Welcome to part two of my series of posts on experimental governance. After the break I'm going to conceptualize a social experiment. Read more to find out if I'm successful.
Let me start by saying that in the broadest sense all public policy is experimental. That is to say policy is intended to have a causal relationship in society. I'll try to illustrate how public policy and my use of the term experimental government differ. The starting point for these posts was the idea that a government could improve a subset of the population to solve a macro-social erosion. I'll qualitatively discuss a broader conceptualization of an experimental government, not specific to the original inception, the UK riots and the governmental response to them.
Unlike a hard science, there is no absolute truth in an experimental government. All attempts at a scientific approach to governing would be inherently plagued by the same subjective bias that they are our current government has a problem with. Agreeing on an objective reality would be the overall context through which a scientific government would function.
That seems like a herculean task considering the amount of bureaucracy and partisan bickering of our current governmental system. Think of the petty, insignificant things our government seems to not be able to agree on. Yet within this context many branches of government are able to quantitatively determine courses of action based on scientifically sourced data. It's not impossible, yet on highly politicized issues such as abortion, stem cell research, climate change, objective reality doesn't seem to come to the surface.
Bringing an objective reality to governing should be the first step in a scientific approach to governing. Facts and figures are presented in Washington for every argument in the political world, as they are in science. The difference is that in a scientific community, those facts and figures are rigorously vetted and tested,through peer review and experimentation. If I perform a study on climate change and claim to prove the Earth is round, that data and method can be challenged. That doesn't happen with 99% of arguments in politics. An argument is made, voters decide if that argument was reality or not. The truth behind the arguments doesn't really matter if you get elected.
Once there can be an agreeable reality that can be tested in a social experiment, we move into the experimentation phase. Say that the proposal would be an attempt to create jobs within a 10 mile section of Norman. The hypothesis would be that tax decreases would correlate to increased businesses, and therefore jobs in that area. The conception would have to be explicated further to an experimental term, but you get the broad idea. We want to test something in society by setting up a situation which would represent an underlying theoretical principle.
So, once objective reality is brought in and then formulated a hypothesis to experimentally try in a representative population, we can now set up the experiment. The design of the experiment would be to set up a controlled, representative system through which the theory can be tested at an operational level. If you want to test directly the relationship of taxes to jobs, the experiment would monitor two sections of the city. One which does not provide tax incentives, the other which offers no tax incentives. This will allow a direct comparison of the statistics. However, the researcher wouldn't be sure if he was actually studying the relationship between tax incentives or not. This is an experimental design problem that is not easily solved.
A clever researcher would be able to formulated a qualified, controlled situation that directly tests the variables of the research. The problem is that society on a larger scale is grossly unpredictable. The seemingly infinite number of factors which go into personal decisions. In the next part, I'll discuss more about what our societal experiment would look like in practice. How am I doing so far though? Lost?
Once there can be an agreeable reality that can be tested in a social experiment, we move into the experimentation phase. Say that the proposal would be an attempt to create jobs within a 10 mile section of Norman. The hypothesis would be that tax decreases would correlate to increased businesses, and therefore jobs in that area. The conception would have to be explicated further to an experimental term, but you get the broad idea. We want to test something in society by setting up a situation which would represent an underlying theoretical principle.
So, once objective reality is brought in and then formulated a hypothesis to experimentally try in a representative population, we can now set up the experiment. The design of the experiment would be to set up a controlled, representative system through which the theory can be tested at an operational level. If you want to test directly the relationship of taxes to jobs, the experiment would monitor two sections of the city. One which does not provide tax incentives, the other which offers no tax incentives. This will allow a direct comparison of the statistics. However, the researcher wouldn't be sure if he was actually studying the relationship between tax incentives or not. This is an experimental design problem that is not easily solved.
A clever researcher would be able to formulated a qualified, controlled situation that directly tests the variables of the research. The problem is that society on a larger scale is grossly unpredictable. The seemingly infinite number of factors which go into personal decisions. In the next part, I'll discuss more about what our societal experiment would look like in practice. How am I doing so far though? Lost?
Notes:
Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist of the Hayden Planetarium and science popularizer, was on Real Time with Bill Maher last month. During his appearance on Bill's panel he livened up the discussion with some insight that I hadn't thought of until then. On a professional level, the people we elect as politicians are mostly lawyers. With the field of law, the theory is that rhetorical prowess can elucidate the truth. An idea which is not based in a scientific approach. An interesting point. Here is the video if you're curious.
I might take a break from this series to put up other posts.
The next post in this series will further explicate experimental governments.
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment