WatchAmerica is currently suffering from a very corrupt electoral system. Those with the most money (the 1%) get federal and state laws made in their favor, rigging the game against the rest of us (the 99%). The 1% corrupts our laws primarily by campaign contributions, which are legalized bribes. But also, the 1% simply has much better connections that the 99%, and they use these elite connections to personally influence Congressmen, who also usually come from the 1%:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/as-a-class-congressional-freshmen-e.html
One solution is to ban private campaign contributions, and to make all Congressional campaigns publicly funded, but there are valid concerns that this might unfairly limit the freedom of speech of the 1%. Even with a ban on private campaign contributions, the same 1% would inevitably still dominate Congress simply through elite personal connections.
A better solution would be to use the model of ancient Athenian democracy, choosing our legislators by lots, the same way juries are chosen. This is called sortition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Sortition would immediately solve the problem of campain finance, since there would be no electoral campaigns anymore. All Congressmen, Senate and House alike, would be selected by lot. Even better, sortition would solve the problem of personal connections between the 1% and Congressmen. Each new crop of Congressmen would not be connected to the 1% any more than occurs normally in the population. Everyone who can vote and serve on a jury would have a chance to serve in Congress.
One objection to sortition is that a truly representative sample of Americans would not be qualified to make laws. We have already decided that juries are qualified to make life-and-death decisions in court. So it follows that a much bigger representative sample of Americans is also qualified to make the laws. Even if they have no legal expertise, they can ask experts for advice and reach a consensus like juries do. A four-week "Congress boot camp" would probably be enough to get most people up to speed on how laws are made.
Another objection is that citizens selected for Congress may not want to serve. In that case, the person should be excused and another person chosen by lot until one is found that agrees to serve.
The 1% would try to bribe the citizen-Congressmen to twist laws in their favor, but at least the 1% could not threaten to withhold campaign contributions. It would also be much harder to apply social pressure, since there probably would not be many social connections between randomly-chosen Congressmen and the 1%.
The ancient Athenians were pretty smart people. I think we should create a consitutional amendment to choose our Congressmen by random lottery, and not by whoever can raise the most campaign cash and has the best connections. We would then have a truly representative democracy for 100% of the people at last.
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Bellingham, WA
The negative feedback here is that there's no downside for working against the public interest.
At least elected representatives have to win reelection to stay in office. This aligns their interests more with their constituents, the ones who vote at least.
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Why would you work against the public interest if you agreed to be a randomly selected member of Congress?
Accepting bribes is illegal and may carry a prison sentence, so that's a downside to working against the public interest. Well, it's illegal unless you call the bribe a "campaign contribution", which is one flaw in our system that this proposal tries to correct.
Aside from bribery, what motive might a random citizen have in doing anything other than his best for the people?
Don't think like an economist. Economists still cannot get their heads around the Ultimatum Game, because economists can't understand the human desire for fairness and cooperation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
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Patrick says
Patrick,
I don't get why this Ultimatum Game should automatically indicate the human desire for fairness and co-operation. If it does indicate anything, it shows what is the marginal utility of the portion of money player 2 receives from player 1.
Marginal utility = boundary use of the thing that a person acquires. Let's say I was a rich person, then I am more than likely to accept a lower offer than x/2 (where x is the amount that has to be divided), whereas if I was not, then I would not accept anything less than x/2.
In fact, the problem shows the self-similar nature of human thinking. In the sense a human always try to maximize their benefit out of any good.
Patrick says
I like the idea. but there are problems:
people's motives are usually strongly dominated by their emotions and that may not always indicate the best interests of people in mind. (similar to jury decisions affected based on emotional feelings of jurors)
there could be also be prejudices based on race/caste etc. May be this can be eliminated at the selection process itself.
One important question: how can you ensure that the selection process in the system cannot be rigged?
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46 male
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austrian_man says
I'd be willing to bet that that's not true. I think the rich generally feel entitled to a larger share of everything. Again, it's not about reason, it's more of a social thing.
austrian_man says
That's a good question. All the names should be on some giant list, with a number, and the number should be selected by some inherently unpredictible thing that everyone can verify. But what? Something about the weather maybe.
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Patrick says
What I am saying is certainly true for things such as food (perishable), water etc. Not necessarily true for money, because money is to save future consumption.
Even for money such as gold, there are ancient ages where even monarchies did well, when the King was benevolent to the people and treated everyone fairly. So no, it doesn't necessarily have to be false.
Too much importance on more materialstic pleasures is more of a Western mindset, not so common in other cultures such as Buddhism and some eastern cultures. But increasingly, the Chinese and Indian mindset is also becoming Western, in that more consumption on materialstic things beyond one's need is considered 'good'.
'Value' in and of itself is a subjective concept, in that there is no such thing as 'value' outside human consciousness. From this subjective theory of value is where theory of marginal utility emerges.
Money's marginal utility can be thought as constant, in the sense that there is no time when a human will refuse money (as long as the person emphasizes materialistic wealth more than what he needs is important).
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I've covered this in many places before on the internet. I call it the Random Party. I've actually combined the Random Party with the Pitchfork Party. Our platform consists mainly of two things: Choose representatives at random and don't do business with anyone you cannot reach with a pitchfork.
Someone said, "Value in and of itself is a subjective concept."
I disagree. As is commonly accepted, yes..you are correct. In the universe, however, and with living things, "value" consists of something that is useful for the future and to future generations. Net value or what I call "net usefulness" is the factor which decides if a species survives or goes extinct. Any species which consumes the resources it will need in the future goes extinct. A species which provides some net future usefulness (ha ha..F.U.) over and above what it consumes in resources, will be prepared for setbacks and other contingencies by storing information (DNA) or diversity or by adding to the value of the environment by helping it work better (Symbiosis).
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You are assuming Yahoos know how to run a government.
Good luck!
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samuelson30 says
You're assuming our current politicians know how to run a government!
I don't think the yahoos would do any worse.
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Read how the constitution really came about. Madison, et al
were scared to death of direct democracy --- for good reasons.
And what we now have is a plutocracy disguised as a democracy ---
all brought about by the wisdom of the average voter.
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Chico, CA
Choosing congress by lottery would be better than the current system. But I still don't like the idea of so-called representative government, a republic. Vote for one of these lousy representaives and then watch as they continually do exactly the opposite of what the majority wants. It happens every time... Why not get rid of Congress altogether and simply let the people vote directly on important issues? A direct democracy.
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Hampton, VA
So lets see:
We take an average joe off the street and put him into a position of power and influence that he has not worked for nor knows how to handle.
He is sent to Washington for a specific term and answerable to no constituant. Grand temptation to just enjoy the trappings of power.
The "1%" could just ply these folks with babes and job offers.
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Zakrajshek says
I like direct democracy, but there would be a lot to work out. Would it all be over the web, or what? How would people propose legislation? How would committees work? Just selecting Congressmen at random would be much easier to begin with, since it's the same system we have now, minus the elections.
HeadSet says
Doesn't that happen now anyway?
I think the public would be VERY interested in exactly what their randomly-selected Congressman is up to, so that would apply some pressure to be good. And we do have laws against bribery.
But sure, they would not be worried about getting re-elected, because there would be no elections. OK, how about this: we have an election AFTER the guy's term is up, and if the people approve of his performance, then he gets a pension. If not, he gets nothing.
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Good to see this post. I've been thinking about this for several years now and as far as I can see it is the only rational, fair way to have a real democracy short of constant direct referendums - which of course would also be prey to 'rigging' in terms of the questions and how the arguments are presented, and not necessarily conducive to arriving at policy decisions with all the evidence considered.
As Barbara Goodwin says in her book 'Justice by Lottery', what we have at the moment is a lottery which happens at birth and then the pretence of equal opportunity afterwards. As someone who has done a lot of campaigning on local and national issues - involving many direct conversations with a range of politicians across the political spectrum - I have to say I've never met a politician I felt was any more qualified than any 'normal' person I've ever met to make decisions on other people's behalf. Indeed if everyone knew that holding office was a real possibility and had real training for it in high school it might go some way towards making sure people were involved in their own collective governance most of the time, rather than it just amounting to casting a vote every two-four years.
Another point Goodwin raises is that with a demographically balanced sortition process which would select people for a limited period of time, decision-makers would have a far greater likelihood of being directly affected by their decisions than what is now the 'political class' does.
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Patrick, Today's cartoon (Luckovitch) is your best so-far. Also Athens was a very small insular society. These ideas work better in that setting.
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Patrick says
1% has a nice ring to it, but I think it's more like 0.5% or even 0.1% that truly have the power.
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Ross, CA
Sortition has very, very little chance of becoming a reality. And even if it did happen, it would probably be a disaster. Most people are far too disorganized and lack critical thinking skills needed to legislate.
Rather than hope for some pie in the sky solution, it is better to shine more and more lights on congress' actions (or in-actions, as the case may be) much the same way you've done on the real estate industry with your great site.
And I'm not talking about partisan mud slinging but rather an informed citizenry. The generation that is coming of age now will not be sedated by good jobs and all the trinkets that come with it. They will become more and more pissed off at the mess they have inherited. And they will take advantage of the new wired world and their natural comfort in using it to expose the bs that has always gone on in government.
A quick analogy: What would become of Prop 13 if every home and building had to put up a sign with the yearly property tax bill? Us geezers would need the physical signs, the next generation of home buyers will not.
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rowemoore says
And yet we trust most people with life-and-death decisions as jurors.
Should we stop having jury trials?
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Patrick says
Most jury trials last a day or two, and only 1 in a million is "life or death" trial. The scope is very tight and the instructions are very clear. If for some reason you are not a good fit, you will be sent packing by the judge or one of the lawyers. (who would make that call under your scenario) If you are selected, you will be guided every step of the way.
Comparing serving on a jury to being a congress member is, at best, a ridiculous stretch. It would be nice to live in a country where all citizens are well-informed and capable of legislating. Of course, if we had that type of citizenry, we wouldn't have the mess we have now.
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46 male
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The point is, we do trust the common people to make jury decisions. And we trust them with voting.
If everyone had a chance to be in Congress, we would have a big motive make sure everyone was capable of critical thinking.
You could start coming up with tests to see if a common citizen qualifies to be chosen for Congress, but that immediately leads to all kinds of discrimination. Even a simple spelling test would exclude most hard-core Republicans. Seriously, they just can't spell for some reason. I see it every day on the forum.
Sure, we'd get some complete bozos by random selection, but we have some complete bozos in Congress already. No one bozo could do all that much damage, because the laws are made by majority vote.
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Patrick says
For how long? I could see the new legislaters setting a very high bar for proving abuse, obstensibly to protect against "frivolous" lawsuits. Like the immunity to "insider trading" the Congress has now.
And how about that $350k per year no-show job that Michele Obama received from a hospital, folowing a grant to that hospital appoved by her hubby? Bribery laws had no affect here.
Some hope though. Recently Virginia politician Phil Hamilton was sentenced to nine years in jail for voting for a grant for Old Dominion University, while being offered a part time job at that institution (40k per year).
Although the Obama bribe was on a much bigger scale, it occured before the bank bailouts while Hamilton's bribe was after the bailouts. I would like to think that Hamilton's prosecution means that post bailout, the people are less willing to tolerate corruption.
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HeadSet says
Gosh that's awful. Well it would be if it were true. But it's not true.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/05/michelle-obamas-salary/
The disinclination of most people to check facts is definitely a good argument against randomly selecting people to be in Congress. So thank you for that.
I'm disappointed that Obama turned out to be so much like Bush (continued war, continued tax cuts for the ultra-rich) but the continuous stream of dubious allegations against him just begs for some rebuttal:
http://www.fightthesmears.com/
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Tyranosopher's website
Athens ran a standard democracy. It was direct in the sense that every citizen could make his voice heard. Juries were enormous, they consisted of about 500 citizens, say .5% of the citizenry.
A disadvantage of selecting "representatives" haphazardly is that ideas themselves campaign during campaigns. But, with selection without elections, ideas could not be elected.
Instead of really wild propositions, a more democratic system, say as in Switzerland, could be implemented easily, as it already exists, and works well. Switzerland is 100 times the size of ancient Athens in population. It is directed by a seven member Federal Council, and the presidency is just a year. There are also lots of referenda, and if a canton wants to block something, it can. Even the European Union had to submit to the will of individual Swiss Cantons! [Yes, even though Suisse is not in the EU! So mighty is more direct democracy!]
And why do we need representatives? Can't we just vote and campaign and debate directly through the Internet? Not one man, one vote, but one man, one representative.
In a way that is what we are doing now.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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Tyranosopher's website
I read very carefully the http://www.factcheck.org/2009/05/michelle-obamas-salary/
Although it claims to defend Michelle, the description is pretty indicting actually. I say this calmly. I know Obama personally, he is a friend. And, agreed, that is how the system works. And, as I was told by this ethereal crowd, this was very small potatoes.
It is true that, for example in Silicon Valley, larger scale corruption systems have been run for two decades (check Goldman Sacks valuation of their creature, facebook, at 50 billion dollars). But it's not because it's everywhere that it does not smell bad. And it has got to the point we cannot breathe.
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Seems like an awful lot of entropy to throw into a system just to get rid of a negative aspect of its function. The best analogy I can think of offhand is having a fever to get rid of a cold. But the fever goes away when the cold is gone.
In particular, corruption from concentration of power does not necessarily imply that extreme distribution of power will ultimately be worth obliterating the benefits of the concentration of power, even if corruption goes too.
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A statistically valid random sample of the population would likely govern no worse than the current system.
What you lose in institutional expertise you gain in:
- Broad knowledge of different aspects of the economy, culture, and morality of the country.
- Lower potential for corruption.
- Less contempt for government in general.
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Another way to almost accomplish the same thing would be term limits. Limit the president and congress to one term each and offer no pensions to them. This would make it way more difficult for very many of them to be professional politicians.
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Patrick says
But juries themselves are selected in different ways. There used to be old urban legends that getting a drivers license somehow put you on a list and you could be called for it (not everyone in a city drives or has a need for a license)
Studies have been performed on juries in terms of conviction rates and from that lawyers and attorney's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_jury_selection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_research
I can tell you that if someone knows constitutional law and they have a background in it chances are they'll never be picked on a jury. It is harder to pick people for a jury these days because of communications (internet, court tv etc).
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Patrick says
I stand corrected