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Comment by turbinerneiter | Hacker News Reader

There is a great book on that matter: Against Elections: The Case for Democracy from David Van Reybrouck

It argues that it would be better and more democratic to randomly sample parliament instead of voting. It also describes how a transition could look like and how mixed systems could work.

The biggest issue I see is that such a system would need a very strong and well-designed bureaucracy and very well educated and moral public servants. You would have a state run by technocrats, who prepare options for decisions that the randomly drawn parliament would need to make. These technocrats could get all-powerful quickly.

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Just imagine the value of the industry popping up to "explain" things to the confused random people in parliament. It would take lobbying to a whole new level. At least the current ones are weary and cynical and have their wits to understand how money talks and what's up, who wants what when they say something etc. Maybe some are naive in certain areas like tech, but I'm pretty sure random people would be like dropping sheep to the wolves' den.

The idea of neutral impartial helpful technocrats guiding them sounds wonderful but I'm not sure it would play out like that.

That's pretty much what has happened at the state level in the US because of term limits: the lack of experience produces a gap that is filled by lobbyists, who wind up writing the laws, because the rookie legislators lack the experience to draft complex legislation. The lobbyists are often former lawmakers who have sold their services to some wealthy industry or company.

People sometimes ask me about this because "I'm the tech guy", and surely it would be good to have the tech experts set the regulations. To this my response is:

Would you like banking regulations set by bankers?

> Just imagine the value of the industry popping up to "explain" things to the confused random people in parliament. It would take lobbying to a whole new level.

Honestly I'm not sure it'd be all that different. I mean, ask a random pedestrian on the street if they know what lobbying is, and they likely have at least some minimal clue. That means it's already a "cultural factor."

What would change is the way lobbying works, since it'd no longer work in a way where a long-term rapport is established between a politician and a bunch of lobbyists...

In the U.S. I would take advantage of the bicameral structure to randomly sample the House of Representatives but elect the Senate.

You do need professional legislators who understand law enough to write it, but lawyers have a warped viewpoint that needs to be counterbalanced by the voice of the people.

That’s messy because the senate and house aren’t really divided by experience since the 17th amendment. The main difference now is geographic state level vs. popular district level representation. Using elections for one and sortition for the other doesn’t make any sense anymore.

You would probably want to either change that or else select both by lot, but with a high bar for eligibility in the senatorial lot (e.g., either passing some nontrivial civics exam or something or rolling back the 17th amendment).

Heck, I'd go farther and make the House a random sample, and move the Senate back to being selected by the States.

I live in a place (Switzerland) where administration heads are not generally replaced when the minister changes. This is commonly regarded as a good thing.

In Austria, where I live, thats also the case.

Suppose the candidates for the sortition are selected using following method: Phase 1: Each citizen has a right to nominate one candidate. We assume that citizens will nominate persons with whom they are acquainted personally and whom they believe are honest and competetnt. Phase 2: We count nominations for each potential candidate end keep in the pool only these who have between 10 and 50 nominations. This way we select only person who are considered honest and competent by at least 10 people, and who are also NOT public figures. Phase 3. We implement sortition between the candidates left in the pool. This way we have excellent probability to have parliament full of honest and competent peuople.

A nominations system in which vouching for a candidate is more likely to harm than help their chances of appointment [especially if one is sufficiently convinced of their competence to believe 10 other people will feel likewise] is palpably absurd.

Don't you personally know somebody who you consider be a good candidate? I do...

This seems to be missing the point (maybe my wording is at fault). If somebody I know has 49 people voting for them, they might be selected under this system. If I nominate them, because I also think they might be a good candidate, I stop them from having any chance of being selected. The only time my vote is definitely helpful to somebody is if most people they know definitely wouldn't trust them.

(Not to mention how easily the system is gamed by a membership groups orchestrating nominations. Pick 10% of your membership and get the others to nominate them and you'll have a lot of people in the hat. To be sure these candidates will be in the lottery, they'll want to select people who aren't well respected outside the group....)

Eh, there's a logic to it, I think. If you intend people to only nominate the people they know personally (because otherwise they are relaying their impression of a curated media image, or the opinion of someone else) then it's likely that people who have more than 50 (or maybe 100 or 200) nominations are being nominated by people that don't really know them.

Some Twitch streamer with a thousand followers would have little problem getting 50 nominations by snapping their fingers, regardless of their qualifications.

This being said, there's probably a better way.

Clarifying your point because I didn't get it at first: parent is saying that discarding nominees who got more than 50 nominations is harmful.

I think the technocrat problem would be partly mitigated by the fact that you are bound to randomly pick a few people who are smart and informed enough to be able to critically look at what the technocrats are doing and possibly use discretionary funds to launch an investigation.

Some of the technocrats could also be picked from professional bodies using sortition, just enough to stir things up.

Assuming these technocrats haven't rigged the selection system to prefer less educated people.

/would need a very strong and well-designed bureaucracy and very well educated and moral public servants/

Yeah, that's a feature, not a bug. You want the average education level to be such that random people can govern reasonably well... Which is GREAT at the societal level.

The world would be a much better place if it was possible to raise the average education level that high without negative side-effects.

The last time that was possible was something like 100-200 years ago, before specialisation became so important.

I don’t know anything of note about pharmaceuticals or civil engineering, rhetoric or national security, trade or industry. But I think it’s a safe bet that 90% of the people on Hacker News knows far more about computers than the average UK politician.

If everyone in a nation has to learn politics well enough to govern, nobody would have time to learn anything else. The only measure by which I can even judge politicians is their character, their honesty, their morals — and I do recognise the problems with even those as my measure.

A couple things to consider in the US context:

a) Most elected politicians, especially at highest levels, are spending a HUGE amount of their time on the phones, working on (or being worked on by) donors. Most of the 'real' work of governing is done by staff.

b) About half of the US elected officials believe that the best way to govern is to not govern at all, and furthermore undermine any projects which might make it seem like government can do anything successfully. (For example, Grover Norquist is on record opposing pre-filled taxes because he believes taxes should be as painful as possible. Similar examples of 'we can't do that, it might work' abound.) Which is to say, random people may well still be better than deeply ingrained active saboteurs.

Thanks for that info.

Why are there politicians who are trying to undermine their own thrones? How does that even work?

I’m not doubting you, I just don’t understand what’s going on.

Some background reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Regan: "The nine most terrifying words in the english language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Norquist, again: "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

What's ACTUALLY happening here is a combination of goals, ultimately about cutting social programs and reducing taxes for the wealthy. "Government doesn't work" => "We shouldn't pay them taxes" => "We should cut lots of taxes" => Tax breaks which overwhelmingly benefit rich donors and party members, while reducing services for people that need them... It's a straight up wealth transfer, and it's been exceedingly efficient.

If government does something well, then the first link in the chain is broken. So to keep the whole chain of reasoning intact, it's best to keep government inefficient and ineffectual, especially as it relates to people's everyday lives. And every failed program is another bit of fuel for the nihilist campaign strategy.

Ah, so equivalent to asset-stripping/corporate raiding?

We already have that, though.

Elected politicians spend most of their time raising money and the remainder stoking culture war bullshit. The system mostly runs itself.

The nice thing is that the increasing levels of public-awareness / call-out culture would mitigate this. All it would need is one guy on twitter to create a stir to bring opposing points into the mind of the appointed, to which the technocrats would need to have a good rebuttal or be overruled by the appointed.

I'd like to expore the idea some more, seems really interesting.

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