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Comment by LordN00b | Hacker News Reader

Not having MPs doesn't lead to a dictorship, dial it back. Not having MPs means that we don't have MPs,(hooray) and the opportunity to replace them with something alittle more equitable to the society they exist in, free of the influences of lobbying, cronyism, greed, power and rampant, unchecked hypocrisy. Personally, I want a new class of people, styled after monks that spend 20 years being schooled in social structure, land husbandry, city welfare etc. These are then cloistered for the term that they serve and can only be approached by the permanent Civil Service when required. The local consituants are served by local councillers, (probably all of whom are lib dem as they are unconsionably successful at local issues). Anyway down with parlimentary democracy, and have a nice Sunday.

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Or you could do like a ancient Greece where serving in the Senate was more like jury duty & people are appointed by random ballot.

I think representative democracy is fine, it's career politicians I'd do away with.

> appointed by random ballot.

The term for this kind of election is sortition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

I would favour just appointing people by random ballot (not from a particular group). That would be far more representative of the population. It would solve issues like having fair representation for women of ethnic minorities etc.

There was a party in Australia that wanted to elect MPs (or whatever equivalent) whose only job would be to delegate decisions to a panel of independent experts in each field (I think the panel would be elected as well, don't remember the details, but it would be something like doctors deciding what public health decisions should be, for example), and IIRC sometimes decisions would be made by having polls where every member of the party could vote if the policy was not related to some field in particular. I think that didn't get anywhere though, unfortunately, as the idea sounds pretty damn superior to having a bunch of know-nothing but charismatic people who decide on all sorts of things pushed by lobbyists whose interest not always reflect that of the general population (or very rarely do so).

The problem with that most important decisions cover multiple fields. For example public health decisions are not purely medical. They have financial and economic implications. They are sometimes tied to issues of personal liberty. They operative in a framework of laws. They are often organisational and management decisions (e.g. where to build a hospital, how many ambulances to buy).

In general important decisions require many different skills.

This will also lead to the problem raised earlier of experts making decisions that suit their own interests (and biases).

This approach does appeal to me in some ways, one of the things that excites me most about the current government is seeing people with experience being appointed to position in cabinet.

I’m pretty sure you’re not serious in suggesting a technocrat class who are sheltered from the real world, but let’s assume you weren’t. The end result of this is likely to be stagnation because you lack the introduction of new people and new views into positions of power. I’d also add that in a functional government we already have that class of people who are purely focused on implementation and looking at options in the Civil Service. Rarely is a cabinet minister themselves really coming up with ideas, they’re waving their arms and describing vibes to the Civil Service, who then go and work how they’re meant to achieve it.

Unfortunately for the last 14 years we’ve had a government asking them to do ever more unhinged things, with predictable results.

What you're describing is a form of technocracy (rule by a class of dedicated scholars). It has been tried occasionally, but it is essentially the same thing as any non-Democratic rule: the technocrats do what is best for themselves, and using their knowledge and expertise, are able to invent convincing reasons on why that is supposedly best for the country as well.

This is especially true when the "science" they are supposed to study is economics, a notorious pseudo-science whose real purpose is to act as justificationa for policies desired by whoever is paying the research.

There is no way to ensure that rulers align with the people unless the people have a say in who rules. Scientific authorities have a long history of being negative even for their own fields ("physics advances one funeral at a time"), and that doesn't change when they are given power over an entire country.

With the current MPs, why do you think they do not do what's best for themselves, or for whoever is sponsoring their political campaigns and lobbying them constantly? The question is not whether a technocracy would be perfect, it's whether it would be better than that, and your argument has zero explanatory power to answer that.

And the leaders of the proposed technocracy would be immune from lobbying and bribes?

Yes, because they would be easily "caught" if they didn't make decisions based on merit.

By whom? What new institution that doesn't work today would work then?

Because they still need to win an election, so at least some of them need to do at least a few things that makes them popular enough. A technocrat only needs to make sure people aren't so desperate as to rise up.

This is really simple political theory, not some advanced concepts.

Nobody said the technocrats wouldn't also be elected, you made that up.

So you simply want MPs who have a minimum standard of education? The fact that they are kept isolated for the duration of their term? That wouldn't prevent them from being bribed and lobbied in their election campaigns.

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