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Comment by jparishy | Hacker News Reader

We're on the same wavelength. To me, I find it hard not to think about our explosive growth as a country happening at the same time we refuse to expand representation of the public. These charts are very frustrating to me: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN11547

The people in power do not want to lose control, but clearly have no idea how to manage the scale of what has been built. There's an American leadership crisis going on right now that is hard to ignore, both in public and private life.

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We should go back to having the house filled with 1 representative per 10,000 people. Also, we should do something new and have all the representatives in the house be chosen by lottery.

Normal people are not represented in congress, because politicians are not normal people, but if we chose people by lottery we would have a branch of congress filled with normal people. They would have time enough to study the issues. Some of them would be stupid, but this is no worse than the current crop of politicians.

I don't normally reply twice to the same thread, but I just wanted to say that I wish that the US had been founded with a co-equal branch of government comprised of people drawn via lottery (probably voluntary) like in ancient Greece:

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

I believe that this was one of the great mistakes by our founders. I'm sure that many suggested it, but unfortunately their ideas were suppressed due to our roots in slavery, colonialism and aristocracy (meritocracy today).

Ancient Greek politics were chaotic and violent, especially cities like Athens.

A couple of American politicians were executed in their homes a few months ago and one of the two presidential candidates was nearly JFKd in front of hundreds of cameras last year. A few years ago, a mob stormed the capital and erected a gallows to hang the sitting vice president if they could lay hands on him.

That’s violent enough even if you don’t consider the fact that de facto martial law is about to descend on major cities all over the country in the next few weeks. I’m doubtful that Greeks were anywhere near as volatile or violent as Americans are today.

What you're describing are anomalies. Most Presidental candidates are not "nearly JFK'd" nor do mobs storm the Capitol with regularity. For all of its cultural pretensions of being a nation of armed patriots always ready to "water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" the US political system is for the most part incredibly stable and nonviolent. In ancient Greece, meanwhile, violent mobs, assassinations and tyranny were the norm rather than the exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(ancient_Greece)

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

One person's anomalies is another person's new normal.

“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.” -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

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