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Unless it was a very high percentile, that would incentivize competent people to flee to the private sector, or it would encourage competent but corrupt people

by chroma 4y ago

Unless it was a very high percentile, that would incentivize competent people to flee to the private sector, or it would encourage competent but corrupt people to join the government. A better compensation mechanism would be to measure changes in outcomes such as wealth, crime, and health, then have bonuses for positive changes in those metrics. For example: If each member of congress got an extra $10 million if homicide rates went back to 2019 levels, I guarantee we'd fix the crime wave within a year. It'd only cost $5.4 billion, or $15 per US citizen. And it'd avoid approximately 5,000 murders per year. One can imagine similar incentive strategies for health and wealth. Unfortunately, most people view governance as a sacred value, and are unwilling to introduce money as an incentive. So we're stuck with things like congress giving the FDA more power to restrict nicotine vaping products while 400,000 Americans die every year from smoking tobacco.

gjm11 4y ago
You could pay them, say, 3x the 20th percentile salary. (I'm not sure it's _civil servants_ this sort of thing should be considered for. They don't make the decisions and there's little a civil servant can do that will change what the 20th-percentile person gets paid. It would make more sense for politicians.) I suspect that if each member of Congress got a $10M reward for bringing homicide rates to 2019 levels, the result would be legislation that redefines homicide or changes how it's reported or something of the kind, rather than anything that actually involves fewer people killing one another.
- chroma 4y ago
  This is a solved problem, as it comes up in situations such as CEO bonuses, sports betting, and prediction markets. You either specify the definition in the bonus (eg: according to the FBI's UCR data definitions as of 2019) or you delegate an arbitrator (eg: the GAO). If this weren't solvable then the world would look very different. CEOs and acquired companies would never have compensation tied to target metrics. Sports betting would be rife with lawsuits and fraud. And economic metrics would be as accurate as those claimed by the Soviet Union.
maerF0x0 4y ago
> A better compensation mechanism would be to measure changes in outcomes such as wealth I agree that GNH (gross national happiness) etc matter too, but I think that tying their income to lower percentiles would greatly increase the correlation between GDP growth GNH... the only reason it's broken in the US is because GDP goes to the upper ranks, in a rent seeking manner, from the lower ranks. > Unless it was a very high percentile, that would incentivize competent people to flee to the private sector, or it would encourage competent but corrupt people to join the government. I actually think there needs to be a return to the "service" mentality to civil service. IMO government shouldn't be a job you do because of the compensation, stability, union etc. It should be a service to your country. But that would require so many Americans to stop hating their nation as they seem to now.

by chroma 4y ago

gjm11 4y ago

You could pay them, say, 3x the 20th percentile salary. (I'm not sure it's _civil servants_ this sort of thing should be considered for. They don't make the decisions and there's little a civil servant can do that will change what the 20th-percentile person gets paid. It would make more sense for politicians.) I suspect that if each member of Congress got a $10M reward for bringing homicide rates to 2019 levels, the result would be legislation that redefines homicide or changes how it's reported or something of the kind, rather than anything that actually involves fewer people killing one another.

chroma 4y ago
This is a solved problem, as it comes up in situations such as CEO bonuses, sports betting, and prediction markets. You either specify the definition in the bonus (eg: according to the FBI's UCR data definitions as of 2019) or you delegate an arbitrator (eg: the GAO). If this weren't solvable then the world would look very different. CEOs and acquired companies would never have compensation tied to target metrics. Sports betting would be rife with lawsuits and fraud. And economic metrics would be as accurate as those claimed by the Soviet Union.

maerF0x0 4y ago

> A better compensation mechanism would be to measure changes in outcomes such as wealth I agree that GNH (gross national happiness) etc matter too, but I think that tying their income to lower percentiles would greatly increase the correlation between GDP growth GNH... the only reason it's broken in the US is because GDP goes to the upper ranks, in a rent seeking manner, from the lower ranks. > Unless it was a very high percentile, that would incentivize competent people to flee to the private sector, or it would encourage competent but corrupt people to join the government. I actually think there needs to be a return to the "service" mentality to civil service. IMO government shouldn't be a job you do because of the compensation, stability, union etc. It should be a service to your country. But that would require so many Americans to stop hating their nation as they seem to now.