Monotonic Politics: a thought experiment

Much of politics consists of proposals to replace bad people in power with better people. The most boring possible politics consists of ONLY this (consider two centrist politicians running against each other in which the major issue is some dirty construction money or a sex scandal or something.) More and less subtle variations on this include:

• the world is run by hypersocial idiots, we need to place truth-valuing nerds in power
• the world is run by stodgy old assholes, we need bold revolutionary action by the young
• the world is run by fanatics, we need /sensible/ people in charge
• the world is run by grey bureaucrats, we need enterpreneurial risk-takers
• ethnic group (bad, them) is screwing over us, the good ethnic group
• capitalists got where they are by sheer ruthlessness, which make them bad, so they should be replaced
• &c. &c., I'm sure you can think of examples of this form that match /your/ politics

More broadly, much of political talk consists of attempts to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked. Uncharitably, the first consideration is something of a subset of this, with the point of replacing rulers not so much to put effective and just leadership on the throne but to reward good people with thrones.

Concern with such rank-ordering questions isn't necessarily wrong. After all, rewards and punishments can alter behavior, and all else being equal, you'd rather institutions be governed by people who are more benevolent than mal-. But I think we devote more time to such considerations than is genuinely warranted.

Hence the thought experiment:

How would your political views change if the rank-ordering of people (or different types of people) was immutable?

In such a world, many things about the structure of society could be up for grabs. It could be more or less equal, more or less prosperous, more or less interesting, more or less secure, and so on. But the most powerful people in it would be Trump, Kavanaugh, Xi, Bezos, and so on - or at any rate people exactly like them.

How true is this? Certainly not literally, but I do think there's a certain amount of truth to it. In any social order you're going to have a very small number of sociopaths jockeying for the very top, with a much larger millieu of social climbers serving them, and people who have been dealt a bad hand (perhaps physical or mental health, perhaps something more abstract) occupying the most vulnerable positions.

Put this way, I think this can be a spur to thinking about how to build institutions that give common people (and uncommonly vulnerable) people the means to defend themselves from exploitation, rather than simply hoping that institutions are improved by having the right people in charge.