On the Lack of Use of Mathematics in Public Policy

Mathematics still has tremendous potential for applications in various disciplines and fields that have remained mathematically illiterate, including the public sector. Eventually, its requirements for feedback for optimization will lead to the implementation of learning processes in institutions that currently operate arbitrarily and with full of biases. The claim that not every outcome can be measured is based on primitive measurement methods, which higher mathematical knowledge would allow to replace, and would certainly lead to a more rigorous examination of policies that are currently based mainly on gut feelings

Extrapolation of Existing Policy  (Source)

In political science and the public sector today, they only know how to use linear functions, such as the number of voters. But what about logarithmic voting or voting by a square root factor according to the amount of money you voluntarily contribute to the state? A rich person can give a lot of money and buy influence but with diminishing marginal utility. This way, the state will gain taxes, and on the other hand, it will not become controlled by the wealthy. All that's needed is to find the appropriate function, the right slope. And we're stuck with a very suboptimal function because our approximation is only linear.

The same goes for non-linear taxation (for example, income tax). Why is the tax burden linear, when it's clear that this is not the mathematically optimal option? We can conduct experiments or use machine learning to find a more optimal function, or gradually bend it and receive feedback, and each tax year will provide feedback according to set parameters, and the learning will be online (meaning based on past results so far) and very cautious. And so we can slowly calibrate and optimize all the primitive functions of the state and society.

Because we can finally move from elementary school mathematics to high school mathematics with the advancement of population education. And start gradually incorporating more and more sophisticated algorithms, and thus citizens will also learn to use more and more sophisticated algorithms, and the sophistication of society will rise wonderfully. Political science has not yet begun to discover mathematics, which is why people complain that they haven't used mathematics since elementary school, despite its capabilities. The more mathematical the public sector becomes, the higher the level of public discourse about it will be, because most will understand that they don't understand. And thus the field will also be expropriated from populism to algorithm. Which is the ultimate goal of public policy in the 21st century.