Voting by Design
I want to start with Doctors.
Imagine two health systems.
The first one is designed to treat sick people.
Doctors get paid when you get sick.
Hospitals fill up when things go wrong.
The whole machine runs on illness.
The second system is designed to maintain health.
Doctors get paid until you get sick.
The incentive runs in the other direction.
Keep people well. Prevent the crisis before it arrives.
Measure success by how few people need treatment.
Same profession. Same tools. Completely different design principles.
And the design principle determines almost everything — not just the outcomes, but the questions that people ask, the investments they make, the definition of success itself.
Now, ask yourself: when was the last time you applied that kind of thinking to a politician?
When Zoran Mandami won the New York City mayoral race last November, becoming the city’s first Muslim and Asian American mayor, I asked some New Yorkers what they thought, and the answers fell into about four camps.
There were those who thought he was a fraud, too idealistic, too far left, maybe too woke.
There were those who liked some of it but weren’t sure he could pull it off.
Of course, there were the true believers, his supporters.
And then there were the cynics.
The cynics were thoughtful people. They thought his ideas were basically good but that he didn’t stand a chance of achieving them. Just another politician with a gift for inspiring language and a limited gift for governing reality.
And their skepticism wasn’t cheap. It was won and earned by a lifetime of expectations and disappointments. But they were all asking the same question.
And I want to suggest it was the wrong one.
The question was: can he do it?
But maybe the better question is: what is this thing designed to do?
This thing that he wants to create. What is it designed to do?
He ran on free city buses, a rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, a $30 minimum wage.
You can agree or disagree with any of those specifics, but step back and ask the design question: what kind of city is this platform trying to build? What does success look like in the world this man is trying to create?
The answer is a city where the cost of living doesn’t grind ordinary people into the pavement, where a working family can afford to stay, where the public infrastructure actually serves the public. And that’s a design principle.
The question worth asking is not whether every specific proposal survives the city council — it’s whether that design principle is the one we want someone in city hall fighting for.
Now I want to say something to the cynics, and I say this with genuine respect, because skepticism is not a character flaw — it’s a form of intelligence. But there is a version of cynicism that crosses a line. It uses the impossibility of perfection as a reason to withhold support from anything that’s imperfect.
They say: I will wait until someone proves they can deliver before I give them my energy.
The problem with that posture is that nothing difficult ever gets done without people willing to push before the outcome is certain.
In Europe, students are supported before they prove their worth. Parents have dreams for their children that those children may never fully achieve. But good parents keep supporting anyway. They don’t fatigue. They don’t give up. Because the possibility of the dream is so fervent, so intense, that they can’t bring themselves to stop.
The civil rights movement didn’t wait for guaranteed results — it had a dream.
The disability advocates who got curb cuts into every sidewalk in New York City did not wait for a cost-benefit analysis. They showed up, argued, pushed, and made something that now seems so obvious we have forgotten it was ever even a fight.
Here is what Zoran Mamdani did before he was mayor: he went on a 15-day hunger strike alongside New York City taxi drivers who were being crushed by predatory medallion loans. He didn’t hold a press conference. He didn’t issue a statement. He sat down and stopped eating until the city moved. And eventually, the city moved — $450 million in debt relief for drivers who had nobody else in their corner.
Now this isn’t a man who only talks.
So here’s the framework: three questions, three questions worth sitting with the next time we get to decide who deserves our support.
What world is this person trying to build? Not their ten-point plan — the place itself. What does it look like, what does it feel like, and can we see ourselves living there?
Does this person speak to the better angels or to the fears? The answer to this question says a lot about who we are.
And finally, third.
Is this person more interested in inclusion or exclusion?
Between two people with similar values, yes, you’ve got to look at competence. You’ve got to look at the track record. Those things matter. But we rarely get two people with the same dream. We usually get to choose between two very different visions of what this place is supposed to be.
And when that is the choice, the design principle has to come first.
Dreams without reality is delusion. Reality without dreams is managed decline. The tension between the two is not a bug in the system — it is the system.
Ask better questions. Support the better design. Keep reaching. Keep reaching. Keep reaching.
I’m Bob Martin, and this is The Flow. To go with the flow, you have to understand the flow.
