Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

thewalrus.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#61

Post by haolez »

macintux wrote: post #34
haolez wrote: post #6

I 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.

“Institutional memory”. It’s the first time I’ve heard this term. I like it! Is this common in public administration literature?

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#62

Post by todd-davies »

macspoofing wrote: post #28
1556 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "tweaking" that you refer to sounds exactly like British immigration policy in the decades preceding the EU referendum. It didn't solve anything, resentment just built up and eventually overflowed. And the end result is far more damaging than it would have been to just listen in the first place.

If they didn't adjust the policy they would be in the same place as Britain is with Brexit today.

I think this has a point, though the author's meaning is ambiguous.

To elaborate, if the Swiss govt directly implemented popular policy viewpoints, then fears of immigration could have brought about a Brexit type situation in a way similar to how the UK Government had a yes/no referendum that implemented the 'popular' policy of Brexit.

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#63

Post by wool_gather »

DayDollar wrote: post #46
wpskidd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Nothing in your scheme prevents corruption outside its designated lines any more than what we have already. So I have a counter-proposal: why don't we just skip the legitimization step and move straight to the life sentences?

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#64

Post by wool_gather »

buboard wrote: post #45

While 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 s…

That Venetian scheme is interesting, but ultimately it reminds me of a non-cryptographer trying to roll their own secure random number generator. Thirty chosen by lot, then by lot reduced to nine? Eh? Just choose nine to start with.

Moreover (on the assumption that all the people chosen at each step are on the Council, which isn't clear) this looks like a system that will be absolutely rife with horsetrading and intrigue: "I'll vote for you on the eleven, as long as you (vote for P to the forty-one|support my housing bill|etc)". It may not be corruption from outside, but the intricate machinations of an in-group don't lend themselves to representative democracy either.

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#65

Post by mattkrause »

rayiner wrote: post #59
js2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "campaign finance" appears on this page 45 times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC Maybe you could say "technically, the case invalidated restrictions on campaign related advertising by third parties, so-called soft money. Though this may be commonly referred to as campaign finance, strictly speaking, that's not correct." I think very few non-lawyers would say the case "had nothing to do…

The specific provision at issue in Citizens United was part of the campaign finance laws for the same reason the Patriot Act is called what it is. But it had nothing to do with financing of campaigns. It involved speech prohibitions on corporations and labor unions unrelated to campaigns.

What?

The issue the heart of Citizens United v. FEC (i.e., the Federal Elections Commission) was whether a non-profit's funding of a TV special criticizing a candidate violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

I guess it's technically true that the decision doesn't allow more money to flow directly to the campaign, and there's not /supposed/ to be coordination with campaigns either (wink wink, nudge nudge), but it's very obvious that CU increased the flow and role of money in elections.

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#66

Post by buboard »

wool_gather wrote: post #64
buboard wrote: post #45

While 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 s…

That Venetian scheme is interesting, but ultimately it reminds me of a non-cryptographer trying to roll their own secure random number generator. Thirty chosen by lot, then by lot reduced to nine? Eh? Just choose nine to start with. Moreover (on the assumption that all the people chosen at each step are on the Council, which isn't clear) this looks like a system that will be absolutely rife with horsetrading and intr…

> Just choose nine to start with.

They probably wanted multiple rounds to minimize lottery fraud

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#67

Post by buboard »

Zenst wrote: post #11

If we had a more granular democratic say that was counted above and beyond a token X in a limited choice of option every 4-5 years with those options promises being no guarantee that what was on the tin is what you will get. Then maybe we would have more harmony and progress. Imagine if you will that every voter had the ability to submit their idea's for other voters to support/debate and the top ones go onto being v…

> they are not zero.

People already did elect the Nazi party and Hitler, multiple times. Someone needs to calculate the odds, but the probability of getting Kkk by chance is much lower

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#68

Post by macintux »

haolez wrote: post #61
macintux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Institutional memory”. It’s the first time I’ve heard this term. I like it! Is this common in public administration literature?

I've probably heard it somewhere before, but I was translating from the phrase I use a lot in computer world: tribal knowledge.

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#69

Post by DayDollar »

wool_gather wrote: post #63
DayDollar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Nothing in your scheme prevents corruption outside its designated lines any more than what we have already. So I have a counter-proposal: why don't we just skip the legitimization step and move straight to the life sentences?

Its basically a free market for power- and in a market for power, nobody trust one another- so game theory tells us, everyone will try to make secret agreements, and then go all in to get the most out of it.

And if all that lobbying money piled up , goes into the organized corruption, there is little left for the rest of the power percentage.

Re: We Should Let a Lottery Decide Our Government

#70

Post by BurningFrog »

lostmyoldone wrote: post #57
BurningFrog wrote: post #35

Earlier 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.

Political parties and their representatives stopped trying to only get their message to voters a long time ago. Today they want to target - and preferably close to drown - each person with the sequence of messages, video clips, social media reactions, and sound bites that are most likely to get you to vote for them, based on as much data as possible, and oftentimes both using and abusing every cognitive weakness we h…

That's your personal analysis.

What I said wasn't my opinion, it's the consensus from the research that's been done on this.

Anyone who lived through the 2010 California governors race could also see Brown being outspent 5:1, and win easily.

There is a correlation/causation illusion here: The (A) winner in votes usually also has the (B) biggest donation to the campaign. Can you see the two main reasons why A causes B, and not the reverse?

Post reply on HN