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>How do you call a system of government when power is literally forced on unwilling people ? A government. All governments are coercive and premised on a few p

by krapp 19d ago

>How do you call a system of government when power is literally forced on unwilling people ? A government. All governments are coercive and premised on a few powerful elites maintaining and exercising their power with a monopoly on violence[0]. Yes, even the "good" ones. At the end of the day government, like war, is a racket. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

phtrivier 18d ago
I meant "unwilling people are forced to _exercise_ power". I don't know that it's the case in any representative democracies - people literally _compete_ to access power.
- krapp 18d ago
  Ok. That would be weird. Presumably if you have power, you have the power to just quit or resign. Given how much effort people put into getting out of jury duty I can only imagine how something like sortition (which I think is what you're describing) would work. Would it be like military conscription, where you could go to prison if you're AWOL? If so, who really has the power in that scenario? And there's also the problem of competence. Forcing some random to act as Secretary of HHS is more likely to get us an RFK type than someone who knows what they're doing. But then vetting candidates with some kind of voir dire like system is just voting, except only a few people get to do it.
  - jjav 18d ago
    These are all problems. On the other hand we know for sure from centuries (millenia?) of evidence that allowing the people who most crave power to be the ones who seek and obtain said power, is a recipe for disaster as well. It is interesting to brainstorm what could be a better system. I think clear qualifications should be required. So to use the HHS example, it would have criteria to be a doctor, certain years of practice, perhaps practice in several specialties for breadth, some research experience, some administrative experience. You'd want to make the criteria narrow enough that only mostly truly qualified people meet it, but also broad enough that at least tens of thousands of people do qualify for the role, so that someone can't just easily fine-tune their resume to assure themselves a spot. It needs to be impossible to game. I don't have the answers, but clearly we can do better than the current system where only power-hungry psychopaths choose to travel the road to obtain the vast power they crave.
    - phtrivier 18d ago
      It's a known problem, for which we've also had a pretty robust workaround since Montesquieu : distribute separate part of power to _many_ craving people who disagree and can lock each other's. I'm all for adding a branch that would be primarily picked at random (and I'm all for having a branch that is only recruited among peers of expertise, with fréquent rotation as a way to limit the risk of connivence, etc...)

by krapp 19d ago

phtrivier 18d ago

I meant "unwilling people are forced to _exercise_ power". I don't know that it's the case in any representative democracies - people literally _compete_ to access power.

krapp 18d ago
Ok. That would be weird. Presumably if you have power, you have the power to just quit or resign. Given how much effort people put into getting out of jury duty I can only imagine how something like sortition (which I think is what you're describing) would work. Would it be like military conscription, where you could go to prison if you're AWOL? If so, who really has the power in that scenario? And there's also the problem of competence. Forcing some random to act as Secretary of HHS is more likely to get us an RFK type than someone who knows what they're doing. But then vetting candidates with some kind of voir dire like system is just voting, except only a few people get to do it.
- jjav 18d ago
  These are all problems. On the other hand we know for sure from centuries (millenia?) of evidence that allowing the people who most crave power to be the ones who seek and obtain said power, is a recipe for disaster as well. It is interesting to brainstorm what could be a better system. I think clear qualifications should be required. So to use the HHS example, it would have criteria to be a doctor, certain years of practice, perhaps practice in several specialties for breadth, some research experience, some administrative experience. You'd want to make the criteria narrow enough that only mostly truly qualified people meet it, but also broad enough that at least tens of thousands of people do qualify for the role, so that someone can't just easily fine-tune their resume to assure themselves a spot. It needs to be impossible to game. I don't have the answers, but clearly we can do better than the current system where only power-hungry psychopaths choose to travel the road to obtain the vast power they crave.
  - phtrivier 18d ago
    It's a known problem, for which we've also had a pretty robust workaround since Montesquieu : distribute separate part of power to _many_ craving people who disagree and can lock each other's. I'm all for adding a branch that would be primarily picked at random (and I'm all for having a branch that is only recruited among peers of expertise, with fréquent rotation as a way to limit the risk of connivence, etc...)