We used to link to the Boston Review with some regularity until December 2020 when they published and we linked to "To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity" which not only dismissed one of the most attractive features of current {!} electrical systems and grids: being available when you want it, but was also a bit boring in its lack of creativity in addressing the intermittency problem with renewable sources o'leccy.
However...
From The Boston Review, August 19:
A new book makes the case for replacing them with a system of government based on random selection.
Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections
Alexander Guerrero
Oxford University Press, $45When democracy seems everywhere in crisis, it may sound paradoxical, to say the least, that the solution to our troubles is to scrap elections altogether. But that is precisely what political philosopher Alexander Guerrero proposes in his bold and illuminating book, Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections. We should select political officials not by voting, he contends, but by lottery from among the entire adult citizenry.
As radical as it sounds, the idea, indeed the reality, of “sortition”—using random selection to select political officials—is nothing new. Nor is it the prerogative of any particular political persuasion. The Athenians used such a system more than two thousand years ago. The Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James celebrated this system when he argued, echoing Lenin, that “every cook can govern.” The idea has seen something of a popular revival in recent years thanks to the writing and advocacy of people like political theorist Hélène Landemore and Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck. And it has been put into practice in a variety of deliberative and citizens’ assemblies, including in Europe and the United States. What sets Guerrero’s analysis apart is that he has thought through how such a system might work in modern societies in exhaustive detail. The result is a landmark argument that must be reckoned with.
Guerrero spends much of the book putting flesh on the bones of the abstract idea of lottocracy, presenting a picture sufficiently well specified for meaningful comparison with real-world electoral democracy. In the rest of the book, he makes the case for the relative superiority of lottocracy and offers ideas about how we might get there from here. The book’s central claim is not that lottocracy is perfect but that, for all its flaws, it is still preferable to other political systems.
Of course, there are many ways to compare political systems. One might ask how well they comport with political equality: the ideal that everyone should have, at some level, the same say over policy. Or one might ask how well they offer opportunities for participation: the ideal that everyone be able to contribute to making policy. Guerrero contends that lottocracy does as well if not better than other systems on these criteria. But his primary interest is different: how well a political system solves problems, whether it delivers the objectively correct policy (which he thinks exists). While the capacity of a political system to solve problems—to, among other things, make people’s lives better—may not be a condition of a system’s counting as democratic, Guerrero is certainly right that it is something that we should want....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
"Detox democracy through representation by random selection"
Assume for now that I am correct in my long-propounded judgement that the very people who pursue political power are exactly the same folks who should not be allowed anywhere near it.
A repost from the early days of the covid-19 pandemic, January 18, 2020:
We are fans of randomness....*
Profiting From Random Strategies
Can Information Rise From Randomness?
Should You Just Give Up And Trade Stocks Randomly?
Joys of Noise: Technologies that Rely on Randomness
Think a coin toss has a 50-50 chance? Think again.
Randomness: "A Drunkard’s Walk in Manhattan"
Attention Managers, You Can Improve Corporate Efficiency by Randomly Promoting Employees
That last piece of research was awarded Harvard's own Ig Nobel prize in 2010.
Ya see, ya got your complex systems and ya got your chaotic systems and then ya got your complex-chaotic systems like weather or the economy or the stock market and when you endeavor at those levels of sophistication you realize:...There may be issues.
