The technical term is sortition. And it is my pet unorthodox political position. The legislature should be replaced with an assembly of citizens picked by lottery.
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Now, the idea of electing a few thousand representatives and having sortition determine who is actually selected is something I could feasibly get behind.
Not selecting absolute random people, but people who have established their ability to intelligently handle responsibility, and avoid breaking the law. E.g., once you have achieved a certain level of educational attainment (3.0+ at well-ranked college, managerial-level at established biz, certain mil leadership rank, etc.), pass security clearance, pass citizenship test, etc., you are in the qualified pool, and may be called upon to serve in a legislature. The always-a-newbie problem could be solved by allowing legislators to serve 2nd or maybe 3rd terms by re-election/confidence vote. Same for POTUS, possibly selected by sortition out of the existing legislators who pass a confidence vote.
There is no way a reasonably and responsibly selected random group of achieving responsible people would do worse than a corrupt or craven group, especially worse than the selected-for-corruption — i.e., selected for loyalty-to-leader — currently seated.
If we want to be very careful about a reform like this, we should test it at a smaller scale, such as a city for instance. We can start without any criteria and see if that works well enough. If it does, no need to overcomplicate things.
It is not merely adding qualifying criteria, it is setting qualifications AND sortition to select legislators and executives.
>>solve a problem that hasn't been demonstrated to exist ...The main threat to a well-functioning society are people acting in bad faith.
Your second sentence there is entirely correct, and specifically disproves the first. We have a problem
>>we should test it at a smaller scale, such as a city for instance
100% agree, we should test and adjust any changes before scaling up
>>start without any criteria and see if that works well enough
We've pretty much demonstrated that it doesn't
>>uneducated people may not be very effective in coming up with solutions, but their presence is important to remind educated people of their existence.
We do not need to hand uneducated people the keys to power to be reminded of their existence, any more than we should give loaded handguns to toddlers to be reminded of their existence. Intelligent people suitable for leadership can remember the existence of both just fine, thank you. Moreover, with qualified sortition, the selection is random so it is highly likely that qualified, educated, accomplished people who are adjacent to people with issues will be p[ut in power and able to do something for them