The Doomsday Scenario

At the end of my paper Ikanocracy: Government by the Competent, (which I am sure you have already read) I challenge readers to come up with a scenario where Democracy would make better decisions than a mature Ikanocracy. There is one scenario I have come up with which I call the Doomsday Scenario. The Doomsday Scenario is any situation where society has to make a decision where, if the wrong decision is made, there is a 50% chance the society would be destroyed.

One example of a Doomsday Scenario would be where a company was being run according to Ikanocracy and a decision had to be made where the right decision is expensive but if the wrong decision is made, there was a 50% chance the company could be bankrupted. Another example, would be where Earth had a world government based on Ikanocracy and a planet killer asteroid was heading towards Earth with a 50% chance that it will strike the Earth, and that if it did hit, all life on Earth would be wiped out. Scientists and engineers get together and come up with a plan to divert the asteroid, (think Armageddon) but it will cost (trillions of dollars) and the plan must be put into effect immediately.

(This scenario is not that far-fetched. Five years ago there was some concern that a huge asteroid called Apophis might strike Earth in 2029. With more precise measurements, it was realized that it would miss, although it will be back in 2036, and its exact trajectory cannot yet be determined. Earlier this year, a much smaller asteroid barely missed Earth.)

A Proposition is put to a vote to implement the asteroid diverting plan. A voter who is concerned with maximizing their vote share might reason as follows: if I vote against the building of the asteroid-diverter, and the asteroid hits the Earth then we all die anyway, but if it misses the Earth then I have saved trillions of dollars and so have supported the right decision and so later on my vote share will increase as society realizes I made the right decision.  My vote share will not decrease in either case, but if I vote for the building of the asteroid-diverter it is 50-50 whether by shares increase or decrease.

In a Doomsday Scenario, there is a 50% chance that the hindsight vote will never happen, and so a citizen concerned with maximizing their vote share vote on a Proposition (regardless of the correctness of their position) based only on how a hindsight vote might play out in the 50% chance it does happen.

I was concerned about this scenario, and considered whether Ikanocracy needed special rules when a Doomsday Scenario was in effect. You might think that special rules would be unnecessary as no rational person would risk their life on a 50-50 proposition, just to get an increase in vote share. But an individual might reason that the Proposition will almost certainly pass anyway, and so their vote shares would not be needed, and so by voting against the building of the asteroid-diverter they get the best of both worlds: the asteroid diverter would be built, but in the event it was not needed their vote share would increase.

One key feature of Ikanocracy is that acting in ones own self interest, (by maximizing their voting share) is also in the best interest of society, but in the Doomsday Scenario, this does not seem to be the case.

Some special rules I considered: (1) in a Doomsday Scenario, no hindsight vote would be taken, or (2) in a Doomsday Scenario, only the best decision makers (i.e. persons whose vote share was in the top X percent of all vote shares) could vote. These special rules offended my sensibilities. On of the key principles of Ikanocracy is its simplicity. Needless complexity should not be added to any governing system, but perhaps it is needed in this case.

I finally reconciled Ikanocracy with  the Doomsday Scenario by realizing that, even if the asteroid missed the Earth, the hindsight vote still might decide that it was the right decision to build the asteroid-diverter, just like we still think that having insurance is a good idea, even when we don't use it. Voters could not make assumptions about the hindsight vote and so, even when making decisions totally based on the selfish motivation of increasing their vote share, might still make the best decision for society.

Is there a scenario where Democracy makes better decisions that Ikanocracy?