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Comment by 7952 | Hacker News Reader

An interesting approach is to just make government decisions algorithmic. Have people do a questionnaire during elections, and then optimise policy to maximise benefit to everyone. Try and make the optimisation process as open and explicit as possible.

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"Have people do a questionnaire during elections"

That's essentially what a ballot paper is, except the questionnaire is "Which political party have the Red-top or Black-top newspapers convinced you to vote for?" - and I think history demonstrates that a population cannot reliably vote for their own best-interests - so expecting them to produce reliable aggregate data through mass surveys - with which to make major decisions, is foolish.

I have long preferred this suggestion. I know it is a bit creepy, but ultimately given the parameters, there is one optimal result. You know things are frustrating when you prefer the machine to your representatives.

A Demand-Revealing Referendum does this, and has a theoretical basis to it, apparently making it impossible to game the system: http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...

But I don't know anything about economics, law, healthcare, biology, international relations, geopolitics, mathematics, history, agriculture, environmental protection, or much of anything for that matter so why should I decide?

Do you have a belief that politicians somehow do know these things well enough to make decisions across this spectrum on your behalf?

In practice? No, of course not. Representational democracies are all flawed more or less depending on the country. I'm just not convinced direct democracy is the solution.

Take the TPP for example. Is it a good idea? Is it bad? I haven't read it, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't know either way. Even if I could vote on it directly, I'd have to trust someone to explain it to me. And how would I know which explanation to trust? It seems that we're back to square one.

A questionnaire would give policy makers an insight into how you would feel about particular policies. It could be used to test the detail of something like TPP. Give an indication of how you would feel if you had studied the specifics.

This is what I often think. I like the idea of democracy, but in reality it just means people who don't know shit voting on things that are actually important. We don't just let anyone be a doctor, we make them do years of training first and get certified. In the same vein, maybe some people's votes should count more than others. Like if a bunch of economic experts say brexit is a bad idea, their votes have more sway...

George Osborne knew nothing about economics and yet found himself Chancellor.

Most of our politicians know precisely fuck all about the cabinet offices they inhabit.

I like when Gove, the guy who in 2015's Flagship Policy was to increase the "times table". After he was laughed out of office, he was moved into "Law and Justice". So now he is peddling similar completely irrelevant bullshit over on that side of the fence.

Meanwhile, Hunt, the culture secretary for the Olympics did such a great job that he is now the Health Secretary.

I would rather get a 1% tax increase, and pay for real people, a real NHS manager with 50 years, and pay him for his insight than pay these fucking plebs to poke around in their careers.

That is what the civil service is for. Politics is really about making value judgements. Issues cannot be easily isolated and divorced from all other considerations. An expert opinion is useful, but does not tell you how to strike a balance or what is a priority.

it's important to note, (western) government decisions already are algorithmic. We simply aren't privy to many of the steps involved, and our ability to influence outcomes is limited by the elitism of representative democracy and the stifling regressive nature of bureaucracy.

Edit: that isn't "regressive" as leftists confusingly redefine it, it's the dictionary definition. Might be important to note in a political comment.

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