🤔 "democracy"
- "representative democracy", ie. choosing government official through elections (to "represent you") results in assemblies that are not representative of their populations (in the "statistically 'representative' sample" sense)
- look at any modern western parliament, and it is heavily biased towards rich / elites / landlords
- (... because they are the ones who can afford to stand out through the election process, or, are connected to those who can help them afford it)
- Athenian democracy specifically avoided elections for this reason
- and preferred sortition (random selection) to multiple different assemblies
- the US founding fathers specifically avoided democracy (choosing to form a republic, in model after Rome instead of Athens)
- eventually, the "democracy" was usurped to legitimize/white-wash elections as "rule of the people"
- ...and now, "democracy" in common use is less about the specific governance mechanisms, but the various related ideals
- moving our modern systems towards sortition doesn't just mean, say, "replace parliament elections with random allotment", there would likely be more structural and procedural changes
- like additional checks-and-balance by creating multiple assemblies
- in Athens, they had separate ones for "agenda setting / law drafting" vs "voting on laws"
- a good sketch here:
- Democracy Through Multi-Body Sortition, Bouricius
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341075999DemocracyThroughMulti-BodySortitionAthenianLessonsfortheModernDay/fulltext/5eac18b092851cb267694107/Democracy-Through-Multi-Body-Sortition-Athenian-Lessons-for-the-Modern-Day.pdf?origin=publicationdetail&tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uRG93bmxvYWQiLCJwcmV2aW91c1BhZ2UiOiJwdWJsaWNhdGlvbiJ9fQ
- suggests having bodies for:
- Agenda Council
- setting the agenda (and hearing petitions)
- Interest Panels (many)
- Review Panels (per policy area)
- amend bills based on hearings and discussion
- Policy Juries
- convened to vote on each piece of legislation
- Rules Council
- decide rules on how the process of other assemblies work
- Oversight Council
- "enforces" procedural rules and complaints
- more here:
- https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections
- arguments against sortition
- "professional" politicians "know better" than a random citizen
- ...are better informed, are more efficient at the art of politics
- mob rule (abuse of minorities at the hand of majority)
- could become "captured" by the bureaucracy
- bureaucrats have longer tenure than elected/sortitioned officials and can use that to accumulate power and manipulate the assembly
- could be easily swayed by skilled orators
- no "accountability"
- ...
- arguments for sortition
- "statistically" representative of the general population
- elections heavily bias towards wealthy and elite
- even if biased towards self, can better represent the people's interests
- elected politicians often just vote based on what they know personally (or in their networks)
- elected politicians are often "captured" by special interest groups
- elections motivate parties to divide the population and sow division
- elected politicians are motivated by short-term effects to improve re-election chances
- elections lead to focus on polarizing wedge issues, campaign-contribution-attracting issues, and short-term issues
- more cognitive diversity
- parties force an entire package of policies
- actual deliberation happens (to determine what is best)
- ...
- IMO...
- first-past-the-post based "democracies" are a farce, a sufficiently believable illusion of "rule by the people" to keep the populace content, while allowing a minority to stay in control
- in Canada, senate could reasonably be switched to sortition
- many already argue it could be abolished, but IMO, there's an opportunity to use it as a "gateway" towards sortition (ie. shift the Overton window)
- https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-lets-replace-canadas-senate-with-a-randomly-selected-citizen-assembly
- and later, add 100 seats to the House of Commons that are selected by lot
- https://www.pressreader.com/canada/national-post-latest-edition/20050922/281882998729157
- this would make discussions and votes in the House actually meaningful
- (and maybe later, do away with elections all-together)