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Comment by theodric | Hacker News Reader

The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and so on. I strongly suspect this will lead to a worse government, not a better one.

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How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?

Read/watch this interview [1] with Ada Palmer on her new book about the Renaissance. Florence did this for a time.

> You put names in a bag. You examine all of the merchant members of guilds. You choose which ones are fit to serve, meaning not ill and dying, not insane, not so deeply in debt that they could be manipulated by the people whom they owe money to. Their names go in a bag. You choose nine guys at random. They rule the city. They are put in a palace where they rule the city from that tower.

> They’re actually locked in the tower for the duration of their time in office because if they left the tower, they could be bribed or kidnapped. They rule the city for two or three months. At the end, they are thanked for their service and escorted out, and then a different nine guys share power for the next three months. It’s a power sharing that is designed to be tyrant-proof because you need consensus of nine randomly selected guys to decide to do anything.

[1] https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ada-palmer

Venice's system also involved random selection, though in a very convoluted way.

There were multiple repeated iterations where they selected a random group of eligible people and then that group voted to select a group who would then have a random selection taken who would then elect another group and so on.

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions.

These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power.

This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

Not quite the same thing, but in Ireland, it's become more common for Citizens Assemblies, which are randomly selected (this is disputed by some) citizens appointed to help word referenda on constitutional amendments and otherwise gauge public feeling on certain issues.

The assembly then passes it's recommendation to the Parliament who are free to ignore it if they don't like it.

We could start by something like a randomly appointed commission to investigate, say, very expensive public projects.

I like this idea, much better suited to a "jury duty" style approach.

Also Renaissance era Florence did something similar. Also, fun fact, juries in Athens had 500 members to make it too expensive to bribe them.

AKA sortition:

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

“Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”

― Plato

Some people selected randomly might also be underqualified.

Some people who actively seek positions of power are terribly unqualified or have other discommending properties, as well. This does not seem too great an impediment to their success.

How about both? A chamber of life peers and a chamber of temporary randomly selected representatives.

Why would a hereditary system work any better? Plenty of monarchies based on heredity ran themselves into the ground.

It's interesting how people never even learn about any upsides to that. Even if the balance comes out on the side of elected officials, it's good to at least have some idea of why so many societies have worked like that (other than "they were dumb and evil I guess").

The main thing is long-term stability and limits on backstabbing and ruthless competition. Sure it doesn't bring it to zero, plenty of bloody examples from history. But when someone gets close to power for the first time and might be out of there quite soon, and have to watch out for being replaced quickly, they will behave quite differently than someone who plans ahead in decades and generations (if all things go well). If you have a short time under the sun, you better extract all you can while it lasts.

It's kind of like a lifetime appointment or like tenure, except also across generations. Tenure allows professors to ignore short-term ups and downs and allows them some resilience and slack (though funding is still an issue). Similarly a nobleman can "relax" and take a longer-term view on things. The failure mode is that they stop caring and become lazy and just enjoy their position.

You already get this in the UK, and also in other countries, most of which have royal families and associated aristocrats.

There are also - notoriously - foreign-funded influencer, lobbyist, and donor operations.

And the traditional industries - fossil fuels, property, finance, arms - also have a huge say.

The reality is most decisions aren't made in Westminster. Parliament is a device for packaging and legitimising decisions made by the oligarchy. And the House of Lords is largely ceremonial.

It's not there to shape policy, it's there to provide a reward for loyal service to the country's real rulers.

Being in the Lords is a very nice deal. You get up to £371 a day just for turning up, with the option to claim expenses on top of that.

You get access to high quality heavily subsidised food and drink. And you get the status of being a lord, which opens doors if you happen to be someone for whom they weren't already open.

371 x 250 days is about $100k...in London...that's pretty middle class if you ask me. Just look at how Congress makes out in comparison. They legalized insider trading for themselves and only themselves. What you describe is quaint by comparison.

If you are in a position to be appointed to the House of Lords, it is reasonable to assume that you were not hand-to-mouth before that happened. At worst, you had a good job in one of the classes that gets you access to British Costco. At best, you have an estate and staff.

Heredity is only one of many flavours of cronyism.

It provides an additional check. Much like a monarch, a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself. Without the country, they're just a toff with some money and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

> a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself.

I'd argue their interest is tied to the welfare of the country for themselves, not the country itself or the general public.

This is the most convincing argument for the house of lords/monarchy that I've ever heard. Going to be thinking about this for a while, thanks.

The usual elitist slop.

Every single citizen has a skin in the game of their country. They live there.

Your fortunes are not inextricably tied to your country any more than mine are. I've lived in four countries; am now a citizen of two. I have no passive incomes or sociolegal status which is tied to an estate or a title in a country that must continue to prosper or that status and wealth will diminish. If I see shit going sour, I'll sell my farm in Ireland for twice what I paid for it, move somewhere else, and still be a commoner.

Sorry about the aggressive initial response.

It’s difficult for me to respond to these comments. I have to argue against the idea that there is virtue to setting up a hereditary parasite (passive income) who can do good for his/her country because they have, well, passive income.

Why can’t we just not do that? People, i.e. commoners, already have a stake in their country by virtue of living there. Even outlier globetrotters like you do.

The comparison isn't to the average person off the street but rather the typical elected politician.

I didn’t stutter. People criticize so-called democracy and then I take that as the charitable premise: we are indeed discussing genuine democracy, not just the fake and typical democracy of only politicians having any power.

The Senate is, while not the whole story, a significant part of the reason the government constantly fails to do what is either the desire of the people or what's in their interests. I wouldn't lament losing the Senate.

The US Senate is designed to check and balance the House of Representatives. But that often puts the Congress as a whole in deadlock, meaning it can no longer balance the other two branches.

When they could get anything done they delegated a lot of power to the Executive. Which worked ok, but eventually a "unitary executive" appropriated even more power, and the Legislature is powerless to prevent it.

Unpopular opinion: deadlock is fine. Most legislation is bad. What really matters is the budget. And the rule that failing to pass a budget can automatically force an election avoids the absurd US "shutdown" that isn't a shutdown.

This is now my second favorite idea, after a nationwide ban of first past the post voting schemes.

My third (previously second) is outlawing political parties. The problem with that one is it would be really difficult to implement in a way that doesn't run afoul of freedom of association and freedom of speech. Probably worth figuring out though.

I don't think it can be figured out. Every democratic country has political parties.

True but I think much could be done to blunt their impact if we collectively put our minds to it.

People really love to create associations, and if "parties" are banned, "movements" or "clubs" that are "totally-not-parties" will take their place.

We are too gregarious to prevent emergence of political groups. A parliament of cats would probably be more individualistic, but not that of humans.

You don't need to outlaw parties, just remove any privileges and powers they have.

Voting system reform would probably mitigate the worst aspects of political parties.

Egypt after ousting Mubarak held an election where a third of seats were reserved for independents. Most winning candidates were just Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. I suspect the military interim government did that deliberately to justify their later coup.

Deadlock would be fine if the other two branches weren't running amuck.

Not a problem in the UK system, although the PM has a lot of power he is very much removable if the party doesn't support it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't members of the current PM's party publicly saying he needs to step down right now?

Yes. They can say what they like, but until they can find 167 votes from Labour MPs to remove him, he stays. https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons

This is where the intra-party coalitions become important. Every party of significant size has them. Labour is effectively a coalition between a rightwing faction (New Labour/Blue Labour) and everyone else who is more leftwing. The internal and external debate is the question: should they focus "right" (immigrant and queerbashing, welfare cuts) to appease the right wing of the party and try to pick up Reform/Conservative voters, or focus "left" on their base and people who are switching to Green?

On the other hand, voting needs to mean something. If voting doesn't mean anything, because the whole system is held in a vice grip by a sclerotic institution playing power games with itself, then the broader system eventually collapses.

My personal opinion is that Mitch McConnell's intransigence and unwillingness to do anything lest Obama get credit for it led directly to an increased desire for a "strongman"

The Senate was fundamentally from the start a compromise in favor of the slave-owning ogliarchy. You just have to look at free and slave states being admitted in pairs to preserve the status quo of slavery to see how that went.

Aren't you supporting parent's point? The senate is elected these days after all ...

The Senate gives a rather disproportionate democracy in which the votes of a small number in small states take on disproportionate significance compared to the votes of a large number in populous states.

That still does nothing to refute the parent's complaint about democracy. Lopsided representation is still representation (as opposed to a council of nobles or military generals or whoever).

Also the thing you're objecting to is literally the entire point of the senate from day one. It was intended to give less populous states an equal voice in contrast to the house of representatives. Unfortunately history happened and the house of representatives hasn't been proportional for a long time. But if you're going to complain about something it should probably be the latter rather than the former.

Extraordinary, and disgusting, to see monarchism touted by literate professionals in the 21st century.

The "point" of hereditary peerage is, from the perspective of the nobility, to preserve privileges with only self-interested regard for the welfare of the public—which very obviously resolves into tyrannical despotism at the earliest opportunity!

Utterly unconscionable to carry water for the literally medieval political economy that brought us, eg the calamitous 14th century.

Countless—countless—examples of the hideous cruelties of hereditary nobles abound since the institution's inception. You'd have to be a blind pig to ignore the myriad failure states. My God, man, do you want your children to be slaves??

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