I'm for the lottery model:
* people get choosen at random for a term
* decent, but not opulent compensation
* obviously their choice to take the responsibility or deny it
No bros, no parties. You have to bond with others and cope with the differences. (Or you don't get anything done.)
Id hold against this. Our world is getting more and more complex, we need expertise and far-sight, which is hard to come by with a lottery system.
But i also understand the positives about a "citizen council" to break up syndicates.
Maybe a mix of professional politicians, dedicating their life and getting compensated generously to bolster their indipendence and random rotating people with decent compensation and strong veto rights.
Oh, and strong punishment, maybe revokation of certain rights, for misconducting officials.
I'll counter that. The argument that complexity somehow itself
justifies anything is a retreat to the folly of philosopher kings that
Plato wrote an entire work against (you all have heard of "The
Republic" - which careful, thorough readers of political science
understand is a rejection of such simplicity. Indeed all philosopher
kings, like Hitler, Mao, Stalin etc... fail horribly and cause misery
and death)
Furthermore, incumbent conditions foster complexity. Complexity is a
symptom of political failure as much as a cause.
> professional politicians
We are surely seeing that these two words do not belong together in
21st century society. Most of our "politicians" are the antithesis of
"professional", being vain, shallow, corrupt and immoral.
It is surely clear that any randomly selected mature person could
fare better, with minimal training/induction.
With communication technology and "AI" as their new weapons, the
present cadre of egotist politicians are an ever more dangerous breed.
As the OP rightly says, that's because of a corrupt and captured
mainstream and social media landscape that they learn to play rather
than engage in listening, thinking and policy making.
We will have no fair politics or justice until the "lies machine" is
utterly destroyed along with those that ride on it. It's not that we
haven't had lies-machines all along, but part of ur political/civic
duty is to tear it down and counter it - something we have failed to
do in the Internet age.
Real experts, who are quiet civil servants and scientists are being
attacked and displaced precisely because they are ones able to manage
complexity and to communicate rationally. Almost all of these people,
who form the real government, are driven by duty, or pursuit of
truth, not base ambition.
You are confusing some things, but your central point is still correct imo.
Philosopher kings != democratic representants.
Our societal complexity is a result of our cultural evolution and not caused by political failure.
Professional politicans in the most basic sense know their craft and their field of expertise well enough to articulate legalese that achieves something intended and does not get ripped appart by courts or adused by others. Corruption, etc. is not a contradictor of professionalism.
That said, why should randomly selected people be better and not get corrupted or misinformed? Even harder, why should they push urgently needed political change that impacts them and many other negatively (bad short term, good/needed long term)?
Your central point of civic duty and democratic literacy falls on all of us, and right now, imo it requires long term thinking professionals to reform child care, education and as a 2nd order, our media and state. Right now, the populus is not able to drag itself out on its own.
> Philosopher kings != democratic representants. Professional
politicans in the most basic sense know their craft and their field
of expertise well
Indeed. What we see though is a decline in the quality of
representatives who are forced to skew toward immodest grandiosity and
media theatrics instead of statecraft. They forced into a race to the
bottom to present a veneer of "expertise" in everything, and
pontificate confidently.
> Our societal complexity is a result of our cultural evolution and
not caused by political failure.
I'll hold my position here; Culture and politics are not separate. If
politics is the project to attain a "good life" (Aristotle), then
managing complexity is part of that. There is no "perfect" society
that is such a burden on its people it's unfit to live in
(Tocqueville).
> Corruption, etc. is not a contradictor of professionalism.
Your pragmatic slant maybe, but it is not a definition of public
office I recognise or respect. Integrity and professionalism are
bedfellows in my take.
> That said, why should randomly selected people be better and not get
corrupted or misinformed?
This is a very good question. The question, indeed.
I don't think I've even thought about it, but simply started from the
clear perspective (one that I've arrived at reluctantly through
observing the world) that a random person could do no worse than
those who seek power today.
Maybe that's what the "anti-elite" populists wanted to achieve - a
devaluation of politics itself. Ready to offer up their "technical
solutions".
> civic duty and democratic literacy falls on all of us, and right
now,
How do you think real professionals and experts, who are being
excluded from the decision making arena, can be effective in exile?
Working with these guys [0] recently I see the emerging idea of a
functional government in exile ready to "restore from backups" after
DOGE crash the system.
With some caveats, particularly ensuring a baseline level of competence, in a way that is somehow not overly discriminatory, I agree. The challenge then is to train the representatives sufficiently, but I think it could be done. And naturally I think there are significant benefits to this scheme, particularly having fresh faces (and ideas!) and not making the reelection-popularity/wealth-contest constantly reoccur.
Sortition as a scheme fails to reckon with the nature of power and how individuals wield it. There is a reason you only ever see these kinds of citizen’s councils created when legislatures don’t want to deal with particular issues, and most of the time their final reports and recommendations are ignored.
For sortition to work the bodies need to be vested with real power. Are we ready to hand over levers of a complex society to a representative sample of our peers? Or to demand that they be handed over?
Not everyone has to be selected by lottery, we can have a percentage of the total representatives. But I think it is important to have it, so that we break the barrier that political careerism poses. The set of people who are willing to run for office is a very limited set, and in the process of finding them we are filtering out a lot of signal. You keep ignoring the signal for too long, and it becomes a tsunami.
I feel like politics will be automated eventually. We have voters who express intents, then we have politicians who are (in theory) hired to best represent and interpret those intents.
But there's only 1 signal (election/not-election) and it's only delivered every few years. Yes, there's some voter feedback in the interim sometimes, but unless there's also a lot of press and noise around the voter feedback, politicians are unlikely to do anything with it because it probably won't impact re-election.
Ideally, there would be much more interactive feedback between voter and political agent (human or otherwise) carrying out voter intents, especially around informing of unintended repercussions of policy decisions and ultimately forcing voters to have more nuanced policy views.
At least that's what I hope for. What reality says is usually quite different.
When it comes to America, we can say that its not the democracy which is an issue, its the information market is fragile.
Some of the counter views on misinformation, point out that the demand for misinformation can scarcely increase, it’s not like we lack supply in quantity or quality. Yet the total prevalence of Misinfo is relatively low in the content diet of Americans or Europeans. The issue, according to this view, is when authorities repeat misinfo, or use it themselves.
But why does that matter? IF you have a good media ecosystem, then such sale of bad information should be checked. Well, lies are cheap, and if you have a captive media ecosystem you don’t have to deal with such challenges.
This is the case in America. The issue here is not a media bias issue (which exists), it’s a market capture issue on the right, with a closed loop between Political creatures, and media enterprises.
The fragility of the US information market is a structural issue that needs to be resolved, for democracy in US to function effectively.
This was a really interesting read. I've spent a lot of time thinking about incremental changes to our US democracy, but this opened my eyes to some of the preconceptions I have on what a democracy even looks like!
LOL, cargo cult plane thinks is a real plane, it even has two wings, how cute.
Yes, beat yourselves up again in fruitless war. The Indians will save you again, that's how the system works. There there.
USA democracy was founded upon a system they do not comprehend, whose pieces don't exist anymore because they continuously erased it. Even the story of how the Iroquois confederacy seeded their founding fathers was messed up and cannot be fully relied upon.
So, stop fixing the classical portrait. It will look like blurry Jesus messed up by crazy old lady in the end[0].
I'm for the lottery model: * people get choosen at random for a term * decent, but not opulent compensation * obviously their choice to take the responsibility or deny it
No bros, no parties. You have to bond with others and cope with the differences. (Or you don't get anything done.)
Id hold against this. Our world is getting more and more complex, we need expertise and far-sight, which is hard to come by with a lottery system.
But i also understand the positives about a "citizen council" to break up syndicates.
Maybe a mix of professional politicians, dedicating their life and getting compensated generously to bolster their indipendence and random rotating people with decent compensation and strong veto rights.
Oh, and strong punishment, maybe revokation of certain rights, for misconducting officials.
> our world is getting more and more complex,
I'll counter that. The argument that complexity somehow itself justifies anything is a retreat to the folly of philosopher kings that Plato wrote an entire work against (you all have heard of "The Republic" - which careful, thorough readers of political science understand is a rejection of such simplicity. Indeed all philosopher kings, like Hitler, Mao, Stalin etc... fail horribly and cause misery and death)
Furthermore, incumbent conditions foster complexity. Complexity is a symptom of political failure as much as a cause.
> professional politicians
We are surely seeing that these two words do not belong together in 21st century society. Most of our "politicians" are the antithesis of "professional", being vain, shallow, corrupt and immoral.
It is surely clear that any randomly selected mature person could fare better, with minimal training/induction.
With communication technology and "AI" as their new weapons, the present cadre of egotist politicians are an ever more dangerous breed. As the OP rightly says, that's because of a corrupt and captured mainstream and social media landscape that they learn to play rather than engage in listening, thinking and policy making.
We will have no fair politics or justice until the "lies machine" is utterly destroyed along with those that ride on it. It's not that we haven't had lies-machines all along, but part of ur political/civic duty is to tear it down and counter it - something we have failed to do in the Internet age.
Real experts, who are quiet civil servants and scientists are being attacked and displaced precisely because they are ones able to manage complexity and to communicate rationally. Almost all of these people, who form the real government, are driven by duty, or pursuit of truth, not base ambition.
(some light edits)
You are confusing some things, but your central point is still correct imo.
Philosopher kings != democratic representants.
Our societal complexity is a result of our cultural evolution and not caused by political failure.
Professional politicans in the most basic sense know their craft and their field of expertise well enough to articulate legalese that achieves something intended and does not get ripped appart by courts or adused by others. Corruption, etc. is not a contradictor of professionalism.
That said, why should randomly selected people be better and not get corrupted or misinformed? Even harder, why should they push urgently needed political change that impacts them and many other negatively (bad short term, good/needed long term)?
Your central point of civic duty and democratic literacy falls on all of us, and right now, imo it requires long term thinking professionals to reform child care, education and as a 2nd order, our media and state. Right now, the populus is not able to drag itself out on its own.
> Philosopher kings != democratic representants. Professional politicans in the most basic sense know their craft and their field of expertise well
Indeed. What we see though is a decline in the quality of representatives who are forced to skew toward immodest grandiosity and media theatrics instead of statecraft. They forced into a race to the bottom to present a veneer of "expertise" in everything, and pontificate confidently.
> Our societal complexity is a result of our cultural evolution and not caused by political failure.
I'll hold my position here; Culture and politics are not separate. If politics is the project to attain a "good life" (Aristotle), then managing complexity is part of that. There is no "perfect" society that is such a burden on its people it's unfit to live in (Tocqueville).
> Corruption, etc. is not a contradictor of professionalism.
Your pragmatic slant maybe, but it is not a definition of public office I recognise or respect. Integrity and professionalism are bedfellows in my take.
> That said, why should randomly selected people be better and not get corrupted or misinformed?
This is a very good question. The question, indeed.
I don't think I've even thought about it, but simply started from the clear perspective (one that I've arrived at reluctantly through observing the world) that a random person could do no worse than those who seek power today.
Maybe that's what the "anti-elite" populists wanted to achieve - a devaluation of politics itself. Ready to offer up their "technical solutions".
> civic duty and democratic literacy falls on all of us, and right now,
How do you think real professionals and experts, who are being excluded from the decision making arena, can be effective in exile?
Working with these guys [0] recently I see the emerging idea of a functional government in exile ready to "restore from backups" after DOGE crash the system.
[0] https://www.wethebuilders.org/
With some caveats, particularly ensuring a baseline level of competence, in a way that is somehow not overly discriminatory, I agree. The challenge then is to train the representatives sufficiently, but I think it could be done. And naturally I think there are significant benefits to this scheme, particularly having fresh faces (and ideas!) and not making the reelection-popularity/wealth-contest constantly reoccur.
Sortition as a scheme fails to reckon with the nature of power and how individuals wield it. There is a reason you only ever see these kinds of citizen’s councils created when legislatures don’t want to deal with particular issues, and most of the time their final reports and recommendations are ignored.
For sortition to work the bodies need to be vested with real power. Are we ready to hand over levers of a complex society to a representative sample of our peers? Or to demand that they be handed over?
Not everyone has to be selected by lottery, we can have a percentage of the total representatives. But I think it is important to have it, so that we break the barrier that political careerism poses. The set of people who are willing to run for office is a very limited set, and in the process of finding them we are filtering out a lot of signal. You keep ignoring the signal for too long, and it becomes a tsunami.
I feel like politics will be automated eventually. We have voters who express intents, then we have politicians who are (in theory) hired to best represent and interpret those intents.
But there's only 1 signal (election/not-election) and it's only delivered every few years. Yes, there's some voter feedback in the interim sometimes, but unless there's also a lot of press and noise around the voter feedback, politicians are unlikely to do anything with it because it probably won't impact re-election.
Ideally, there would be much more interactive feedback between voter and political agent (human or otherwise) carrying out voter intents, especially around informing of unintended repercussions of policy decisions and ultimately forcing voters to have more nuanced policy views.
At least that's what I hope for. What reality says is usually quite different.
When it comes to America, we can say that its not the democracy which is an issue, its the information market is fragile.
Some of the counter views on misinformation, point out that the demand for misinformation can scarcely increase, it’s not like we lack supply in quantity or quality. Yet the total prevalence of Misinfo is relatively low in the content diet of Americans or Europeans. The issue, according to this view, is when authorities repeat misinfo, or use it themselves.
But why does that matter? IF you have a good media ecosystem, then such sale of bad information should be checked. Well, lies are cheap, and if you have a captive media ecosystem you don’t have to deal with such challenges.
This is the case in America. The issue here is not a media bias issue (which exists), it’s a market capture issue on the right, with a closed loop between Political creatures, and media enterprises.
The fragility of the US information market is a structural issue that needs to be resolved, for democracy in US to function effectively.
This was a really interesting read. I've spent a lot of time thinking about incremental changes to our US democracy, but this opened my eyes to some of the preconceptions I have on what a democracy even looks like!
> legacy systems from the United States
LOL, cargo cult plane thinks is a real plane, it even has two wings, how cute.
Yes, beat yourselves up again in fruitless war. The Indians will save you again, that's how the system works. There there.
USA democracy was founded upon a system they do not comprehend, whose pieces don't exist anymore because they continuously erased it. Even the story of how the Iroquois confederacy seeded their founding fathers was messed up and cannot be fully relied upon.
So, stop fixing the classical portrait. It will look like blurry Jesus messed up by crazy old lady in the end[0].
[0]: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/34388/memory-of-botc...
[dead]