stochastic jubilee
28 Aug 2026 - 28 Aug 2026
- (surely I didn't make this idea up, or at least, not now)
- The bug with jubilee is that it happens all at once at predictable times. You could say jubilee happens at a random year, not every 50. Some trusted random process with a suitable distribution determines when it happens, so nobody can plan for it.
- Or, another design parameter to vary, is whether it happens to everyone simultaneously or to different people at different times. In the latter case, you still randomize but everybody gets their own spin of the wheel.
- I suppose life is random enough without adding artificial, intentional randomness.
- This idea must have a history Ask Claude
- This is a rich idea with several overlapping threads in the historical and economic literature. Here's what's known:
The History of the Idea
The Original Jubilee Was Already Partly "Stochastic" by Accident
- In the ancient Near East, it was normal for new rulers to proclaim debt amnesty edicts upon taking the throne, in the aftermath of war, or upon the building or renovating a temple.
- Assyriologists found that "from the beginning of recorded history in the Near East, it was normal for new rulers to proclaim a debt amnesty upon taking the throne."
- This is your first design parameter already realized historically: timing tied to succession rather than a fixed calendar made jubilees effectively unpredictable — nobody knew when the king would die.
- Judaism then took the practice out of the hands of kings and placed it at the center of Mosaic Law
- — regularizing it into the fixed 50-year cycle, which introduced the very predictability problem you're identifying.
- By setting debt forgiveness on a fixed and periodical calendar, the Jubilee resolved the age-old social problem of debt relief
- , but at the cost of allowing people to plan around it.
The Core Economic Problem You've Identified
- The standard critique of predictable jubilees is exactly what you're pointing at.
- If borrowers anticipate eventually discharging debt through bankruptcy, they may accumulate additional debt to finance higher consumption.
- A fixed-date jubilee makes this worse: creditors tighten lending as the date approaches, and debtors strategically overborrow. Randomizing the timing directly attacks this moral hazard.
Closest Existing Literature
- 1. Probabilistic immigration amnesty — This is the tightest analogue I found.
- Under plausible assumptions, the rich country's optimum may require a probabilistic rather than a certain amnesty to fine-tune the mix of migrants. Numerical examples illustrate that probabilistic or certain amnesties, addressed to different partitions of the migrant population, are each optimal as the mix of potential migrants changes.
- The logic there is precisely yours: uncertainty about whether/when an amnesty arrives changes the self-selection of who takes the risk.
- 2. Stochastic vs. periodic interventions — In disease modeling there's a formal result that closely parallels your intuition about random timing:
- results show an exponential improvement in extinction times even though controls are implemented using a random Poisson distribution. Researchers discovered parameter regimes where random treatment yields an exponential improvement in extinction times over the application of strictly periodic intervention.
- The logic carries over: periodic interventions can be "gamed" by the system, random ones cannot.
- 3. Goodhart/Hudson on modern jubilee design —
- Since the threat of a fixed levy would distort and disrupt valuations and transactions, it might seem logical to impose an initially affordable but steadily rising tax rather than an immediate stochastic jump
- — note that "stochastic jump" appears here as a foil, not the preferred solution, but the trade-off is explicitly acknowledged.
Your Two Design Parameters, Mapped to the Literature
- | Your parameter | Historical/economic analog |
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| | Random timing (collective) | Ancient succession-triggered amnesties; Poisson-process policy models | | Individual random spin | Bankruptcy law (each person gets their own event), immigration amnesty lotteries |
- The individual spin version is essentially what bankruptcy already is — a stochastic event from the population's perspective, triggered by personal circumstances rather than a calendar. The difference is that bankruptcy requires the debtor to be genuinely distressed; your version would grant forgiveness by lottery even to people who could pay.
Why It Seems Underexplored
- Human beings are often hostile to seeing their fate decided by the toss of a coin. In US law, the Administrative Procedure Act forbids the use of random devices in administrative decisions.
- The political economy of randomized forgiveness is brutal: the people who don't win the lottery in a given period have a strong grievance, whereas with a fixed-calendar jubilee everyone waits together. So the idea exists in scattered places but hasn't consolidated into a named proposal or research program — at least not under any label I can find. You may genuinely be coining "stochastic jubilee" as a term.
- Tell me more about: In US law, the Administrative Procedure Act forbids the use of random devices in administrative decisions.
- Ask Claude
- This is a well-documented legal principle. Here is a thorough breakdown:
The APA's Prohibition on Random Devices in Administrative Decisions
The Statutory Foundation
- The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), enacted in 1946, is the United States federal statute that governs the way in which administrative agencies of the federal government may propose and establish regulations, and it grants U.S. federal courts oversight over all agency actions.
- The prohibition on random or arbitrary decisions flows directly from the APA's judicial review provision.
- Under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), a reviewing court shall set aside agency action that is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law."
- This is the operative clause that effectively bans the use of random devices.
- In the United States, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) effectively prohibits the use of random devices in administrative decisions.
What "Arbitrary and Capricious" Means
- In American law, the phrase "arbitrary and capricious" describes a key legal standard used by courts to review decisions made by government agencies. It comes from the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which governs how federal agencies make and enforce rules. When a court says an action is arbitrary and capricious, it means the agency acted without a sound basis in reason or evidence — that its decision was irrational, inconsistent, or made without proper consideration of the facts.
- A decision is deemed arbitrary and capricious if it appears to be based on whim or is unjustifiably random, without consideration or disregard for the facts and circumstances that surround it. Such decisions lack a reasonable basis or fail to follow legal standards and principles.
- Under the standard, courts ask whether an agency:
- examined all relevant data and evidence, considered the important aspects of the issue, and offered a satisfactory explanation that connects the facts to its decision.
The Key Supreme Court Case: Judulang v. Holder (2011)
- The clearest Supreme Court articulation of the prohibition on random decision-making came in Judulang v. Holder.
- On December 12, 2011, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Judulang v. Holder, a case addressing the policy of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) regarding when resident aliens convicted of certain offenses may apply to the Attorney General for relief from deportation.
- In an opinion delivered by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court reversed, holding unanimously that the Board's "comparable grounds" rule was "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act.
- Crucially, Justice Kagan's opinion explicitly addressed the coin-flip analogy:
- cheapness alone cannot save an arbitrary agency policy. (If it could, flipping coins would be a valid way to determine an alien's eligibility for a waiver.)
- This language has since been widely cited. For example, a later Supreme Court petition quoted Judulang for the proposition that
- if an agency decided eligibility for discretionary immigration relief "by flipping a coin," the Court "would reverse the policy in an instant."
- The APA requires courts to set aside agency action that is "arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion." The US Supreme Court in Judulang ruled that the use of a random device is arbitrary and thus illegal, regardless of how costly it is to provide a rationalization.
The "Hard Look" Doctrine
- The Administrative Procedure Act instructs federal courts to invalidate agency decisions that are "arbitrary" or "capricious." In its 1983 decision in the State Farm case, the Supreme Court firmly endorsed the idea that arbitrariness review requires courts to take a "hard look" at agency decisions. The hard look doctrine has been defended as a second-best substitute for insistence on the original constitutional safeguards; close judicial scrutiny is said to discipline agency decisions and to constrain the illegitimate exercise of discretion.
Why It Matters
- The "arbitrary and capricious" standard acts as a check on executive power. It prevents agencies from acting on political whims, favoritism, or guesswork.
- This ensures that government actions — even those made by experts — remain transparent, rational, and accountable to the public. It also embodies a broader principle of the rule of law: that power must be exercised with reason, not impulse.
Academic Controversy: The "Rationally Arbitrary" Debate
- Some legal scholars have challenged how strictly this principle should apply. Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule argued in a notable 2015 paper that
- there is an important category of agency decisions under uncertainty in which it is rational to be arbitrary. Rational arbitrariness arises when no first-order reason can be given for the agency's choice, yet the agency has valid second-order reasons to make a particular choice. When these conditions obtain, even coin flipping may be a perfectly rational strategy of decision making for agencies.
- His conclusion was that
- courts should defer to rationally arbitrary decisions by agencies, though there is a proper role for courts in ensuring that agencies have adequately invested resources in information-gathering, which may dispel uncertainty.
Broader Context
- The US is not alone in this skepticism of randomness.
- Several European countries have witnessed significant opposition to school choice mechanisms involving randomization. The UK government's "School Admissions Code (2014)" explicitly states that "local authorities must not use random allocation as the principal oversubscription criterion." Medical researchers often report difficulties in running randomized controlled trials (RCTs), as doctors oppose allocating treatment at random.
- In short, the APA's "arbitrary and capricious" standard functions as an effective legal ban on random decision-making in federal administration, requiring agencies to always ground their decisions in reasoned, evidence-based, and explainable rationale.
- Didn't the draft lottery back in the 60s violate this? Or was that earlier?
- ? Ask Claude
- This is very helpful. Now I have the full text of § 556. I notice it does NOT contain an explicit prohibition on "random devices" — that phrasing may come from the original 1946 APA text or from a specific provision elsewhere. Let me check the original APA text and find the specific "random device" language.
- Now I have the full original APA text. I can see that there is no explicit mention of "random devices" in the APA itself. The prohibition on random devices is actually a principle derived from the APA's requirements for reasoned decision-making. Let me now put this all together with what I know about the Selective Service exemption from the APA.
- This is a nuanced topic. Here is a comprehensive answer based on all the sources gathered:
The APA, "Random Devices," and the Draft Lottery
The APA's Prohibition on Arbitrary/Random Decisions
- First, a clarification: the APA does not contain a clause that literally says "random devices are forbidden." Rather, the prohibition emerges from the APA's core structure.
- The APA is a federal law enacted in 1946 that governs how federal agencies create, amend, and repeal regulations, and establishes procedures for rulemaking, adjudication, and judicial review.
- A key requirement it imposes is the demand for reasoned, evidence-based decisions.
- The law requires agencies to provide public notice of proposed rules, solicit comments, and explain the reasoning behind final decisions, and allows courts to review agency actions to ensure they are not arbitrary, capricious, or beyond the agency's legal authority.
- The APA's formal adjudication provisions (original §§7–8, now codified at 5 U.S.C. §556) require that decisions in formal hearings be based on "reliable, probative, and substantial evidence" from the record, and that all decisions include "a statement of findings and conclusions, as well as the reasons or basis therefor." A decision made by flipping a coin or drawing lots would plainly violate this — not because the word "random" appears, but because there would be no reasoned basis at all. This is the general legal consensus behind saying the APA "forbids random devices."
Did the Vietnam Draft Lottery Violate the APA?
- The short answer is: **No — and it was explicitly insulated from the APA.** Here's why:
- 1. The original 1946 APA itself excluded the Selective Service. The original APA expressly exempted "the functions conferred by the following statutes: Selective Training and Service Act of 1940" from the operation of the Act. This was a deliberate carve-out for military conscription from day one.
- The Selective Service adjudication scheme — deciding who among registrants will receive deferments, postponements, or exemptions from military service — is explicitly not subject to the Administrative Procedures Act with respect to adjudications [50 U.S.C. App. 463(b)].
- 2. The lottery was also authorized by specific statute.
- On November 26, 1969, President Nixon signed an amendment to the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 that established conscription based on random selection (lottery), and the first "draft lottery" was held on December 1, 1969.
- A lottery based on birth dates was conducted by the Selective Service System on December 1, 1969, to determine the order of conscription for men born between January 1, 1944, and December 31, 1950.
- Because Congress itself specifically authorized the random selection method by amending the Military Selective Service Act, the lottery had explicit statutory backing — another reason APA challenges would fail.
- 3. The APA also broadly exempts military/foreign affairs functions. Even beyond the Selective Service-specific carve-out, the APA's rulemaking section (original §4) explicitly excluded "any military, naval, or foreign affairs function of the United States" from its notice-and-comment requirements. And the APA's adjudication section (§5) similarly excluded "the conduct of military, naval, or foreign affairs functions."
Legal Challenges That Were Actually Raised
- People did try to challenge the lottery in court, but on different grounds (primarily the randomness of the randomness itself — i.e., that the lottery wasn't actually random):
- In January of 1970, a group of statisticians and politicians formally accused the system of not being truly random and called for a Congressional hearing and a new draw. White House officials denied these accusations, which claimed later birth dates were consistently drawn before earlier birth dates. Courts eventually ruled that the process was fair despite resounding statistical evidence showing that it was not, and judges rejected requests to redo the lottery that year.
- Statisticians and commentators argued the process produced non-random outcomes: analyses suggested later calendar dates (autumn/winter) disproportionately received lower numbers, implying inadequate mixing of capsules and a flawed randomization procedure. Contemporary challenges even sought injunctions to halt inductions until a truly randomized method was used, but courts declined because the live drawing was already complete.
Timeline Clarification
- To answer your specific question about timing: the lottery was not in the 1960s —
- it was conducted on December 1, 1969
- (just barely). Prior to the lottery, the Vietnam-era draft used a local draft board system where the oldest men first were called, with discretionary deferments — a system that had its own serious fairness problems.
- President Nixon abandoned this established SSS draft system, which called to service the oldest men first. The SSS had come under fire for being biased against low-income and uneducated men, as it had originally allowed men attending college to defer from entering service until after they had graduated.
Summary
- | Issue | Answer |
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| | Does the APA literally say "no random devices"? | No — but its requirements for reasoned, evidence-based, on-the-record decisions have that effect for agencies it covers | | Did the APA apply to the draft lottery? | No — Selective Service was explicitly excluded from the APA, and military functions are broadly exempt | | Was the lottery challenged legally? | Yes, but on statistical-fairness grounds, not APA grounds; courts rejected those challenges | | Was the lottery in the 60s? | Barely — December 1, 1969; the prior system (age-based + deferments) ran through the 1960s |