A large part of the Federalist Papers is about designing structures and incentives to make government robust against overwhelming ambition and corruption—to make ambition in one branch check ambition in another branch, similarly between state and federal and between state and state.
That said, I think Friedman (I was never on a first name basis with him) is overly dismissive of electing the right people. But again we need to set up structures and incentives differently, so elections are less of an entertaining spectacle and more like a hiring search or job interview. The structures or institutions that might improve the situation don’t have to come from legislation (though some of them could—I’m not against that on principal); e.g. parties weren’t legislated into being, and if we want something better, we should not look exclusively to legislation.
It seems at least conceivable to have some agreement across party lines that our electoral processes, as I said before, look less like a circus to which we passively attend, and more like a hiring search / job interview type process.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
Not so ironically, maybe our best hope is to persuade people that our current approach with its sound bites, catch phrases, push polls, gerrymandered “safe seats” and so on is a source of dangerous blindness that affects all of us, with all of our different interpretations of “the good” (of the country, etc.); to persuade people to find all of that current process repulsive, and to insist that all that airtime, column inches, etc., be devoted to information about the candidates, analysis of the current crises and challenges and possibilities, and to debates of all sorts: dozens of debates, discussions, and joint press conferences among the candidates.
One problem: “Information” (as in “information” about the candidate, etc.) is a word that gets bandied about too casually. What might possibly be done to increase the sanity with which people evaluate what is and isn’t truly “information”. I think that is the big problem that people concerned with rationality might be able to make some progress in solving.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
I think that the only rules we have against spreading nasty rumors about other candidates are our laws against defamation; spreading malicious falsehoods about people in order to deprive them of business opportunities in favor of yourself is exactly the sort of thing that those laws prohibit, because then the people who did those sort of things would be the most likely to get the jobs. Job candidates would have to become willing to undercut their rivals in order to stay competitive, and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
As for bringing a brass band to a job interview, candidates are entitled to do such things, with the caveat that they wouldn’t get the jobs. It would be an awfully rare position where bringing a brass band to the interview would be positive evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job well. Giving candidates too much leeway for self expression runs the risk of turning interviews into contests of showmanship.
and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
My point is nobody hires people for ordinary jobs the way we collectively hire a president. We are extremely passive, and don’t manage the process. There is a field I am very interested in called Social Epistemology (it’s a divided field with one part being excessively postmodern and relativistic; the other side, which interests me, holds that there really are such things as truth and falsehood, and the biggest name in that area is Alvin Goldman). This field is very interested in institutions, such as the law court in its different forms, that have tried to come up with procedures and standards (like selectivity in the sort of evidence you will listen to) that try to improve the chances of coming to the right conclusion. There is quite a lot of emphasis on law courts, but it occurred to me that hiring committees do something similar; they require things like resumes, and have a systematic way of questioning candidates rather than say to candidates “Come and put on a show and we’ll see what we think of you”.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
I don’t understand why you’re arguing that job interviews should be more like elections in that case. If the process leads to bad outcomes for elections, and is likely to lead to bad outcomes for job interviews as well, why use it?
A large part of the Federalist Papers is about designing structures and incentives to make government robust against overwhelming ambition and corruption—to make ambition in one branch check ambition in another branch, similarly between state and federal and between state and state.
That said, I think Friedman (I was never on a first name basis with him) is overly dismissive of electing the right people. But again we need to set up structures and incentives differently, so elections are less of an entertaining spectacle and more like a hiring search or job interview. The structures or institutions that might improve the situation don’t have to come from legislation (though some of them could—I’m not against that on principal); e.g. parties weren’t legislated into being, and if we want something better, we should not look exclusively to legislation.
It seems at least conceivable to have some agreement across party lines that our electoral processes, as I said before, look less like a circus to which we passively attend, and more like a hiring search / job interview type process.
I’ve often thought of ironically proposing that we should legislate that job interviews have to be more like elections: i.e. stop limiting candidates’ ability to express themselves. If somebody wants to bring a brass band to an interview, it’s their free speech right to do so. If they want to spread nasty rumours about the other candidates why not?
Not so ironically, maybe our best hope is to persuade people that our current approach with its sound bites, catch phrases, push polls, gerrymandered “safe seats” and so on is a source of dangerous blindness that affects all of us, with all of our different interpretations of “the good” (of the country, etc.); to persuade people to find all of that current process repulsive, and to insist that all that airtime, column inches, etc., be devoted to information about the candidates, analysis of the current crises and challenges and possibilities, and to debates of all sorts: dozens of debates, discussions, and joint press conferences among the candidates.
One problem: “Information” (as in “information” about the candidate, etc.) is a word that gets bandied about too casually. What might possibly be done to increase the sanity with which people evaluate what is and isn’t truly “information”. I think that is the big problem that people concerned with rationality might be able to make some progress in solving.
I think that the only rules we have against spreading nasty rumors about other candidates are our laws against defamation; spreading malicious falsehoods about people in order to deprive them of business opportunities in favor of yourself is exactly the sort of thing that those laws prohibit, because then the people who did those sort of things would be the most likely to get the jobs. Job candidates would have to become willing to undercut their rivals in order to stay competitive, and we’d be at risk of risk devolving to a state where having to filter through webs of malicious falsehood in any hiring situation where the candidates are known to each other was the norm rather than the exception.
As for bringing a brass band to a job interview, candidates are entitled to do such things, with the caveat that they wouldn’t get the jobs. It would be an awfully rare position where bringing a brass band to the interview would be positive evidence of the candidate’s ability to perform the job well. Giving candidates too much leeway for self expression runs the risk of turning interviews into contests of showmanship.
which sounds to me like the state we are in w.r.t. election to political offices.
My point is nobody hires people for ordinary jobs the way we collectively hire a president. We are extremely passive, and don’t manage the process. There is a field I am very interested in called Social Epistemology (it’s a divided field with one part being excessively postmodern and relativistic; the other side, which interests me, holds that there really are such things as truth and falsehood, and the biggest name in that area is Alvin Goldman). This field is very interested in institutions, such as the law court in its different forms, that have tried to come up with procedures and standards (like selectivity in the sort of evidence you will listen to) that try to improve the chances of coming to the right conclusion. There is quite a lot of emphasis on law courts, but it occurred to me that hiring committees do something similar; they require things like resumes, and have a systematic way of questioning candidates rather than say to candidates “Come and put on a show and we’ll see what we think of you”.
I don’t understand why you’re arguing that job interviews should be more like elections in that case. If the process leads to bad outcomes for elections, and is likely to lead to bad outcomes for job interviews as well, why use it?
To quote myself:
It’s irony. I.e., it’s such a bad idea that I’d like to suggest it’s also a bad way to elect presidents.
Ah, see, I thought you meant that ironically, while it’s not a good way to elect presidents, it would be an improvement on how we conduct interviews.