I often talk about life and society with my close friends, and felt like writing down some of the ideas that keep coming to my mind. I don't claim that these would make a better world, and I do not have any skills in politics or economics, but they are at least topics that I find interesting and worth discussing.
I think the main metric governments should look at to evaluate their success is happiness. Happiness aggregates everything about a person's life into one feeling. In my opinion, a poor country with 80% of its people happy is a way better success than a rich country with only 20% of its people happy. Money, health, safety, freedom, work, stability, social life, everything affects happiness. So a country with a high happiness probably does pretty well overall.
Governments should admit when they fail and let others take their place to try to do better. Every trimester, all citizens could be invited to provide feedback to the government, regarding their happiness in particular. This would help validating previously established laws, and designing new ones.
If after n years in charge, the average happiness of the people of the country has decreased compared to its starting level, the government has failed and new early elections could be organized to replace it.
I think it doesn't make sense that anyone can vote and decide the faith of a country without having a minimal knowledge of the consequences of their vote. Most people, including me, don't know anything about the economy, geopolitics, or how their country uses the taxes they pay. Voting for a candidate because they vaguely look or seem like they would be a better president is terrible. And even if you take the time to understand what the candidates want to do, unless you have some serious skills on those matters, you have no idea about the consequences of their projects.
I think it should be required to first learn the basics of politics and economy to be able to vote. This program should be available for free to anyone, and should not be too disruptive of one's life. The program could be established and discussed publicly by the community of politicians and economists of the country, and should be as unopinionated and neutral as possible.