The technical term is sortition. And it is my pet unorthodox political position. The legislature should be replaced with an assembly of citizens picked by lottery.
This could realistically incur the same issue as term limits, where you end up moving power and know how away from visible (no matter how flawed) and (somewhat) accountable elected official to the staff and interest groups that are not subject to such limits
I do like sortition for certain scenarios (definitely favour that over a referendum for instance), but I think it'd work better as something that either has to veto some piece of law or can offer amendments or the likes
I would argue that sortition is Democracy. From a purely technical point of view to be anti-sortition is to be anti-democracy, which is fine I guess but begs a lot of questions.
From a practical point of view the selection process is a bit of a red herring though. The current controls break down because the feedback loop is simply way too long to meaningfully affect the process.
While I personally subscribe to the idea that sortition is a superior way of electing representatives I don't see people considering it seriously. However what everyone can understand is using the same process but with sampling with a higher frequency.
In this day and age, why can't we just have electronic direct democracy on policy issues (subject to any logical constraints)? As needed, the votes can optionally be weighed by how informed a voter is. It is like sortition, but the sample size is the population size.
The underlying assumption here seems to be that there is no or even negative value in someone actively specializing their labor into politics, and I just don't think that's true. To the extent we have to "do politics" at all [1], it's probably best handled by the people who have dedicated their lives to becoming politicians, the same way that getting your house wired is probably best done by someone who spent their life becoming an electrician.
In fact, if anything, this system seems like it would be even easier to game compared to the status quo. If you select truly at random from the population you're going to pull a lot of people with not a lot in the way of resources, making for a very easy to bribe block, even if you have to repeat the bribes every few years as people shuffle through. If you don't - if you select randomly from, say, only the group of people who got perfect scores on the SATs, or from white land owning males - you're practically begging for tacit collusion as they realize they have essentially the same power that HOAs do when it comes to what we'll do next. Democratically elected politicians at least have enough sense to understand they have to balance their short run desires with their long run interests in continuing to be democratically elected politicians.
Article evidently recommends satisficing over optimizing employee selection and performance. Which has indeed been proven to be the better option in almost all scenarios, but is sadly forgotten in the move-fast-and-break-things venture-capital-funded era.
I support the idea of sortition, which appears to be guiding idea behind "Assembling America". However, I'm not quite sure what this has to do with meritocracy.
From my perspective, the fundamental justification for sortition is that randomly selected citizens are more representative of the general public and, crucially, less corrupt and corruptible on average than elected representatives.
Why less corrupt? Because I think people who seek power are more corrupt and self-centered on average than those who have power thrust upon them. Why less corruptible? Because randomly selected citizens don't have to fundraise for political campaigns, and they are merely temporary occupants of their seats, not running for reelection and becoming career politicians. As far as I'm concerned, political campaign contributions are legalized bribery. It would be easier to police citizen legislator corruption, because we allow crap from elected officials—campaign contributions, gifted travel, post-legislator lobbying jobs—that we really should make totally illegally and jailable. A lot of "working class" politicians suddenly become super-wealthy after leaving office, and we all know it's quid pro quo. Just outright ban that crap and strictly audit former legislators.
* Campbell's Law (a variant of Goodhart's Law) states that the more a metric is used for social decision-making, the more it will be subject to corruption which distorts and corrupts not only the metric itself, but the very social processes it was meant to measure *
I just had a friend complain to me about LeetCode, saying that it's meaningless since everyone just mindlessly grinds the problem sets.
I pointed out to him that it's called studying for the test.
First, we need an actual meritocracy --- the purest forms of that I've ever experienced were when in the military when in a unit with an officer who both had good ethics _and_ a good understanding the people under his command, and a school system which I briefly attended when I was very young --- my understanding of the school system based on my recollection and how it was explained to me by my parents in the light of more typical schools was that classes were divided between social and academic: academic classes (English and other languages, math, science) were attended at one's ability level, with a four year cap through eighth grade (after which the cap was removed) and social classes (homeroom, social studies, physical education, home economics and shop class) were attended at one's age level. In addition to grades K--12, many of the teachers were accredited as faculty at a local college, and if need be, students were either transported to that college, or professors from the college would come to the school to teach classes. It was not uncommon for students to graduate from high school and simultaneously be awarded a college diploma.
Random selection prevents a dogma from taking roots. If we consider a dogma as an empremeral something that's too complex for one mind, but in a stable group of like-minded people it can settle and grow like some poisonous weed. Shuffling the people by popular vote or by other means is like replacing the soil where that weed grows.
Besides the curious absence of the word 'sortition'. Their historical examples are mostly totally wrong or missing key bits of nuance. Their example of picking the Doge of Venice misses that the convoluted process of "randomly" picking the doge isn't that random. They randomly choose electors only from the great families and randomly choose candidates from the great families and then choose. This is like if we chose the President my randomly choosing electors amongst the Senate, Governor, and the House, who would then choose candidates from amongst that same group, then randomly choose electors to decide amongst the candidates. Their example of hereditary monarchy assumes that murder and killing off competitors was common, however in European history that was pretty rare (instead putting them in the church was the way to thin the herd). If anything switch from gavelkind (all sons get a claim and split the lands between them) and going to a pure primogeniture succession greatly reduced said murdering and warring by reducing claimants.
My experience with KPIs also doesn't match the poster. KPIs are mostly ignored and it ends up going back to relationships and who has a better "deck" of accomplishments each year.
This perspective under-appreciates the role of a leader's charisma when it comes to attracting staff that will actually execute the ideas of that leader.
Anyone who has worked in a presidential administration (or a congressional office) can tell you that a leader is effective if and only if they have staff that believes in their message and agenda, and that is willing and able to execute on that agenda.
The practical reality here is that charisma isn't just a way of gaming the "getting elected" part of the job, it's also a requirement to be effective at the job.
Yes, especially as prime minister or president, you need to be the face of the country. For everyone: not just your party. And while listening to the public is an important part of the job, sometimes you also need to explain things to the public. Same with ministers, to a slightly lesser degree.
I feel one downside of a district-based system like in the US is that it's harder to build up a healthy mix of representatives, where some are more on the charismatic side and others more on the technical "policy wonk" side. Everyone needs to win their own elections, so it's biased too much towards the charismatic side.
There is an interesting example of random selection of leadership from the Bible when the apostles replaced Judas. The criteria were agreed upon and then lots drawn.
Acts 1:21-26 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.” So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
Can you imagine this practice replacing the Papal conclave? Or, pastor selection at your favorite Protestant group?
The obsession with meritocracy needs to be toned down a bit. In my opinion, the very idea of merit is fuzzy and lives right beside corruption and bias.
Merit is measured in imperfect ways, by other people, and fundamentally, we don't want a hierarchy of classes, even if we claim the higher rankings/elites have merited it.
Human dignity isn't contingent on outperforming others, and everyone would likely rather live somewhere that doesn't feel like constant competition is needed to enjoy leisure, food, shelter, pastimes, etc.
When it comes to who we should trust for critical work, taking decisions on our behalf, etc., we do want someone qualified. I find the idea of "qualification/qualified" much nicer than "merit". The latter seems to imply a deserved outsized reward, like it justifies not why you are given the responsibility of something important, but why you are allowed to be richer, higher ranking, etc., than others.
> Directly select candidates at random for positions from an eligibility pool. Set and maintain the eligibility standard (such as an exam) by randomly selected oversight board to keep it updated and prevent the standard from being manipulated or gamed.
what? is this like a joke? an "eligibility pool" with "an exam" is going to be....."random" ?
sure! we did this and it's all random white men worth billions of dollars. So weird those were the only people that could pass "the exam"! But we have no idea which white male billionaires it will be, so it's "random" !
> In his 2019 book The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits poses that meritocracy is responsible for the exacerbation of social stratification, to the detriment of much of the general population. He introduces the idea of "snowball inequality", a perpetually widening gap between elite workers and members of the middle class. While the elite obtain exclusive positions thanks to their wealth of demonstrated merit, they occupy jobs and oust middle class workers from the core of economic events. The elites use their high earnings to secure the best education for their own children, so that they may enter the world of work with a competitive advantage over those who did not have the same opportunities. Thus, the cycle continues with each generation.
> In his book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, the American political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that the meritocratic ideal has become a moral and political problem for contemporary Western societies. He contends that the meritocratic belief that personal success is solely based on individual merit and effort has led to a neglection of the common good, the erosion of solidarity, and the rise of inequality. Sandel's criticism concerns the widespread notion that those who achieve success deserve it because of their intelligence, talent and effort. Instead, he argues that this belief is flawed since it ignores the role of luck and external circumstances, such as social and external factors, which are beyond an individual's control.[91]
Yep you can read in the same article that the word “meritocracy” was originally coined as a perjorative word intended to highlight how “merit” is obviously a function of social class and money. It’s wild that everyone is using “merit” and “meritocracy” as though it somehow avoids elitism, when in reality it’s a sneaky way to cement biases without the appearance of bias. Of course people should be judged on their skills and not their wealth. But, how’d they acquire those skills, and why would anyone assume the money didn’t help? Of course it’s a self-reinforcing system. What I don’t know is what the alternative is. Randomness? Maybe, but I’m not convinced.
> Directly select candidates at random for positions from an eligibility pool. Set and maintain the eligibility standard (such as an exam) by randomly selected oversight board to keep it updated and prevent the standard from being manipulated or gamed.
We don't want to discourage people from improving once they've met the bar. Learning a skill is often logarithmically distributed: it costs just as much to learn the first 50% as the next 25% and so on. At a minimum, to keep people cost-agnostic, we need
d/dx Pr(selected | didn't learn x%) ~ log(x%)
or
selection weight = [x log x - x + 1] * C
Note that x is on a scale from 1 to 0, where a 0 means there is nothing more you can improve at the skill, and a 1 means you need to improve at everything.
I recommend people read the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. The most admired leaders were the people who positioned themselves to receive admiration, but they also tended to be the least effective. Likewise the most effective leaders, according to various metrics, tended to be people who humbly avoided the media and self-promotion.
My take away from this is that uniformed people will believe exactly what you tell them to believe. The tremendous effort that goes into that distracts from the responsibilities or running an organization. So, don't let the unexperienced dictate the criteria for success. I see this a lot in software, people without experience attempting to artificially dictate the terms of success.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 64.3 ms ] threadI do like sortition for certain scenarios (definitely favour that over a referendum for instance), but I think it'd work better as something that either has to veto some piece of law or can offer amendments or the likes
From a practical point of view the selection process is a bit of a red herring though. The current controls break down because the feedback loop is simply way too long to meaningfully affect the process.
While I personally subscribe to the idea that sortition is a superior way of electing representatives I don't see people considering it seriously. However what everyone can understand is using the same process but with sampling with a higher frequency.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/
https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
In fact, if anything, this system seems like it would be even easier to game compared to the status quo. If you select truly at random from the population you're going to pull a lot of people with not a lot in the way of resources, making for a very easy to bribe block, even if you have to repeat the bribes every few years as people shuffle through. If you don't - if you select randomly from, say, only the group of people who got perfect scores on the SATs, or from white land owning males - you're practically begging for tacit collusion as they realize they have essentially the same power that HOAs do when it comes to what we'll do next. Democratically elected politicians at least have enough sense to understand they have to balance their short run desires with their long run interests in continuing to be democratically elected politicians.
[1]: Which I don't admit we should in the first place, cf https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm for one reason why.
From my perspective, the fundamental justification for sortition is that randomly selected citizens are more representative of the general public and, crucially, less corrupt and corruptible on average than elected representatives.
Why less corrupt? Because I think people who seek power are more corrupt and self-centered on average than those who have power thrust upon them. Why less corruptible? Because randomly selected citizens don't have to fundraise for political campaigns, and they are merely temporary occupants of their seats, not running for reelection and becoming career politicians. As far as I'm concerned, political campaign contributions are legalized bribery. It would be easier to police citizen legislator corruption, because we allow crap from elected officials—campaign contributions, gifted travel, post-legislator lobbying jobs—that we really should make totally illegally and jailable. A lot of "working class" politicians suddenly become super-wealthy after leaving office, and we all know it's quid pro quo. Just outright ban that crap and strictly audit former legislators.
I just had a friend complain to me about LeetCode, saying that it's meaningless since everyone just mindlessly grinds the problem sets.
I pointed out to him that it's called studying for the test.
My experience with KPIs also doesn't match the poster. KPIs are mostly ignored and it ends up going back to relationships and who has a better "deck" of accomplishments each year.
Anyone who has worked in a presidential administration (or a congressional office) can tell you that a leader is effective if and only if they have staff that believes in their message and agenda, and that is willing and able to execute on that agenda.
The practical reality here is that charisma isn't just a way of gaming the "getting elected" part of the job, it's also a requirement to be effective at the job.
I feel one downside of a district-based system like in the US is that it's harder to build up a healthy mix of representatives, where some are more on the charismatic side and others more on the technical "policy wonk" side. Everyone needs to win their own elections, so it's biased too much towards the charismatic side.
Acts 1:21-26 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.” So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.” Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
Can you imagine this practice replacing the Papal conclave? Or, pastor selection at your favorite Protestant group?
The Copts still pick their pope by lot. Of course only from three preselected candidates but still.
Merit is measured in imperfect ways, by other people, and fundamentally, we don't want a hierarchy of classes, even if we claim the higher rankings/elites have merited it.
Human dignity isn't contingent on outperforming others, and everyone would likely rather live somewhere that doesn't feel like constant competition is needed to enjoy leisure, food, shelter, pastimes, etc.
When it comes to who we should trust for critical work, taking decisions on our behalf, etc., we do want someone qualified. I find the idea of "qualification/qualified" much nicer than "merit". The latter seems to imply a deserved outsized reward, like it justifies not why you are given the responsibility of something important, but why you are allowed to be richer, higher ranking, etc., than others.
what? is this like a joke? an "eligibility pool" with "an exam" is going to be....."random" ?
sure! we did this and it's all random white men worth billions of dollars. So weird those were the only people that could pass "the exam"! But we have no idea which white male billionaires it will be, so it's "random" !
> In his 2019 book The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits poses that meritocracy is responsible for the exacerbation of social stratification, to the detriment of much of the general population. He introduces the idea of "snowball inequality", a perpetually widening gap between elite workers and members of the middle class. While the elite obtain exclusive positions thanks to their wealth of demonstrated merit, they occupy jobs and oust middle class workers from the core of economic events. The elites use their high earnings to secure the best education for their own children, so that they may enter the world of work with a competitive advantage over those who did not have the same opportunities. Thus, the cycle continues with each generation.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Books
> In his book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, the American political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that the meritocratic ideal has become a moral and political problem for contemporary Western societies. He contends that the meritocratic belief that personal success is solely based on individual merit and effort has led to a neglection of the common good, the erosion of solidarity, and the rise of inequality. Sandel's criticism concerns the widespread notion that those who achieve success deserve it because of their intelligence, talent and effort. Instead, he argues that this belief is flawed since it ignores the role of luck and external circumstances, such as social and external factors, which are beyond an individual's control.[91]
* Ibid
We don't want to discourage people from improving once they've met the bar. Learning a skill is often logarithmically distributed: it costs just as much to learn the first 50% as the next 25% and so on. At a minimum, to keep people cost-agnostic, we need
or Note that x is on a scale from 1 to 0, where a 0 means there is nothing more you can improve at the skill, and a 1 means you need to improve at everything.Plus, you can't get much worse than the 2014 Committee for Science, Space and Technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI
My take away from this is that uniformed people will believe exactly what you tell them to believe. The tremendous effort that goes into that distracts from the responsibilities or running an organization. So, don't let the unexperienced dictate the criteria for success. I see this a lot in software, people without experience attempting to artificially dictate the terms of success.