alt Hacker NewsOr we can recruit lawmakers how we choose juries: randomly. Every two years we randomly select 435 individuals to serve in the House and 100 random people for the Senate. We pay them well, and they pass a basic literacy test. No money in politics, no parties. You have to for a coalition to govern.
One objection could be this: but what if we hire unqualified people. The counterargument: do you think are current legislators are more or less qualified than an average person?
Another objection: but what if they don’t want to do it? Counterargument: when a juror does not want to be on a case, they are almost always dismissed from it. Doesn’t mean you get to skip jury duty, just that you don’t get to do that one.
One last one: this will disrupt those people’s lives. Counter argument: what Congress is and isn’t doing right now is disrupting everyone’s lives as are lobbyists and special interest groups.
Something similar has been done in Ireland with their assemblies. And I do think that if you cannot convince 535 randomly selected average citizens that a law should be passed, that law is probably not worth passing.
Democracy is a terrible form of government. It’s just that it is about 5x better than anything else we have invented so far. Doesn’t mean we should stop looking for a better system.
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For reference, this is referred to as "sortition", and at least the Athenians felt that it was more democratic than elections. The randomization machines they used for picking winners (kleroterion) are quite ingenious.
In modern times, sortition sometimes shows up in some deliberative democracy proposals.
We elect leaders - people with skills, knowledge, and expertise.
Does the average citizen even understand discounted cash flows or opportunity cost? And not to mention legal concepts I’m ignorant of.
I don’t see why lowering the quality of candidates by 10x would improve things.
Sounds very interesting, but one more counter-points I'd like to see counter-countered:
These random people will have to rely on experts a lot for knowledge they lack on any topic, because the world is complex. Now, these experts can be biased, bought, influenced etc. Or be accused of being in some sort of "Deep State" if you're into that.
But then again, this can already be the case, now I counter-countered myself.
sortition is just democracy but with a weird probabilistic form of voting
As a prosecuting attorney who selects and works to convince the "average" juror 5+ times a year, this is not a good idea. You are vastly overestimating what the average level of competence is. Most people, when given unfamiliar knowledge work to do, are so hopelessly biased and ignorant that I definitely think the average congressperson is more qualified to do that kind of work. We are spoiled by selection bias when extrapolating what "average" means in the USA.