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Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions

(assemblingamerica.substack.com)
360 points namlem | 1 comments | 14 Jul 25 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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retrac ◴[14 Jul 25 16:28 UTC] No.44562032[source]▶
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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gameman144 ◴[14 Jul 25 16:33 UTC] No.44562101[source]▶
This may show that I'm biased, but the idea of a randomized group of citizens making the law of the land scares the heck out of me. There is a non-trivial amount of nuance and compromise that goes in lawmaking.

Now, the idea of electing a few thousand representatives and having sortition determine who is actually selected is something I could feasibly get behind.

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yesfitz ◴[14 Jul 25 16:54 UTC] No.44562367[source]▶
That's what bicameral legislatures[1] were meant to address.

Ideally, the lower house are representatives elected from the common people, and the upper house are the career politicians that understand how the government works.

In the U.S., the 17th amendment[2] changed that, for better or worse (probably both).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

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rrrrrrrrrrrryan ◴[15 Jul 25 04:02 UTC] No.44567719[source]▶
Ideally, the upper house is gradually stripped of its powers, as it's undemocratic by design.

IIRC it's actually somewhat rare to have a bicameral legislature where both houses have roughly symmetrical powers.

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1. delichon ◴[15 Jul 25 04:29 UTC] No.44567835[source]▶
"Undemocratic by design" applies to the whole Constitution, since everything in it requires supermajorities to change. A legislature is undemocratic in that it restricts voting to representatives. Due process is another constraint on democracy. This is to say that "undemocratic" is not necessarily a bug, since pure democracy is rule by the whim of the mob.