Wouldn't the lack of accountability and long term involvement (ie: re-elections) simple mean that those chosen would have an incentive to funnel as much money to themselves and their friends as possible?
We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#42I like this idea, but I think that the biggest risk would be in the legal assistants needed to navigate the sea of bureaucracy that legislative work usually needs. The lottery-selected citizens would come and go, but the assistant would probably remain in office for several “elections”. The selected citizens would probably be oblivious to what’s currently going on and the assistants would have incentives to influence…
That's a common argument against term limits: by shifting the burden of institutional memory even farther away from the elected officials, you're further empowering the bureaucrats.
Isn't already the case though?
If yes, it should not prevent us from tying out term limit, only push us to also add some mechanism to deal with bureaucrats.
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#43Random just means without reproducible information about inputs. There is nothing additionally equitable in deciding an outcome (more representation by favoured minority groups) and then calling the selection process “random.” Are airport screening selections random, or just opaque? What the author is in effect advocating is an opaque process whose outcome reflects some desirable criteria. Presumably if one disagrees…
What's opaque about anything in the article?
(Not GP but) The composition of the body being one male and one female from each district plus two (presumably opposite gender) from Indigenous people and "adjusted for age" represent an element of opacity. What does "adjusted for age" mean? Am I less likely to be chosen if I'm in a particular age range (or particular age range crossed with district)? If a particular district is heavily skewed in gender (in either direction), should the representation be constrained to one of each gender?
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#44Random just means without reproducible information about inputs. There is nothing additionally equitable in deciding an outcome (more representation by favoured minority groups) and then calling the selection process “random.” Are airport screening selections random, or just opaque? What the author is in effect advocating is an opaque process whose outcome reflects some desirable criteria. Presumably if one disagrees…
When it comes to random - ask yourself this: People mostly accept the results of a lottery draw, if the same system was used to pick politicians, then we all deep-down just know - people would question the results more and more. Indeed I'd expect headline reports that a Russian satalite was flying overhead when the draw took place and effected gravity and the results and they should be voided. Just how society works.…
I can see how some people like the idea of legitimizing irreproducible results, but they don’t bear scrutiny and it’s no way to transfer power. I also don’t think it is reasonable to dismiss someone who writes for the walrus, whose piece was edited by someone there, as an innumerate and naive lightweight. An agenda seems much more plausible.
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#45While the Athenians were true about giving real power to everyone (rather than a facade of power in the form of vote every 4 years) , only the citizens who were male had the privilege. Non citizens , women and slaves could not. Still, their model was more inclusive than democracy ( as most household had a chance, instead of 51% as is typical in democracy today).
Such an arrangement would lead to much-less-regulated societies, as people would be wary of weaponized legislation that can be used by their neighbor.
There is also something to be said about how contemporary democratic politics have been turned to emotional porn
You could also mix sortition with elections to minimize power plays, like the way they elected the Doge of Venice:
> New regulations for the elections of the doge introduced in 1268 remained in force until the end of the republic in 1797. Their intention was to minimize the influence of individual great families, and this was effected by a complex electoral machinery. Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge.[19] Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.[20]
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counterintuitive solution is to get rid of campaign finance restrictions. If money is easier to get, candidates will need to "pay" less for it in favors. To understand the dynamics here, the key fact is that additional money only helps a campaign up until it has enough to get its message to the voters. More money after that doesn't impact the result.
How about we instead consider distancing the human political actors from direct contact with temptation? Corruption is an integral part of all political systems and ultimately festers until inevitable failure and restart. Can’t we start to consider open source, programmatic execution of popularly derived decisions?
I have quite the oppossite approach- if corruption is so unavoidable, why not instituionalize it? The economic sector gets 25 % of the votes in parliament. Companys can boost the percentage of there representive in this fixed part, by paying taxes (in secret). If there are 25 company representives, and every company pays 1 billion - they get each get 1% of the economic-sector-power to distribute.
Corruption outside of this fixed percentage is heavy penalized, as in life prison sentences.
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#47A broader sequel to the Dice Man ?
It's the plot to P.K. Dick's first published novel "Solar Lottery".
> The operating principle was random selection: positions of public power were decided by a sophisticated lottery and when the magnetic lottery bottle twitched, anyone could become the absolute ruler of the world, the Quizmaster.
> But with the power came the game – the assassination game – which everyone could watch on TV. Would the new man be good enough to evade his chosen killer? Which made for fascinating and exciting viewing, compelling enough to distract the public’s attention while the Big Five industrial complexes ran the world. Then, in 2203, with the choice of a member of a maverick cult as Quizmaster, the system developed a little hitch…
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#48I've long thought this would be a great idea, although given the differences in communities it would probably make most sense to implement this at the state or even local level.
I do find it this statement odd:
> These assemblies are part of a wider conversation, and in this conversation, there should also be a place for social movements: the reasoned deliberation of disinterested citizens should not come at the cost of the voices of those who have stakes in the issues being debated. ... For example, the British environmental movement Extinction Rebellion lists a citizens’ assembly on climate and ecological justice as one of its demands.
People who want more democracy are often rather selective about what the legitimate scope of that democracy should be. Consistently less than 5% of voters believe that the environment/climate change is the most important issue facing the country: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp.... (By contrast over 20% say immigration.) Climate change, moreover, seems like one of those issues that affects everyone, rather than one of those issues--like say marriage quality or affirmative action--where certain individuals have particularly strong "stakes in the issues being debated." Such a broad policy choice--embodying fundamental trade-offs between present discomfort and future risk--would seem most appropriate for resolution by an impartial panel of randomly selected citizens.
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counterintuitive solution is to get rid of campaign finance restrictions. If money is easier to get, candidates will need to "pay" less for it in favors. To understand the dynamics here, the key fact is that additional money only helps a campaign up until it has enough to get its message to the voters. More money after that doesn't impact the result.
Aren't we trying that already? Citizens United dramatically loosened the rules on campaign finance.
Citizens United had nothing to do with campaign finance. It was about election-related speech by an independent third-party non-profit organization.
Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government
#50The article focuses on demographic representation and campaign reform. There are benefits to both of those, but to me the strongest argument in favor of sortition is that it cleans out the stable every few years. It seems like some government corruption comes from either being so secure in your position that you feel a sense of impunity, or else being so insecure in your position that you promise favors in exchange for later support. Knowing you'd only ever have one term in office, but not who your successor would be, would at least resolve those issues.
On the other hand, it might just push the corruption down the ladder, to the class of functionaries who stay in government as advisors for these people.