A long time when I was a sophomore in college, I remember a certain line of thinking I went through:
It is important for politicians to be incentivized properly. Currently they are too susceptible to bribery (hard, soft, in between) and other things.
It is difficult to actually prevent bribes. For example, they may come in the form of “Pass the laws I want passed and instead of handing you a lump sum of money, I’ll give you a job that pays $5M/year for the next 30 years after your term is up.”
Since preventing bribes is difficult, you could instead just say that if you’re going to be a politician—a public servant—you have to live a low income lifestyle from here on out. You and your family. Say, 25th percentile income level. Or Minimally Viable Standard of Living if you want to get more aggressive. The money will be provided to you by the government and you’re not allowed to earn your own money elsewhere. If you start driving lamborghinis, we’ll know.
The downside I see is that it might push away talent. But would it? Normally if you pay a lower salary you get less talented employees but for roles like President of the United States of America, or even Senator of Idaho, I think the opportunity for impact would be large enough to get very talented people, and any losses in talent would be made up for reduced susceptibility to bribery.
I often cringe at the ideas of my past selves but this one still seems interesting.
I haven’t seen any good reasoning or evidence that allowing businesses and titans to bribe politicians via lobbyists actually results in worse laws. People gasp when I say this, but the default doesn’t seem that much better. If Peter Thiel had been able to encourage Trump to pick the cabinet heads he wanted then our COVID response would have gone much better.
Most billionaires at least seem to donate ideologically, not really based on how politicians affect their special interest group. There’s definitely a correlation there, but if billionaires are just more reasonable on average then it’s possible that their influence is net-positive overall.
It is important for politicians to be incentivized properly.
Is there anyone for whom this is NOT important? Why not an asset ceiling on every human?
The problem is in implementation. Leaving aside all the twiddly details of how to measure and enforce, there’s no “outside authority” which can impose this. You have to convince the populace to impose it. And if they are willing to do that, it’s not necessary to have a rule, it’s already in effect by popular action.
Is there anyone for whom this is NOT important? Why not an asset ceiling on every human?
It generally is quite important. However, (powerful) politicians are a special case because 1) they have more influence on society and 2) I presume people would still be motivated to take the position even with the asset ceiling. Contrasting this with my job as a programmer, 1) it’d be good if my incentives were more aligned with the company I work for but it wouldn’t actually impact society very much and 2) almost no one would take my job if it meant a lower standard of living.
The problem is in implementation. Leaving aside all the twiddly details of how to measure and enforce, there’s no “outside authority” which can impose this. You have to convince the populace to impose it. And if they are willing to do that, it’s not necessary to have a rule, it’s already in effect by popular action.
Wouldn’t the standard law enforcement people enforce it, just like how if a president committed murder they wouldn’t get away with it? Also, it’s definitely tricky but there is a precedent for those in power to do what’s in the interest of the future of society rather than what would bring them the most power. I’m thinking of George Washington stepping away after two terms and setting that two term precedent.
However, (powerful) politicians are a special case because 1) they have more influence on society and 2) I presume people would still be motivated to take the position even with the asset ceiling.
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
Wouldn’t the standard law enforcement people enforce it
I didn’t mean the end-enforcement (though that’s a problem too—standard law enforcement personnel can detect and prove murder. They have SOME ability to detect and prove income. They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it. But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
Hm, maybe. Let me try thinking of some examples:
CEOs: Yeah, pretty big influence and I think smart people would do it for free. Although if you made a rule that CEOs of sufficiently large companies had to have asset ceilings I think there’d be a decent amount less entrepreneurs which feels like it’d be enough to make it a bad idea.
Hedge fund managers: From what I understand they don’t really have much influence on society in their role. I think some smart people would still take the job with an asset ceiling but they very well might not be smart enough; I know how competitive and technical that world is. And similar to CEOs, I don’t think there’d be many if any hedge funds that got started if they knew their traders would have to have asset ceilings.
Movie stars: Not much influence on society, but people would take the role for the fame it’d provide of course.
After trying to think of examples I’m not seeing any that fit. Do you have any in mind?
They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it.
There might be things that are hard to prevent from slipping through the cracks, but the big things seem easy enough to detect: houses, cars, yachts, hotels, vacations. I guess they’d probably have to give up some rights to privacy too though to make enforcement for practical. Given how much they’re already giving up with the asset ceiling, the additional sacrificing of some amount of privacy doesn’t seem like it changes anything too much.
But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
I’m not optimistic about it, but to me it seems at least ballpark plausible. I don’t understand this stuff too much, but to me it seems like voters aren’t the problem. Voters right now, across party lines, distrust politicians and “the system”. I would assume the problem is other politicians. You’d have to get their support but it negatively affects them so they don’t support it.
Maybe there are creative ways to sidestep this though.
Make the asset ceilings start in 10 years instead of today? Maybe that’d be blatantly obvious that it’s the current politicians not wanting to eat their gross dogfood? Would that matter?
Maybe you could start by gathering enough public support for the idea to force the hands of the politicians?
Asset ceilings for politicians
A long time when I was a sophomore in college, I remember a certain line of thinking I went through:
It is important for politicians to be incentivized properly. Currently they are too susceptible to bribery (hard, soft, in between) and other things.
It is difficult to actually prevent bribes. For example, they may come in the form of “Pass the laws I want passed and instead of handing you a lump sum of money, I’ll give you a job that pays $5M/year for the next 30 years after your term is up.”
Since preventing bribes is difficult, you could instead just say that if you’re going to be a politician—a public servant—you have to live a low income lifestyle from here on out. You and your family. Say, 25th percentile income level. Or Minimally Viable Standard of Living if you want to get more aggressive. The money will be provided to you by the government and you’re not allowed to earn your own money elsewhere. If you start driving lamborghinis, we’ll know.
The downside I see is that it might push away talent. But would it? Normally if you pay a lower salary you get less talented employees but for roles like President of the United States of America, or even Senator of Idaho, I think the opportunity for impact would be large enough to get very talented people, and any losses in talent would be made up for reduced susceptibility to bribery.
I often cringe at the ideas of my past selves but this one still seems interesting.
I haven’t seen any good reasoning or evidence that allowing businesses and titans to bribe politicians via lobbyists actually results in worse laws. People gasp when I say this, but the default doesn’t seem that much better. If Peter Thiel had been able to encourage Trump to pick the cabinet heads he wanted then our COVID response would have gone much better.
To me the reasoning seems pretty straightforward:
If the politician is trying to appease special interests, that will usually comes at the expense of society. I guess that is arguable though.
If (1), that would be “worse” because goodness depends on how the policies affect society as a whole.
Most billionaires at least seem to donate ideologically, not really based on how politicians affect their special interest group. There’s definitely a correlation there, but if billionaires are just more reasonable on average then it’s possible that their influence is net-positive overall.
Is there anyone for whom this is NOT important? Why not an asset ceiling on every human?
The problem is in implementation. Leaving aside all the twiddly details of how to measure and enforce, there’s no “outside authority” which can impose this. You have to convince the populace to impose it. And if they are willing to do that, it’s not necessary to have a rule, it’s already in effect by popular action.
It generally is quite important. However, (powerful) politicians are a special case because 1) they have more influence on society and 2) I presume people would still be motivated to take the position even with the asset ceiling. Contrasting this with my job as a programmer, 1) it’d be good if my incentives were more aligned with the company I work for but it wouldn’t actually impact society very much and 2) almost no one would take my job if it meant a lower standard of living.
Wouldn’t the standard law enforcement people enforce it, just like how if a president committed murder they wouldn’t get away with it? Also, it’s definitely tricky but there is a precedent for those in power to do what’s in the interest of the future of society rather than what would bring them the most power. I’m thinking of George Washington stepping away after two terms and setting that two term precedent.
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
I didn’t mean the end-enforcement (though that’s a problem too—standard law enforcement personnel can detect and prove murder. They have SOME ability to detect and prove income. They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it. But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
Hm, maybe. Let me try thinking of some examples:
CEOs: Yeah, pretty big influence and I think smart people would do it for free. Although if you made a rule that CEOs of sufficiently large companies had to have asset ceilings I think there’d be a decent amount less entrepreneurs which feels like it’d be enough to make it a bad idea.
Hedge fund managers: From what I understand they don’t really have much influence on society in their role. I think some smart people would still take the job with an asset ceiling but they very well might not be smart enough; I know how competitive and technical that world is. And similar to CEOs, I don’t think there’d be many if any hedge funds that got started if they knew their traders would have to have asset ceilings.
Movie stars: Not much influence on society, but people would take the role for the fame it’d provide of course.
After trying to think of examples I’m not seeing any that fit. Do you have any in mind?
There might be things that are hard to prevent from slipping through the cracks, but the big things seem easy enough to detect: houses, cars, yachts, hotels, vacations. I guess they’d probably have to give up some rights to privacy too though to make enforcement for practical. Given how much they’re already giving up with the asset ceiling, the additional sacrificing of some amount of privacy doesn’t seem like it changes anything too much.
I’m not optimistic about it, but to me it seems at least ballpark plausible. I don’t understand this stuff too much, but to me it seems like voters aren’t the problem. Voters right now, across party lines, distrust politicians and “the system”. I would assume the problem is other politicians. You’d have to get their support but it negatively affects them so they don’t support it.
Maybe there are creative ways to sidestep this though.
Make the asset ceilings start in 10 years instead of today? Maybe that’d be blatantly obvious that it’s the current politicians not wanting to eat their gross dogfood? Would that matter?
Maybe you could start by gathering enough public support for the idea to force the hands of the politicians?