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Athens -- a city built by slaves with riches obtained by military conquest, for the exclusive benefit of men. A poor model to emulate; we can do better. Never

Athens -- a city built by slaves with riches obtained by military conquest, for the exclusive benefit of men. A poor model to emulate; we can do better. Nevertheless, I think Sortition is a very interesting approach we should consider implementing.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>a city built by slaves with riches obtained by military conquest, for the exclusive benefit of men. That applies to every major capital city in Europe with a colonial past, from London and Amsterdam to Paris and Vienna.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Actually, that applies to pretty much everywhere in the world. Of course no-one is suggesting to emulate Athenian society as it was, it's quite odd to suggest otherwise as the comment you're replying to does. Athenian democracy was momentous and a big step forward at a time when the standard was a despotic ruler.
  - watwut 6y ago
    It depends a lot on who you was. The people who enjoyed that democracy were only minority of the population - the rest was not free nor had a say.
- ginko 6y ago
  >and Vienna What Austrian colonies would those be?
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed several other peoples who chafed under Austro-Hungarian rule, namely Serbs, Slovaks, Rusyns, and Transylvanian Romanians. You ought to have heard about this, because it was the spark that ignited World War I, after all. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there was grumbling from the peripheries about its riches going to a foreign people in the center, just as one heard from the colonies that other European powers set up overseas.
    - ginko 6y ago
      > The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed several other peoples who chafed under Austro-Hungarian rule, namely Serbs, Slovaks, Rusyns, and Transylvanian Romanians. None of these were colonies though. And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        > None of these were colonies though. Some scholars of colonialism have considered them such, especially considering policies by which the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave land in its eastern and southern marches to magnates from Central Europe. > And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Serbs were not limited to Ottoman-occupied Serbia or to the nascent independent Serbian state, they also lived (as they continue to today) in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in Vojvodina. As I said, it was Serbian grievances against Austro-Hungarian rule that sparked World War I when Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo – this is basic schoolbook stuff.
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Oh, silly me, they weren't? Then what do you call the occupation of your country under a foreign power? It's not like the Austrians asked the occupied regions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania: "Hey, are you guys OK with us ruling you? Because if not, we're totally cool about it and we'll just leave you be, no strings attached." In case you missed history class, WW1 started because, among other things, due to Serbian revolts against Austrian rule.
        ginko 6y ago
        You're applying standards of a modern nation state to a historical multi-ethnic empire. These regions were not occupied but simply under government rule. Of course with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century there were signs and instability starting to show up. The split into an Austrian and a Hungarian part was the first step in satisfying nationalist grievances. Believe me. I'm keenly aware of the causes of WW1. Maybe it's you who isn't aware that Franz Ferdinand himself was planning to federalize the empire[1]. Of course this never took place since he was assassinated by Serbian nationalists and then WW1 and the eventual dissolution of Austria-Hungary happened. And again: 'Colony' in modern parlance generally refers to overseas territories [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austr...
a_imho 6y ago
Sortition is a very interesting approach we should consider implementing This One Trick The Elites Hate, You Would Not Believe it. Seriously, I do not see any solution besides sortition that has a chance to enable power structures which actually serve the common people.
- tragomaskhalos 6y ago
  Given the idea of public offices allocated by lot to people who, virtually by definition, would have absolutely no idea what the job entailed, one imagines a "Yes, Minister" style class of civil servants with whom the real power actually resided. I wonder if there is any evidence of that, or if the appointees genuinely winged it / learned on the job. I'm pretty sure I'd want a Sir Humphrey holding the hand of the guy in charge of the water supply, for example.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I wonder if the gap between "knowledge required for the job" and "knowledge the average citizen has" wasn't rather small then. Note the "citizen" part - they tended to be more of an elite than citizens today, which are almost everybody.
    - tragomaskhalos 6y ago
      That's an excellent point actually; in the modern world we are so used to high levels of complexity in every field that we forget that this is a recent and not entirely welcome phenomenon - to cherry pick one minor example, people of my age will in their youth have been able to fix a wide variety problems with their car (or have a friend who could do so), today not so much. The systems, in both their technical and organisational natures, would have been far simpler in Athens.
  - sep_field 6y ago
    Currently public offices are allocated by vote to people who have absolutely no idea what the job entails, yet are seeking power. So picking people randomly by lot does seem superior to me vs. picking people who want power. Maybe we could make it even better by, instead of picking people at random, picking them by pools of capability. So for instance the person in charge of the water supply could be chosen by sortition of plumbers.
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
We should absolutely not implement sortition without some form of filtering to ensure the pool contains only qualified individuals, but that pushes the goalpost to selecting a benevolent committee which brings us back to the current situation. From the Central Limit Theorem, we would end up with mostly candidates from the middle of the pool. The fact that 'average' people are in possibly important positions a) enables malicious actors to manipulate them much easier than having more qualified (or smarter people) and b) puts potentially unqualified people in important positions. I do not suggest that the current state of affairs is better either, but considering, for example that a very large portion of people in the US are Qanons, putting them in any important position is definitely not a good idea.
- krapp 6y ago
  QAnons are already in positions of power throughout the American government. You can't have a democracy and not have a significant cultural and political movement be represented, even if it is crackpot lunacy and a Trojan horse for white supremacy. That's on the US and its poisonous political culture for letting QAnon get big enough to matter. Now it matters and America and the Republican party are stuck with the ramifications of QAnon having become popular enough to win elections.
- ozim 6y ago
  Well I imagine that it could work without ensuring anything. If sortition would be used to get people to serve in parliament. Then it works as usual because parliament consist mostly of people who don't need to be qualified at all. They vote for prime minister and then that prime minister assembles government with ministers that are qualified specialists. In the end parliament votes if they trust that selection of prime minister and done. In the end I just came to conclusion that whole voting for parliament members is useless because I can imagine it would not be much worse than random selection from pool of interested people. You also remove issue with people who are handing out places on voting cards because a lot of people just vote on the first person on the list of political party. I can imagine political parties are not going to change status qua :)

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>a city built by slaves with riches obtained by military conquest, for the exclusive benefit of men. That applies to every major capital city in Europe with a colonial past, from London and Amsterdam to Paris and Vienna.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
Actually, that applies to pretty much everywhere in the world. Of course no-one is suggesting to emulate Athenian society as it was, it's quite odd to suggest otherwise as the comment you're replying to does. Athenian democracy was momentous and a big step forward at a time when the standard was a despotic ruler.
- watwut 6y ago
  It depends a lot on who you was. The people who enjoyed that democracy were only minority of the population - the rest was not free nor had a say.
ginko 6y ago
>and Vienna What Austrian colonies would those be?
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed several other peoples who chafed under Austro-Hungarian rule, namely Serbs, Slovaks, Rusyns, and Transylvanian Romanians. You ought to have heard about this, because it was the spark that ignited World War I, after all. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there was grumbling from the peripheries about its riches going to a foreign people in the center, just as one heard from the colonies that other European powers set up overseas.
  - ginko 6y ago
    > The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed several other peoples who chafed under Austro-Hungarian rule, namely Serbs, Slovaks, Rusyns, and Transylvanian Romanians. None of these were colonies though. And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > None of these were colonies though. Some scholars of colonialism have considered them such, especially considering policies by which the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave land in its eastern and southern marches to magnates from Central Europe. > And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Serbs were not limited to Ottoman-occupied Serbia or to the nascent independent Serbian state, they also lived (as they continue to today) in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in Vojvodina. As I said, it was Serbian grievances against Austro-Hungarian rule that sparked World War I when Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo – this is basic schoolbook stuff.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      Oh, silly me, they weren't? Then what do you call the occupation of your country under a foreign power? It's not like the Austrians asked the occupied regions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania: "Hey, are you guys OK with us ruling you? Because if not, we're totally cool about it and we'll just leave you be, no strings attached." In case you missed history class, WW1 started because, among other things, due to Serbian revolts against Austrian rule.
      - ginko 6y ago
        You're applying standards of a modern nation state to a historical multi-ethnic empire. These regions were not occupied but simply under government rule. Of course with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century there were signs and instability starting to show up. The split into an Austrian and a Hungarian part was the first step in satisfying nationalist grievances. Believe me. I'm keenly aware of the causes of WW1. Maybe it's you who isn't aware that Franz Ferdinand himself was planning to federalize the empire[1]. Of course this never took place since he was assassinated by Serbian nationalists and then WW1 and the eventual dissolution of Austria-Hungary happened. And again: 'Colony' in modern parlance generally refers to overseas territories [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austr...

a_imho 6y ago

Sortition is a very interesting approach we should consider implementing This One Trick The Elites Hate, You Would Not Believe it. Seriously, I do not see any solution besides sortition that has a chance to enable power structures which actually serve the common people.

tragomaskhalos 6y ago
Given the idea of public offices allocated by lot to people who, virtually by definition, would have absolutely no idea what the job entailed, one imagines a "Yes, Minister" style class of civil servants with whom the real power actually resided. I wonder if there is any evidence of that, or if the appointees genuinely winged it / learned on the job. I'm pretty sure I'd want a Sir Humphrey holding the hand of the guy in charge of the water supply, for example.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I wonder if the gap between "knowledge required for the job" and "knowledge the average citizen has" wasn't rather small then. Note the "citizen" part - they tended to be more of an elite than citizens today, which are almost everybody.
  - tragomaskhalos 6y ago
    That's an excellent point actually; in the modern world we are so used to high levels of complexity in every field that we forget that this is a recent and not entirely welcome phenomenon - to cherry pick one minor example, people of my age will in their youth have been able to fix a wide variety problems with their car (or have a friend who could do so), today not so much. The systems, in both their technical and organisational natures, would have been far simpler in Athens.
- sep_field 6y ago
  Currently public offices are allocated by vote to people who have absolutely no idea what the job entails, yet are seeking power. So picking people randomly by lot does seem superior to me vs. picking people who want power. Maybe we could make it even better by, instead of picking people at random, picking them by pools of capability. So for instance the person in charge of the water supply could be chosen by sortition of plumbers.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago

We should absolutely not implement sortition without some form of filtering to ensure the pool contains only qualified individuals, but that pushes the goalpost to selecting a benevolent committee which brings us back to the current situation. From the Central Limit Theorem, we would end up with mostly candidates from the middle of the pool. The fact that 'average' people are in possibly important positions a) enables malicious actors to manipulate them much easier than having more qualified (or smarter people) and b) puts potentially unqualified people in important positions. I do not suggest that the current state of affairs is better either, but considering, for example that a very large portion of people in the US are Qanons, putting them in any important position is definitely not a good idea.

krapp 6y ago
QAnons are already in positions of power throughout the American government. You can't have a democracy and not have a significant cultural and political movement be represented, even if it is crackpot lunacy and a Trojan horse for white supremacy. That's on the US and its poisonous political culture for letting QAnon get big enough to matter. Now it matters and America and the Republican party are stuck with the ramifications of QAnon having become popular enough to win elections.
ozim 6y ago
Well I imagine that it could work without ensuring anything. If sortition would be used to get people to serve in parliament. Then it works as usual because parliament consist mostly of people who don't need to be qualified at all. They vote for prime minister and then that prime minister assembles government with ministers that are qualified specialists. In the end parliament votes if they trust that selection of prime minister and done. In the end I just came to conclusion that whole voting for parliament members is useless because I can imagine it would not be much worse than random selection from pool of interested people. You also remove issue with people who are handing out places on voting cards because a lot of people just vote on the first person on the list of political party. I can imagine political parties are not going to change status qua :)