Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions

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.

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.

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...

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.