Politics are Just So Last Year

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the practical value of political parties, platforms, and philosophies. I've concluded that it's all rubbish. Basically everyone wants the same outcomes. We differ in our belief of how to get there, and to a lesser extent, whether the goal is practical or economical. But we agree on probably 90% of the goals (to wit: government initiatives and public institutions be effective and efficient).

The trouble with governing top-down by political philosophy rather than bottom-up by actual results is that we don't seem to learn from our mistakes. It seems as if we all live by the credo, "It's the thought that counts". You would think, in this scientific age, we'd be more inclined to say, "Gosh, I don't know how best to reach this goal. Maybe we should try an experiment. Let's bring together several competing groups, have each tackle this problem in a different way for a while, and then sit down and evaluate the results to see which was best, and learn what worked under what circumstances." Hmm. Wouldn't that be nice.

Outside of politics, a great many enterprises have had great success for many years making decisions using little more than the simple strategy of hypothesize-and-test. Many have used (machine) learning techniques and variations on a theme to evaluate candidate schemes for advertising, marketing, product pricing, contract negotiation, medical treatment, and myriad other settings where function matters more than form. Why have they succeeded where government has largely failed? Probably they cared most about results, not traditions or appearances or preserving the status quo.

So why is politics immune to the scientific method? Why isn't the bottom line the bottom line? I really don't know. Maybe in a democracy, results matter only if The People say they do. But I do think America could learn a lot from Google's style of management. You want results? Hire an engineer or scientist; ask them how they'd quantify a system and tune it up. I'll take their designs over a lawyer's any day.