer and most importantly what measures (e.g. governmental) – (independent variables in a scientific sense) work best. This entails facts and measurements, statistics and rational connections instead of religion, culture, opinions or feelings. Therefore, the bedrock of modern ethics is also science.
In fact, modern civilization already has much more advanced ethics in the sense that more of our attitudes and behavior result in more happiness as well as less suffering of others. Unlike animals, humans who can understand the world and reason can incorporate more information about the wellbeing of more people (or even animals and the planet overall) and make logical connections. Emotions like empathy are naturally part of us (for evolutionary reasons), but to live up fully to our potential altruism is about knowledge and reason. Over time we learned to incorporate more and more information (variables) about the wellbeing or suffering of others. First just about ourselves, then our families and tribes and later towards anybody and even other species.
Hence, ethics is to a large degree about intelligence. To figure out what is “good” or “right” and what exactly to do requires us to be smart, to think, to collect data and to be rational on top of being empathetic.
Unfortunately, politics hardly ever follow these principles. First, because politicians are humans, with all their faults and limitations (last section). Secondly, the rest of us (society) also don’t approach politics in a scientific, humanist way. We all have our opinions of what should be done based on our unique perspective of the world.
The only way how we can maximize progress and value for all is thus by detaching from our own beliefs, perceptions and attitudes. We have to put on a so-called veil of ignorance where you assume that you don’t know which member of society you will be (e.g. a millionaire’s heir or an old, poor and sick person).
The Government’s Role in Creating Even More Value (Innovation)
Now that we’ve understood the basic principles of why a government is needed as a central coordinating force to overcome the limitations of society or individuals let’s look at why we need the government to make more progress, i.e. to make the cake bigger.
Any innovation and any small bit of progress we make implies change. Change, however, is extremely hard, as I’ve explained before. Especially the grand innovations with the biggest potential multiplier effects, i.e. education, transport and automation are where change is the trickiest, precisely because of the problem of lock-in that I described above. Let’s take transport as an example: many people don’t want to give up their car; therefore, fewer public transport is built, which in turn makes it less attractive and the circle restarts. Another example would be automation: people would lose their jobs in the short-term and hence oppose it; therefore, less automation occurs. In both cases a government can bridge so-called market failures or lock-ins. In fact, governments can be the most powerful catalyzer for innovation and progress. How exactly to do this is studied by colleagues of mine and myself in the innovation policy and transition fields as well as others, which shall be described in more detail in the future, but here are two simple examples.
First, to help transition to a more efficient (and sustainable) transport system, governments should bear the necessary switching costs, i.e. the amount of money that is needed to shift the system to a new trajectory, but that no individuals or firms would invest as long as the old system is ‘stabile’ (or at least not quickly). A better transport system would be worth around 10% of the entire yearly GDP, hence almost any investment would be justified, even if it raised debt (d).
Secondly, if the main block for more automation is that people lose their jobs in the short-term, then it would, for example, make sense for governments to provide these people with generous unemployment benefits and free education. Again, the cost of perhaps a few percentage points of the GDP (which only incur once) is nothing compared to the additional value of potentially 50% GDP or more (e). Sounds a bit much? Not when we look at how much the economy has already grown and what pivotal roles governments played in that growth.
In a bit over two generations (since 1941) the US GDP/person (inflation adjusted) has increased not 50%, but 500% (1). Central to this monumental growth and the US becoming the highly-advanced superpower that it is, have been though very thorough innovation policies. From the Pacific Railroads Act in 1862 and the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956 that connected Americans (and laid the basis for the automobile age) to the GI Bill to boost education and ARPANET to help give rise to computers and the Internet.
Therefore, throughout all the STEPS the government (the “P” in STEPS) is potentially the strongest force, i.e. with the greatest multiplier effect. In basic science research where firms might not benefit directly and hence are less likely to invest (f), governments can centrally coordinate resources (i.e. taxes paid by all) to direct it into research that ultimately benefits us all. Similarly, it can create a more optimal education system, which as I have described before has the largest multiplier effect of anything long-term or set incentives for entrepreneurs to drive innovation.
“Politics” – the Process
So far I have written only about what the perfect government would look like, but it is worth noting that it is, of course, just a part of politics. Politics is the overall process through which any member of society contributes (e.g. opinions, voting or other actions) to how the framework or central coordination (described above) is shaped. Hence, it includes all of us (society) and is based on our perceptions and attitudes (innovation habit), and hence all the different directions we all pull into.
The less scientific a society is and the less it is aligned with the actions that lead to progress the less likely it is that a government will be effective. After all, people vote and give politicians power. An ignorant population will be more likely to vote for ignorant and unqualified politicians and worse at even spotting them and taking actions against them. That is, in a nutshell, how 63m Americans voted for a man who believes climate change is a Chinese conspiracy and doesn’t understand at all what the words “science” and “facts” mean.
This is a central reason why education has the largest multiplier effect of any system.
Why We Can’t Have a Perfect Government
So what politicians would actually have to do is this: First, set the goal of maximizing value for society as a whole instead of just representing one line of thought, interest group or stopping short at sub-optimal measures, what I call pick-up variables or zero-sum games (future article). Secondly, spend their entire fu*king time looking for ways to get to that goal. Throughout this entire process they should be guided by the principles of science and humanism.
In practice, that means that politicians’ actions should be guided by academic papers, researchers and experts as well as the scientific consensus of specialized fields. Especially nowadays we can make data-driven decisions that are highly precise.
What actually happens is that everything I wrote above is just totally not happening. It’s the general attitude of society that politicians don’t do their jobs well, but perhaps more because they are seen as selfish. In reality, I think they’re just genuinely useless most of the time. At the end of the day, they’re only human too and come with the same limitations as the rest of us. It comes back to the basic point that the world is unfathomably complex and that we can only ever understand a tiny fraction of it. We live in our own small worlds and form our own perceptions of the world – and there’s a thin line of actually being correct (science compass). Hence, if we just follow our perceptions and opinions we are almost always irrational and wrong. Here’s an example (not to take a political position): A little boy growing up in a Christian town and a Republican all his life will simply have an according set of values and opinions (g) embedded virtually unalterably in his brain’s neurons. If he becomes president, he will just “stand for” these values, often regardless of what opposing evidence he is presented with (if at all). In a way, no matter how wrong he is, he still is “right”, because he does (to a large degree) what the people who voted for him want.
Such is the absurdity of how we all engage in politics so that a few people are bestowed a tremendous amount of power, people who have not specialized in gaining a thorough understanding of the world and hence pull us all in a suboptimal direction. That is why politicians need to follow science, because it is the optimized method for finding out what is true and making the right connections. The only realistic way that is possible is if society is educated, especially on the principles of science.
What Does All this Mean in Practice?
First, it has to be noted that we can never reach perfection, but that that is not the issue. The issue is that nobody tries. We have to skip all the way to what I call the z-point (future article) where wellbeing for people overall is maximized and then see what feasible measures have the biggest multiplier effects. Hence, it’s not enough to be right, but we have to be right on the right things, i.e. to think about where the biggest potential value or improvement lies.
For example, it’s 2018 and the LGBT community still does not have equal rights in most areas of the world, even developed countries, even though it is so obviously wrong. When we apply our principles from above then it is an instance of happiness not being maximized (to marry and found a family and live in peace is a fundamental need) by a significant amount for about 5% of the population. The solution takes three seconds to come up with once you get the ethics right: Equal rights for all. Debate over. This measure would not hurt anybody, but would make life for millions of people instantly better.
The same is true for prohibiting euthanasia (which I picked because of its high controversy), which really just means forcing the most miserable people in all of society to have to continue to suffer.
Yet, it still takes generations for such changes to the law because of, to boil it down to the essence, ignorance. We don’t process information about other people’s suffering and at the same time cannot change the wiring of our brains in the face of facts.
A proper government would pick out all such issues and implement the changes without much of a fuss, but the politicians we have speak of such topics as if the right solution was up to a debate between different fractions of society.
As I’ve mentioned before it is one of the greatest failures of modern, Western society to not do more to alleviate extreme poverty in less fortunate areas in the world. Starving children are without a doubt one of the largest forms of suffering and injustices. Hence, an ideal government would take more action. They have the power to send money, resources, doctors and experts as well as conduct diplomacy. How much precisely is a tough question (h), but certainly more than currently.
So far, we’ve covered issues that might be fairly obvious for most educated people, but they served as empirical examples to demonstrate the core logic established above – some politicians would even agree with, but then practice is still very far from theory. Barack Obama changed his views to eventually support gay marriage (not least thanks to the change in mindsets of millions of Americans). Bernie Sanders has been fighting for equality for decades. Equality is great because it gives bigger pieces of the cake to more people, i.e. higher average happiness for all. However, to recognize what the measures with the greatest multiplier effects are that make the cake larger and then allocate the pieces is even better. Much, much better. Hence, we (and especially a government) has to ask not just what measure are good, but which measures are best and should be prioritized.
Hence, at the bottom line “perfect” politicians or governments need to do two things:
- Get the core logic right! This acts as a metaphorical compass of science and humanism that precisely shows the right direction of progress – a better world.
- Maximize that progress! It is not enough to just walk in the right direction when you can run, to do good when you can do best.
We can talk about greed and blame inefficient governments on the selfishness of politicians, i.e. pulling into their own directions. And yes, the underlying issue is indeed that actions are not aligned enough towards maximizing the wellbeing of all – obviously. However, the underlying issue to that, in turn, is a lack of science and not just greed or selfishness. If we humans were sapient enough, we could solve that. For example, introduce performance indicators for governments, i.e. based on growth, equality, sustainability etc., and based on how well they do their job, let politicians have their bonus payments of millions like effective managers do in companies. When a thirst for power is the problem, then it will be hard for a person to grab power when the people is thoroughly educated and people of science. We can continue this with many more examples.
However, to break the cycle of bad politics depends on you. Become an educated person, a person of science and reason, of sound logic and then act accordingly.
Of course, there are also obvious limitations to what a government can do. Nothing is ever simple in the real world but co-evolution of countless, often unexpected, factors. Changes that make sense in theory might be too radical to accept for society. The list goes on and on. When we imagine a perfect government, however, it is one that can navigate its way through the complexity of the world, because it has mastered the most effective principles and methods.
If, for example, society is the main flood gate for progress then it is also part of politicians’ jobs to communicate visions and changes. 
References:
1. US Bureau of Economic Analysis: https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product#gdp
Footnotes:
a) The world “value” summarizes all that we humans want and value, that increases happiness and reduces suffering.
b) Not all can get 100% of course, e.g. in cases where the richest 0.001% lose some of their wealth but the rest of society benefits. Some lost a bit, but more gain more.
c) Check out Sam Harris’ “The Moral Landscape”.
d) Of course, it’ not that simple. There are many evolutionary processes that occur through time, but that would take too long to explain. Generally, however, the government as representation of all people holds the key to system changes.
e) It does not matter if these calculations are precise, but we know for certain the multiplier effect of innovation throughout history and we know the main problem is socio-technical system lock-ins, which governments can best bridge.
f) Basic science research is not linked to specific products or technologies directly, but more general and underlying.
g) Not entirely, but largely.
h) After all, if people in developed countries had to give too much of their wealth away their suffering would increase, the economy would collapse, which would not help developing countries either.
Generation Utopia 