8 ms·

If this system is established, the corruption will come in pretty fast into this one too. Even easier because there is just so few people to influence in short

by szundi 4y ago

If this system is established, the corruption will come in pretty fast into this one too. Even easier because there is just so few people to influence in short time.

lapcat 4y ago
> Even easier because there is just so few people to influence in short time. What do you mean by so few people? The size of the legislatures wouldn't necessarily change, so it's the same number of people at any given time, and since there's no reelection, it ends up being a larger number of people overall. And I would say it's harder to corrupt people you don't have relationship with. Whereas long-serving politicians develop relationships with lobbyists over the years. The biggest reduction of corruption is the elimination of campaign contributions, which is essentially legalized bribery. This leaves only illegal bribery, which can be prosecuted. You could audit randomly selected legislators for years after they leave office to make sure they're not taking bribes.
- kqr 4y ago
  It's also hard to build relationships with future members of the legislature when there's a pool of 10 million to choose from, rather than the 5000 or so career politicians we have in the current system.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    I'm sure there are many piles of ready lobby cash that will happily build new relationships in no time at all
- ajjenkins 4y ago
  One reason corruption might increase with sortition is that it would be much cheaper to successfully bribe a representative. Most politicians are rich so it’s very expensive to make a bribe worthwhile to them. But if people with less money are in power, they might be swayed by smaller bribes. Also, they don’t have as much to lose if they’re caught accepting a bribe. If a career politician is caught accepting a bribe, their career as a politician is over. But if a mechanic is caught accepting a bribe during their 2 year stint as a representative, they would suffer minimal reputational damage and could just go back to being a mechanic. You also mentioned that you could prevent this with harsh penalties and long term audits, but I think it would be pretty easy to circumvent an audit. Like, if I wanted to bribe someone elected by sortition, I would just offer them free stuff instead of money so it’s harder to trace. Like free hotel stays or prepaid gift cards. I could imagine apolitical people treating a sortition win like winning the lottery and expecting to get money out of it. And just auctioning their vote off to the highest bidder. With all that said though, there would be a lot of advantages to sortition so the risk of corruption and bribery might still be worth it and would still probably be better than our current system.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > Most politicians are rich so it’s very expensive to make a bribe worthwhile to them. The question is, bribe them to do what? Usually, you're bribing them to follow the preferences of the wealthy. Which already happens if the politician is wealthy! They're already voting for self-serving legislation. So in a sense, bribing the wealthy is more redundant than expensive. However, you might be surprised how little you have to contribute to a politician's reelection campaign to get the politician to do stuff for you. > If a career politician is caught accepting a bribe, their career as a politician is over. They go to jail. This has happened a number of times. Bribery is illegal. > I would just offer them free stuff instead of money so it’s harder to trace. Like free hotel stays or prepaid gift cards. This happens with politicians too. But they still get caught. Anyway, it's no harder or easier than doing the same thing with elected politicians.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    >they would suffer minimal reputational damage and could just go back to being a mechanic presumably they would also go to prison
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Or we could cut their hands off, sentence them to house arrest for life, brand them with a scarlet letter, banish them to an island, etc. there are options other than just shrugging and accepting it as inevitable.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      No they wouldn't, because that's not how bribes work anymore. Basically all bribes of politicians or civil servants are based on promises of jobs or consulting work after leaving the public sector. Look at how frequently politicians show up being paid inexplicably huge speaking fees at major banks despite having nothing to say, or how frequently regulators end up getting well paid jobs at the companies they were supervising immediately after leaving. The issue is you can't prove these are bribes. There's no paper trail, no mysterious payments. Someone's expertise or worth to another is entirely arbitrary, you can't say someone's speaking fee is 'too large' or their experience isn't worth that much money, especially if they've had an unusually interesting position beforehand.
- permo-w 4y ago
  campaign donations aren't such a big deal in the UK, so the main form of legal bribery is "do us a favour and we'll give you a cushy non-executive directorship for the rest of your natural life". this would still be an issue with sortitioning, possibly even more than in the current system, as the representatives are less likely to be rich in the first place I still like the idea, but something would need to be done about this. a fat pension perhaps. or anonymity. but that leads to its own issues
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > The size of the legislatures wouldn't necessarily change, so it's the same number of people at any given time, and since there's no reelection, it ends up being a larger number of people overall. Except that the people in the legislature would have little to no knowledge about how things work, and so would heavily rely on the advice and expertise of the bureaucrats and lobbyists to know how to move on various topics. With experienced legislatures they know the system and when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Some people bemoan "career politicians", but in what other profession does (more experience = bad)? Carpenters, pilots, developers?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > With experienced legislatures they know the system and when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Like when we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction? > Some people bemoan "career politicians", but in what other profession does (more experience = bad)? Carpenters, pilots, developers? These professions aren't elected by popular vote, otherwise they would indeed be much worse.
  - kqr 4y ago
    The incentive for politcians is to be popular and attract votes, not do good by the people. If politicians were actually experienced at doing good, that would be great. Unfortunately the bulk of their experience is in popularity pageants, which does not prepare them for office.
    - jkepler 4y ago
      Or its in reality TV.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 4y ago
The current system forces our politicians to spend a third to a half their time fundraising. We basically force politicians to sell out to keep their jobs. Sortition would remove the structural incentives towards corruption that exist today so our efforts to combat corruption should become easier.
dwiel 4y ago
A few ideas: 1) make the sortition group big enough, say 1000 or 10000 people, so the required number of people bribed goes up, which increases bribery cost as well as chances of getting caught 2) make a bounty program to help put a lower bound on the cost to bribe

by szundi 4y ago

If this system is established, the corruption will come in pretty fast into this one too. Even easier because there is just so few people to influence in short time.

lapcat 4y ago

> Even easier because there is just so few people to influence in short time. What do you mean by so few people? The size of the legislatures wouldn't necessarily change, so it's the same number of people at any given time, and since there's no reelection, it ends up being a larger number of people overall. And I would say it's harder to corrupt people you don't have relationship with. Whereas long-serving politicians develop relationships with lobbyists over the years. The biggest reduction of corruption is the elimination of campaign contributions, which is essentially legalized bribery. This leaves only illegal bribery, which can be prosecuted. You could audit randomly selected legislators for years after they leave office to make sure they're not taking bribes.

kqr 4y ago
It's also hard to build relationships with future members of the legislature when there's a pool of 10 million to choose from, rather than the 5000 or so career politicians we have in the current system.
- headsoup 4y ago
  I'm sure there are many piles of ready lobby cash that will happily build new relationships in no time at all
ajjenkins 4y ago
One reason corruption might increase with sortition is that it would be much cheaper to successfully bribe a representative. Most politicians are rich so it’s very expensive to make a bribe worthwhile to them. But if people with less money are in power, they might be swayed by smaller bribes. Also, they don’t have as much to lose if they’re caught accepting a bribe. If a career politician is caught accepting a bribe, their career as a politician is over. But if a mechanic is caught accepting a bribe during their 2 year stint as a representative, they would suffer minimal reputational damage and could just go back to being a mechanic. You also mentioned that you could prevent this with harsh penalties and long term audits, but I think it would be pretty easy to circumvent an audit. Like, if I wanted to bribe someone elected by sortition, I would just offer them free stuff instead of money so it’s harder to trace. Like free hotel stays or prepaid gift cards. I could imagine apolitical people treating a sortition win like winning the lottery and expecting to get money out of it. And just auctioning their vote off to the highest bidder. With all that said though, there would be a lot of advantages to sortition so the risk of corruption and bribery might still be worth it and would still probably be better than our current system.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Most politicians are rich so it’s very expensive to make a bribe worthwhile to them. The question is, bribe them to do what? Usually, you're bribing them to follow the preferences of the wealthy. Which already happens if the politician is wealthy! They're already voting for self-serving legislation. So in a sense, bribing the wealthy is more redundant than expensive. However, you might be surprised how little you have to contribute to a politician's reelection campaign to get the politician to do stuff for you. > If a career politician is caught accepting a bribe, their career as a politician is over. They go to jail. This has happened a number of times. Bribery is illegal. > I would just offer them free stuff instead of money so it’s harder to trace. Like free hotel stays or prepaid gift cards. This happens with politicians too. But they still get caught. Anyway, it's no harder or easier than doing the same thing with elected politicians.
- permo-w 4y ago
  >they would suffer minimal reputational damage and could just go back to being a mechanic presumably they would also go to prison
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Or we could cut their hands off, sentence them to house arrest for life, brand them with a scarlet letter, banish them to an island, etc. there are options other than just shrugging and accepting it as inevitable.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    No they wouldn't, because that's not how bribes work anymore. Basically all bribes of politicians or civil servants are based on promises of jobs or consulting work after leaving the public sector. Look at how frequently politicians show up being paid inexplicably huge speaking fees at major banks despite having nothing to say, or how frequently regulators end up getting well paid jobs at the companies they were supervising immediately after leaving. The issue is you can't prove these are bribes. There's no paper trail, no mysterious payments. Someone's expertise or worth to another is entirely arbitrary, you can't say someone's speaking fee is 'too large' or their experience isn't worth that much money, especially if they've had an unusually interesting position beforehand.
permo-w 4y ago
campaign donations aren't such a big deal in the UK, so the main form of legal bribery is "do us a favour and we'll give you a cushy non-executive directorship for the rest of your natural life". this would still be an issue with sortitioning, possibly even more than in the current system, as the representatives are less likely to be rich in the first place I still like the idea, but something would need to be done about this. a fat pension perhaps. or anonymity. but that leads to its own issues
throw0101c 4y ago
> The size of the legislatures wouldn't necessarily change, so it's the same number of people at any given time, and since there's no reelection, it ends up being a larger number of people overall. Except that the people in the legislature would have little to no knowledge about how things work, and so would heavily rely on the advice and expertise of the bureaucrats and lobbyists to know how to move on various topics. With experienced legislatures they know the system and when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Some people bemoan "career politicians", but in what other profession does (more experience = bad)? Carpenters, pilots, developers?
- lapcat 4y ago
  > With experienced legislatures they know the system and when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Like when we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction? > Some people bemoan "career politicians", but in what other profession does (more experience = bad)? Carpenters, pilots, developers? These professions aren't elected by popular vote, otherwise they would indeed be much worse.
- kqr 4y ago
  The incentive for politcians is to be popular and attract votes, not do good by the people. If politicians were actually experienced at doing good, that would be great. Unfortunately the bulk of their experience is in popularity pageants, which does not prepare them for office.
  - jkepler 4y ago
    Or its in reality TV.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 4y ago

The current system forces our politicians to spend a third to a half their time fundraising. We basically force politicians to sell out to keep their jobs. Sortition would remove the structural incentives towards corruption that exist today so our efforts to combat corruption should become easier.

dwiel 4y ago

A few ideas: 1) make the sortition group big enough, say 1000 or 10000 people, so the required number of people bribed goes up, which increases bribery cost as well as chances of getting caught 2) make a bounty program to help put a lower bound on the cost to bribe