Government

 

And The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

The Movie-Palace is now undone,
The all-night WATCHMEN have had their fun,
Sleeping cheaply on the midnight show,
It's the same old ending-time to go.

Its an age-old question, “Who Watches the Watchmen?" 

In a System Optimal solution, the question is what, or who, is the system.  Merriam Webster defines system as “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole”.  While humans are independent, they can act together as a system.  While there is a system of smaller systems, nature, or God’s dominion depending on your beliefs, humans as individuals have to form their own smaller system of other humans.  The problem is that each human acting as an individual, seeks a User Optimal solution.  The system of humans ideally will be composed those other humans who can put aside their own User Optimal solution and seek the System Optimal solution.  

In choosing other humans to represent them as that System, humans have to trust that those individuals  will act for the System. One way to do this is to choose a person of integrity who would be honest about any conflicts between his own User Optimal and the System Optimal, for example, “Honest” Abe Lincoln, or George Washington who could not tell a lie. Failing that, individuals might be chosen who have no incentive to choose their own User Optimal because they already are so rich that their User Optimal can be disregarded, for example the  Rockefellers or Kennedys.  What should never be their choice for the System are people who lie, and who will choose their own User Optimal and lie that it is the System Optimal.