This is an opinion piece detailing the merits of Sortism or random assignment to political office rather than having low turnout voters vote for people. Personally I think this is one of the worst...
This is an opinion piece detailing the merits of Sortism or random assignment to political office rather than having low turnout voters vote for people.
Personally I think this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard because most people I've met aren't qualified to run a lemonade stand let alone something important like the department of energy. The author then tries to link Dark Triad traits to people who seek political office, and I hate when we start talking about these traits due to how it's overused and abused as a way to label people we don't like.
What do you folks think? Should we do away with democracy and randomly assign people to jobs in the government?
To change the authors intent "The worst people are cops. Should we give random individuals the guns and handcuffs every year?" Fuck that's such a bad idea. I would call most politicians average to...
To change the authors intent "The worst people are cops. Should we give random individuals the guns and handcuffs every year?"
Fuck that's such a bad idea. I would call most politicians average to below average but the solution should be to enforce more participation, not less.
What's next? Who gets to create the algorithm for selection? How do we deal with the eventual selection of a dead person when the person in charge of the census never updated the voter rolls because they can't read or write? How do we control population selections for national offices or can you just get assigned six different offices at once by random.
Sometimes I think I've heard the dumbest idea ever and then someone comes along and writes an OP ED.
Larger populations to pick from? I kid, but the reality is you're not going to get 'the exceptional' for the most part when the pay is average and the job is somewhat thankless. I accept that the...
Larger populations to pick from? I kid, but the reality is you're not going to get 'the exceptional' for the most part when the pay is average and the job is somewhat thankless.
I accept that the reality is that most people who feel called to lead do it out of a sense of ego. But, as long as the public benefits from their ego, I can live with that. If society is able to function day to day, that makes you an average politician. And that's not so bad. We don't all have to change the world, just keep it running.
The pay is not even average: it's a pittance. A congressperson earns $174,000 a year, which may sound plentiful, but anyone connected and capable enough to successfully run a campaign can do...
the reality is you're not going to get 'the exceptional' for the most part when the pay is average and the job is somewhat thankless.
The pay is not even average: it's a pittance. A congressperson earns $174,000 a year, which may sound plentiful, but anyone connected and capable enough to successfully run a campaign can do better in the private sector.
And it is more than thankless: it invites the media and the public to pick through and judge every significant and mundane detail of one's life: grades, clothes and hairstyles, past relationships, sexuality, and so on. And half of your demographic will despise you, and a tiny minority will be mentally ill enough to want to harm you and your family.
Rational people steer clear of politics. Which means we're left with the irrational folks.
It's down to the process and the incentives. If you have a position that sucks and only the most extreme of people have time to vote for, well it's not going to be surprising when corrupt zealots...
It's down to the process and the incentives. If you have a position that sucks and only the most extreme of people have time to vote for, well it's not going to be surprising when corrupt zealots get in because everyone else is either sane enough to not want the position or sane enough to not be elected by the extremist taking time off to vote in some stupidly complicated process.
Making elections easier to be involved with at the local level, and the primary level, is critical. It's the area where the average vote can actually have a reasonable understanding of the issues and make the most impact, and yet we've made it less and less easy to participate in. In the last 10 years i've seen tons of reasonable candidates get primaried by extremists claiming nonsense and it just leads to worse governing overall.
I don’t think it’s the worst idea. But I do think it would be far far easier to cheat. You just need someone with a little sleight of hand skill to make Trump win every time. And don’t you dare...
I don’t think it’s the worst idea. But I do think it would be far far easier to cheat. You just need someone with a little sleight of hand skill to make Trump win every time. And don’t you dare suggest computers as a solution.
Better education and better access to elections sounds good and less risky.
Politicians, managers, and many other leadership roles require high skills in many different areas. Too many people think they're easy jobs and that the people who get hundreds, thousands or...
Politicians, managers, and many other leadership roles require high skills in many different areas. Too many people think they're easy jobs and that the people who get hundreds, thousands or millions of votes are somehow unqualified. Many others somehow think they (or other people) could last a week in the shoes of a full-time politician.
The acts of a society's democracy expose the values of the society (and in many cases the selfishness in how we vote that makes reaching those values nigh on impossible).
A society gets the politicians it deserves. We get who we vote for; the winner is the candidate who does best by the rules we've set. The politicians are just a reflection of getting the politicians we deserve in a way that is much harder to avoid.
Society is us. We're the ones who have to step up and do our part if we want change.
It's easy to whine and moan about "those politicians". Having random people gain roles of importance they're not motivated for one bit?
One compromise is to have a bicameral legislature: have the House of Representatives be selected, have the Senate be elected. One problem is that lawyers are way over represented in the...
One compromise is to have a bicameral legislature: have the House of Representatives be selected, have the Senate be elected.
One problem is that lawyers are way over represented in the legislature which leads to solutions that are onerous to the average person but seem just fine to specialists in dealing with red tape. Would have have so many complex means-tested benefits programs if it wasn't for that? Even so, lawyers do have some talents that would be helpful in writing law and they ought to be represented somehow.
My guess is that randomly selected people would be less vulnerable to corruption than people who had to work really hard to get where they are and wouldn't want to lose it all by rocking the boat. If you gave ordinary people a chance to be corrupt some of them would succumb, but it would be like playing Russian Roulette, some legislators would show you a gun, go to the cops, go to the media, it would be entirely too dangerous to try to buy off randomly selected legislators. (in contrast to the current situation where there would be a lot of "thanks but no thanks")
It's interesting you wrote that - I feel the complete opposite. I think that random people would be much more likely to take sweetheart deals, accept gifts, etc than people who had worked hard to...
My guess is that randomly selected people would be less vulnerable to corruption than people who had to work really hard to get where they are and wouldn't want to lose it all by rocking the boat.
It's interesting you wrote that - I feel the complete opposite. I think that random people would be much more likely to take sweetheart deals, accept gifts, etc than people who had worked hard to get where they are and had a lot to lose.
I think many of the would but I think 20% or though of them would probably end the life or career of somebody who tries to corrupt them, that is, “Russian Roulette”.
I think many of the would but I think 20% or though of them would probably end the life or career of somebody who tries to corrupt them, that is, “Russian Roulette”.
There is merit to the idea of democracy by lot. Most of the merit is a byproduct of voting for individuals in elections is a kinda terrible situation. It rewards charisma and appearance over...
There is merit to the idea of democracy by lot. Most of the merit is a byproduct of voting for individuals in elections is a kinda terrible situation. It rewards charisma and appearance over policy. Bush 2 won over Gore in part because "I'd rather have a beer with him" was a determining factor for a fair number of voters.
By seperating elections from popularity contests, you resolve that problem. The new problem is of course one of qualifications. I think there are a few aspects that I think would yield better policy in doing this:
Raising the stakes for random population selection from jury duty to governing places more onus on making the overall population more civicly minded. Gutting public education would be more blatantly harmful. It honestly think this is a good idea for policing for similiar reasons. Getting to see 'both sides' and a new incentive to teach everyone how to diffuse situations (and maybe rethink unlimited guns for everyone) is a good thing, if one with an akward and painful transition period.
Reducing the power that any one person can have. Rather than Rando president picking their staff...maybe that's chosen by votes coming from House and Senate instead. Where even if they too are drawn by lot, having them be larger bodies enables 'wisdom of the crowds' to a greater degree.
I see everyone else worrying that its terrible because we can't trust randos. And perhaps addressing why we can't trust randos will result in a better system overall, even if rule by lot doesn't come to pass.
You could borrow from the Westminster system where members of the Cabinet must themselves be Members of Parliament (or Congresspeople in the American context). Though I guess that wouldn't quite...
Reducing the power that any one person can have. Rather than Rando president picking their staff...maybe that's chosen by votes coming from House and Senate instead. Where even if they too are drawn by lot, having them be larger bodies enables 'wisdom of the crowds' to a greater degree.
You could borrow from the Westminster system where members of the Cabinet must themselves be Members of Parliament (or Congresspeople in the American context). Though I guess that wouldn't quite work with how the separation of powers is set up.
I couldn't read the article because of the paywall or account requirement. From what you've said, do you agree with how juries are put together? I like the idea of eliminating career politicians...
I couldn't read the article because of the paywall or account requirement. From what you've said, do you agree with how juries are put together? I like the idea of eliminating career politicians and having representation from actual non-millionaires. Maybe a check on that could be something like a recall if constituents don't like the way their lotteried rep is behaving.
The system is designed so that juries don't need any expertise in anything. The Judge will make it clear to them what the law is that they are supposed to decide on. The lawyers for both parties...
The system is designed so that juries don't need any expertise in anything. The Judge will make it clear to them what the law is that they are supposed to decide on. The lawyers for both parties and the expert witnesses they call will explain what happened in as much detail as possible, allowing a jury that previously had no knowledge of the case to make an accurate decision.
If you appoint a random Secretary of State (or a random president who appoints a friend) then there's no systems in place for how to deal with a Secretary of State who doesn't know anything. For example, recently Secretary Blinken got China to agree to stop exporting long range civilian drones to Russia. Do you think a random person could have managed that?
It wouldn't necessarily have to be random. The article mentions a pool of qualified candidates. The qualification specifically mentioned is civics knowledge but you can imagine more (literacy,...
It wouldn't necessarily have to be random. The article mentions a pool of qualified candidates. The qualification specifically mentioned is civics knowledge but you can imagine more (literacy, mathematics, etc.). I would much prefer someone with that sort of knowledge over someone born into a wealthy or well connected family.
Look at Blinken's career history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Blinken There's not exactly a giant pool of candidates for the position who you could pull from that would have anything...
There's not exactly a giant pool of candidates for the position who you could pull from that would have anything close to his level of qualifications.
And of course if you randomly picked a similarly qualified person, but got someone who completely disagreed with the President on foreign policy, it would also be a disaster even if everyone was qualified, because you'd never get any consistent policy out of anyone. The way it is now presidents can pick someone who is both qualified and agrees with their vision for what should be done, and this goes for pretty much every important appointment, not just Secretary of State
I think this strategy could work for both the US congress and president. You could have different qualification requirements for different pools for different positions too. For cabinet positions...
I think this strategy could work for both the US congress and president. You could have different qualification requirements for different pools for different positions too. For cabinet positions maybe the executive could still appoint their team.
The Secretary of State is appointed by the President. If you nominate random leaders you get random secretaries of state. Alternatively, if you get random leaders but force them to choose from a...
The Secretary of State is appointed by the President. If you nominate random leaders you get random secretaries of state.
Alternatively, if you get random leaders but force them to choose from a very narrow pool of qualified candidates, now these people essentially get to dictate policy on their own. Maybe not for high profile stuff, but for a huge amount of their job they would be able to just not tell the President anything, or tell him so much that he wouldn't understand any of it. This is the whole benefit to having career politicians, they stick around long enough to understand the system.
any idea that relies on "ok, the first thing we do, is we bring back literacy tests" is dead on arrival, and I view everything else the author proposes as automatically suspect, because they've...
Exemplary
In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution.
any idea that relies on "ok, the first thing we do, is we bring back literacy tests" is dead on arrival, and I view everything else the author proposes as automatically suspect, because they've demonstrated ignorance of an extremely basic thing about American political history.
as ever, the problem is who writes the literacy test? who grades its answers? (if we assume there's essay questions of some kind and not just multiple-choice) whoever has that power ends up actually controlling the system, despite this veneer of "random selection".
To paraphrase William F. Buckley Jr., I’d rather be governed by the first 535 people in the phone book.
ahh, there we go. this is one of my favorite / least-favorite genres of op-ed, the "stealth conservative" one.
on the surface, what he's proposing is non-partisan and neutral. but by approvingly quoting the founder of the National Review, it's pretty clear that what he's suggesting is a thoroughly conservative idea.
Switching to sortition would save a lot of money too. The 2020 elections alone cost upward of $14 billion. And if there’s no campaign, there are no special interests offering to help pay for it.
uh-huh, and we're supposed to believe the money spent by those special interests would simply vanish, rather than being redirected into think-tanks and lobbying groups that would "help" these randomly-selected legislators with pre-written laws and policy proposals?
Finally, no voting also means no boundaries to gerrymander and no Electoral College to dispute. Instead of questioning whether millions of ballots were counted accurately, we could watch the lottery live, like we do with teams getting their lottery picks in the NBA draft.
except, as I said, debates over who is qualified/allowed to enter the lottery would still flourish.
and to a certain segment of conspiracy-minded people, results they didn't like would still generate conspiracy theories about the lottery being rigged (which is entirely possible - who oversees the process? how are the rules decided?)
Yup. People game things. Especially tests. Particularly any sorts of tests that might be involved in elections or leadership. Who designs the test, administers it, and so on. Replace test with...
Yup. People game things. Especially tests. Particularly any sorts of tests that might be involved in elections or leadership. Who designs the test, administers it, and so on. Replace test with "rules" or "committee" and you get the same outcome with the same problems; bias and selective decision making on the part of whomever has the power to influence the test/rules/committee's outcome.
Consider the famous "price of milk" question in American politics, as a simple example. A reporter thought that up one time and sprung it on a candidate. The intention behind the question was to use it as a way to determine if the politician was "in touch" with regular people. If they didn't know how much a gallon of milk cost, they might not be.
Questions that help voters figure that out are probably A Good Thing. Knowing that a leader shares your concerns is probably something a lot of voters would rank highly in their individual decision making for who to vote for. But this test, this question about milk, becomes a meaningless exercise when all the politicians game it and just staff it out to research. So when some local reporter at the debate (not that we really have those anymore, debates with actual questions are disallowed by the American national parties) tries this classic zinger, the politician just smiles and recalls the answer.
A whole lot of tests and whatnot seem like good ideas when you first think of them. Ways to figure out and screen potential leaders. But then you sit and think about the rules, as humans are apt to do, and you start to immediately see holes and shortcuts and bypasses that render the rule, the test, the gotcha, meaningless.
Human leadership never comes down to smarts or aptitude. Only charisma. Humans band behind someone who attracts them. Not romantic attraction, but social attraction. The smartest, most capable person in the world will never, ever be allowed to lead, no matter how right they are by every measure you could devise, when they're not charismatic enough to wave that charisma wand and magically make random people believe in them.
And some people are clever enough to have learned how to fake charisma. Which is how we get modern politicians. People who are devious enough to know how to game the system for their own benefit.
I can't read the article because of the paywall, but this reminds me a podcast episode on Capitalisn't that explored a similar line of thinking, but more of creating citizens assemblies that are...
I was very skeptical of random selection having any role in politics, but the arguments in the podcast convinced me that it can have a place, at least at the local level. One of the arguments is that having a direct hand in the process and being assigned responsibilities makes the citizens to be more engaged with politics. It's a good argument and I was intrigued that the citizens of the assembly were not only engaged with the process but also asking hard introspective questions to the governance group like why certain experts were brought in for certain topics. I was also heartened by how they made sure some of their fellows with more minority opinions were heard in both within the discussions and the proposals themselves.
I am still skeptical that this will work in many parts of the world. After all, this experiment is a very very small sample size and France citizenry I like to think is more civic minded than let's say those in the US. But certainly it's worth exploring. And maybe I have the causal direction wrong; maybe low civic engagement won't doom the assemblies but the assemblies will increase civic engagement.
They also encourage politicians to take the public's opinions into account, lest they lose their jobs. Even if 99% of voters submitted blank ballots and only 1% actually filled theirs out,...
They also encourage politicians to take the public's opinions into account, lest they lose their jobs.
Even if 99% of voters submitted blank ballots and only 1% actually filled theirs out, politicians would still be concerned about the general public's opinions, so long as they don't know which voters actually vote. But if nobody votes, and the politicians know it, why should they care what the public thinks? The public has no mechanism to threaten their jobs.
This is an opinion piece detailing the merits of Sortism or random assignment to political office rather than having low turnout voters vote for people.
Personally I think this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard because most people I've met aren't qualified to run a lemonade stand let alone something important like the department of energy. The author then tries to link Dark Triad traits to people who seek political office, and I hate when we start talking about these traits due to how it's overused and abused as a way to label people we don't like.
What do you folks think? Should we do away with democracy and randomly assign people to jobs in the government?
To change the authors intent "The worst people are cops. Should we give random individuals the guns and handcuffs every year?"
Fuck that's such a bad idea. I would call most politicians average to below average but the solution should be to enforce more participation, not less.
What's next? Who gets to create the algorithm for selection? How do we deal with the eventual selection of a dead person when the person in charge of the census never updated the voter rolls because they can't read or write? How do we control population selections for national offices or can you just get assigned six different offices at once by random.
Sometimes I think I've heard the dumbest idea ever and then someone comes along and writes an OP ED.
That sounds like conscription, but for police instead of the military
Would you mind elaborating on this? Why do you think this?
How should we realistically get "better" candidates to run for election?
Larger populations to pick from? I kid, but the reality is you're not going to get 'the exceptional' for the most part when the pay is average and the job is somewhat thankless.
I accept that the reality is that most people who feel called to lead do it out of a sense of ego. But, as long as the public benefits from their ego, I can live with that. If society is able to function day to day, that makes you an average politician. And that's not so bad. We don't all have to change the world, just keep it running.
The pay is not even average: it's a pittance. A congressperson earns $174,000 a year, which may sound plentiful, but anyone connected and capable enough to successfully run a campaign can do better in the private sector.
And it is more than thankless: it invites the media and the public to pick through and judge every significant and mundane detail of one's life: grades, clothes and hairstyles, past relationships, sexuality, and so on. And half of your demographic will despise you, and a tiny minority will be mentally ill enough to want to harm you and your family.
Rational people steer clear of politics. Which means we're left with the irrational folks.
It's down to the process and the incentives. If you have a position that sucks and only the most extreme of people have time to vote for, well it's not going to be surprising when corrupt zealots get in because everyone else is either sane enough to not want the position or sane enough to not be elected by the extremist taking time off to vote in some stupidly complicated process.
Making elections easier to be involved with at the local level, and the primary level, is critical. It's the area where the average vote can actually have a reasonable understanding of the issues and make the most impact, and yet we've made it less and less easy to participate in. In the last 10 years i've seen tons of reasonable candidates get primaried by extremists claiming nonsense and it just leads to worse governing overall.
I don’t think it’s the worst idea. But I do think it would be far far easier to cheat. You just need someone with a little sleight of hand skill to make Trump win every time. And don’t you dare suggest computers as a solution.
Better education and better access to elections sounds good and less risky.
Politicians, managers, and many other leadership roles require high skills in many different areas. Too many people think they're easy jobs and that the people who get hundreds, thousands or millions of votes are somehow unqualified. Many others somehow think they (or other people) could last a week in the shoes of a full-time politician.
The acts of a society's democracy expose the values of the society (and in many cases the selfishness in how we vote that makes reaching those values nigh on impossible).
A society gets the politicians it deserves. We get who we vote for; the winner is the candidate who does best by the rules we've set. The politicians are just a reflection of getting the politicians we deserve in a way that is much harder to avoid.
Society is us. We're the ones who have to step up and do our part if we want change.
It's easy to whine and moan about "those politicians". Having random people gain roles of importance they're not motivated for one bit?
You're right. It's a terrible idea.
Those low turnout people are voting. They are voting that they don't care. Piss them off enough and a big percentage of them will not stay apathetic.
One compromise is to have a bicameral legislature: have the House of Representatives be selected, have the Senate be elected.
One problem is that lawyers are way over represented in the legislature which leads to solutions that are onerous to the average person but seem just fine to specialists in dealing with red tape. Would have have so many complex means-tested benefits programs if it wasn't for that? Even so, lawyers do have some talents that would be helpful in writing law and they ought to be represented somehow.
My guess is that randomly selected people would be less vulnerable to corruption than people who had to work really hard to get where they are and wouldn't want to lose it all by rocking the boat. If you gave ordinary people a chance to be corrupt some of them would succumb, but it would be like playing Russian Roulette, some legislators would show you a gun, go to the cops, go to the media, it would be entirely too dangerous to try to buy off randomly selected legislators. (in contrast to the current situation where there would be a lot of "thanks but no thanks")
It's interesting you wrote that - I feel the complete opposite. I think that random people would be much more likely to take sweetheart deals, accept gifts, etc than people who had worked hard to get where they are and had a lot to lose.
I think many of the would but I think 20% or though of them would probably end the life or career of somebody who tries to corrupt them, that is, “Russian Roulette”.
There is merit to the idea of democracy by lot. Most of the merit is a byproduct of voting for individuals in elections is a kinda terrible situation. It rewards charisma and appearance over policy. Bush 2 won over Gore in part because "I'd rather have a beer with him" was a determining factor for a fair number of voters.
By seperating elections from popularity contests, you resolve that problem. The new problem is of course one of qualifications. I think there are a few aspects that I think would yield better policy in doing this:
I see everyone else worrying that its terrible because we can't trust randos. And perhaps addressing why we can't trust randos will result in a better system overall, even if rule by lot doesn't come to pass.
You could borrow from the Westminster system where members of the Cabinet must themselves be Members of Parliament (or Congresspeople in the American context). Though I guess that wouldn't quite work with how the separation of powers is set up.
I couldn't read the article because of the paywall or account requirement. From what you've said, do you agree with how juries are put together? I like the idea of eliminating career politicians and having representation from actual non-millionaires. Maybe a check on that could be something like a recall if constituents don't like the way their lotteried rep is behaving.
The system is designed so that juries don't need any expertise in anything. The Judge will make it clear to them what the law is that they are supposed to decide on. The lawyers for both parties and the expert witnesses they call will explain what happened in as much detail as possible, allowing a jury that previously had no knowledge of the case to make an accurate decision.
If you appoint a random Secretary of State (or a random president who appoints a friend) then there's no systems in place for how to deal with a Secretary of State who doesn't know anything. For example, recently Secretary Blinken got China to agree to stop exporting long range civilian drones to Russia. Do you think a random person could have managed that?
It wouldn't necessarily have to be random. The article mentions a pool of qualified candidates. The qualification specifically mentioned is civics knowledge but you can imagine more (literacy, mathematics, etc.). I would much prefer someone with that sort of knowledge over someone born into a wealthy or well connected family.
Look at Blinken's career history:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Blinken
There's not exactly a giant pool of candidates for the position who you could pull from that would have anything close to his level of qualifications.
And of course if you randomly picked a similarly qualified person, but got someone who completely disagreed with the President on foreign policy, it would also be a disaster even if everyone was qualified, because you'd never get any consistent policy out of anyone. The way it is now presidents can pick someone who is both qualified and agrees with their vision for what should be done, and this goes for pretty much every important appointment, not just Secretary of State
I think this strategy could work for both the US congress and president. You could have different qualification requirements for different pools for different positions too. For cabinet positions maybe the executive could still appoint their team.
The Secretary of State is appointed by the President. If you nominate random leaders you get random secretaries of state.
Alternatively, if you get random leaders but force them to choose from a very narrow pool of qualified candidates, now these people essentially get to dictate policy on their own. Maybe not for high profile stuff, but for a huge amount of their job they would be able to just not tell the President anything, or tell him so much that he wouldn't understand any of it. This is the whole benefit to having career politicians, they stick around long enough to understand the system.
This is an archive link.
Thanks very much.
any idea that relies on "ok, the first thing we do, is we bring back literacy tests" is dead on arrival, and I view everything else the author proposes as automatically suspect, because they've demonstrated ignorance of an extremely basic thing about American political history.
as ever, the problem is who writes the literacy test? who grades its answers? (if we assume there's essay questions of some kind and not just multiple-choice) whoever has that power ends up actually controlling the system, despite this veneer of "random selection".
ahh, there we go. this is one of my favorite / least-favorite genres of op-ed, the "stealth conservative" one.
on the surface, what he's proposing is non-partisan and neutral. but by approvingly quoting the founder of the National Review, it's pretty clear that what he's suggesting is a thoroughly conservative idea.
uh-huh, and we're supposed to believe the money spent by those special interests would simply vanish, rather than being redirected into think-tanks and lobbying groups that would "help" these randomly-selected legislators with pre-written laws and policy proposals?
except, as I said, debates over who is qualified/allowed to enter the lottery would still flourish.
and to a certain segment of conspiracy-minded people, results they didn't like would still generate conspiracy theories about the lottery being rigged (which is entirely possible - who oversees the process? how are the rules decided?)
Yup. People game things. Especially tests. Particularly any sorts of tests that might be involved in elections or leadership. Who designs the test, administers it, and so on. Replace test with "rules" or "committee" and you get the same outcome with the same problems; bias and selective decision making on the part of whomever has the power to influence the test/rules/committee's outcome.
Consider the famous "price of milk" question in American politics, as a simple example. A reporter thought that up one time and sprung it on a candidate. The intention behind the question was to use it as a way to determine if the politician was "in touch" with regular people. If they didn't know how much a gallon of milk cost, they might not be.
Questions that help voters figure that out are probably A Good Thing. Knowing that a leader shares your concerns is probably something a lot of voters would rank highly in their individual decision making for who to vote for. But this test, this question about milk, becomes a meaningless exercise when all the politicians game it and just staff it out to research. So when some local reporter at the debate (not that we really have those anymore, debates with actual questions are disallowed by the American national parties) tries this classic zinger, the politician just smiles and recalls the answer.
A whole lot of tests and whatnot seem like good ideas when you first think of them. Ways to figure out and screen potential leaders. But then you sit and think about the rules, as humans are apt to do, and you start to immediately see holes and shortcuts and bypasses that render the rule, the test, the gotcha, meaningless.
Human leadership never comes down to smarts or aptitude. Only charisma. Humans band behind someone who attracts them. Not romantic attraction, but social attraction. The smartest, most capable person in the world will never, ever be allowed to lead, no matter how right they are by every measure you could devise, when they're not charismatic enough to wave that charisma wand and magically make random people believe in them.
And some people are clever enough to have learned how to fake charisma. Which is how we get modern politicians. People who are devious enough to know how to game the system for their own benefit.
I can't read the article because of the paywall, but this reminds me a podcast episode on Capitalisn't that explored a similar line of thinking, but more of creating citizens assemblies that are randomly assigned rather than elected. Highly recommend listening to this. As a more modern example of randomly delegated political assignments, there was an experiment in Reoun, France that randomly selected citizens for a citizens assembly that produced 100 proposals for the city.
I was very skeptical of random selection having any role in politics, but the arguments in the podcast convinced me that it can have a place, at least at the local level. One of the arguments is that having a direct hand in the process and being assigned responsibilities makes the citizens to be more engaged with politics. It's a good argument and I was intrigued that the citizens of the assembly were not only engaged with the process but also asking hard introspective questions to the governance group like why certain experts were brought in for certain topics. I was also heartened by how they made sure some of their fellows with more minority opinions were heard in both within the discussions and the proposals themselves.
I am still skeptical that this will work in many parts of the world. After all, this experiment is a very very small sample size and France citizenry I like to think is more civic minded than let's say those in the US. But certainly it's worth exploring. And maybe I have the causal direction wrong; maybe low civic engagement won't doom the assemblies but the assemblies will increase civic engagement.
Elections are pretty important from a symbolic/ritualistic point of view; they encourage people to get out and engage in their political system!
They also encourage politicians to take the public's opinions into account, lest they lose their jobs.
Even if 99% of voters submitted blank ballots and only 1% actually filled theirs out, politicians would still be concerned about the general public's opinions, so long as they don't know which voters actually vote. But if nobody votes, and the politicians know it, why should they care what the public thinks? The public has no mechanism to threaten their jobs.
NYT really opting for that clown car again with this one. Jesus Christ.
The biggest argument against democracy is how fickle your average voter is. Do you want people that fickle running your country? No thanks.