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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

by 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.
- a_imho 6y ago
  This is a legitimate point, and there is no 100% answer. I have a couple of points to consider though. 1. Most offices do not require any kind of formal qualification. Where requirements to be met the pool of candidates must be restricted obviously. 2. A benevolent clueless is probably less harmful than a dedicated competent working for their own self interest (imo there is very strong selection bias for these types of people). 3. If we are worried about certain people wielding too much power maybe no one should have it and positions with too much power should be diluted. At least I would not put that much faith in our current selection processes to act as gatekeepers. 4. I'm no American but my impression is jury duty is a real life example where mostly random people are put in charge of life and death matters at least on TV. 5. Sortition has some very nice properties for election compared to voting, such as fraud resistance. Majority voting inherently turns into a two horse race, does not favor diversity of thought and completely disregards the minority opinion culminating in what we have now, recycling the elites. All in all weighing the pros and cons I'm in favor of sortition but probably because I'm part of the plebs. As for examples: would someone who transition into politics qualify like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronald Reagan?

by a_imho 6y ago

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.
a_imho 6y ago
This is a legitimate point, and there is no 100% answer. I have a couple of points to consider though. 1. Most offices do not require any kind of formal qualification. Where requirements to be met the pool of candidates must be restricted obviously. 2. A benevolent clueless is probably less harmful than a dedicated competent working for their own self interest (imo there is very strong selection bias for these types of people). 3. If we are worried about certain people wielding too much power maybe no one should have it and positions with too much power should be diluted. At least I would not put that much faith in our current selection processes to act as gatekeepers. 4. I'm no American but my impression is jury duty is a real life example where mostly random people are put in charge of life and death matters at least on TV. 5. Sortition has some very nice properties for election compared to voting, such as fraud resistance. Majority voting inherently turns into a two horse race, does not favor diversity of thought and completely disregards the minority opinion culminating in what we have now, recycling the elites. All in all weighing the pros and cons I'm in favor of sortition but probably because I'm part of the plebs. As for examples: would someone who transition into politics qualify like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronald Reagan?