The diagnosis I largely agree with. To the point I no longer identify as a (small-d) democrat, it is the tyrrany of the mob's choice of (usually reprehensible) representative, who will have lied and pacted with corrupt elites to obtain his/her position, and been nominally elected by the ignorant. Anyone who wants power should by that fact be excluded. The solution however (lottery-election) is absurd. We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect.
Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
41–50 of 105 posts
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#42This is the kind of naive nonsense that children come up with. Anyone who has done jury service knows how thick and incompetent a random sampling of the population is.
If you want effective rulers, you need Roman democracy. Each position is held only for a year, and you either win election to the next rank, or you’re out.
Corbyns and Bernies can’t just sit in the same seat for 50 years without ever doing anything. Morons can’t get to be ruler. Every step is an intense competition, encouraging boldness in public service.
They also had an amazing system for war declarations… only those eligible to fight were eligible to vote whether to declare war. The old and the weak were not allowed to vote in those specific ballots.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#43Frankly it couldn't work any worse than our current system. the problem with most politicians is that they're the sort of people who want to be politicians
Our current system works very well. It provides predictability and protects the rights of people. That's also why it's heavily biased against rapid changes. It's not _perfect_ for sure.
But the sortition-based systems are in general quite terrible exactly because they lack the feedback loops that keep societies stable. The main problem with the current administration, for example, is its disdain for these checks and balances and desire to move fast and break all the written and unwritten traditions.
There are also examples of failed sortition-based systems. I can give you the Soviet Union as one example. On paper, it was ruled by the Supreme Council ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Soviet_of_the_Soviet_U... ). Its delegates were chosen mostly randomly from workers and then approved by a public vote. Yet it was a complete rubber-stamp organization with zero actual power.
Sortition made sure of that, people couldn't form reliable alliances and power-hungry people who could initiate real reforms almost never actually got chosen.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#44The diagnosis I largely agree with. To the point I no longer identify as a (small-d) democrat, it is the tyrrany of the mob's choice of (usually reprehensible) representative, who will have lied and pacted with corrupt elites to obtain his/her position, and been nominally elected by the ignorant. Anyone who wants power should by that fact be excluded. The solution however (lottery-election) is absurd. We should inste…
> We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect.
How do we prove non-evil?
Also the exam part brings to mind the Chinese imperial exams for civil service.
I don't know whether that's good or bad, it didn't work out well for them.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if you try to place limits on staffers, then you’ll find even more legislation being drafted by lobbyists.
Outlaw lobbying/lobbyists. What's next?
This seems like an easy proposal, but I don't see many case studies of it being successfully implemented.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#46The issue with randomly selected representation is that the support staff start to become the ones who effectively make the decisions. This is the same issue with term limits (which to be clear, I'm in favor of, but we have to go in with our eyes open), which is that e.g. the congressional staffers gain power, especially if they persist across the end of the term limit. In these kinds of cases, you almost need term l…
Great. Now we have inexperienced legislators, inexperienced aides, and experienced lobbyists. That's definitely going to be an improvement rather than an absolute catastrophe. Term limits are like so many populist ideas: they sound great until you think at all about the consequences. Effective government requires people with a long tenure. That's how you learn how the system operates, that's how you build the relatio…
In my own defense, the kinds of term limits I'm talking about are much lengthier than most people start out wanting, I think. I would term limit senators at 5 terms, perhaps, and representatives at 12 or 15? I think the issue is not so much long tenures per se as losing relevance by spending an entire lifetime in one position in government.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#47Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#48It would be better to hold referendums instead. An important decision should be brought directly to the populace rather than be driven by the whims of the currently elected party in power (regardless of political stripes). Examples of important questions are: Should we allow X people to immigrate per year? Should we go to war with country Y?Should the new tax rate be Z?
The Swiss do this. They are one of the populations most satisfied with their government. Referendums work.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#49So called democracy is already "hacked". What you do is create a two party system in most countries, which provides the illusion of choice.
What "most countries" have a two-party system? From the summary below, most democracies actually seem to not have one. Spain, for example, used to be rather binary in early 2k, but its parliament has diversified since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system Maybe Americans should question why new parties cannot be formed that actually represent their people instead of looking to replace democracy entirely wit…
New Zealand isn’t on that list, but two parties generally take 70-80% of the vote. Last election (~65%) was an outlier due to the two leaders being pretty unpopular.
However, NZ has a proportional voting system that leads to coalitions forming governments. This is considered a good thing, but can lead to…interesting outcomes. The current government is very much the dog being wagged by a couple of nasty tails. Current PM is a weak “I've run a company so can run a country” type.
Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
#50The "let's pick people at random to discuss hairy topics" has been done at least three times in France in the form of "Convention Citoyenne".
In each case, people came up with relatively "popular" solutions (one of them is still in progress)
In each case, the elected officials all but ignored the output, on the ground that the body had not been elected, was manipulated by experts, had no responsibility and accountability, etc...
Anyone who solves this will indeed have found an improvement over elective democracy.
In the case of the US, a lower hanging fruit would be getting out of "elections that can easily be bought by corporations with litteral money".