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Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

lottocracy.org

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Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#71

Post by [deleted] »

silenced_trope wrote: post #44
guiriduro wrote: post #41

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 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.

[deleted]

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#72

Post by sirmike_ »

Arainach wrote: post #32
throw310822 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid that mr Buckley would be shocked if he actually met and had a conversation with the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone book.

Mr. Buckley may or may not be shocked, but he's certainly a vocal opponent of a competent effective government, so all of his thoughts on how he'd prefer to be governed should be ignored with extreme prejudice.

According to YOU. What a very poor all or nothing statement. And the reader should never listen to someone who claims all or nothing here or there. Nope. Perhaps throw a bridle on your unbridled "kindly fuck off nuance" view.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#74

Post by pigpop »

I think a much more "American" style of political competition would be to have elected politicians compete at various levels to determine who gets to move on to the next higher position. They already seem to do this informally in many cases by progressing through a career as a politician so why not formalize it? That way instead of your advancement being determined by your party officials or your fundraising it could be based on how well you governed at each level of office with the winner determined by measurable improvements they made.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#75

Post by krapp »

Arainach wrote: post #28
jaggederest wrote: post #21

The 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…

I'll take inexperienced legislators with fresh ideas who understand how the world actually works over 80 year old careerists whose only skill is fundraising and who still see the world through the lens of Cold War great man politics. Long tenure is how you get entrenched power dynamics, dynasties and eventually dictatorships, and government locked in eternal stasis and unable to adapt to modernity.

I'm really starting to think Thomas Jefferson was right and every 20 years we should just burn Washington to the ground, rip up the Constitution, hang every politician and start over, and make the new blood walk through the corpses on their way to work just to keep the fear of God fresh in their hearts.

FFS, Hillary Clinton had the long tenure. She had experience - implicitly as first lady, and explicitly as governor and secretary of state. She campaigned on policy. She lost to a buffoon conman sex pest with no political experience whose reputation hitherto was playing himself on tv.

Am I saying Hillary Clinton was a better person than Donald Trump? No. I'm not even saying she would have been a particularly good President. But I'm just pointing out how little "reputation" actually matters to American voters, because she was obviously vastly more qualified for the job, and if that mattered it wouldn't have been a contest at all. But the one thing Americans hate more than an experienced politician is an experienced legacy politician. FFS the most popular American President in recent history was an actor who had Alzheimers in office, and got advice from his wife's astrologer.

What he have is already an absolute catastrophe, an utter circus. The competent, well-meaning civic minded politicians you're referring to don't exist, nor does the educated, discerning voter base necessary to put them into office. People voted for Donald Trump the second time because they thought he could control the price of eggs. Like there was a fucking knob somewhere and Joe Biden just didn't want to turn it.

The least we can do is try to minimize the damage any specific idiot (in the voting booth or in office) might cause.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#76

Post by nh23423fefe »

MadameMinty wrote: post #66
derektank wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you try to ban lobbying you will incidentally criminalize basically all political speech. White papers are a form of lobbying, providing testimony is a form of lobbying, running an ad campaign is lobbying, speaking with your congressional representative is lobbying.

It'd simply have to be carefully drafted policy rather than an internet comment.

So simple it's indescribable

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#77

Post by Arainach »

pigpop wrote: post #58
Arainach wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't that just reinventing aristocracy?

No. Elected officials have to be elected, which is a control and feedback mechanism.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#78

Post by lapcat »

Two things I find very strange about the criticisms of sortition, as opposed to elections:

1) There are very few prerequisites for electoral candidates, mostly just age minimums (with no maximums). In some but not all cases there's a residency requirement, and in the case of the POTUS, a birthright citizenship requirement. Otherwise, there is no specific requirement for intelligence, knowledge, experience, ethics, etc. Basically, any random citizen who's old enough can run, and win, as long as they can somehow convince enough other people to vote for them. And there are some incredible dumbasses who get elected; I'll mention my own Senator Ron Johnson as particularly noteworthy in that department, but the list is quite long IMO.

2) The random voters who are so distrusted by critics of sortition are the very same people who are entrusted with voting for the candidates in elections that are supposedly superior to sortition. How exactly is that supposed to work, where that outcome, election outcomes, are magically better than the outcomes of voters deliberating among themselves?

What I like about sortition is that I think the odds are a lot better to select honest, good-intentioned, non-corrupt people by lot than by election. The latter tends to pick out the power-hungry, and in a political system where campaigns are privately financed, elections also tend to pick out the financially corrupt.

The situation would be a lot different if for example we had stringent standardized tests as prerequisites for political office, but we don't. Ironically, you have to pass the bar to be a lawyer, but you don't have to pass the bar to be a lawmaker.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#79

Post by delichon »

boroboro4 wrote: post #65
delichon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have confidence in the US electoral system to select representatives of more than usual charisma, but not competence or integrity.

In my opinion even charisma implies higher than average intellect which is already something. We should put more pressure on elected politicians around competence and integrity, sure, but it doesn’t mean random person is going to be better. In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

> In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

I think that intellect may sometimes be weakly and unreliably associated with some kinds of competence, but not with integrity, which is as important. I think power seekers are self-selecting to be more self-serving.

Re: Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

#80

Post by the_snooze »

Arainach wrote: post #77
pigpop wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just reinventing aristocracy?

No. Elected officials have to be elected, which is a control and feedback mechanism.

Yeah, I feel like our form of representative democracy is the least bad option. At the very least, office-holders aren't entitled to their office beyond their term unless they're re-elected.

The fundamental problem is that governing is boring, complicated, and unfulfilling to most people. The most impactful elections to citizens' day-to-day lives (i.e., local offices, state legislatures, and primaries for those) have absolutely abysmal participation rates, even in states that bend over backwards with voter accessibility.

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