737
Tis a silly place (media.piefed.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
562 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
Tis a silly place
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ancient Greek democracy, where they used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition (picking representatives at random).

If you're USian, your jury is like sortition.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not a USian, but I do know how their jury duty works. Yeah, it's been over a decade since I last went to history class, I'd completely forgotten about this system and I guess I don't think outside of the box enough to come up with it myself. There are some negatives I can think of, but some few positives too.

    Here's my biggest concern, and I'm hoping that maybe you have an answer: Outside of the US, MOST people who get into politics are at least decently educated. MOST voters prefer intelligent and well-educated candidates. Most of them, not all of course. If everyone is eligible and there's no filtering happening, a bunch of honest to god dumbfucks might be chosen by random chance. You COULD give it an education requirement, but then a lot of otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people who didn't finish school for one reason or another, are disqualified. IQ tests can have unwanted cultural, racial and socioeconomic biases. How do you make sure that there aren't too many ridiculously unqualified people chosen, without outright imposing requirements that could be unfair?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Outside of the US, MOST people who get into politics are at least decently educated. MOST voters prefer intelligent and well-educated candidates.

    No. You're romanticizing. From east to west, north to south, all democracies fall to establishment and "families", or "parties" and vote on candidates from those. And then enshittification ensues.

    There might be singular exceptions on local level, but every country I checked trends to establishment protecting families (or parties) in power and growing it's own ruling class.

    How do you make sure that there aren’t too many ridiculously unqualified people chosen, without outright imposing requirements that could be unfair?

    Let's start with admitting that elections don't solve for that. When was the last time you saw someone in power and though "yup, they're an expert and they will make all of our lives better"?

    Now if the people were randomly chosen from general populus - that incentivizes highly educated in ethics, morals, well read general population, or you will be ruled by dumb dumbs and your country will make very costly mistakes or implode.

    Having said that, your Senate or officials in power don't have to be extra smart. They can hire smart people. The point of sortition is to create a system where wealthy don't rule everyone else and create laws unfair to everyone except current nobility.

    Apparently it worked, and it could work again because we're not really being taught that in school. In fact, we're lied that ancient Greeks used elections in their democracy.

    If you go to wiki page you'll be linked to multiple pro's and con's, critiques of sortition, critiques of elecotralism etc. if you have time, sink into that instead of asking a random on the internet like me to assay your doubts.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent