Political disagreements often appear to concern principles.
More frequently, they concern persons.
Who should govern?
Who should decide?
Who should allocate?
Who should intervene?
The answers vary considerably.
The question itself is rarely examined.
Political movements often resemble their adversaries more than they realize.
When confronted with an institution they distrust, people typically imagine a "better" institution.
When confronted with a leader they oppose, they seek a "better" leader.
When confronted with a system they regard as unjust, they propose a more "just" system.
These responses differ in content. They frequently share a common structure.
The question remains:
Who should decide?
Governments offer one answer.
Markets offer another.
Experts offer another.
Algorithms offer yet another.
Political disagreement often concerns the identity of the decision-maker rather than the necessity of decision-making itself.
This observation should not be exaggerated.
No society can function without institutions. No procedure emerges spontaneously from nature. Every constitution, market, court, lottery, and protocol reflects human choices made at some point in time.
There is no escape from judgment.
The relevant question is therefore not whether judgment can be eliminated.
It cannot.
The question is where judgment should reside.
Most systems embed judgment continuously.
Officials decide.
Managers decide.
Committees decide.
Experts decide.
Participants repeatedly encounter the intentions of other participants.
Alternative arrangements are possible.
A lottery does not abolish judgment. Someone must still decide to establish the lottery. Someone must define its scope, its rules, and its limits.
The difference lies elsewhere.
The judgment occurs at the level of institutional design rather than at the level of each individual allocation.
A procedure replaces a sequence of decisions.
This distinction is easy to overlook because modern political imagination remains strongly attached to intentional outcomes.
We prefer events that can be explained by reference to somebody's purpose.
A decision made by a person appears meaningful.
A decision made by a procedure often appears arbitrary.
Yet much of social life already depends upon procedures whose legitimacy derives precisely from the fact that they constrain subsequent discretion.
Constitutions constrain rulers.
Markets constrain planners.
Protocols constrain operators.
The question is whether certain forms of allocation might benefit from similar constraints.
Not because procedures are neutral.
Not because they transcend politics.
But because they reduce the number of occasions on which power may intervene.
Human beings readily criticize rulers.
They are often less willing to question how many decisions require rulers in the first place.