Fighting Power Corruption with Randomness: Designing a Fairer System
This article explores Campbell's Law (a variant of Goodhart's Law), stating that any metric used for social decision-making is susceptible to manipulation. Using the selection of authority positions as an example, it shows how traditional methods (elections, heredity) can be gamed, leading to those skilled at manipulation rather than the most qualified obtaining power. The author proposes introducing randomness (e.g., randomly selected review boards, random candidate selection) to combat this corruption, increasing fairness and efficiency, citing historical and modern examples. Ultimately, the article argues that randomness doesn't exclude excellence but safeguards it, preventing meritocracies from becoming dominated by schemers and sycophants.