[extropy-chat] Examining Risks (was RE: META: List Quality)

[Mike Linksvayer]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 08:41:01AM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote:
> This is called "retrospective voting" in the political science 
> literature.  Yes, it
> has long been known that if voters would just vote to dump or keep an incumbent
> based on if their life seems to be going better or worse than expected, this
> would provide good incentives for a single central democratic power.
> 
> Unfortunately, power is divided, so that voters have to decide who to 
> credit with
> what changes.  And people do not just vote on their life - they 
> consider how they
> think other peoples lives are going, and they make judgements about the
> particular policies pursued.  While an electorate who knew how little they know
> might effectively discipline a central government, an overconfident electorate
> can do a lot worse.

I've idly wondered about the impact of policy outcomes on the
electoral success of policy makers (I assumed very little).  This
thread motivates me to de-idle for a second.  The first relevant
article I found (abstract only) is "Macroeconomic conditions and
committee re-election rates" at
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-005-3471-y

	Using Presidential Party return rates from 10 House committees
	over the time period 1916-1996, I find the impact of economic
	conditions at the polls varies by committee. Generally,
	committees that manage money or provide a public good are
	the most sensitive to economic fluctuations. Contrastingly,
	members of the Public Works committee and the Rules committee
	are more insulated from electoral culpability due to economic
	fluctuations.

I'll have to read the article to discern the level of impact, which
I still assume to be very low.  There must be decades to centuries
worth of both macroeconomic and electoral outcome data across many
jurisdictions.  Has anyone done a comprehensive survey?

The reason I've been idly wondering is that I find Robin's Futarchy
idea increasingly compelling but probably too unfamiliar for people
to consider it a realistic proposal anytime soon.  The world needs
much more experience with prediction markets for one thing.

So how to make policy (beliefs) more productive of desired outcomes
(values) without the market mechanism?  One possibility to to fire
all or (randomly) most politicians if certain benchmarks are not
met, e.g., current members of the relevant legislative body are put
out of office (and not eligible for re-election) if real per capita
income growth falls under 1%.  There could be gradations, encouraging
politicians to aim for higher growth rather than a safe level that
won't get them fired, e.g., 100/income growth percent are put out
of office (all go if growth is zero or less).

As with Futarchy benchmarks could be more complex and as today they
would be subject to manipulation.  To reduce potential for maniuplation
terms could be very long, even indefinite, militating against short
term policies designed to make incumbents look good during an
election cycle without regard to long term harm.

The goal is to automatically punish politicians for producing bad
outcomes since voters cannot be counted on to do so.  Rewards (e.g.,
bonuses for surpassing certain benchmarks) could be incorporated
as well.  I don't know of any representative democratic system that
incorporates rewards for the production of good outcomes other than
safe incumbency, higher office, and accumulation of power, all of
which I assume to be very weakly linked to the production of good
outcomes.

Potential slogan, utilizing envy food good: "If we're out of work,
so are you!" (Assuming [un]employment rate is a benchmark, "you"
are politicians.)

I'm sure that similar proposals have been made many times and tried
on a small scale.  The nearest I can think of off the top of my
head in a political (but not policy-setting) context is school
reconstitution.  In the private sector an automatic wholesale
management or board firing would be much more similar.  Do such
arrangements exist?  They are probably far less necessary in private
organizations as they are already fundamentally disciplined in ways
organizations with the power to tax are not.

-- 
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://gondwanaland.com/ml/