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Comment by bhawks | Hacker News Reader

The people created the system though - indirectly thru flawed / corrupt leaders but you get what you get. I'd like to understand now why we'd get a better set of leaders if we tear it all down now. I personally don't have any observations indicating why that would be true.

Similarly if you redistribute wealth - what's going to prevent it from becoming unequally distributed again? I'd imagine that a small subset of people would quickly game whatever system is devised and we're back at square one again.

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Just for demonstration purposes: imagine we get rid of voting alltogether.

Instead, a random representative sample of 1000 people is chosen from the population, for some congress, for a year. They rule during that time. Some rules cannot be overruled, like the 1 year limit, no way to game that. Additionally, all communication of the chosen ones must be recorded and public, without exceptions.

This basically eliminates corruption or the rise of a „ruling class“, and lobbyism has a much harder task.

I would also argue that this will result in much better overall decisions - they might lack some initial knowledge but that is more than offset by missing corruption and cronyism

You can't parachute people into government without explaining to them how government works. Representatives don't just vote on legislation, they have to propose it and draft it. Someone has to understand and explain how all of that functions.

The people doing the drafting, suggesting, and explaining won't have term limits and will have the real power. They'll also be the ones targeted by lobbyists.

You'll end up with is a floor show with the real decisions being made behind the scenes by people who are mostly not directly accountable.

Not unlike what we have now. Different, possibly better in some ways, and possibly worse in others.

Instinctively I love term limits - however they are already in place in many states and there are many studies indicating mixed results at best - see: https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/political-science-te...

A randomly assigned legislature sounds like a recipe to create an unaccountable bureaucracy of staffers and advisors 'guiding' the forced citizen through what must be done / can't be done legislatively. This is where the real power would lie - and frankly we are kind of there today. Most congresscritters spend 45% of their time campaigning, 45% of their time fundraising and 10% of their time looking damn cute. Staffers, lobbyists and think-tanks do most of the legislative work.

> unaccountable bureaucracy of staffers and advisors 'guiding' the forced citizen through what must be done / can't be done legislatively

Sounds like the UK civil service in Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister.

https://youtu.be/FLm2X6sFa48 https://youtu.be/7hsNfNM0SvE

Term limits won’t do anything unless we ban the legal bribery that is unlimited campaign contributions through dark money groups and super PACs.

In my country, we have some kind of "popular tribunals" (i.e. tribunals where nobody is a professional outside of the lawyers) for trade disputes (although there are professional tribunals for appeals).

My sample is anecdotal at best, but the single instance in which I ended up in a position to witness a judgement and its rationale, the result was... laughably wrong. It was quickly overruled in appeal by the judges who actually know the law.

So... I'm not optimistic. Perhaps some AI could help, I guess? But that comes with lots of risks, too.

> Similarly if you redistribute wealth - what's going to prevent it from becoming unequally distributed again?

The redistribution shouldn't be a one-time event, but rather a persistently different approach to taxation, labor rights (unions!), welfare, etc.

We can see this working in a number of countries, especially the Nordics.

Of course, there will always be attacks on such a system, but such is life. Some battles need to be refought every two generations or so, that's just how humans work.

We can see this working in a number of countries, especially the Nordics.

Norway doesn’t count because of its sovereign wealth fund.

How is it working in Sweden though? That country still has billionaires (IKEA founder, Minecraft’s notch).

I think it just doesn’t work in general. If you try to set up a new system to redistribute the wealth, the winners will be those in charge of the system.

What exactly is the issue with having billionaires, as long as there is a decent standard of living for everyone and people are taken care of?

You need incentives to work hard and it is a good idea to have strong differences in outcome, as long as you have mostly equal opportunity.

Otherwise you end up where all socialist experiments end up: in economical, social and humanitarian hell.

I'm not saying there's an issue with it. I'm just saying that if you have billionaires then you haven't actually redistributed all of the wealth.

What makes you think the entrenched interests befitting from the status quo won't co-opt that process and funnel the wealth into themselves?

I mean hell, the whole BLM shindig petered out the nanosecond that it looked like the people with BLM signs in their yard might not get tackled by the first cop that see em'.

Now imagine how something with serious dollar signs attached would go(!!).

Should have read:

I mean hell, the whole BLM shindig petered out the nanosecond that it looked like the people with BLM signs in their yard might get to see someone walk down the street with an open container and not get tackled by the first cop that see em'.

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