# corerepr: the core task of representatives is to prevent bad plans (3/6).

in @/coreleader i observed that leadership doesn't work if it has large number of people involved. this means we need to make it work with few people. in that previous post i also mentioned that the leadership's role is to ensure a healthy and long-living organization.

# organization

what is an organization? i think it's just a set of people interpersonally connected through some shared belief or goal.

even among those, different people are connected with an organization on different levels. some people care if the organization is long living, some people don't. let's call "stakeholders" the people who want the organization long-living.

this means the leader's interest has to align with the stakeholders.

# stakeholders

who are the stakeholders? i think we need to consider three sets of people:

• power source: citizens for governments since they pay the tax. shareholders for private companies since they bought this privilege with money.
• controlled people: citizens for governments since the government can jail them. employees for private companies since the leader can fire them.
• affected people: foreigners if the government trades or fights with other countries. customers for private companies.

which group's interest should the leader's interest be aligned with?

affected people? no because they have the least stake and because it's infeasible to find all the affected people. barring some extreme circumstances, customers can simply walk away from the company. such group might have unreasonable demands just because they don't have to deal with the consequences of bad decisions. and how do you even find the affected people? anybody could argue that some decision affected them. just because i don't like sugary foods, i should not have the power to ban selling cookies in my local shop.

power source? no because paying for something doesn't legitimatize things. if i'm a billionaire then would it be fair for me to completely take over a business and then tell people what to do? or if i'm a big company, can i buy up smaller companies and tell them to shut down? wealth should give you the power to invest but not the power to tell people what to do. i understand the two are very tightly coupled but let's keep this distinct in this formal setting for now.

controlled people? yes because this has the greatest power inversion. jailing up or firing people are major life events. that's an incredible amount of power to wield above someone. it's only fair if we try to equalize this power. i think that people's desire for prosperous and free living will average to an interest that makes the whole organization prosperous and free.

an example organization could be your body. the power source is the food you eat, or books and videos you consume. the affected entities are the other people you interact with such as friends and family. the controlled entities live inside you: it's your organs. you can remove an organ you don't like. but you remove too much and you no longer exist. if one of your organs doesn't work well, you can't work well either. a headache or a broken bone and you can no longer work. the power source is replaceable. if you are out of carrots, you eat potatoes. so is the affected entities: you can change the people around you. not so for your organs. it's very expensive to change your organs given how critically interconnected they are (also see the #power section in @/coreleader). if the "you" wants to live long and healthy, then keeping your organs (controlled people) healthy and in sync should be the most important task.

with a healthy body the rest will follow naturally. e.g. you can go to shop on your own to pick the nicest fruits. and just how you would buy the healthiest looking apple, similarly investors prefer buying healthy looking companies to dysfunctional ones. just focus on keeping your organization healthy and investors and customers will come but they don't need to overtake leadership.

# aligning

how do we align the interests of the leaders and the stakeholders? there are many ways to look at this but i'll go at this from the simplicity angle.

most proposals have only two sides: for and against. and each citizen (or employee) has an opinion (again, let's go with this for simplicity). often this is split at the 50% boundary: half the people are for, the other half are against a specific proposal. if the leader chooses the same option as what the citizen wants, we can say the citizen is represented.

the problem is that if there's a single leader, then they might live in an echo chamber and completely oblivious to the large opposition.

what if there are 2 leaders? they would cover the whole opinion spectrum in this simplified model. when one of the leaders signs a proposal, it gives it to the other person. the other person has two options: approve or veto.

however there are two downsides: first, if one of the leaders is sick, the whole decisionmaking is on a break. second, if the two leaders really don't like each other, the leaders might just veto everything and no progress will be made. this can get quite nasty over time.

what if there are 3 leaders? i think this is quite the sweet spot. there's is significantly more chance that 2 out of 3 people can agree on a proposal. it's even more representative: in a nuanced organization a 3rd candidate could represent a minority voice.

what about more leaders? i don't think there's a good number. 3 is pretty much the minimal number that avoids the worst problems hence i'll go with that for simplicity.

if we have 3 leaders, then i think voting a leader starts working again. if done right, the selected 3 leaders will be an authentic voice of the citizens or employees. but if we vote people to represent us, perhaps we could call them representatives rather than leaders. they don't really lead after all, but rather accept proposals on our behalf. let's just call them representatives rather than leaders.

so what are those 3 representatives do? the same thing as a single leader would do: approve proposals and then enforce them.

i want the bureaucracy around all this to be minimum. on a high level it's really just a one-click task: approve or not. there's not much formal process to it. this way the representatives can focus on the task they do best: ask questions, inform themselves, debate, ask the proposal writers for improvements.

in the end the proposals to make decisions are coming from everywhere. all they need to ensure that really bad proposals are never approved.

now the only question is: how do we vote for our representatives? i'll explore that in @/corevoting.

# edit from 2023-08-13

here are some interesting references about multi-person leadership i found over time:

• book: two presidents are better than one: the case for a bipartisan executive branch.
• search web articles titled "two ceos are better than one". there's a lot of chatter on this.
• 3 people created the go programming language. consensus drove the design. the designers added only those facilities that all three agreed on. but in exchange go turned out super-mature and well-thought of. the reference for this is a rob pike interview: https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1623555.

published on 2022-10-03, last modified on 2023-08-13

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