As a New Yorker, I see New York as the centre of the world. So, as global ruler, I would make my HQ there. But I would indulge myself by bringing back the Concorde. I’m always on aeroplanes and in airports but I have little tolerance for it. My private Concorde would make life more efficient, and pleasant.
As ruler, my days would begin fairly late. I’m a night owl, so one of my first policy interventions would be to shift everyone’s schedule back by an hour or two. In particular, I’d want to combat this puritanical idea of sending kids to school so early. There’s evidence that children are not biologically suited to waking up that early and, as a result, they’re less alert throughout the day.
At school, I’d reform how we teach maths to kids, shifting the focus towards statistics and probability. Now we have so much data at our fingertips, it’s more important than ever that people understand how to interpret it properly. Although parents would object, teaching kids how to play poker and backgammon would give them a much more intuitive sense of how probability works. Kids learn English primarily through speaking, listening and reading, rather than through grammar lessons. Similarly, in maths you can learn the rules by deduction, if you’re encouraged to experiment with data sets.
One group of people who would benefit from knowing how to interpret data better are political pundits. In order to create more accountability, I would bring in a law requiring them to place bets on their predictions. If that brought about a world with no political pundits—well, good! They add little to the conversation. I’m too much of a libertarian to ban things outright, but I’m not above setting up a market to make that the likely result.
Looking at the media more broadly, I’d want to change the American obsession with distinguishing so sharply between “opinion” and “news.” Does the fact you’re writing an op-ed column mean you don’t have to be truthful and accountable? Does reporting the news mean you’re not allowed to express a view? Something closer to the British newspaper approach seems more honest—being clear in saying: “Here’s how we approach things politically, and we’re going to analyse information from this point of view.” Instead, we have this pretension of journalistic objectivity in the US, which in political journalism just means quoting each side. That is not objective; it’s just convenient.
Politics itself should be less of a profession and more representative. The enterprise of politics is at best amoral and at worst immoral. A lot of it is about finding ways to manipulate public opinion, so I’d want to create more constraints. This would involve more term limits and making it harder for politics to become professionalised. In ancient Athens members of the ruling council were chosen by lot. I would consider adjusting the system to include an element like that. I would also make voting easier. If you’re 16 you should be allowed to vote—and you should be able to do it online or from your mobile phone. If you can transfer £10, 000 between accounts via your phone then why shouldn’t you be able to vote with it?
The obstacle here is not technology, but politics. Parties that think they would lose out if there were higher participation try to restrict that from happening. In the US, I would probably face opposition from Republicans, whose supporters tend to be older, trying to prevent more young people from voting. But it’s indefensible in a democracy to raise barriers to political participation.
Other items on my checklist of political reforms: I think it’s hard to justify the presence of the filibuster in the US Senate. It’s frankly hard to justify having a senate at all. I’d get rid of America’s electoral college voting system [whereby presidential candidates don’t have to win the popular vote but a certain number of “electoral college votes” on a state-by-state basis]. I’d put a national vote in its place. It seems intrinsically simpler and fairer—there’s no good argument for why someone’s vote in California should count less than someone’s in Ohio. This reform would compromise my livelihood as a political forecaster but as my new job would be global leader, I guess that’s OK.
We could also do with some better Mexican food in New York. I would suggest a global system of culinary exchange. The British could get some better pizza places and we Americans could finally get some good fish and chips shops.
My final decree would be to ban restaurants which post fake reviews of themselves online. I would shut them down. That’s the one place I would be a fascist. Or maybe we could shame them with a scarlet letter on the door.
