Hacker News Reader

Are you aware of the historical abuse of “literacy requirements”[1] for voting? It’s hard to understand how your proposed system would not have similar problems; whoever has control of the test effectively has complete power over who can become an elected official.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

This is not the same thing as I am proposing. These were restrictions on voters, not on elected officials. There have always been some restrictions on elected officials (age, for example) and I think it’s obvious that you’d want competent literate people in positions.

As to your second point - there could certainly be ways to address that. But the exam is a minor filter - the real selection would be via randomness, as I mentioned. If anything, the test makers would have less control over the officials than our current lobbyist system.

You're not proposing the same system, but the system you're proposing has same problem.

Step 1: Make the test extremely difficult so essentially nobody passes.

Step 2: Allow a de facto exemption for some group based on an arbitrary qualification you can control (e.g. automatic pass to those deemed to have "good community standing.")

Step 3: One of your pre-chosen candidates wins the random selection since they make up the entire candidate pool.

Of course if you just arbitrarily add rules, the idea will collapse. I don’t see how that is relevant. The basic concept I am proposing is that representatives are not selected via voting (which is deeply flawed and ineffective) but via a more fair and effective system. Ideally this would be both random and meritocratic.

You’d simply design the system in a way in which the test is chosen by the population and/or by an entity separate from the representatives. At worst, you’d get the current three-part division of power system which most democratic countries are based on.

Your problem is you can't define meritocratic in a way that everyone will agree with (if they don't agree and you try to impose this outside the democratic process anyway, they will attack you and imprison you).

Indeed the very first objection you got was "literacy tests are racist". If you read the wiki page for it you'll see that the argument is not about whether they actually tested literacy or not (after the initial phase when "good moral character" exemptions disappeared), but rather whether it was legitimate to exclude new waves of immigrants who didn't speak good English at all (Italians, Russians ...).

Whether to even check the ID of voters in a rigorous way is opposed on similar grounds. If you can't check the ID of voters you certainly can't check their ID when they apply to become bureaucrats, and if you can't even answer "who is this applicant" then how can you answer more sophisticated questions about them?

> Your problem is you can't define meritocratic in a way that everyone will agree with

Of course you can't. One man's merit is another man's vice. The very notion of a meritocracy is literally a sarcastic joke [1].

But the problem is even worse than that. EVEN IF if you could define a universally agreeable "meritocratic" system, you would still have the problem that people with power would abuse the system to lock out others.

Suppose 100% "meritocratic" people were selected at random. They then immediately change the rules. Now 99.99% of people disagree with the legal definition of "meritocratic". But tough shit, cause this ain't a democracy, and the other 00.01% of people have all the power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology

It's not a joke, but it is relative (like most conceptual words). A vote decides on the definition of merit in the least relative way possible: by letting everyone contribute to the definition. A definition of merit decided by the heads of a bureaucracy is extremely relative - to whatever those few people think they want.

What is considered “merit-worthy” is defined by the society implementing it. There is no such thing as objective universal merit across time and culture.

I don’t see why this is controversial. It’s no different than “fair” or “justified” or innumerable other values that a society has to work out a definition for.

> What is considered “merit-worthy” is defined by the society implementing it. There is no such thing as objective universal merit across time and culture.

I think the point of the comment you're responding to is that it's not defined by the society implementing it, but by those in power. So whether the idea of 'merit' changes across time and culture might be true, but is beside the point.

> There have always been some restrictions on elected officials (age, for example) and I think it’s obvious that you’d want competent literate people in positions.

Things like this happen sometimes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosco_the_dog

It depends on who it's desirable to. You can see this electoral system manipulation quite a bit in Singapore. They introduced mandatory voting to help the PAP win an election. Their system of group constituencies was introduced to stop competing parties from focusing on one race, or to make it harder for them to get their foot in the door, depending on who you ask. The system of presidential elections, and the requirements to be a presidential candidate (which includes things like having been in charge of a big organization), was designed to limit the damage if some opposition party wins an election. Not to mention all the restrictions on speech...

“a democratic system in which everyone is "required" to participate in the political process is desirable state of affairs”

Citizens of a democratic nation have one job to do.

If they’re not doing it, the question must be Why?

Apathy, or they find more value in spending their attention and time doing something else, a feeling like their vote won't change a thing, or straight up laziness.

I don't actually think it's important why someone doesn't vote, so long as their right to vote isn't impeded. I have a theory that society, like many other systems, tends to take on more stable forms over time. Part of the reason democracy has been so stable is that it allows people, who would otherwise be unhappy and want to change things, a chance to have a say. Non-voters are already a "stable" part of society, since they apparently don't have strong enough feelings to go vote for something different. I don't see a problem with that.

I expect that a substantial number of nonvoters suffer from learned helplessness.

> Citizens of a democratic nation have one job to do.

And they are doing their job. Voting was never a job.

Because expecting everyone to vote without incentive is stupid. Voting is NOT a job, by definition. You aren't paid for it. The common argument here is that the incentive to vote is to "take control of your future", or some similar marketing schlock. There must be a reason so many people feel that voting does not give them control of their future! I submit that the electoral process has become so flawed and gamed, that the average person has NO control.

>Citizens of a democratic nation have one job to do.

This seems circular, and makes it sound like citizens exist to serve the government rather than the other way around.

Optimally it should be a mutually beneficial relationship.

The idea that a government could benefit sounds weird to me. I think of benefiting as requiring a subjective personal experience.

When you fix your car, does your car benefit? When you remodel your house, does your house benefit?

In my mind, government functions, and ideally it functions in service of the people.

There is absolutely no way to prepare such an exam without (justified) accusations of bias.

In theory, different parties could put forward different proposed exams before an election, and then citizens could vote on which exam would be used to filter the candidates. (There would probably have to be a "null exam" option on the ballot, to allow people to oppose the use of this filter, and perhaps all non-voters should be counted as having voted for that option).

Arguably, though, this process would just move the problem of voter apathy back a step, unless there is some reason to expect that voting for exams is more motivating (or more reasonable to make mandatory) than voting for candidates. Also, it's not clear that the exam would be testing anything other than candidates' memory, as presumably the correct answers would have to be published in advance for the citizens to check.

Possibly true, but we also haven’t really attempted it on a society-wide scale. Clearly some government agencies are capable of creating fair tests (NASA, for example.)

In any case, the question isn’t whether an exam would be perfect, but whether it would be better than voting. There are certainly plenty of biases involved in the voting process: appearance, public speaking ability, etc. These biases might already be greater than any which arise from an exam.

What you propose would require a constitutional congress and a rewriting of the constitution. That's why we're not trying out things like this. In the current political atmosphere, calling a constitutional congress would be suicide for our nation. I cannot see anything positive coming out of it or any type of government that isn't authoritarian and dictatorial. The reality is that we don't have a choice and fantasizing about alternative power structures instead of voting does no one any good. Of course, if you feel strongly about this, we're only a couple of states away from calling a constitutional congress and the national suicide and likely civil war that would usher in. But you have the right to work towards that and legally bring about the demise of the US. I will certainly not stick around for that shitshow.

This is silly. Suggesting a change to the way democratic representatives are selected is not tantamount to wishing for civil war.

I remind you that “democratic system” is not the same thing as “voting system.”

Maybe so but what the parent comment is suggesting is that we do not have a democratic process. Maybe it's possible to do this as just a constitutional amendment instead of a constitutional convention. I think that's even less likely to succeed.

I think it would have to start as a smaller movement on the local level, which (assuming it had positive outcomes) would eventually grow into a nationwide idea.