No More Bold Visions of the Future
&gt; I spend much time thinking about solutions to existing problems – the incentive mismatch in mass media that is causing accelerating polarization, how to remedy the effects of climate change, and so on. But these are all fixes, reactions. It feels like I’m in the belly of the ship, frenetically plugging leaky holes, never even having the space of mind to think where the ship should go. Ostensibly, those decisions are made on the bridge of the ship, which, in October 2020, seems to be populated by well-intentioned individuals, but hamstrung in their ability to make good collective decisions.<p>Here&#x27;s a bold vision for a better world: maybe the ship should set as its target the goal of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the significant numbers of human beings on the planet that aren&#x27;t doing so well in those categories.<p>&gt; Recent years have shown me how difficult it is to make any meaningful public decision. Every debate is endlessly contentious, every subject has meaningful nuance, and every decision has exceedingly hard-to-predict second-order-effects. The world is much more complex than it was even twenty years ago, and the effects are paralyzing. This is clearly felt among policymakers, but I feel it even as a technologist: I understand that virtually all tools can be used – and more often than not, will be used – for both good and evil, and how hard the results are to predict over years in our dynamic world. I learned that technology can rarely solve fundamental social problems, and I’ve seen the public perception rollercoaster of “this technology&#x2F;person&#x2F;policy is good” to “this is evil” more times than I can count.<p>Maybe the issue isn&#x27;t so much the difficulty of the physical problem itself, but the tool we use to make decisions: <i>representative democracy</i>.<p>The following quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill:<p>&quot;Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.&quot;<p>But it seems what he really said was:<p>&quot;No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms <i>that have been tried</i> from time to time.&quot;<p>As far as I can tell, the only people who are significantly happy with the results of the ones we have now are those who are within the system, and the top &lt;x&gt;%.  Maybe it&#x27;s about time we should try a new form, <i>one that hasn&#x27;t been tried before</i>.  Is it not possible to come up with something new, something that might show the potential to <i>actually</i> deliver an increase in aggregate global happiness?