What do you think about a political system fundamentally built around the scientific method with the primary goal of optimizing the HDI, GDPPP, and environmental impact?

2026-07-13 10:45 UTC

That is all policies and political structures are testable and tested to see their effect on those three (or other suggested) factors. If a policy doesn’t reasonably work then it’s simply not continually employed. I’m curious to see what factors others think ought to be used. It seems most political systems now were built without science in mind and utilize it as an afterthought to help develop legitimacy for policies individuals want. Generally politics across countries seems deeply emotionally driven and not fact driven. That is people have a feeling that an idea is a good idea and then they cobble together whatever they can to support that point without any unified measure of good or better. Ideally it ought to be the other way around, fact or evidence informed policy generation.

Replies (6)

@Devadander@lemmy.world 2026-07-13 11:00

Sure. Just get rid of money globally and punish instead of reward those who hoard resources

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@dihutenosa@piefed.social 2026-07-13 11:31

If you start tracking performance (of whichever system) via a graph, then people will start pushing the graph up, at the cost of anything else. Human happiness is multifaceted and not easy to represent in a simple chart.

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@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 2026-07-13 11:34

It seems you are referring to a technocracy. This could be an efficient means of managing capitalism but it does not remove capitalism. Political systems are subordinate to their economic base not the other way around. A technocratic system that scientifically negates the consequences of capitalism will not come about becauae it would reduce profits.

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@emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2026-07-13 16:23

This is a variation of a very old philosophy called legalism. They didn’t have HDI and GDP in those days, but the idea was that you should judge civil servants and government policies based on objective results rather than morality. It worked when there was a strong and relatively neutral emperor / chancellor to make and enforce those judgements impartially. In the modern day, Singapore might be an example of this. But the problem is that you still need a strong and relatively neutral institution to make and enforce judgements fairly.

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@Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2026-07-13 16:30

Marxism-Leninism is already heavily based on science, and takes the stance of dialectical materialism as the basis for science and analysis. What’s wrong with scientific socialism as it already exists, in your eyes?

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@azureskypirate@lemmy.zip 2026-07-13 17:35

It makes sense. Technology has made workers much more effecient since the 1970s, yet weekly hours worked have not fallen. It might be worth it to have the option to work less, in other words, to increase HDI a lot for a little less GDP.

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