5 ms·

Could be interesting. My main fear would be a wider variability in behavior, reducing effectiveness. Currently there are incentives against representatives act

Could be interesting. My main fear would be a wider variability in behavior, reducing effectiveness. Currently there are incentives against representatives acting too much like assholes - they would lose the support of their political party, effectively ending their career. Randomly chosen people have no such incentive. Take the loudest, most obnoxious people and put them in our congress? Nothing would get done, they’d just be grand standing all day, taking selfies, or breaking various rules. I’m sure most people chosen would be fine, but it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the batch / process.

PaulHoule 1y ago
It goes the other way around. I'd think the kind of people who get elected today, if offered a chance to be corrupt, would often decline politely or it would be possible for people to extend feelers to get some idea about it. Trying to corrupt a set of random Americans who weren't selected by "being good at politics" would be like a game of Russian Roulette. Some people would go for it but sooner or later you'd be looking at the barrel of a gun or get the police called on you or something.
- vorpalhex 1y ago
  The primary form of corruption we see is an indirect tit-for-tat. "You buy our x,y and z and we'll hire you for a cushy gig many years from now." And when we look at amateur politicians (smaller elections, smaller electoral pools, first time candidates) then we see this happen.. more. Much, much more. Government by lotto would dramatically increase corruption.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    If the lotteries are regular the number of people that would need to be bribed increases as does the risk of exposure. At some point it stops being worth the risk. On the spectrum of centralization such that only one person decides to the other end with complete devolution such that each person decides there is a trade off on how much it cost to bribe the ‘politician’ and how much gain could be obtained from the bribe. In the extreme case of everyone deciding you’d have to bribe everyone and it would be impossible for the value extraction to be greater than the bribe. It would be hard to do worse than entrenched political parties and who tend to have lifetime and even hereditary tenures.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    and when "many years from now" finally arrives, what guarantee is there that the promise of a cushy gig would be remembered if honored? seems like a very risky proposition for the one being corrupted much more than the one doing the corrupting. that's the best "i'll gladly pay you on tuesday for a hamburger today" arrangement.
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      If they want to be believed then they need to have a history of hiring post tenure politicians, the whole thing ends up a bit like a pyramid scheme with the success of new bribes having to cover the expense of the previous bribes.
  - patcon 1y ago
    > And when we look at amateur politicians (smaller elections, smaller electoral pools, first time candidates) then we see this happen.. more. Much, much more. It's a known fact that smaller governments are more corrupt, but that's due to low levels of infrastructure for oversight, not because of some equivalence in corruptability of the career political players vs small/amateur players. [1] Small outsider players with similar oversight as federal politics would surely be less corruptible in the ways we normally track [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_local_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_local_government
- namlem 1y ago
  When France had a citizens' assembly on climate, lobbyists from both the government and corporations tried to approach some delegates outside of the assembly and they were promptly snitched on.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Why would random selection wind up putting the loudest, most obnoxious people in Congress? Why would it be worse at it than, say, the current process? > Nothing would get done, they’d just be grand standing all day, taking selfies, or breaking various rules. Yeah, that sounds very much like the current Congress...
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  I've served on a few juries, and they've been far more sensible than Congress. I'm all for selecting representatives the same way, randomly from a pool of law-abiding citizens. Most of the work could be done remotely, so people wouldn't have to quit their jobs and go live in the capital and lose touch with the people back home. Keep the terms short, like 6 months, so they don't have much chance to "grow in office" and start trying to rule the world. Offer a decent stipend to pay for the inconvenience, which could be a fraction of what the current ones cost. You'd probably have to have a hardship opt-out for people who honestly couldn't do it for personal reasons. But as long as it wasn't too strenuous--and there's no reason it should be--most would be willing to do it, just like jury duty. It's a great idea, very democratic.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Part of the reason juries work so well is the default “fuck you I don’t understand so I say not guilty”. If the prosecutor tries to baffle the jury the jury won’t convict. If something happens similar with “legislative juries” where they’d refuse to pass a complicated law they didn’t understand.
    - dpassens 1y ago
      Is that necessarily a bad thing? If the average person doesn't understand a law, shouldn't that law be reworked?
      - harimau777 1y ago
        I think that could depend on if we are fine with having an administrative state. I.e. can regular people have simple laws and then have experts work out the highly nuanced details?
lotharcable 1y ago
Right now most Democratic systems are a contest to find the most perfect high functioning psychopath. It filters for people who possess the ability to lie very convincingly, tell people what they want to hear, disregard their own failings, and high levels of superficial charm and a overwhelmingly strong desire for social status and access to power. Also in the last 75 years or so, due to the way party politics dominate election choices and the nature of internal politics there has been a rise in the 'professionalization' of the political class. Decades ago representatives were often people with professional expertise and notority outside of politics who are more or less amateurs. Now the vast majority of politicians are people who have dedicated their entire lives to it. However it is a profession with no professional standards, no training, no monitoring body, no certification system, and is largely unaccountable. All of these are very bad things to have in a representational democracy because having a dedicated class of managers it is not representational at all. Where as a lotto system solves all these problems.

PaulHoule 1y ago

It goes the other way around. I'd think the kind of people who get elected today, if offered a chance to be corrupt, would often decline politely or it would be possible for people to extend feelers to get some idea about it. Trying to corrupt a set of random Americans who weren't selected by "being good at politics" would be like a game of Russian Roulette. Some people would go for it but sooner or later you'd be looking at the barrel of a gun or get the police called on you or something.

vorpalhex 1y ago
The primary form of corruption we see is an indirect tit-for-tat. "You buy our x,y and z and we'll hire you for a cushy gig many years from now." And when we look at amateur politicians (smaller elections, smaller electoral pools, first time candidates) then we see this happen.. more. Much, much more. Government by lotto would dramatically increase corruption.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  If the lotteries are regular the number of people that would need to be bribed increases as does the risk of exposure. At some point it stops being worth the risk. On the spectrum of centralization such that only one person decides to the other end with complete devolution such that each person decides there is a trade off on how much it cost to bribe the ‘politician’ and how much gain could be obtained from the bribe. In the extreme case of everyone deciding you’d have to bribe everyone and it would be impossible for the value extraction to be greater than the bribe. It would be hard to do worse than entrenched political parties and who tend to have lifetime and even hereditary tenures.
- dylan604 1y ago
  and when "many years from now" finally arrives, what guarantee is there that the promise of a cushy gig would be remembered if honored? seems like a very risky proposition for the one being corrupted much more than the one doing the corrupting. that's the best "i'll gladly pay you on tuesday for a hamburger today" arrangement.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    If they want to be believed then they need to have a history of hiring post tenure politicians, the whole thing ends up a bit like a pyramid scheme with the success of new bribes having to cover the expense of the previous bribes.
- patcon 1y ago
  > And when we look at amateur politicians (smaller elections, smaller electoral pools, first time candidates) then we see this happen.. more. Much, much more. It's a known fact that smaller governments are more corrupt, but that's due to low levels of infrastructure for oversight, not because of some equivalence in corruptability of the career political players vs small/amateur players. [1] Small outsider players with similar oversight as federal politics would surely be less corruptible in the ways we normally track [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_local_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_local_government
namlem 1y ago
When France had a citizens' assembly on climate, lobbyists from both the government and corporations tried to approach some delegates outside of the assembly and they were promptly snitched on.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

Why would random selection wind up putting the loudest, most obnoxious people in Congress? Why would it be worse at it than, say, the current process? > Nothing would get done, they’d just be grand standing all day, taking selfies, or breaking various rules. Yeah, that sounds very much like the current Congress...

aaronbaugher 1y ago
I've served on a few juries, and they've been far more sensible than Congress. I'm all for selecting representatives the same way, randomly from a pool of law-abiding citizens. Most of the work could be done remotely, so people wouldn't have to quit their jobs and go live in the capital and lose touch with the people back home. Keep the terms short, like 6 months, so they don't have much chance to "grow in office" and start trying to rule the world. Offer a decent stipend to pay for the inconvenience, which could be a fraction of what the current ones cost. You'd probably have to have a hardship opt-out for people who honestly couldn't do it for personal reasons. But as long as it wasn't too strenuous--and there's no reason it should be--most would be willing to do it, just like jury duty. It's a great idea, very democratic.
- bombcar 1y ago
  Part of the reason juries work so well is the default “fuck you I don’t understand so I say not guilty”. If the prosecutor tries to baffle the jury the jury won’t convict. If something happens similar with “legislative juries” where they’d refuse to pass a complicated law they didn’t understand.
  - dpassens 1y ago
    Is that necessarily a bad thing? If the average person doesn't understand a law, shouldn't that law be reworked?
    - harimau777 1y ago
      I think that could depend on if we are fine with having an administrative state. I.e. can regular people have simple laws and then have experts work out the highly nuanced details?

lotharcable 1y ago

Right now most Democratic systems are a contest to find the most perfect high functioning psychopath. It filters for people who possess the ability to lie very convincingly, tell people what they want to hear, disregard their own failings, and high levels of superficial charm and a overwhelmingly strong desire for social status and access to power. Also in the last 75 years or so, due to the way party politics dominate election choices and the nature of internal politics there has been a rise in the 'professionalization' of the political class. Decades ago representatives were often people with professional expertise and notority outside of politics who are more or less amateurs. Now the vast majority of politicians are people who have dedicated their entire lives to it. However it is a profession with no professional standards, no training, no monitoring body, no certification system, and is largely unaccountable. All of these are very bad things to have in a representational democracy because having a dedicated class of managers it is not representational at all. Where as a lotto system solves all these problems.