Ask HN: If Politicians were selected by Random Lotto?

> "... w/ 1 term only."

Nevada introduced term limits a few years ago and the result has been, at best, zero meaningful change and, at worst, actively making an already crappy state government even worse. And they're still given at least a few terms, rather than just one (which would make it even worse).

What ends up happening when you term limit politicians is other actors in the political system gain more power. And in Nevada's case, that means lobbyists and special interests.

They're the ones who can accumulate 20 years of experience while politicians come and go. They're the ones freshman lawmakers are forced to turn to because all other sources of institutional knowledge are no longer around.

In the abstract, I get the appeal of term limits. Fresh blood, new ideas, change for the better. In the real world, though, it just doesn't work.

Term limits are a (generally, ineffective) attempt to hack around a bad electoral system that doesn't provide meaningful choices (majority or plurality/runoff).

Preference voting systems (either single member systems, like IRV, or multimember systems like STV) address the problem term limits try to address more directly.

Absolutely. Well said.

To your point that the electoral system doesn't provide "meaningful choices," one suggestion I've always thought was interesting is Jonathan Bernstein's "floors, not ceilings" idea:

> No, the trouble in campaign finance that bothers me the most isn’t corruption, or the massive sums spent on presidential campaigns; it’s the fact that many Senate challengers and most House challengers can’t raise enough to run minimally viable campaigns. The solution to that, in my view is to put a layer of public financing as a floor for all major party congressional nominees, while loosening the rules to make it easier for them to raise larger amounts of money. Floors, not ceilings (plus meaningful disclosure).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/for-f...

> Let me ask 2 questions: 1: Is what we have now working, e.g. is there still homelessness, and poverty in America? 2: If our system is already failed, how does trying something new that may fail, hurt anything?

There's a pretty big gap between a government "working" to the extent of eliminating all major social ills like homelessness and poverty, and "failing" so completely as to not require any more argument than "our current system is failing, so trying something new, no matter what its obvious weakness, can't hurt anything".

Exactly. The current system is bad. But things can still get much worse. So "let's try some random thing, because it might help" is a bad idea. On average, it's probably more likely to make things worse rather than better.

Ever read Solar Lottery? It's not really the same, but I do wonder if over time randomly selected representatives wouldn't just milk their power for what it's worth since it seems like there'd be little to no accountability of any kind.

Not that there's any real accountability provided through elections as it is anyway.

"1: Is what we have now working, e.g. is there still homelessness, and poverty in America?"

You presume that there could not be homelessness and poverty in the optimal system. I'm not sure that's guaranteed.

"2: If our system is already failed, how does trying something new that may fail, hurt anything?"

You can always fail harder.

Mind you, I'm in favor of a basic income and there are some interesting things about this idea (though I don't think I favor it); I'm just skeptical of your rhetoric.

>Just as people say Guaranteed Basic Income will fail-- Let me ask 2 questions: 1: Is what we have now working, e.g. is there still homelessness, and poverty in America? 2: If our system is already failed, how does trying something new that may fail, hurt anything?

I question your assumptions. Should homelessness and poverty be the main concerns for politicians? Why do you believe our system has failed to the point of "elect random people from the public."

>Why can't we change things, shake things up a bit, push the envelope?

"Push the envelope" is a meaningless expression. What exactly do you mean?

>Wasn't America's founding principles on shaking things up?

No, it wasn't.

> >Wasn't America's founding principles on shaking things up?

> No, it wasn't.

Yeah, this is part of the myth that comes from the misnamed American "Revolution". The revolt of the American colonies against Britain was largely the opposite of being about shaking these up -- the anger was largely over the arbitrary deprivation of rights the upper classes expected to have respected as British subjects. The founding principle was more about securing what were already viewed as traditional protections than about shaking anything up.

Similar method worked fine for 300 years in ancient Greece in Athenes....

What you describe is called Demarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy

I've advocated this for a long time.

The big advantage is that it would put an end to corruption. If you tried to corrupt a member of the political class you might get a polite "no thank you" at best. If you tried to corrupt average Americans you might have some who would say yes, but you'd have 1/3 who would call the cops, punch you in the face, pull a gun, or otherwise do something that would make it way too risky.

> The big advantage is that it would put an end to corruption.

More likely it would move the locus of corruption (as well as the locus of power) from the actual members to the professional staff, on whom randomly-selected members would be more dependent on -- and less skilled in controlling/evaluating -- than professional politicians.

(To a certain extent, term limits do this with the locus of power, as well.)

What makes you think people are less likely to be corrupted by power and large financial incentives if they don't have to convince the electorate they have principles?

It works the opposite of how you say.

The first rule of being a "respectable" person is that you have to respect other "respectable" people.

For instance, you have to respect Bernard Madoff because Bernard Madoff is respectable.

What this means is you can safely feel out a respectable person to see if he is corruptable or not. If you picked average people, very dangerous things might happen at a 30% or so probability.

I just read this a few days ago and it's pretty interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

If this kind of thing is interesting to you I'd get ahold of the short story and read it through.

maybe we should have more congress people since population has skyrocketed since 1912 when it was last adjusted.

I love this idea. And for anyone who doesn't like it, ask yourself why we are using it for juries...

We use it because juries can't write laws, enter judgements, or execute laws/judgements, or, really, do anything on their own. They serve -- particularly in the criminal sphere -- as a brake on government.

Which might be an interesting role in this case. Any time congress tries to pass a bill, it not only needs the President's signature, but it also has to pass a randomly selected panel of ordinary people?

I'm not sure what problem this is supposed to solve.

The one thing the US system isn't short of is veto points in the legislative process.

Certainly a fair point. What it would do is cut out long-term horse trading. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Why not move to popular vote for laws? Some people think it can be hacked/gamed, but --if that's the case so can any normal election - and a lot of times republicans will do anything they can to get people not to vote because the more voters that show up, the more likely they are to fail.

I really like the idea of Liquid democracy -- what if a new political party popped up, and the runners agreed to take a public poll before every vote and the party can choose to keep or throwout the candidate at the next election based on how often they side w/ the people.

Throw in location/regionalized grouping, and you can easily have all sw ohio voters contribute to reps vote tally from that area...etc..

Also what if we raised the bar on representation - We currently have 1 congressmen per million... that's highly not representative.. -- true representation needs to also find a way to not only represent locations...but also demographics better..

What if we just tripled the reps, but required 1/3rd come from middle class, 1/3rd from lower-class, 1/3rd from upper class.

It would provide a better idea of what the people really want from all levels.

An ordinary popular vote for laws I don't like because I don't have time to research everything to the depth I would need to. Something like liquid democracy suffers much less from that, of course. I've recently been taken with the idea (though I am not at all convinced it would actually be a good idea) of drawing panels at random - like jury selection - to decide individual issues, but giving them time and pay to inform themselves and deliberate. Just expecting people to come to well informed decisions on their own time doesn't turn out great.

What would happen? Most likely, chaos would ensue.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a story about this.

While there is no system of government that is good, a random lottery would probably be better than what we have today. In a democracy, the best liars and thieves rise to the top of the totem pole. I think that a random sample of the population is more likely to include a few more good and decent people than today's system where outright criminals continuously gain power. EDIT - this idea of the incentives in democracy for bad people to rise to the top is discussed in very interesting ways in Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed which I would highly recommend.

One reason why I believe that a voluntary society is the ultimate future of the world is that there would be more opportunity for like minded folks to get together and institute any social order they wish to. If there's lots of folks that believe in a guaranteed basic income, there wouldn't be any regional monopoly of ideas so they'll have an opportunity to try their ideas and convince others that their system is the right one.