# Selective, Corrective, Structural: Three Ways of Making Social Systems Work

*(A reference post for a concept that comes up often enough to warrant such a thing.)*

---

> If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
> 
> —[James Madison](https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60)

## Three kinds of methods

The one comes to us (wishing to build a social system, and having only people, and no angels, to work with) and says:

*“My system would work perfectly, if only everyone involved would behave in the optimal manner!”*

Granted; unfortunately (or [fortunately](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vvzfFcbmKgEsDBRHh/honoring-petrov-day-on-lesswrong-in-2019?commentId=kD64pb4QRXyaDgCLr)), not all people can be relied on to behave optimally. How to make the system work despite this?

There are three sorts of approaches:

1.  **Selective** methods—build your system out of only the right sort of people, and exclude the wrong sort.
2.  **Corrective** methods—apply such measures as will make the people in your system alter their behavior, to conform to relevant optimality criteria.
3.  **Structural** methods—build your system in such a way that it will work if people behave in the ways that they can be expected to behave.

## Examples

### Work

The challenge: build an organization (or a team within one) that will be able to accomplish various desirable projects.

* **Selective:** hire people who have the skills/experience/etc. to do the work; don’t hire (or fire, if discovered post-hiring) people who aren’t capable of doing the work.

* **Corrective:** on-the-job training; social approval/disapproval from coworkers for good/bad work.

* **Structural:** bonuses and other financial incentives for performance; technological and process improvements that reduce skill requirements.

### World of Warcraft

The challenge: assemble a raiding guild that will be able to defeat the most challenging boss monsters.

* **Selective:** accept players who can demonstrate competence in their chosen raid role; exclude those who can’t or won’t perform.

* **Corrective:** teach inexperienced players to play better; shame lazy or selfish players into putting in effort, and contributing to the guild’s success.

* **Structural:** assign raid members to roles that best fit their talents and inclinations; design a [loot distribution system](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esP8ixxKzKiasNutH/everything-i-ever-needed-to-know-i-learned-from-world-of) that incentivizes effort and effective participation.

### Governance

The challenge: place over society a government, that will rule for the good of all.

* **Selective:** choose wise and just rulers; prevent the foolish and the wicked from gaining power.

* **Corrective:** [“We demand that public administration be taught by conscientious workers and soldiers and that it be started immediately, i.e. that all the working people, all the poor, should immediately be enlisted in this training.”](https://ru.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80_%D0%98%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD)

* **Structural:** checks and balances; a nation of laws, not of men.

## Which way is best?

I have no revelatory answer. Probably it varies from one case to another. And—as the examples show—the approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. All three can be combined, potentially, or any two. Each has its advantages; each, also, its drawbacks. (I will explore some of these in [the comments section](#comments) for this post.)

The critical thing, I think, is just to be aware that all three types exist.

## Postscript

This post explains, finally—it only took five years!—what I meant by [this comment](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iTnyxwE8i9wNYh8D8/the-hamming-problem-of-group-rationality?commentId=jak6xsLK45kr7kxN6).