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How do you ensure the people that are selected have any significant level of intelligence, or desire to better their country rather than just themselves, or hav

How do you ensure the people that are selected have any significant level of intelligence, or desire to better their country rather than just themselves, or have any applicable life experience or knowledge that would lead them to make good, wise, decisions? How can you ensure that if it's a random selection?

furgooswft13 5y ago
We don't ensure any of that currently for any of our politicians. In fact the system we have in place now has perverse incentives to ensure exactly the opposite, both on intelligence and self-interest. So a purely random selection would seem like an improvement at this point.
dgb23 5y ago
You don't ensure any of that anyways.
kahmeal 5y ago
It's the same as voting. You give everyone a vote because that is the least exploitable, fairest approach given the situation. You don't try to determine who is "most qualified to vote" because you end up with what the republicans are doing now. The likelihood that you accidentally recruit a power hungry dictator by virtue of his random selection to some position of power is much less than that individual maliciously seeking it of his/her own volition.
dane-pgp 5y ago
If sortition is used to select the members of a second legislative chamber, then we would expect the randomly chosen set of people to have the same average intelligence as the general population. This chamber would have the right to veto and suggest changes to legislation, but not initiate it or unilaterally change any laws. Just as politicians may not be experts in the specific areas that they legislate on, the members of this second chamber would have the right to ask for input from specialists. This could be seen as an extension of the right that juries have in some states to ask questions of expert witnesses. Even if, in practice, the second chamber end up mostly listening to advisers (or lobbyists) provided by the existing political parties, they would at least have to hear a variety of opinions, let's say in proportion to the partisan leanings of that chamber. This would eliminate gerrymandering and other problems like campaign financing.
namlem 5y ago
It doesn't matter if they have a significant level of intelligence or desire to better their country. That's the beauty of the system. If you have a large enough sample and a well-designed deliberative structure, even a group of average, self-interested individuals will be able to perform well. The deliberative structure used is based on research into group decision-making, and is usually some form of system where people split into small discussion groups that engage in structured discussion, then present something to the broader group, then discuss again, then shuffle into different groups and repeat the process. The fact that people are self-interested also doesn't pose a problem, so long as the sample is large enough. You probably want at least 100 for good measure, depending on the population being represented. Because it's a representative random sample (ideally it's not fully random, but weighted to represent population demographics), you get a broad slice of the population and therefore many competing interests. An individual may wish to further their own interests, but this would conflict with the interests of everyone else. Overall, the group's incentive is to do a good job, because they live in society and their decisions will affect them.

furgooswft13 5y ago

We don't ensure any of that currently for any of our politicians. In fact the system we have in place now has perverse incentives to ensure exactly the opposite, both on intelligence and self-interest. So a purely random selection would seem like an improvement at this point.

dgb23 5y ago

You don't ensure any of that anyways.

kahmeal 5y ago

It's the same as voting. You give everyone a vote because that is the least exploitable, fairest approach given the situation. You don't try to determine who is "most qualified to vote" because you end up with what the republicans are doing now. The likelihood that you accidentally recruit a power hungry dictator by virtue of his random selection to some position of power is much less than that individual maliciously seeking it of his/her own volition.

dane-pgp 5y ago

If sortition is used to select the members of a second legislative chamber, then we would expect the randomly chosen set of people to have the same average intelligence as the general population. This chamber would have the right to veto and suggest changes to legislation, but not initiate it or unilaterally change any laws. Just as politicians may not be experts in the specific areas that they legislate on, the members of this second chamber would have the right to ask for input from specialists. This could be seen as an extension of the right that juries have in some states to ask questions of expert witnesses. Even if, in practice, the second chamber end up mostly listening to advisers (or lobbyists) provided by the existing political parties, they would at least have to hear a variety of opinions, let's say in proportion to the partisan leanings of that chamber. This would eliminate gerrymandering and other problems like campaign financing.

namlem 5y ago

It doesn't matter if they have a significant level of intelligence or desire to better their country. That's the beauty of the system. If you have a large enough sample and a well-designed deliberative structure, even a group of average, self-interested individuals will be able to perform well. The deliberative structure used is based on research into group decision-making, and is usually some form of system where people split into small discussion groups that engage in structured discussion, then present something to the broader group, then discuss again, then shuffle into different groups and repeat the process. The fact that people are self-interested also doesn't pose a problem, so long as the sample is large enough. You probably want at least 100 for good measure, depending on the population being represented. Because it's a representative random sample (ideally it's not fully random, but weighted to represent population demographics), you get a broad slice of the population and therefore many competing interests. An individual may wish to further their own interests, but this would conflict with the interests of everyone else. Overall, the group's incentive is to do a good job, because they live in society and their decisions will affect them.