Athenian Democracy in the Political Imagination
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
* https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2021/01/30/athenian-democr...
As he notes, Athens was't even really the first democracy.
And some are plain wrong. For example he complains that Athenian trials by jury weren't as fair as modern American trials by jury, while conveniently forgetting to mention that few other states even had trials by jury.
The author seems to confuse the aspirational ideal with Athens as its stand in embodiment with actual desire to implement the details of the Athenian state. No one wants to remake Athens as it was, its a figurehead for nebulaus concepts.
Nevertheless, I think Sortition is a very interesting approach we should consider implementing.
This One Trick The Elites Hate, You Would Not Believe it.
Seriously, I do not see any solution besides sortition that has a chance to enable power structures which actually serve the common people.
I wonder if there is any evidence of that, or if the appointees genuinely winged it / learned on the job. I'm pretty sure I'd want a Sir Humphrey holding the hand of the guy in charge of the water supply, for example.
1. Most offices do not require any kind of formal qualification. Where requirements to be met the pool of candidates must be restricted obviously.
2. A benevolent clueless is probably less harmful than a dedicated competent working for their own self interest (imo there is very strong selection bias for these types of people).
3. If we are worried about certain people wielding too much power maybe no one should have it and positions with too much power should be diluted. At least I would not put that much faith in our current selection processes to act as gatekeepers.
4. I'm no American but my impression is jury duty is a real life example where mostly random people are put in charge of life and death matters at least on TV.
5. Sortition has some very nice properties for election compared to voting, such as fraud resistance. Majority voting inherently turns into a two horse race, does not favor diversity of thought and completely disregards the minority opinion culminating in what we have now, recycling the elites.
All in all weighing the pros and cons I'm in favor of sortition but probably because I'm part of the plebs.
As for examples: would someone who transition into politics qualify like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronald Reagan?
Maybe we could make it even better by, instead of picking people at random, picking them by pools of capability. So for instance the person in charge of the water supply could be chosen by sortition of plumbers.
That applies to every major capital city in Europe with a colonial past, from London and Amsterdam to Paris and Vienna.
Of course no-one is suggesting to emulate Athenian society as it was, it's quite odd to suggest otherwise as the comment you're replying to does. Athenian democracy was momentous and a big step forward at a time when the standard was a despotic ruler.
What Austrian colonies would those be?
None of these were colonies though. And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
Some scholars of colonialism have considered them such, especially considering policies by which the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave land in its eastern and southern marches to magnates from Central Europe.
> And Serbia wasn't part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
Serbs were not limited to Ottoman-occupied Serbia or to the nascent independent Serbian state, they also lived (as they continue to today) in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in Vojvodina. As I said, it was Serbian grievances against Austro-Hungarian rule that sparked World War I when Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo – this is basic schoolbook stuff.
It's not like the Austrians asked the occupied regions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania: "Hey, are you guys OK with us ruling you? Because if not, we're totally cool about it and we'll just leave you be, no strings attached."
In case you missed history class, WW1 started because, among other things, due to Serbian revolts against Austrian rule.
Believe me. I'm keenly aware of the causes of WW1. Maybe it's you who isn't aware that Franz Ferdinand himself was planning to federalize the empire[1]. Of course this never took place since he was assassinated by Serbian nationalists and then WW1 and the eventual dissolution of Austria-Hungary happened.
And again: 'Colony' in modern parlance generally refers to overseas territories
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austr...
From the Central Limit Theorem, we would end up with mostly candidates from the middle of the pool. The fact that 'average' people are in possibly important positions a) enables malicious actors to manipulate them much easier than having more qualified (or smarter people) and b) puts potentially unqualified people in important positions.
I do not suggest that the current state of affairs is better either, but considering, for example that a very large portion of people in the US are Qanons, putting them in any important position is definitely not a good idea.
Then it works as usual because parliament consist mostly of people who don't need to be qualified at all. They vote for prime minister and then that prime minister assembles government with ministers that are qualified specialists. In the end parliament votes if they trust that selection of prime minister and done.
In the end I just came to conclusion that whole voting for parliament members is useless because I can imagine it would not be much worse than random selection from pool of interested people. You also remove issue with people who are handing out places on voting cards because a lot of people just vote on the first person on the list of political party. I can imagine political parties are not going to change status qua :)
That's on the US and its poisonous political culture for letting QAnon get big enough to matter. Now it matters and America and the Republican party are stuck with the ramifications of QAnon having become popular enough to win elections.
Capitalism has had 400 to 500 years (arguably even longer), and in that time it oppressed, colonized, enslaved and engaged in genocide of hundreds of millions of people, thoroughly warped democracy (e.g. bribes and huge amounts of money spent to ensure the election of capitalist-friendly politicians), thoroughly warped geopolitical evolution (e.g. the propping up of dictators to ensure the flow of oil and other resources needed to keep the capitalist machine humming), and is thoroughly wreaking havoc on the environment as it demands we consume as much as it can produce, again to keep the machine humming.
Yet we've only experimented with socialism for 100 years (and that's being generous with the definition of socialism) and it is dismissed out of hand as a failed idea and that its supporters are crackpots.