Social media is the problem. We weren't this polarized until after the Bush admin, right as everyone on the planet got online.
Politics used to be civil. Republicans and Democrats in Congress used to go out to lunch together. Hyper online discourse and algorithms that boost rage ended that.
We're all being taught to foam at the mouth to increase screen time.
Having said that, it doesn't seem obvious to me that elected power is actually all that powerful, compared to unelected powers like corporations. I think you could use the same reasoning as pro-sortition arguments, but to argue for more democracy and elections, not less. Or at least that a state/citizen-focused theory of power is inadequate. (Raymond Geuss talks more about this.)
The main problem with choosing representatives by lottery is that the average person just doesn't want to do the job. I know I wouldn't. It's about as appealing as having to do jury duty for three years.
The book proposes financial incentives as a way to address this reluctance, such as paying the person 1.5 times their current salary. But that seems like it will lead to representatives who are only doing it for the money, not because they care about doing a good job.
Part of me wonders what would happen if a lottery were used not to select representatives from among the population at large, but from among the candidates who have won their parties' respective primaries. Of course, then you'd have to decide whether to use weighted selections (which would strongly favor the entrenched parties) or non-weighted (which would give a strong edge to minor parties).
But realistically, sensible term limits seem like they would help achieve a lot of what the proposed lottocracy system would achieve.
I doubt this would work better. the average person simply isn't a good executive. they'd end up getting dominated by the assertive folks. a simpler and easier solution to our problems to enforce approval voting across all elections, local, state and national, which will easily allow for moderates to siphon all votes and moderate the country drastically.
approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.
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 limits for staff, which feels pretty cruel and arbitrary - "Thank you for making a career in public service but you are now legally barred from your chosen career"
I don’t think it solves the core limitation of democracy - limits you to lowest common denominator of what the man on the street thinks. Who is by definition of average intelligence.
It’s all sorts of rubbish and not conducive to solving problems decisively but seems to be the only system where power doesn’t get monopolized
“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” -- William F. Buckley.
Now more than ever. See "Franchise" (1955) by Isaac Asimov for an efficient version.
This is the premise of The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton. In 1984 (100 years after the writing of the book), the King of England is now selected by lottery. Much wildness ensues.
I think this idea (which is properly called sortition) would work even better if combined with the normal kind of democracy.
Most western democracies already have a two-chamber system (commons/lords, congress/senate etc), but those two chambers are elected in very similar ways. Instead, we could make one of them elected by sortition, while keeping the other one a traditional democracy.
I'd personally split the sortition part into per-area committees. There'd be a main committee with members taken from the general populace, whose only job would be to create the rules of who can be chosen for which committee (e.g. only qualified doctors for medicine). That main committee would also manage inter-committee disputes, in cases where it's not obvious whether a particular committee should be given the right to vote on a particular bill.
Why not Plebiscites, updated for the technological age, could function as a mass interface: swipe-based decisions on budgets and policy, where governance emerges from an aggregated collective consciousness rather than elite mediation… thoughts?
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.
This 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.
It 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.
The "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".
Yep, people in this thread are claiming that this doesn’t work.
In fact, it does work, and it is already implemented! Here in Germany we also have the concept of „Bürgerräte“, and we have similar problems as in France (no political power to implement their solutions).
However, one takeaway was that people vastly underestimated how carefully the participants would try to understand the topic at hand. People that would usually just regurgitate angry propaganda were forced to form their own opinion and they did!
IMHO it’s this is a great tool for democracy that is yet underused.
There is a very hilarious genre of political "thinkers" whose entire view of politics is entirely delusional and who are so disconnected from reality that both their diagnosis and their solution looks ridiculous.
I get that Yarvin is an icky fascist bigot, but just read the political thinkers he got his ideas from. The idea that the elected representatives, much less the method by which representatives are chosen, have any meaningful impact on politics is just laughable.
There is a lot of potential in this. Not just for government democracy, but for also introducing democratic elements into tech/AI policy, when that tech has impact comparable to many governments.
I worked in tech, and after some formative experiences, shifted to working on helping ensuring ensure that tech's impact on society can serve the public interest. But that leaves the question of what "what is the public interest"?
Sortitition / lottocracy / deliberative democracy / mini-publics all roughly refer to the same way to answer that question — providing a representative microcosm with the space to deeply examine an issue, and come to a set of recommendations and decisions on it. Unlike with electoral democracy, it's faster to spin up and experiment with, and it's harder for bad actors to entrench power (elections can be useful, but they're one of many tools in the democratic toolbelt).
I've now started an organization focusing on applying this and other democratic paradigms to decision-making about AI (https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/) as a way to solve a variety of challenging governance problems across the AI stack.
If you're curious about it, our ICML paper goes into more detail: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 .
I imagine the random person, if they were to accept, would likely find themselves out of depth and simply outsource most of the job to whoever convinces them they're the right choice.
The system would then morph into a variant of representative democracy. Instead of millions voting for, say, around a thousand of various level representatives, you get a random thousand "voting" for "consultants".
These consultants would be directly hired by the random thousand to do the work for them. They would predicably have marketing campaigns to make themselves seem the right pick. They might even offer their services for free. Demagoguery and corporate sponsorship as usual.
In the end 1000 people would hire, say, 1-1000 consultants to represent them. Thus emulating the original process, or worse. The only difference is the tiny electorate, which increases volatility.
If you'd like to regulate it to prevent this, you'd have to expend an effort and fight similar pressures as with doing it in any other system.
Couple questions .... what is the author's point of origin and experience with "democracy" and/or "democracies"? I mention this as the founding principals of this Lottery thing are more or less "complaints" and not values or principals really. It is very slasdash and hollow.
But this is a fun thought experiment so lets .... move on.
Why *exactly* is democracy the absolute best form of govt known to mankind?
You just kinda slip that in there which is a massive assumption.
And exactly which democracy is best aside from the one proposed?
For that matter exactly WHO? and I do mean WHO says that democracies aren't working? Who the fuck has the balls to say that horseshit premise?
No one is saying that. Not seriously, anywhere. No one.
That ultimately is the fatal flaw for this thought experiment.
There are fundamentally different value judgments from "European" "Democracies" vs US vs Asian as examples.
Lottery based is an interesting system but not really doable the way this site lays out.
3 years is too short to do anything; unless there is a relief value where a certain percentage (by lottery) of that year's cohort can do something critical in any representative form of govt. Incumbency.
You do in fact need a slowly revolving core of representatives who can do proper work over 2-5 terms max. Otherwise its a constant nut house with nothing getting done and not near enough permanence for medium to long term solutions over time.
At the end of the day for me -- I do not think the people behind this thought this through and it shows. There isnt serious skull sweat in this thing and I think it undermines an interesting concept. I also think just because you are frustrated in democratic processes -- you are the problem.
Apathy is a choice. Ignorance is a choice. Frustration is a choice.
If you do not like your form of govt -- move, make peace with it or roll up them sleeves and get busy participating.
32 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] threadSocial media is the problem. We weren't this polarized until after the Bush admin, right as everyone on the planet got online.
Politics used to be civil. Republicans and Democrats in Congress used to go out to lunch together. Hyper online discourse and algorithms that boost rage ended that.
We're all being taught to foam at the mouth to increase screen time.
the problem with most politicians is that they're the sort of people who want to be politicians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Having said that, it doesn't seem obvious to me that elected power is actually all that powerful, compared to unelected powers like corporations. I think you could use the same reasoning as pro-sortition arguments, but to argue for more democracy and elections, not less. Or at least that a state/citizen-focused theory of power is inadequate. (Raymond Geuss talks more about this.)
The book proposes financial incentives as a way to address this reluctance, such as paying the person 1.5 times their current salary. But that seems like it will lead to representatives who are only doing it for the money, not because they care about doing a good job.
And then, of course, there's always a chance that you end up in a "Napoleon of Notting Hill" situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Napoleon_of_Notting_Hill
Part of me wonders what would happen if a lottery were used not to select representatives from among the population at large, but from among the candidates who have won their parties' respective primaries. Of course, then you'd have to decide whether to use weighted selections (which would strongly favor the entrenched parties) or non-weighted (which would give a strong edge to minor parties).
But realistically, sensible term limits seem like they would help achieve a lot of what the proposed lottocracy system would achieve.
approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.
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 limits for staff, which feels pretty cruel and arbitrary - "Thank you for making a career in public service but you are now legally barred from your chosen career"
It’s all sorts of rubbish and not conducive to solving problems decisively but seems to be the only system where power doesn’t get monopolized
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm
Most western democracies already have a two-chamber system (commons/lords, congress/senate etc), but those two chambers are elected in very similar ways. Instead, we could make one of them elected by sortition, while keeping the other one a traditional democracy.
I'd personally split the sortition part into per-area committees. There'd be a main committee with members taken from the general populace, whose only job would be to create the rules of who can be chosen for which committee (e.g. only qualified doctors for medicine). That main committee would also manage inter-committee disputes, in cases where it's not obvious whether a particular committee should be given the right to vote on a particular bill.
The best we can hope for is that those with the most power have our interests at heart.
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.
The Swiss do this. They are one of the populations most satisfied with their government. Referendums work.
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".
In fact, it does work, and it is already implemented! Here in Germany we also have the concept of „Bürgerräte“, and we have similar problems as in France (no political power to implement their solutions).
However, one takeaway was that people vastly underestimated how carefully the participants would try to understand the topic at hand. People that would usually just regurgitate angry propaganda were forced to form their own opinion and they did!
IMHO it’s this is a great tool for democracy that is yet underused.
I get that Yarvin is an icky fascist bigot, but just read the political thinkers he got his ideas from. The idea that the elected representatives, much less the method by which representatives are chosen, have any meaningful impact on politics is just laughable.
I worked in tech, and after some formative experiences, shifted to working on helping ensuring ensure that tech's impact on society can serve the public interest. But that leaves the question of what "what is the public interest"?
Sortitition / lottocracy / deliberative democracy / mini-publics all roughly refer to the same way to answer that question — providing a representative microcosm with the space to deeply examine an issue, and come to a set of recommendations and decisions on it. Unlike with electoral democracy, it's faster to spin up and experiment with, and it's harder for bad actors to entrench power (elections can be useful, but they're one of many tools in the democratic toolbelt).
That thinking lead to https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-de... . That basic approach, has been somewhat picked up by Meta (https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-a-giant-experiment-in-g...) and Open AI (https://aligned.substack.com/p/a-proposal-for-importing-soci..., ~ leading to their democratic inputs and collective alignment work).
I've now started an organization focusing on applying this and other democratic paradigms to decision-making about AI (https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/) as a way to solve a variety of challenging governance problems across the AI stack. If you're curious about it, our ICML paper goes into more detail: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 .
The system would then morph into a variant of representative democracy. Instead of millions voting for, say, around a thousand of various level representatives, you get a random thousand "voting" for "consultants".
These consultants would be directly hired by the random thousand to do the work for them. They would predicably have marketing campaigns to make themselves seem the right pick. They might even offer their services for free. Demagoguery and corporate sponsorship as usual.
In the end 1000 people would hire, say, 1-1000 consultants to represent them. Thus emulating the original process, or worse. The only difference is the tiny electorate, which increases volatility.
If you'd like to regulate it to prevent this, you'd have to expend an effort and fight similar pressures as with doing it in any other system.
But this is a fun thought experiment so lets .... move on.
Why *exactly* is democracy the absolute best form of govt known to mankind? You just kinda slip that in there which is a massive assumption. And exactly which democracy is best aside from the one proposed?
For that matter exactly WHO? and I do mean WHO says that democracies aren't working? Who the fuck has the balls to say that horseshit premise?
No one is saying that. Not seriously, anywhere. No one. That ultimately is the fatal flaw for this thought experiment.
There are fundamentally different value judgments from "European" "Democracies" vs US vs Asian as examples.
Lottery based is an interesting system but not really doable the way this site lays out.
3 years is too short to do anything; unless there is a relief value where a certain percentage (by lottery) of that year's cohort can do something critical in any representative form of govt. Incumbency.
You do in fact need a slowly revolving core of representatives who can do proper work over 2-5 terms max. Otherwise its a constant nut house with nothing getting done and not near enough permanence for medium to long term solutions over time.
At the end of the day for me -- I do not think the people behind this thought this through and it shows. There isnt serious skull sweat in this thing and I think it undermines an interesting concept. I also think just because you are frustrated in democratic processes -- you are the problem.
Apathy is a choice. Ignorance is a choice. Frustration is a choice.
If you do not like your form of govt -- move, make peace with it or roll up them sleeves and get busy participating.