

Ask HN: If Politicians were selected by Random Lotto? - gremlinsinc

Instead of the current &quot;I volunteer as tribute method, what if our elected officials were drawn from completely random lottery...&quot; --<p>The approval rating of congress is abysmal, and idiot-rating through the roof, sure average americans may not know everything about running a country, neither did the author&#x27;s of the constitution, they just knew they wanted something better.<p>I submit that if we picked all senators and congressmen via random lottery, w&#x2F; 1 term only. We would have a MUCH healthier political system than we have now.<p>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?<p>Same goes for anything. Why can&#x27;t we change things, shake things up a bit, push the envelope? Wasn&#x27;t America&#x27;s founding principles on shaking things up?
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throwaway420
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.

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edavis
> "... 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.

~~~
dragonwriter
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.

~~~
edavis
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...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-
partisan/post/for-floors-not-ceilings-in-campaign-
finance/2012/04/13/gIQAU31UFT_blog.html)

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dragonwriter
> 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".

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AnimalMuppet
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.

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Glyptodon
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.

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dllthomas
_" 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.

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mjolk
>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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> >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.

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PaulHoule
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.

~~~
notahacker
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?

~~~
PaulHoule
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.

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

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

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biafra
What you describe is called Demarchy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy)

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

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

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dragonwriter
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.

~~~
dllthomas
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?

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gremlinsinc
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.

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dllthomas
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.

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michaeldhopkins
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a story about this.

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Mz
What would happen? Most likely, chaos would ensue.

