“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both…”

James Madison – 4th US President (1822)

Politics is the arena in which societal decisions are made; how resources are allocated, which priorities are set, and how competing interests are reconciled. At its core, politics can be understood as a series of debates.

These debates may be conducted in a national referendum, bureaucratic committee, or even within the minds of an autocrat or individual voter. Yet the current epistemic infrastructure that supports them, the processes by which claims are evaluated, evidence is weighed, and decisions are justified, is flawed.

Citizens remain unaware of the vast majority of debates that shape their society, let alone the best evidence or arguments within each. For a society to make optimal decisions, it requires systems that can generate, filter, challenge, and publicise accurate information. Without this foundation of understanding, it is inevitable that society will make worse decisions, misallocate resources, and have misplaced priorities. This results in worse outcomes, frayed trust, anger, apathy, and disconnection. In short: ‘unhealthy politics.’

This is not to point the blame at individuals. Even if some in government deserve their share, many genuinely aspire to make a positive difference. Unhealthy politics stems from a deeper root: dysfunctional systems of debate. Before a cure can be prescribed, we must diagnose the disease.

1. The Economic Problem

At the heart of economics lies a simple fact: human wants are infinite, but resources are finite. Choices and trade-offs are unavoidable. Economics is the study of how to make better decisions within this scarcity.

Politics extends this problem to the management of society; how communities organise and allocate their scarce resources. Crucially in politics, these scarce resources include attention, time, trust, goodwill, and mental capacity.

Modern societies are vast and complex. No individual can be aware of every issue, let alone understand every argument, claim, and piece of evidence that informs political decisions. This is exacerbated when understanding is actively obscured by noise, misinformation, and propaganda. Even those whose full-time job is to follow politics cannot grasp it in its entirety.

With limited bandwidth, many important issues are overlooked, misunderstood, or never meaningfully examined at all. Without a means of efficiently surfacing the best information when and where it matters, scarce societal resources are misallocated and decisions inevitably flawed.

2. Unrepresentative Representatives

Many political systems attempt to solve this economic problem by electing individuals to represent citizens’ interests and make decisions on their behalf. Yet all too often, there is a profound disconnect: voters are unaware of who would truly represent their views.

During elections, many voters often become aware of all the possible candidates when they arrive at the ballot box. Even when motivated to become informed, their main resources are the candidates’ own websites (inevitably skewed in their favour), partisan media, or social-media echo chambers.

This epistemic breakdown encourages blind partisan voting, or decisions based on vibes and personality rather than substance. The result is representatives who do not reflect the electorate’s actual preferences.

Once elected, the community is then faced with the ‘agency dilemma’. Agents ideally act in the best interests of their clients; however, in practice, agents face strong incentives to act in their own interests instead. A politician’s decisions may reflect campaign donations or party loyalty, rather than faithfully representing the electorate. Unintuitively, they may even bow to popular pressure for short-term political gain rather than making the tough decisions that are in their long-term interest.

This misalignment is exacerbated by information asymmetry: voters have limited knowledge of what agents are actually doing or why, while agents have full visibility into their own actions and the trade-offs involved. When voters cannot effectively monitor or punish misaligned behaviour, agents can prioritise personal or partisan gains over long-term public good.

3. Disordered Priorities

There is no reliable mechanism to prioritise what deserves society’s limited attention and resources. Politicians are incentivised to pursue short-term policies with immediate results rather than long-term societal benefits. Similarly, both media and political actors are rewarded for spectacle over substance. A salacious scandal will always draw more attention than a dry policy proposal, even if the latter could bring lasting prosperity.

Often only powerful special interests have the awareness, time, and resources to track specific policies in depth. As a result, they wield a disproportionately large influence, lobbying for their own agendas while the broader public remains unaware. Ordinary people may be content and distracted with bread and circuses, while those in power quietly shape society according to their own priorities.

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4. Partisan Echo Chambers

Not only is it impossible for anyone to know everything, but the system creates incentives to make it harder. Some information and perspectives are amplified, while others are buried. Misinformation, deceptive framing and spin can drown out the facts. This could be from a desire to advance partisan goals or simply because outrage and “playing to the base” generate more engagement (and so are more competitive in the market for scarce attention).

As a result, political discourse is increasingly trapped in ideological silos, where voters and politicians consume information that reinforces existing beliefs. It is a dynamic that fosters groupthink, reduces exposure to opposing evidence, and turns nuanced issues into tribal, zero-sum battles. When the opposing side is painted as immoral and illegitimate, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify compromise.

5. ‘Big Tents’ Make for Strange Bedfellows

To win power in winner-take-all or first-past-the-post systems, major parties are often forced to build “big tents” by incorporating those with fringe or radical views.

To mobilise their support, each side is then incentivised:

· To amplify the most extreme voices within the opposing tent.

· Ignore, excuse, or justify the extreme voices within their own tent.

In this way the moderates on both sides can be convinced to grudgingly accept the fringe elements within their own tent as the perceived lesser of two evils. Like a centrifuge, this system is seemingly designed to exacerbate polarization within society.

Policy platforms are pulled toward the fringes while, on many issues, the majority of each party would side with the moderates on the other side over the radicals within their own tent. The considerable common ground on many issues is buried beneath tribal noise.

Evidence of this process can be seen in the declining rates of conscience votes or “crossing the floor”. There is a stark contrast between today’s vitriolic political discourse and the more civil, even friendly, debates within living memory.

6. Unaccountable Words & Actions

The Oxford Dictionary word for the year in 2016 was “Post-Truth” – “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Would we accept this in a hospital? People would die. Structural engineers? Bridges would fall down. Yet it seems acceptable practice by some in the fields of journalism and politics.

Accountability is weak for both what politicians say and the decisions they make once in power:

· Party platforms, speeches, and campaign advertisements are often filled with false, misleading, or unexamined claims. Voters simply do not have the time, resources, access, or tools to examine every issue in depth.

· Once elected, politicians frequently vote against their stated positions or manifestos without consequence or explanation. Limited visibility into decision-making allows backroom deals, lobbying, or policy backflips to go unchallenged, deepening the distrust between representatives and those they are meant to serve.

Societies function on that trust: trust in law and order, in currency, and in shared institutions. Trust is earned through reliability, transparency, and accountability. When political promises are broken, decisions are opaque, and propaganda is perceived, trust is lost. Cynicism rises, civic engagement falls, and citizens retreat into tribal identities or disengage altogether, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of institutional decay.

7. False Choices

Modern democratic systems often present voters (and politicians themselves) with artificially constrained choices:

• this party or that one,
• this policy, yes or no

This dynamic was satirised in The Simpsons Movie where, to combat pollution in Springfield, the President was told:

“Well, I’ve narrowed your choices down to five unthinkable options. Each one will cause untold misery and…”

Real-world problems are rarely reducible to a few choices. In reality, there are many distinct policy options (and each of those options can vary along multiple dimensions, including degree, timing, funding, or implementation strategy).

False-binary choices also incentivise parties to define themselves in opposition to their rivals, framing politics as a zero-sum contest between “us versus them.” Compromise is then often portrayed as capitulation.

Similarly, party pre-selection narrows the field of political candidates by ensuring that only those approved will appear on the ballot in the first place.

By artificially constraining what choices are presented, the system inevitably distorts which choices are made. The result is inevitable polarisation and the systematic exclusion of better, more nuanced outcomes.

8. Institutional Rigidity

Modern political institutions are designed for stability, not adaptability. Bureaucracies and legislatures are slow to respond to fast-moving social, economic, and technological change.

Administrative systems are incentivised to prioritise procedure, risk avoidance, and compliance over efficiency, cost-effectiveness, or outcomes. This makes course-correction difficult even when policies are clearly underperforming or conditions have changed.

Elections function as discrete, infrequent events rather than as mechanisms for ongoing consent. Governments retain full authority for fixed terms even when they deviate from the platforms on which they were elected, or when public support collapses. Consent, whether personal or political, is not a one-time event: it is conditional, informed, and revocable.

With few institutional mechanisms to reassess mandates, enforce commitments, or correct course between elections, systems rely heavily on “buyer beware.” The result is a brittle form of stability: institutions remain formally intact while public confidence erodes, responsiveness declines, and frustration accumulates until change arrives not through learning and adaptation, but through crisis.

9. Unaccountable Bureaucracies

Modern states depend on vast bureaucracies to function. Unlike elected officials, senior bureaucrats face limited public scrutiny, are largely unaccountable to voters, and are often extremely difficult to remove. For these reasons they are often the primary target of those looking to influence government and society.

When an elected government pursues policies that conflict with the views of those within the bureaucracy, their resistance need not be obvious; it can take the form of “malicious compliance,” in which rules are formally obeyed while outcomes are delayed, diluted, or undermined.

Over time, hiring and promotion within bureaucratic institutions can drift away from merit. Cronyism and patronage networks can flourish as competence becomes secondary to ideological alignment or personal connections. This further narrows the range and quality of advice reaching political decision-makers.

Responsibility is diffused across committees, sub-agencies, and external consultants (often former civil servants themselves). When projects fail, costs are borne by the public, while those responsible face little accountability. Billions in public funds can be misallocated without careers being jeopardised or salaries affected.

10. No State Scorecard

All of these ailments are exacerbated by the absence of reliable, accessible, empirical metrics. In most domains of life, performance is measured against clear objectives and adjusted when outcomes fall short. Governments, by contrast, are rarely held to comparable standards.

Public policies are often introduced with undefined success criteria, limited oversight, and weak feedback mechanisms. Even where metrics exist (GDP growth, unemployment, crime, inflation), they are frequently deceptively framed, manipulated, or taken out of context.

In theory, democratic elections allow voters to punish poor performance. In practice, this mechanism is ineffective: electoral cycles are long, public memory is short, and media coverage prioritises scandal, drama, and horse-race commentary over substantive policy evaluation (A Harvard Kennedy School of Government study found only 10% of the 2016 US election coverage discussed policy). Elections also tend to remove only the public-facing leadership, leaving the permanent bureaucracy (where policy design and implementation occur) largely unchanged.

Without a credible, transparent, and accessible scorecard, one that clearly measures outcomes at both the micro and macro level, government performance cannot be meaningfully evaluated. Without measurement, we cannot effectively recognise either success or failure. We cannot learn. We cannot hold to account.

These ten issues share a common underlying cause: dysfunctional epistemic systems (the ways in which society acquires knowledge). They were never perfect. Now they are struggling to keep pace with the increasing scale and complexity of the modern world.

Others have explored these issues in far greater depth than I can here. As a tech entrepreneur, my aim is not to just add another diagnosis but to treat this underlying cause. With better, more accessible, and more timely knowledge, it is possible to achieve healthier politics: better outcomes, greater trust, and a more satisfied and engaged society.

Continued in Healthy Politics – Part 2.