3 ms·

Adam Grant on why democracies need to replace voting with sortition

9 points by dr_dshiv 3y ago

version_five 3y ago
Lots to criticize here about the difference between theory and practice. But even in theory, he's still advocating democracy right, like a leader is randomly selected (we take it in turn to act as a sort of executive officer of the week) but the randomly selected leader is still enacting the will of the population (each decision of that officer must be ratified by a simple majority...) So isn't it just transfering the problem from presidential elections etc to plebiscites? Or is he advocating we randomly select a dictator? And who actually makes policy proposals and how does that process become less partisan? I don't think this is a viable solution to anything. Liberal democracy is about being able to turf the incumbents, the rest is just people jockeying for a system that would short term favor their preferences.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > So isn't it just transfering the problem from presidential elections etc to plebiscites? Or is he advocating we randomly select a dictator? And who actually makes policy proposals and how does that process become less partisan? I think you're overlooking the part where the members of the legislature are also randomly selected? The structure of the government wouldn't necessarily have to change. The change would be in the selection mechanism: elections vs. sortition.
lapcat 3y ago
I've been in favor of sortition over elections for many years. It's really the best way to get the most representative representatives. After all, members are Congress and other high-ranking officials tend to be quite unlike the people they're supposed to represent. They're typically much wealthier, often obscenely wealthy nowadays, and they're also often more politically extreme, due to the way they're selected by their parties in primaries. Indeed, sortition could effectively do away with political parties altogether, which is another great bonus!
haspoken 3y ago
https://archive.is/l84Sh https://archive.is/l84Sh

9 points by dr_dshiv 3y ago

Lots to criticize here about the difference between theory and practice. But even in theory, he's still advocating democracy right, like a leader is randomly selected (we take it in turn to act as a sort of executive officer of the week) but the randomly selected leader is still enacting the will of the population (each decision of that officer must be ratified by a simple majority...) So isn't it just transfering the problem from presidential elections etc to plebiscites? Or is he advocating we randomly select a dictator? And who actually makes policy proposals and how does that process become less partisan? I don't think this is a viable solution to anything. Liberal democracy is about being able to turf the incumbents, the rest is just people jockeying for a system that would short term favor their preferences.

lapcat 3y ago
> So isn't it just transfering the problem from presidential elections etc to plebiscites? Or is he advocating we randomly select a dictator? And who actually makes policy proposals and how does that process become less partisan? I think you're overlooking the part where the members of the legislature are also randomly selected? The structure of the government wouldn't necessarily have to change. The change would be in the selection mechanism: elections vs. sortition.

lapcat 3y ago

I've been in favor of sortition over elections for many years. It's really the best way to get the most representative representatives. After all, members are Congress and other high-ranking officials tend to be quite unlike the people they're supposed to represent. They're typically much wealthier, often obscenely wealthy nowadays, and they're also often more politically extreme, due to the way they're selected by their parties in primaries. Indeed, sortition could effectively do away with political parties altogether, which is another great bonus!

haspoken 3y ago

https://archive.is/l84Sh https://archive.is/l84Sh