9 ms·

Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections

48 points by egghack 10mo ago

echelon 10mo ago
> What if elections are the problem? Social media is the problem. We weren't this polarized until after the Bush admin, right as everyone on the planet got online. Politics used to be civil. Republicans and Democrats in Congress used to go out to lunch together. Hyper online discourse and algorithms that boost rage ended that. We're all being taught to foam at the mouth to increase screen time.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Which Bush? Rush Limbaugh was amping up the polarization in the late 1980's.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  They still go to lunch together. They do so at climate conferences, Davos, and all the other places us peasants are not invited to.
  - gwbas1c 10mo ago
    Because many of us forget that getting elected and staying elected requires putting on an act for the minority of Americans who vote in primaries.
    - nephihaha 10mo ago
      No, it just depends on being in one of two parties. Primaries are internal organisational operations. The US set up means that both of these parties are in power at some level and can never be removed.
      - gwbas1c 10mo ago
        See https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop It explains the problem with primaries. To summarize: In order to make it through your primary, you need to be ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal, and even support policies that don't make sense in a general election.
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  The George W. Bush era (not administration) was very polarized. When I read his memoir, he didn't come across as polarized, but more naive about polarization in the media. He did mention that he regretted not having a better media presence.
- poly2it 10mo ago
  Yes, access to information must be the problem! Neglect the real danger of social media, the corporations behind them.
- observationist 10mo ago
  There have been brief periods where civility was normal, but politics and extreme heated emotion and polarization are the norm. Murder, mayhem, riots, extreme, ridiculous mud-slinging, and simmering turmoil have been the default state for a majority of human history. Social media has exacerbated things in some ways, but in others, it's imposed an artificial civility as people get settled into their bubbles and vent online instead of taking action. Just look at all the political violence in each decade of the 20th century in the US. Look at all the bombings, arson, murder, riots since 1950. The dynamics have changed, but it'll be decades or more before humanity is anywhere near culturally settled down with the internet and instant global communication. It's already a net good, but massive online platforms and entrenched power players manipulating narratives and so on still need to be calibrated in policy. The civility you remember might simply have been that all the violence wasn't being reported and headlining in major outlets 24/7. The threshold for newsworthy events and the willing participation of news outlets in managing perception created a very sterile and civil seeming facade over what's been more or less constant chaos.
  - coryrc 10mo ago
    > it's imposed an artificial civility as people get settled into their bubbles and vent online instead of taking action. Civility serves those taking an ever-growing fraction of the country's wealth generation.
- derektank 10mo ago
  The post-war partisan environment was pretty unique in American history for its civility and substantial overlap between the two parties. The late 19th century had a level of partisanship comparable to today, though much of it was filtered through ethnic and religious identities in a way that would be unfamiliar to people today. In many ways, our modern political environment is a reversion to the mean. I wouldn’t bet money on social media specifically being the primary driver of this change (though I do think the collapse in barriers to sharing information has allowed for partisanship identity to be formed along ideological lines, rather than geographical or cultural lines, in a way that is unique.)
- undeveloper 10mo ago
  I understand the sentiment, but "Republicans and Democrats" doesn't sound appealing, it makes my blood boil, and certainly you are thinking "this idiot's been brainwashed by social media to think that's a good thing!", maybe, fair. But I think maybe democrats shouldn'tve been doing that during 2012 and playing "they go low, we go high" when they were holding a justice position from a centrist candidate a "sensible" congress wouldve passed, I don't think they should've done that when Bush cried about WMDs, and most recently I don't think they should continue to just "have lunch" after January 6th. I'm goddamn tired of complicit democrats.
andrewflnr 10mo ago
It's really, ah, silly to claim this is a new idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition dates back to ancient Athens.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  "Perhaps we can use this wild ancient idea to build a new, better democracy for the 21st century and beyond…" I think they're acknowledging as much.
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  > Perhaps we can use this wild ancient idea to build a new, better democracy for the 21st century and beyond… The linked page makes it very clear that this is an old idea.
  - deleted 10mo ago
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  - andrewflnr 10mo ago
    I did miss that one time, but they spend a lot more words calling it "new". And I read their table of contents which also didn't spend any significant time on history.
    - gwbas1c 10mo ago
      The linked PDF, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66d70657deaace3ac1fc44a0/t/66e091fd5243bf7d8f2dcda5/1725993469879/Lottocracy+the+basics.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66d70657deaace3ac1fc4..., makes it very clear this is an old idea on page 3.
RobotToaster 10mo ago
Frankly it couldn't work any worse than our current system. the problem with most politicians is that they're the sort of people who want to be politicians
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Yeah, basically it becomes a very serious "jury duty".
- deleted 10mo ago
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- cyberax 10mo ago
  Our current system works very well. It provides predictability and protects the rights of people. That's also why it's heavily biased against rapid changes. It's not _perfect_ for sure. But the sortition-based systems are in general quite terrible exactly because they lack the feedback loops that keep societies stable. The main problem with the current administration, for example, is its disdain for these checks and balances and desire to move fast and break all the written and unwritten traditions. There are also examples of failed sortition-based systems. I can give you the Soviet Union as one example. On paper, it was ruled by the Supreme Council ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Soviet_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Soviet_of_the_Soviet_U... ). Its delegates were chosen mostly randomly from workers and then approved by a public vote. Yet it was a complete rubber-stamp organization with zero actual power. Sortition made sure of that, people couldn't form reliable alliances and power-hungry people who could initiate real reforms almost never actually got chosen.
- silisili 10mo ago
  Oh it could be much, much worse. I can only imagine the harebrained ideas that would be popular. No more taxes of any kind. Free beer and cigarettes. Monthly checks of, I don't know, $10k a person. At some point you need adults in the room(in mind, not age). Our system is obviously not great, but this is a way to make it much worse.
shomp 10mo ago
Works exactly once until people who are lottery-elected change the system to stay in power forever.
nephihaha 10mo ago
So called democracy is already "hacked". What you do is create a two party system in most countries, which provides the illusion of choice.
- yunnpp 10mo ago
  What "most countries" have a two-party system? From the summary below, most democracies actually seem to not have one. Spain, for example, used to be rather binary in early 2k, but its parliament has diversified since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system Maybe Americans should question why new parties cannot be formed that actually represent their people instead of looking to replace democracy entirely with...a lottery? I can't comment further because I am not American.
  - georgebcrawford 10mo ago
    New Zealand isn’t on that list, but two parties generally take 70-80% of the vote. Last election (~65%) was an outlier due to the two leaders being pretty unpopular. However, NZ has a proportional voting system that leads to coalitions forming governments. This is considered a good thing, but can lead to…interesting outcomes. The current government is very much the dog being wagged by a couple of nasty tails. Current PM is a weak “I've run a company so can run a country” type.
    - yunnpp 10mo ago
      > Current PM is a weak “I've run a company so can run a country” type. Hopefully a successful company, that is.
      - georgebcrawford 10mo ago
        He was successful at Air NZ from memory. But they're completely different jobs. For example, he cut services and jobs which helped increase profits. Not uncommon for an airline. The same approach when running a country is disastrous and not uncommon for out of touch neoliberals like Luxon. His management experience at Air NZ has not correlated with strong leadership. Compare him with the previous PM (Jacinda Ardern) and most Kiwis, even the right, would agree she handled things better. A few lefties like myself think she could have done more (especially wrt to housing policy) with the immense political capital she had just before Covid, but oh well. You didn't ask for any of that sorry!
keiferski 10mo ago
Not exactly a new idea...but I do think it's one that is underused in democratic societies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition Having said that, it doesn't seem obvious to me that elected power is actually all that powerful, compared to unelected powers like corporations. I think you could use the same reasoning as pro-sortition arguments, but to argue for more democracy and elections, not less. Or at least that a state/citizen-focused theory of power is inadequate. (Raymond Geuss talks more about this.)
jawns 10mo ago
The main problem with choosing representatives by lottery is that the average person just doesn't want to do the job. I know I wouldn't. It's about as appealing as having to do jury duty for three years. The book proposes financial incentives as a way to address this reluctance, such as paying the person 1.5 times their current salary. But that seems like it will lead to representatives who are only doing it for the money, not because they care about doing a good job. And then, of course, there's always a chance that you end up in a "Napoleon of Notting Hill" situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Napoleon_of_Notting_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Napoleon_of_Notting_Hill Part of me wonders what would happen if a lottery were used not to select representatives from among the population at large, but from among the candidates who have won their parties' respective primaries. Of course, then you'd have to decide whether to use weighted selections (which would strongly favor the entrenched parties) or non-weighted (which would give a strong edge to minor parties). But realistically, sensible term limits seem like they would help achieve a lot of what the proposed lottocracy system would achieve.
deleted 10mo ago
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websiteapi 10mo ago
I doubt this would work better. the average person simply isn't a good executive. they'd end up getting dominated by the assertive folks. a simpler and easier solution to our problems to enforce approval voting across all elections, local, state and national, which will easily allow for moderates to siphon all votes and moderate the country drastically.
- ClayShentrup 10mo ago
  yes. election by jury is the good parts of sortition without the bad parts. https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/ approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.
jaggederest 10mo ago
The issue with randomly selected representation is that the support staff start to become the ones who effectively make the decisions. This is the same issue with term limits (which to be clear, I'm in favor of, but we have to go in with our eyes open), which is that e.g. the congressional staffers gain power, especially if they persist across the end of the term limit. In these kinds of cases, you almost need term limits for staff, which feels pretty cruel and arbitrary - "Thank you for making a career in public service but you are now legally barred from your chosen career"
- Arainach 10mo ago
  Great. Now we have inexperienced legislators, inexperienced aides, and experienced lobbyists. That's definitely going to be an improvement rather than an absolute catastrophe. Term limits are like so many populist ideas: they sound great until you think at all about the consequences. Effective government requires people with a long tenure. That's how you learn how the system operates, that's how you build the relationships that allow you to get things done, and that's how you build the reputation that allows you to get people to believe in what you say and accomplish things.
  - jaggederest 10mo ago
    In my own defense, the kinds of term limits I'm talking about are much lengthier than most people start out wanting, I think. I would term limit senators at 5 terms, perhaps, and representatives at 12 or 15? I think the issue is not so much long tenures per se as losing relevance by spending an entire lifetime in one position in government.
  - pigpop 10mo ago
    Isn't that just reinventing aristocracy?
    - Arainach 10mo ago
      No. Elected officials have to be elected, which is a control and feedback mechanism.
Havoc 10mo ago
I don’t think it solves the core limitation of democracy - limits you to lowest common denominator of what the man on the street thinks. Who is by definition of average intelligence. It’s all sorts of rubbish and not conducive to solving problems decisively but seems to be the only system where power doesn’t get monopolized
delichon 10mo ago
“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” -- William F. Buckley. Now more than ever. See "Franchise" (1955) by Isaac Asimov for an efficient version.
- throw310822 10mo ago
  I'm afraid that mr Buckley would be shocked if he actually met and had a conversation with the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone book.
  - Arainach 10mo ago
    Mr. Buckley may or may not be shocked, but he's certainly a vocal opponent of a competent effective government, so all of his thoughts on how he'd prefer to be governed should be ignored with extreme prejudice.
    - sirmike_ 10mo ago
      According to YOU. What a very poor all or nothing statement. And the reader should never listen to someone who claims all or nothing here or there. Nope. Perhaps throw a bridle on your unbridled "kindly fuck off nuance" view.
    - dragonwriter 10mo ago
      Generally, inverting them would be superior to ignoring them, but the last thing you should do is take them as good ideas.
- bongodongobob 10mo ago
  The average person can barely read and knows nothing about world history and politics. No thanks.
- boroboro4 10mo ago
  Would you rather be treated (medically) by the first 2000 people? Do you think code will be written better by the first 2000? I get being unhappy about current political class, but this kind of claims is wild to me.
svieira 10mo ago
This is the premise of The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton. In 1984 (100 years after the writing of the book), the King of England is now selected by lottery. Much wildness ensues. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm
miki123211 10mo ago
I think this idea (which is properly called sortition) would work even better if combined with the normal kind of democracy. Most western democracies already have a two-chamber system (commons/lords, congress/senate etc), but those two chambers are elected in very similar ways. Instead, we could make one of them elected by sortition, while keeping the other one a traditional democracy. I'd personally split the sortition part into per-area committees. There'd be a main committee with members taken from the general populace, whose only job would be to create the rules of who can be chosen for which committee (e.g. only qualified doctors for medicine). That main committee would also manage inter-committee disputes, in cases where it's not obvious whether a particular committee should be given the right to vote on a particular bill.
- sokoloff 10mo ago
  As low an opinion as I have of current politicians, I feel sortition would work even less well.
deadbabe 10mo ago
I’m skeptical. From what I’ve lived through, it seems like power always finds a way to consolidate in perpetuity. The best we can hope for is that those with the most power have our interests at heart.
JavGull 10mo ago
Why not Plebiscites, updated for the technological age, could function as a mass interface: swipe-based decisions on budgets and policy, where governance emerges from an aggregated collective consciousness rather than elite mediation… thoughts?
guiriduro 10mo ago
The diagnosis I largely agree with. To the point I no longer identify as a (small-d) democrat, it is the tyrrany of the mob's choice of (usually reprehensible) representative, who will have lied and pacted with corrupt elites to obtain his/her position, and been nominally elected by the ignorant. Anyone who wants power should by that fact be excluded. The solution however (lottery-election) is absurd. We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect.
- silenced_trope 10mo ago
  > We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect. How do we prove non-evil? Also the exam part brings to mind the Chinese imperial exams for civil service. I don't know whether that's good or bad, it didn't work out well for them.
  - guiriduro 10mo ago
    For a critical thinking exam, you should be able to show that you can decipher political gobledegook, identify lies and platitiudes, strawman arguments etc(there would be much less of it anyway as in a restricted franchise very few with votes would be swayed by it, which is the point.) Non-evilness would be shown by answering questions designed to test basic empathy, and also by the lack of recent recorded crimes or misdemenours.
  - deleted 10mo ago
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MagicMoonlight 10mo ago
This is the kind of naive nonsense that children come up with. Anyone who has done jury service knows how thick and incompetent a random sampling of the population is. If you want effective rulers, you need Roman democracy. Each position is held only for a year, and you either win election to the next rank, or you’re out. Corbyns and Bernies can’t just sit in the same seat for 50 years without ever doing anything. Morons can’t get to be ruler. Every step is an intense competition, encouraging boldness in public service. They also had an amazing system for war declarations… only those eligible to fight were eligible to vote whether to declare war. The old and the weak were not allowed to vote in those specific ballots.
glitchc 10mo ago
It would be better to hold referendums instead. An important decision should be brought directly to the populace rather than be driven by the whims of the currently elected party in power (regardless of political stripes). Examples of important questions are: Should we allow X people to immigrate per year? Should we go to war with country Y?Should the new tax rate be Z? The Swiss do this. They are one of the populations most satisfied with their government. Referendums work.
phtrivier 10mo ago
The "let's pick people at random to discuss hairy topics" has been done at least three times in France in the form of "Convention Citoyenne". In each case, people came up with relatively "popular" solutions (one of them is still in progress) In each case, the elected officials all but ignored the output, on the ground that the body had not been elected, was manipulated by experts, had no responsibility and accountability, etc... Anyone who solves this will indeed have found an improvement over elective democracy. In the case of the US, a lower hanging fruit would be getting out of "elections that can easily be bought by corporations with litteral money".
- haizhung 10mo ago
  Yep, people in this thread are claiming that this doesn’t work. In fact, it does work, and it is already implemented! Here in Germany we also have the concept of „Bürgerräte“, and we have similar problems as in France (no political power to implement their solutions). However, one takeaway was that people vastly underestimated how carefully the participants would try to understand the topic at hand. People that would usually just regurgitate angry propaganda were forced to form their own opinion and they did! IMHO it’s this is a great tool for democracy that is yet underused.
  - phtrivier 10mo ago
    But how useful is it as a tool if nothing is implemented in the end ? What's worst is that, at least in France, there was an elegant solution to the problem : just ask the general population to approve or reject the proposals in a referendum. Even if the referendum was consultative, and even if the lawmakers were to make the law in the end, it would have massively made it harder to ignore the result. And I would have loved to see the "popular jury" campaign for or against the measures.
constantcrying 10mo ago
There is a very hilarious genre of political "thinkers" whose entire view of politics is entirely delusional and who are so disconnected from reality that both their diagnosis and their solution looks ridiculous. I get that Yarvin is an icky fascist bigot, but just read the political thinkers he got his ideas from. The idea that the elected representatives, much less the method by which representatives are chosen, have any meaningful impact on politics is just laughable.
avivo 10mo ago
There is a lot of potential in this. Not just for government democracy, but for also introducing democratic elements into tech/AI policy, when that tech has impact comparable to many governments. I worked in tech, and after some formative experiences, shifted to working on helping ensuring ensure that tech's impact on society can serve the public interest. But that leaves the question of what "what is the public interest"? Sortitition / lottocracy / deliberative democracy / mini-publics all roughly refer to the same way to answer that question — providing a representative microcosm with the space to deeply examine an issue, and come to a set of recommendations and decisions on it. Unlike with electoral democracy, it's faster to spin up and experiment with, and it's harder for bad actors to entrench power (elections can be useful, but they're one of many tools in the democratic toolbelt). That thinking lead to https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-democracy-policymaking-beyond-corporate-ceos-and-partisan-pressure https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-de... . That basic approach, has been somewhat picked up by Meta (https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-a-giant-experiment-in-governance-now-its-turning-to-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-a-giant-experiment-in-g...) and Open AI (https://aligned.substack.com/p/a-proposal-for-importing-societys-values https://aligned.substack.com/p/a-proposal-for-importing-soci..., ~ leading to their democratic inputs and collective alignment work). I've now started an organization focusing on applying this and other democratic paradigms to decision-making about AI (https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/ https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/) as a way to solve a variety of challenging governance problems across the AI stack. If you're curious about it, our ICML paper goes into more detail: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 .
MadameMinty 10mo ago
I imagine the random person, if they were to accept, would likely find themselves out of depth and simply outsource most of the job to whoever convinces them they're the right choice. The system would then morph into a variant of representative democracy. Instead of millions voting for, say, around a thousand of various level representatives, you get a random thousand "voting" for "consultants". These consultants would be directly hired by the random thousand to do the work for them. They would predicably have marketing campaigns to make themselves seem the right pick. They might even offer their services for free. Demagoguery and corporate sponsorship as usual. In the end 1000 people would hire, say, 1-1000 consultants to represent them. Thus emulating the original process, or worse. The only difference is the tiny electorate, which increases volatility. If you'd like to regulate it to prevent this, you'd have to expend an effort and fight similar pressures as with doing it in any other system.
drcongo 10mo ago
In the UK we had this for about 5 years under the previous regime.
sirmike_ 10mo ago
Couple questions .... what is the author's point of origin and experience with "democracy" and/or "democracies"? I mention this as the founding principals of this Lottery thing are more or less "complaints" and not values or principals really. It is very slasdash and hollow. But this is a fun thought experiment so lets .... move on. Why *exactly* is democracy the absolute best form of govt known to mankind? You just kinda slip that in there which is a massive assumption. And exactly which democracy is best aside from the one proposed? For that matter exactly WHO? and I do mean WHO says that democracies aren't working? Who the fuck has the balls to say that horseshit premise? No one is saying that. Not seriously, anywhere. No one. That ultimately is the fatal flaw for this thought experiment. There are fundamentally different value judgments from "European" "Democracies" vs US vs Asian as examples. Lottery based is an interesting system but not really doable the way this site lays out. 3 years is too short to do anything; unless there is a relief value where a certain percentage (by lottery) of that year's cohort can do something critical in any representative form of govt. Incumbency. You do in fact need a slowly revolving core of representatives who can do proper work over 2-5 terms max. Otherwise its a constant nut house with nothing getting done and not near enough permanence for medium to long term solutions over time. At the end of the day for me -- I do not think the people behind this thought this through and it shows. There isnt serious skull sweat in this thing and I think it undermines an interesting concept. I also think just because you are frustrated in democratic processes -- you are the problem. Apathy is a choice. Ignorance is a choice. Frustration is a choice. If you do not like your form of govt -- move, make peace with it or roll up them sleeves and get busy participating.
pigpop 10mo ago
I think a much more "American" style of political competition would be to have elected politicians compete at various levels to determine who gets to move on to the next higher position. They already seem to do this informally in many cases by progressing through a career as a politician so why not formalize it? That way instead of your advancement being determined by your party officials or your fundraising it could be based on how well you governed at each level of office with the winner determined by measurable improvements they made.
lapcat 10mo ago
Two things I find very strange about the criticisms of sortition, as opposed to elections: 1) There are very few prerequisites for electoral candidates, mostly just age minimums (with no maximums). In some but not all cases there's a residency requirement, and in the case of the POTUS, a birthright citizenship requirement. Otherwise, there is no specific requirement for intelligence, knowledge, experience, ethics, etc. Basically, any random citizen who's old enough can run, and win, as long as they can somehow convince enough other people to vote for them. And there are some incredible dumbasses who get elected; I'll mention my own Senator Ron Johnson as particularly noteworthy in that department, but the list is quite long IMO. 2) The random voters who are so distrusted by critics of sortition are the very same people who are entrusted with voting for the candidates in elections that are supposedly superior to sortition. How exactly is that supposed to work, where that outcome, election outcomes, are magically better than the outcomes of voters deliberating among themselves? What I like about sortition is that I think the odds are a lot better to select honest, good-intentioned, non-corrupt people by lot than by election. The latter tends to pick out the power-hungry, and in a political system where campaigns are privately financed, elections also tend to pick out the financially corrupt. The situation would be a lot different if for example we had stringent standardized tests as prerequisites for political office, but we don't. Ironically, you have to pass the bar to be a lawyer, but you don't have to pass the bar to be a lawmaker.
gwbas1c 10mo ago
We still need elections: There are policy decisions that really need to follow popular support; and there are situations where the general public needs to be able to overrule the legislature. (For example, marijuana legalization in Massachusetts was by a ballot initiative.) That being said: 1: I think some aspect of randomly choosing legislative bodies helps avoid leaders who are power-seeking. 2: I think "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop" speaks a lot more about how to fix the issues with elections. https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop
dragonwriter 10mo ago
Sortition. The word I think they are looking for is sortition.
ClayShentrup 10mo ago
election by jury is better. elections aren't the problem — uninformed voters are the problem. especially if the turnout is statistically demographically biased (older, whiter, wealthier, more conservative, etc.) https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/

48 points by egghack 10mo ago

> What if elections are the problem? Social media is the problem. We weren't this polarized until after the Bush admin, right as everyone on the planet got online. Politics used to be civil. Republicans and Democrats in Congress used to go out to lunch together. Hyper online discourse and algorithms that boost rage ended that. We're all being taught to foam at the mouth to increase screen time.

JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Which Bush? Rush Limbaugh was amping up the polarization in the late 1980's.
nephihaha 10mo ago
They still go to lunch together. They do so at climate conferences, Davos, and all the other places us peasants are not invited to.
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  Because many of us forget that getting elected and staying elected requires putting on an act for the minority of Americans who vote in primaries.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    No, it just depends on being in one of two parties. Primaries are internal organisational operations. The US set up means that both of these parties are in power at some level and can never be removed.
    - gwbas1c 10mo ago
      See https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop It explains the problem with primaries. To summarize: In order to make it through your primary, you need to be ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal, and even support policies that don't make sense in a general election.
gwbas1c 10mo ago
The George W. Bush era (not administration) was very polarized. When I read his memoir, he didn't come across as polarized, but more naive about polarization in the media. He did mention that he regretted not having a better media presence.
poly2it 10mo ago
Yes, access to information must be the problem! Neglect the real danger of social media, the corporations behind them.
observationist 10mo ago
There have been brief periods where civility was normal, but politics and extreme heated emotion and polarization are the norm. Murder, mayhem, riots, extreme, ridiculous mud-slinging, and simmering turmoil have been the default state for a majority of human history. Social media has exacerbated things in some ways, but in others, it's imposed an artificial civility as people get settled into their bubbles and vent online instead of taking action. Just look at all the political violence in each decade of the 20th century in the US. Look at all the bombings, arson, murder, riots since 1950. The dynamics have changed, but it'll be decades or more before humanity is anywhere near culturally settled down with the internet and instant global communication. It's already a net good, but massive online platforms and entrenched power players manipulating narratives and so on still need to be calibrated in policy. The civility you remember might simply have been that all the violence wasn't being reported and headlining in major outlets 24/7. The threshold for newsworthy events and the willing participation of news outlets in managing perception created a very sterile and civil seeming facade over what's been more or less constant chaos.
- coryrc 10mo ago
  > it's imposed an artificial civility as people get settled into their bubbles and vent online instead of taking action. Civility serves those taking an ever-growing fraction of the country's wealth generation.
derektank 10mo ago
The post-war partisan environment was pretty unique in American history for its civility and substantial overlap between the two parties. The late 19th century had a level of partisanship comparable to today, though much of it was filtered through ethnic and religious identities in a way that would be unfamiliar to people today. In many ways, our modern political environment is a reversion to the mean. I wouldn’t bet money on social media specifically being the primary driver of this change (though I do think the collapse in barriers to sharing information has allowed for partisanship identity to be formed along ideological lines, rather than geographical or cultural lines, in a way that is unique.)
undeveloper 10mo ago
I understand the sentiment, but "Republicans and Democrats" doesn't sound appealing, it makes my blood boil, and certainly you are thinking "this idiot's been brainwashed by social media to think that's a good thing!", maybe, fair. But I think maybe democrats shouldn'tve been doing that during 2012 and playing "they go low, we go high" when they were holding a justice position from a centrist candidate a "sensible" congress wouldve passed, I don't think they should've done that when Bush cried about WMDs, and most recently I don't think they should continue to just "have lunch" after January 6th. I'm goddamn tired of complicit democrats.

andrewflnr 10mo ago

It's really, ah, silly to claim this is a new idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition dates back to ancient Athens.

JKCalhoun 10mo ago
"Perhaps we can use this wild ancient idea to build a new, better democracy for the 21st century and beyond…" I think they're acknowledging as much.
gwbas1c 10mo ago
> Perhaps we can use this wild ancient idea to build a new, better democracy for the 21st century and beyond… The linked page makes it very clear that this is an old idea.
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- andrewflnr 10mo ago
  I did miss that one time, but they spend a lot more words calling it "new". And I read their table of contents which also didn't spend any significant time on history.
  - gwbas1c 10mo ago
    The linked PDF, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66d70657deaace3ac1fc44a0/t/66e091fd5243bf7d8f2dcda5/1725993469879/Lottocracy+the+basics.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66d70657deaace3ac1fc4..., makes it very clear this is an old idea on page 3.

RobotToaster 10mo ago

Frankly it couldn't work any worse than our current system. the problem with most politicians is that they're the sort of people who want to be politicians

JKCalhoun 10mo ago
Yeah, basically it becomes a very serious "jury duty".
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cyberax 10mo ago
Our current system works very well. It provides predictability and protects the rights of people. That's also why it's heavily biased against rapid changes. It's not _perfect_ for sure. But the sortition-based systems are in general quite terrible exactly because they lack the feedback loops that keep societies stable. The main problem with the current administration, for example, is its disdain for these checks and balances and desire to move fast and break all the written and unwritten traditions. There are also examples of failed sortition-based systems. I can give you the Soviet Union as one example. On paper, it was ruled by the Supreme Council ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Soviet_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Soviet_of_the_Soviet_U... ). Its delegates were chosen mostly randomly from workers and then approved by a public vote. Yet it was a complete rubber-stamp organization with zero actual power. Sortition made sure of that, people couldn't form reliable alliances and power-hungry people who could initiate real reforms almost never actually got chosen.
silisili 10mo ago
Oh it could be much, much worse. I can only imagine the harebrained ideas that would be popular. No more taxes of any kind. Free beer and cigarettes. Monthly checks of, I don't know, $10k a person. At some point you need adults in the room(in mind, not age). Our system is obviously not great, but this is a way to make it much worse.

shomp 10mo ago

Works exactly once until people who are lottery-elected change the system to stay in power forever.

nephihaha 10mo ago

So called democracy is already "hacked". What you do is create a two party system in most countries, which provides the illusion of choice.

yunnpp 10mo ago
What "most countries" have a two-party system? From the summary below, most democracies actually seem to not have one. Spain, for example, used to be rather binary in early 2k, but its parliament has diversified since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system Maybe Americans should question why new parties cannot be formed that actually represent their people instead of looking to replace democracy entirely with...a lottery? I can't comment further because I am not American.
- georgebcrawford 10mo ago
  New Zealand isn’t on that list, but two parties generally take 70-80% of the vote. Last election (~65%) was an outlier due to the two leaders being pretty unpopular. However, NZ has a proportional voting system that leads to coalitions forming governments. This is considered a good thing, but can lead to…interesting outcomes. The current government is very much the dog being wagged by a couple of nasty tails. Current PM is a weak “I've run a company so can run a country” type.
  - yunnpp 10mo ago
    > Current PM is a weak “I've run a company so can run a country” type. Hopefully a successful company, that is.
    - georgebcrawford 10mo ago
      He was successful at Air NZ from memory. But they're completely different jobs. For example, he cut services and jobs which helped increase profits. Not uncommon for an airline. The same approach when running a country is disastrous and not uncommon for out of touch neoliberals like Luxon. His management experience at Air NZ has not correlated with strong leadership. Compare him with the previous PM (Jacinda Ardern) and most Kiwis, even the right, would agree she handled things better. A few lefties like myself think she could have done more (especially wrt to housing policy) with the immense political capital she had just before Covid, but oh well. You didn't ask for any of that sorry!

keiferski 10mo ago

Not exactly a new idea...but I do think it's one that is underused in democratic societies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition Having said that, it doesn't seem obvious to me that elected power is actually all that powerful, compared to unelected powers like corporations. I think you could use the same reasoning as pro-sortition arguments, but to argue for more democracy and elections, not less. Or at least that a state/citizen-focused theory of power is inadequate. (Raymond Geuss talks more about this.)

jawns 10mo ago

The main problem with choosing representatives by lottery is that the average person just doesn't want to do the job. I know I wouldn't. It's about as appealing as having to do jury duty for three years. The book proposes financial incentives as a way to address this reluctance, such as paying the person 1.5 times their current salary. But that seems like it will lead to representatives who are only doing it for the money, not because they care about doing a good job. And then, of course, there's always a chance that you end up in a "Napoleon of Notting Hill" situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Napoleon_of_Notting_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Napoleon_of_Notting_Hill Part of me wonders what would happen if a lottery were used not to select representatives from among the population at large, but from among the candidates who have won their parties' respective primaries. Of course, then you'd have to decide whether to use weighted selections (which would strongly favor the entrenched parties) or non-weighted (which would give a strong edge to minor parties). But realistically, sensible term limits seem like they would help achieve a lot of what the proposed lottocracy system would achieve.

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websiteapi 10mo ago

I doubt this would work better. the average person simply isn't a good executive. they'd end up getting dominated by the assertive folks. a simpler and easier solution to our problems to enforce approval voting across all elections, local, state and national, which will easily allow for moderates to siphon all votes and moderate the country drastically.

ClayShentrup 10mo ago
yes. election by jury is the good parts of sortition without the bad parts. https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/ approval voting is great. i co-founded a major non-profit that got it adopted in fargo and st louis. for election by jury i'd advocate score voting, since higher resolution is more valuable with small groups.

jaggederest 10mo ago

The issue with randomly selected representation is that the support staff start to become the ones who effectively make the decisions. This is the same issue with term limits (which to be clear, I'm in favor of, but we have to go in with our eyes open), which is that e.g. the congressional staffers gain power, especially if they persist across the end of the term limit. In these kinds of cases, you almost need term limits for staff, which feels pretty cruel and arbitrary - "Thank you for making a career in public service but you are now legally barred from your chosen career"

Arainach 10mo ago
Great. Now we have inexperienced legislators, inexperienced aides, and experienced lobbyists. That's definitely going to be an improvement rather than an absolute catastrophe. Term limits are like so many populist ideas: they sound great until you think at all about the consequences. Effective government requires people with a long tenure. That's how you learn how the system operates, that's how you build the relationships that allow you to get things done, and that's how you build the reputation that allows you to get people to believe in what you say and accomplish things.
- jaggederest 10mo ago
  In my own defense, the kinds of term limits I'm talking about are much lengthier than most people start out wanting, I think. I would term limit senators at 5 terms, perhaps, and representatives at 12 or 15? I think the issue is not so much long tenures per se as losing relevance by spending an entire lifetime in one position in government.
- pigpop 10mo ago
  Isn't that just reinventing aristocracy?
  - Arainach 10mo ago
    No. Elected officials have to be elected, which is a control and feedback mechanism.

Havoc 10mo ago

I don’t think it solves the core limitation of democracy - limits you to lowest common denominator of what the man on the street thinks. Who is by definition of average intelligence. It’s all sorts of rubbish and not conducive to solving problems decisively but seems to be the only system where power doesn’t get monopolized

delichon 10mo ago

“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” -- William F. Buckley. Now more than ever. See "Franchise" (1955) by Isaac Asimov for an efficient version.

throw310822 10mo ago
I'm afraid that mr Buckley would be shocked if he actually met and had a conversation with the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone book.
- Arainach 10mo ago
  Mr. Buckley may or may not be shocked, but he's certainly a vocal opponent of a competent effective government, so all of his thoughts on how he'd prefer to be governed should be ignored with extreme prejudice.
  - sirmike_ 10mo ago
    According to YOU. What a very poor all or nothing statement. And the reader should never listen to someone who claims all or nothing here or there. Nope. Perhaps throw a bridle on your unbridled "kindly fuck off nuance" view.
  - dragonwriter 10mo ago
    Generally, inverting them would be superior to ignoring them, but the last thing you should do is take them as good ideas.
bongodongobob 10mo ago
The average person can barely read and knows nothing about world history and politics. No thanks.
boroboro4 10mo ago
Would you rather be treated (medically) by the first 2000 people? Do you think code will be written better by the first 2000? I get being unhappy about current political class, but this kind of claims is wild to me.

svieira 10mo ago

This is the premise of The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton. In 1984 (100 years after the writing of the book), the King of England is now selected by lottery. Much wildness ensues. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm

miki123211 10mo ago

I think this idea (which is properly called sortition) would work even better if combined with the normal kind of democracy. Most western democracies already have a two-chamber system (commons/lords, congress/senate etc), but those two chambers are elected in very similar ways. Instead, we could make one of them elected by sortition, while keeping the other one a traditional democracy. I'd personally split the sortition part into per-area committees. There'd be a main committee with members taken from the general populace, whose only job would be to create the rules of who can be chosen for which committee (e.g. only qualified doctors for medicine). That main committee would also manage inter-committee disputes, in cases where it's not obvious whether a particular committee should be given the right to vote on a particular bill.

sokoloff 10mo ago
As low an opinion as I have of current politicians, I feel sortition would work even less well.

deadbabe 10mo ago

I’m skeptical. From what I’ve lived through, it seems like power always finds a way to consolidate in perpetuity. The best we can hope for is that those with the most power have our interests at heart.

JavGull 10mo ago

Why not Plebiscites, updated for the technological age, could function as a mass interface: swipe-based decisions on budgets and policy, where governance emerges from an aggregated collective consciousness rather than elite mediation… thoughts?

guiriduro 10mo ago

The diagnosis I largely agree with. To the point I no longer identify as a (small-d) democrat, it is the tyrrany of the mob's choice of (usually reprehensible) representative, who will have lied and pacted with corrupt elites to obtain his/her position, and been nominally elected by the ignorant. Anyone who wants power should by that fact be excluded. The solution however (lottery-election) is absurd. We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect.

silenced_trope 10mo ago
> We should instead restrict the franchise by exam to provably non-ignorant, non-evil critical thinkers so that we get representatives who are non-sociopaths that we can respect. How do we prove non-evil? Also the exam part brings to mind the Chinese imperial exams for civil service. I don't know whether that's good or bad, it didn't work out well for them.
- guiriduro 10mo ago
  For a critical thinking exam, you should be able to show that you can decipher political gobledegook, identify lies and platitiudes, strawman arguments etc(there would be much less of it anyway as in a restricted franchise very few with votes would be swayed by it, which is the point.) Non-evilness would be shown by answering questions designed to test basic empathy, and also by the lack of recent recorded crimes or misdemenours.
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MagicMoonlight 10mo ago

This is the kind of naive nonsense that children come up with. Anyone who has done jury service knows how thick and incompetent a random sampling of the population is. If you want effective rulers, you need Roman democracy. Each position is held only for a year, and you either win election to the next rank, or you’re out. Corbyns and Bernies can’t just sit in the same seat for 50 years without ever doing anything. Morons can’t get to be ruler. Every step is an intense competition, encouraging boldness in public service. They also had an amazing system for war declarations… only those eligible to fight were eligible to vote whether to declare war. The old and the weak were not allowed to vote in those specific ballots.

glitchc 10mo ago

It would be better to hold referendums instead. An important decision should be brought directly to the populace rather than be driven by the whims of the currently elected party in power (regardless of political stripes). Examples of important questions are: Should we allow X people to immigrate per year? Should we go to war with country Y?Should the new tax rate be Z? The Swiss do this. They are one of the populations most satisfied with their government. Referendums work.

phtrivier 10mo ago

The "let's pick people at random to discuss hairy topics" has been done at least three times in France in the form of "Convention Citoyenne". In each case, people came up with relatively "popular" solutions (one of them is still in progress) In each case, the elected officials all but ignored the output, on the ground that the body had not been elected, was manipulated by experts, had no responsibility and accountability, etc... Anyone who solves this will indeed have found an improvement over elective democracy. In the case of the US, a lower hanging fruit would be getting out of "elections that can easily be bought by corporations with litteral money".

haizhung 10mo ago
Yep, people in this thread are claiming that this doesn’t work. In fact, it does work, and it is already implemented! Here in Germany we also have the concept of „Bürgerräte“, and we have similar problems as in France (no political power to implement their solutions). However, one takeaway was that people vastly underestimated how carefully the participants would try to understand the topic at hand. People that would usually just regurgitate angry propaganda were forced to form their own opinion and they did! IMHO it’s this is a great tool for democracy that is yet underused.
- phtrivier 10mo ago
  But how useful is it as a tool if nothing is implemented in the end ? What's worst is that, at least in France, there was an elegant solution to the problem : just ask the general population to approve or reject the proposals in a referendum. Even if the referendum was consultative, and even if the lawmakers were to make the law in the end, it would have massively made it harder to ignore the result. And I would have loved to see the "popular jury" campaign for or against the measures.

constantcrying 10mo ago

There is a very hilarious genre of political "thinkers" whose entire view of politics is entirely delusional and who are so disconnected from reality that both their diagnosis and their solution looks ridiculous. I get that Yarvin is an icky fascist bigot, but just read the political thinkers he got his ideas from. The idea that the elected representatives, much less the method by which representatives are chosen, have any meaningful impact on politics is just laughable.

avivo 10mo ago

There is a lot of potential in this. Not just for government democracy, but for also introducing democratic elements into tech/AI policy, when that tech has impact comparable to many governments. I worked in tech, and after some formative experiences, shifted to working on helping ensuring ensure that tech's impact on society can serve the public interest. But that leaves the question of what "what is the public interest"? Sortitition / lottocracy / deliberative democracy / mini-publics all roughly refer to the same way to answer that question — providing a representative microcosm with the space to deeply examine an issue, and come to a set of recommendations and decisions on it. Unlike with electoral democracy, it's faster to spin up and experiment with, and it's harder for bad actors to entrench power (elections can be useful, but they're one of many tools in the democratic toolbelt). That thinking lead to https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-democracy-policymaking-beyond-corporate-ceos-and-partisan-pressure https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-platform-de... . That basic approach, has been somewhat picked up by Meta (https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-a-giant-experiment-in-governance-now-its-turning-to-ai/ https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-a-giant-experiment-in-g...) and Open AI (https://aligned.substack.com/p/a-proposal-for-importing-societys-values https://aligned.substack.com/p/a-proposal-for-importing-soci..., ~ leading to their democratic inputs and collective alignment work). I've now started an organization focusing on applying this and other democratic paradigms to decision-making about AI (https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/ https://aidemocracyfoundation.org/) as a way to solve a variety of challenging governance problems across the AI stack. If you're curious about it, our ICML paper goes into more detail: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09222 .

MadameMinty 10mo ago

I imagine the random person, if they were to accept, would likely find themselves out of depth and simply outsource most of the job to whoever convinces them they're the right choice. The system would then morph into a variant of representative democracy. Instead of millions voting for, say, around a thousand of various level representatives, you get a random thousand "voting" for "consultants". These consultants would be directly hired by the random thousand to do the work for them. They would predicably have marketing campaigns to make themselves seem the right pick. They might even offer their services for free. Demagoguery and corporate sponsorship as usual. In the end 1000 people would hire, say, 1-1000 consultants to represent them. Thus emulating the original process, or worse. The only difference is the tiny electorate, which increases volatility. If you'd like to regulate it to prevent this, you'd have to expend an effort and fight similar pressures as with doing it in any other system.

drcongo 10mo ago

In the UK we had this for about 5 years under the previous regime.

sirmike_ 10mo ago

Couple questions .... what is the author's point of origin and experience with "democracy" and/or "democracies"? I mention this as the founding principals of this Lottery thing are more or less "complaints" and not values or principals really. It is very slasdash and hollow. But this is a fun thought experiment so lets .... move on. Why *exactly* is democracy the absolute best form of govt known to mankind? You just kinda slip that in there which is a massive assumption. And exactly which democracy is best aside from the one proposed? For that matter exactly WHO? and I do mean WHO says that democracies aren't working? Who the fuck has the balls to say that horseshit premise? No one is saying that. Not seriously, anywhere. No one. That ultimately is the fatal flaw for this thought experiment. There are fundamentally different value judgments from "European" "Democracies" vs US vs Asian as examples. Lottery based is an interesting system but not really doable the way this site lays out. 3 years is too short to do anything; unless there is a relief value where a certain percentage (by lottery) of that year's cohort can do something critical in any representative form of govt. Incumbency. You do in fact need a slowly revolving core of representatives who can do proper work over 2-5 terms max. Otherwise its a constant nut house with nothing getting done and not near enough permanence for medium to long term solutions over time. At the end of the day for me -- I do not think the people behind this thought this through and it shows. There isnt serious skull sweat in this thing and I think it undermines an interesting concept. I also think just because you are frustrated in democratic processes -- you are the problem. Apathy is a choice. Ignorance is a choice. Frustration is a choice. If you do not like your form of govt -- move, make peace with it or roll up them sleeves and get busy participating.

pigpop 10mo ago

I think a much more "American" style of political competition would be to have elected politicians compete at various levels to determine who gets to move on to the next higher position. They already seem to do this informally in many cases by progressing through a career as a politician so why not formalize it? That way instead of your advancement being determined by your party officials or your fundraising it could be based on how well you governed at each level of office with the winner determined by measurable improvements they made.

lapcat 10mo ago

Two things I find very strange about the criticisms of sortition, as opposed to elections: 1) There are very few prerequisites for electoral candidates, mostly just age minimums (with no maximums). In some but not all cases there's a residency requirement, and in the case of the POTUS, a birthright citizenship requirement. Otherwise, there is no specific requirement for intelligence, knowledge, experience, ethics, etc. Basically, any random citizen who's old enough can run, and win, as long as they can somehow convince enough other people to vote for them. And there are some incredible dumbasses who get elected; I'll mention my own Senator Ron Johnson as particularly noteworthy in that department, but the list is quite long IMO. 2) The random voters who are so distrusted by critics of sortition are the very same people who are entrusted with voting for the candidates in elections that are supposedly superior to sortition. How exactly is that supposed to work, where that outcome, election outcomes, are magically better than the outcomes of voters deliberating among themselves? What I like about sortition is that I think the odds are a lot better to select honest, good-intentioned, non-corrupt people by lot than by election. The latter tends to pick out the power-hungry, and in a political system where campaigns are privately financed, elections also tend to pick out the financially corrupt. The situation would be a lot different if for example we had stringent standardized tests as prerequisites for political office, but we don't. Ironically, you have to pass the bar to be a lawyer, but you don't have to pass the bar to be a lawmaker.

gwbas1c 10mo ago

We still need elections: There are policy decisions that really need to follow popular support; and there are situations where the general public needs to be able to overrule the legislature. (For example, marijuana legalization in Massachusetts was by a ballot initiative.) That being said: 1: I think some aspect of randomly choosing legislative bodies helps avoid leaders who are power-seeking. 2: I think "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop" speaks a lot more about how to fix the issues with elections. https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://leedrutman.org/breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop

dragonwriter 10mo ago

Sortition. The word I think they are looking for is sortition.

ClayShentrup 10mo ago

election by jury is better. elections aren't the problem — uninformed voters are the problem. especially if the turnout is statistically demographically biased (older, whiter, wealthier, more conservative, etc.) https://www.electionbyjury.org/ https://www.electionbyjury.org/