On Olympics and Elections

You're familiar with the business adage: "what gets measured gets improved".

Consider the Olympian. The result of the Olympic competition is that you eventually find people who are willing to sacrifice their very humanity to prove that they can do it better, be that swimming, running, or hitting a 1" plastic ball over a miniature net.

Now consider electoral politics.  If you reward the person that gets the most votes, you will eventually find people who are willing to sacrifice their very humanity to get more votes.

I'm not absolutely in favor of meritocracy, but sometimes I wish we had something closer to it.  A popularity contest is just lame.

2 comments:

Victor said...

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others...

Or do you have a better idea?

Jeremy Rice said...

I'm not a political scientist. And if I had a better idea, I would have voiced it, of course.

Perhaps my biggest complaint is that there is no emphasis on the biases of electoral politics; we need reminding of the biases inherent in the system, at the very least. We seem to be content (blissful, even) in our ignorance.