Net Present Value (30 years, 5% discount rate): $150M-1.5B per city
I upvoted because I think you’re touching on some interesting ideas. But I think you have a lot to do to demonstrate the scale of benefits you describe—if you have a more detailed analysis, I’d encourage you to link to it in the above section.
In particular:
What evidence there is for (at least) a 10% improvement in policy decisions? I can see how the process would be a substantial improvement over a ‘pure democracy’ (as you describe). But what you describe sounds very similar to what policy-focused civil servants should already be doing (at least in the UK, for national policy), in terms of assessing evidence and listening to various experts and advocates. Perhaps there is a gap at city-level?
You appear to have taken the ’10% improvement’, and then multiplied it by the annual city budget in order to get the yearly benefit, and then multiplied this by 30 (with a 5% discount rate) to get the benefit over 30 years. This makes sense if ‘10% improvement’ literally means 10% improvement in outcomes (rather than ‘reallocating 10% of the budget’).
But if this does mean 10% improvement in outcomes, it seems extremely implausible to me that such improvements can reoccur year-on-year. If a city’s budget is horribly misallocated at the start, then there could be substantial improvements in the first few years—but you’ll pretty quickly get to the point where there are relatively minor differences in the marginal cost-effectiveness of different activities.
[edit: I think this is wrong—a specific 10% improvement made in year 1 could of course reoccur in subsequent years. But there is an assumption that this 10% improvement wouldn’t have been made at any other time without Election by Jury]
Could you provide some real (or even theoretical) examples to support your claims?
You also mention x-risk. But even if what you are proposing is successful, I imagine it would take at least several decades to become widespread. Given the costs you indicate per city, I imagine it would be easier and much faster to try to influence existing politicians and civil servants?
The advantage of “reform” vs “lobby” is a potential permanent change in 10% improvement year-on-year. If the decision making is actually superior, then we can expect repeated improvements in decision making and budgeting for all subsequent years.
>I imagine it would take at least several decades to become widespread
Comparing to the pace of change with regards to any world problems, decades-long timespans, yes ridiculously long, are about on-par with many political battles. How long did it take for example to decriminalize marijuana? After 60 years, the fight is ongoing. How long did it take to eliminate lead from gasoline? Leaded gasolines started being banned in 1925, yet it wasn’t fully banned until the 1970s to 1990s in the US.
The fact that needed reforms have a 60+ year turnaround is an indictment on the incompetence of the status quo in my opinion. If we care about long term planning, we need something more performant.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical new and improved decision making process can reduce the turnaround time from 60 years to only 10 years. What’s the cost-benefit of for example, having unleaded gasoline 50 years sooner?
these were ballparky estimates created by claude. to me, it seems obvious this is the biggest issue for humanity, because it affects every single other policy issue we care about. as i point out, you can’t educate people at scale. but you can absolutely do it with a small statistically representative sample. so no matter what public policy you care about, this is the #1 issue with a bullet.
of course we want to do more to give this the kind of “objective” impact analysis we get via e.g. voter satisfaction efficiency metrics with voting methods. that would require a pretty substantial research budget and involve a massive amount of ballparky estimation. my point here is just to lay out the case at a high level. i’ve worked in electoral reform and “human welfare optimization” and economics for 20 years, and it seems so obvious to me that this is the solution, that i’m merely trying to pose the idea and get more people thinking about it. if someone thinks there’s any other reform that can come close to competing with this for impact, i’d be floored.
I upvoted because I think you’re touching on some interesting ideas. But I think you have a lot to do to demonstrate the scale of benefits you describe—if you have a more detailed analysis, I’d encourage you to link to it in the above section.
In particular:
What evidence there is for (at least) a 10% improvement in policy decisions? I can see how the process would be a substantial improvement over a ‘pure democracy’ (as you describe). But what you describe sounds very similar to what policy-focused civil servants should already be doing (at least in the UK, for national policy), in terms of assessing evidence and listening to various experts and advocates. Perhaps there is a gap at city-level?
You appear to have taken the ’10% improvement’, and then multiplied it by the annual city budget in order to get the yearly benefit, and then multiplied this by 30 (with a 5% discount rate) to get the benefit over 30 years. This makes sense if ‘10% improvement’ literally means 10% improvement in outcomes (rather than ‘reallocating 10% of the budget’).
But if this does mean 10% improvement in outcomes, it seems extremely implausible to me that such improvements can reoccur year-on-year. If a city’s budget is horribly misallocated at the start, then there could be substantial improvements in the first few years—but you’ll pretty quickly get to the point where there are relatively minor differences in the marginal cost-effectiveness of different activities.
[edit: I think this is wrong—a specific 10% improvement made in year 1 could of course reoccur in subsequent years. But there is an assumption that this 10% improvement wouldn’t have been made at any other time without Election by Jury]
Could you provide some real (or even theoretical) examples to support your claims?
You also mention x-risk. But even if what you are proposing is successful, I imagine it would take at least several decades to become widespread. Given the costs you indicate per city, I imagine it would be easier and much faster to try to influence existing politicians and civil servants?
The advantage of “reform” vs “lobby” is a potential permanent change in 10% improvement year-on-year. If the decision making is actually superior, then we can expect repeated improvements in decision making and budgeting for all subsequent years.
>I imagine it would take at least several decades to become widespread
Comparing to the pace of change with regards to any world problems, decades-long timespans, yes ridiculously long, are about on-par with many political battles. How long did it take for example to decriminalize marijuana? After 60 years, the fight is ongoing. How long did it take to eliminate lead from gasoline? Leaded gasolines started being banned in 1925, yet it wasn’t fully banned until the 1970s to 1990s in the US.
The fact that needed reforms have a 60+ year turnaround is an indictment on the incompetence of the status quo in my opinion. If we care about long term planning, we need something more performant.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical new and improved decision making process can reduce the turnaround time from 60 years to only 10 years. What’s the cost-benefit of for example, having unleaded gasoline 50 years sooner?
great points John!
these were ballparky estimates created by claude. to me, it seems obvious this is the biggest issue for humanity, because it affects every single other policy issue we care about. as i point out, you can’t educate people at scale. but you can absolutely do it with a small statistically representative sample. so no matter what public policy you care about, this is the #1 issue with a bullet.
of course we want to do more to give this the kind of “objective” impact analysis we get via e.g. voter satisfaction efficiency metrics with voting methods. that would require a pretty substantial research budget and involve a massive amount of ballparky estimation. my point here is just to lay out the case at a high level. i’ve worked in electoral reform and “human welfare optimization” and economics for 20 years, and it seems so obvious to me that this is the solution, that i’m merely trying to pose the idea and get more people thinking about it. if someone thinks there’s any other reform that can come close to competing with this for impact, i’d be floored.