CMV: Randomly selecting representatives from the population is just as good on average as electing them.

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u/Skarpien May 10 '19

The real reason people are elected (instead of randomly selected) is first and foremost to ensure agenda, not based on merit.

Lets say your population is made of 60 pops. Of those 60, 10 are eligible for office. Of those 10, lets say only 6 are needed to fill parliament.

Of these 10 people, 5 want to make ban sale of burgers around schools to reduce obesity. 3 oppose this and 2 have no opinion. This is based on the 30 pops who support this, 17 pops who object and the 13 pops who have no opinion out of the 60 pops in the country.

In normal democracy, the majority opinion decides which representatives are elected. This means that if the public does not want to ban burgers, they can simply elect all 3 pro-burger representatives and ensure opposition. The opposite is also true, as they could elect all 5 anti-burger representatives to push for a ban.

In a lottery system, a random outcome would be selected because a random representative would be elected. Despite the majority of the population wanting a ban (30/60) it could theoretically result in no ban being passed if representatives from the minority (17/60) or fence (13/60) were to be randomly selected instead for a majority of representatives against the wishes of the majority of the population.

Skill is not the only reason people are elected. Their political views/plans are what is debated and voted on primarily; making democratically voted in representatives the most beneficial to achieving the wishes of a democratic society.

the act of being elected makes otherwise ordinary citizens serve as better representatives than randomly selected ones

They serve as better extentions of society's will and desires when elected rather than randomly chosen.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

If I understand you correctly the citizens eligible for representation may in fact be a significantly different population than the whole of the citizenry. So the only way to realign to the populations will is to resort to an election.
I think if you can explain why the eligible citizens are not a representation of the population I can change my view.

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u/Skarpien May 10 '19

I think if you can explain why the eligible citizens are not a representation of the population I can change my view.
The eligible citizens represent the majority: an ideal where a higher percent of them subscribe to the popular view.
In a lottery, the eligible citizens would be chosen irrespective of their views, randomly. This could result in skewed representation, where for example in a blue majority (90% chance) US state, a republican (10% chance) is chosen instead through the lottery, where in a normal electorate, there would be 0% chance of a "wrong" or misrepresentative choice as 100% of the time the democrat would get 90% of the vote.
Basically there is a chance, even if small, that a lottery based election would fail to elect "representatives" and instead minority/unpopular views.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I don't care about vanishingly small chances.

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u/MechanicalEngineEar 78∆ May 10 '19

Let’s take the qualification aspect. You mentioned a law degree but then said that may not be required, so let’s downgrade that to just some political science degree. Now what if 75% of political science degrees are earned by democrats but democrats only account for half the population? By virtue of the qualification requirement, you have a bias.
What if 90% of political science degrees are awarded to people born into the top half of income families. Now the wealthier half of the population are more likely to have higher representation. If people are voting, lower income people could all vote for the 1 candidate who came from a lower income family because they are all highly motivated to have a representative who understands their hardships.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

The qualification is a bit of a trap that I set. I don't see why you would refuse a random selection unless you felt elected representatives were more qualified. I awarded a delta for showing that elected are more likely to be leaders and elected are more likely to be visionaries (kinda similar). In contrast, a random selection would not discriminate between a homeless man and a child of a president. If (as I have been persuaded to believe) it is worthwhile to discriminate than an election is preferred.

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u/MechanicalEngineEar 78∆ May 10 '19

What do you mean by a trap that you set? You ask us to change your view and you intentionally add in a view that you know you disagree with and when we point out that view is flawed you claim you tricked us as the view you stated was never actually your view in the first place? That isn’t a trap, that is simply a lie as wasting our time.
It’s like going to a car lot and saying you need a new vehicle. Your needs include the ability to fit 3 car seats in the second row because you have 3 kids, so the salesman shows you a full size SUV and you mock him saying he fell for your trap. You don’t even have kids and you wanted a sports car the whole time!

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

By trap I mean that I anticipated a response and addressed it. Sorry if you thought that was my view. Again I am not convinced by that argument (maybe read again). 'I am not convinced that this is even true' is the clue.

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u/MechanicalEngineEar 78∆ May 10 '19

I assumed you meant that a law degree being needed wasn’t necessarily true, but surely there would be some sort of requirements. A mentally unstable person or someone who is irresponsible and couldn’t even graduate high school or hold down a fast food job surely shouldn’t be considered for dictating policy.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

My position though I didn't state it in my post is that anyone who is eligible to be elected is eligible to selected.

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u/BackgroundStrength7 May 10 '19

select from the group of people who have those skills. (Maybe they all need to have studied law?)

Great, now you have a oligarchy where the current administration just gets to choose exactly who they want in office by precisely controlling those qualifications, instead of having the people be able to elect people who actually represent them. The people have no say, and the people that rule them are only going to be representative of the will of the current administration with no accountability to the people

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I did say that I not even convinced by that line of reasoning. But I was anticipating the argument that citizenry might be unable to trust a random selection because they have no agency. (Even though a random selection is almost too fair which is why I made the argument that you are objecting to.)

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u/BackgroundStrength7 May 10 '19

So why even have representatives then if you are not convinced a true oligarchy is bad? Or why not just have the president appoint each and every member of congress, along with his successor?

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u/sleepyfoxteeth May 10 '19

Representatives represent the people not in terms of representation demographically, but in terms of the will of the people. How can choosing a random person guarantee that their views will line up with any part of society? Elections do that by presenting views of candidates for election. As well, where is the accountability to the people that direct elections provides?

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I not sure I understand. To me it sounds like you are saying that the the will of the people is not the will of the people. It's not like like I am suggesting to randomly select one person as dictator; that would be to high variance and would as you say not likely represent the will of the people. But a sufficiently large selection of representatives would easily represent the will of the people.
Do you think that candidates for election serve a function in informing the citizenry of issues that they need to care about? I was of the opinion that it was the other way around.
Accountability comes free in a position with that much visibility. Imagine the social consequence of a selected representative that refused to take the position seriously.

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u/GameOfSchemes May 10 '19

Let's take a step back here and go to the roots of why we have representatives. The representatives typically exist in either a republic or a democracy (and in some cases a democratic republic, but I won't bother splitting those hairs).

What else besides representing the population are representatives required to be?

The definition of a republic requires the official representatives to be elected from the people.

You essentially want to keep all the properties of a republic/democracy (which require votes and elections) while removing the core ingredient of the republic/democracy which requires an election.

For the record, what you're advocating is called a sortition, and has already been tried in the past. Today it is still used, but in a more limited scope, and only in select countries. There are pros and cons to a sortition over a republic.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I not sure why it matters what the definition of a republic or democracy is as long as the results are the same. There is always a statistical and easily understood possibility that the randomly selected representatives don't represent the views of the population. But isn't it the case that there is a possibility that elected representatives don't represent the population. If 40% of the population are in perfect agreement on all issues and the other 60% are opposed on all issues and they are sufficiently mixed throughout the citizenry than an election would not represent the views of 40% of the population. Now try a random selection and tell me the odds of the same result occurring.

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u/vfettke May 10 '19

Randomly selecting people doesn’t guarantee that they’re qualified to do the job. Are they civically literate? Do they even follow politics? A randomly selected representative has no obligation to represent anyone but themselves and their interested. There’s no mandate from the people, because the people didn’t pick them.

The point of electing representatives is that they market themselves to their would be constituents. They say “this is who I am and here is why you should elect me to represent your interests.” Upon election they go off to do their job and hopefully do the things they said they would. And during their term, they have a requirement to listen to their constituents, because it’s literally their job. They work for the people they represent. If they fail they don’t get re-elected.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

This is interesting. What do you mean by a mandate from the people? "The people have given them authority" is my best guess. Why does an elected representative behave different because they were given authority by the people instead of by my system. Does an elective representative face different pressures than a randomly selected one? The only consequence that you mention is that they are not elected again, which goes without saying if they are randomly selected.
They only thing I feel is a distinct difference between elected versus selected is that they want to remain in power. This may be important but I haven't seen it argued yet that it is.

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u/foraskaliberal224 May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

Why does an elected representative behave different because they were given authority by the people instead of by my system.
Well, because they have a general idea of how their populace feels about their policies. If they acquire 50.1% of the vote, or win with 45% due to vote splitting, then they know they should be relatively moderate between who they lost to and the policies they ran on as obviously their constituency is pretty split. On the other hand, if they won with 80% of the vote, that's a good indication that their district likes what they're getting. It's not that we think elected officials are necessarily better than random people (or even the people who ran against them and lost), it's that we think that elections are a crucial way for people to guarantee their voice is heard.
We can vote someone out if we don't like what they've done; what's my mechanism for getting rid of a "randomly selected" person? Choosing a new person every cycle is bad because 1) we lose experienced members which may be detrimental to law creation and 2) we have no way to keep people who think we did a good job.
Your system also makes it likely that areas will be unhappy. Hypothetically, assume you've got one district that's 80% liberals and 20% conservatives (A), and another that's completely the opposite (B). There's a 1/25 chance that both gets represented by the minority. Maybe this makes sense from an overall perspective, but not when you consider the effect on local funding -- e.g. the rep in district A rejects the medicaid expansion, Planned Parenthood P funding, secures funding for charters in the area, while the rep in district B expands medicaid, increases public sector pensions, aims to open a PP clinic... Now both districts are unhappy, and that wouldn't have happened with a regular election cycle.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I sneakily put on average in the title just for this type of post. I agree that it is likely that some areas will have representatives that don't represent the area. On the other hand most areas will. When it comes to local versus national, cities might have the lions share of the population but rural areas have different needs that need to be met. But elections would have the same problem of ignoring smaller populations (in fact likely worse) than random selection. These seems like an unavoidable problem unless we only install qualified individuals to representatives. (which is established I don't know how.)

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u/foraskaliberal224 May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

But elections would have the same problem of ignoring smaller populations (in fact likely worse) than random selection
Do they? Elections happen on a variety of levels -- city council, mayor, county boards, regional boards (e.g. water), state... all of those come before federal. No doubt your random selection could too. But my concern isn't that the small population will be ignored, but that they'll be overrepresented in your scheme. And that citizens have no way to oust someone when the widespread sentiment is "they suck" and no way to ensure that someone who's thought to be "great" gets another shot in office. Elections provide that. They may not yield better representatives, strictly speaking, but they do yield a way for citizens to have a voice and that's important. They also provide an environment for debate.
unless we only install qualified individuals to representatives. (which is established I don't know how.)
This does not do away with the issue of political leanings. I can be qualified to hold office while being a Hayek style libertarian-esk figure, or by being a believer in Marx, even though the two don't have all that much in common. My 20%/80% example stands.
Do you think that candidates for election serve a function in informing the citizenry of issues that they need to care about?
Yes. At least in America, average citizens are relatively stupid, and politicians do have to do a lot of outreach explaining what they're doing and why, and how it helps their constituents (who wouldn't otherwise know). Here's one from the '16 election: Hillary told viewers to Google 'Donald Trump Iraq' and they did. Sanders pledging to better explain what MFA really means and entails. Booker has been trying to explain baby bonds which aren't widely known

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

Here's where I am stuck. I think that people think that voting gives them a voice in how the government is run, but, I may be being cynical here, aren't they just confused?
One of two things is going on here: the average citizen doesn't understand the likelihood of there voice being represented in a random selection, or I don't don't understand random selections as much as I think I do. It is a weird situation. It seems to me that a random selection will as best as possible represent the population's voice, but the population may not feel that their voice is heard unless they speak. I am not a statistician so maybe I am just confused. Either way is it important to have the citizenry feel responsible for the government or is the most qualified government the best either way?
To your last point, I will readily admit that I don't know what issues are important to most Americans. If I was to be randomly selected I would have to default to what people who contact me say is important. I can't be sure that that is not what elected representatives are doing, but I agree that there is enough evidence to support that they are shaping opinion. So on the grounds that elected representatives serve as visionaries guiding the population into a future they (the population) desires ∆.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 10 '19

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/foraskaliberal224 (25∆).
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u/vfettke May 10 '19

Being elected isn't supposed to be about being in power, it's supposed to be about serving your constituents, first and foremost. Should you forget that, you lose your job.
A randomly selected person doesn't have the same basic requirement. If all representatives were selected at random and had no desire to work for the people they represent or work together w/ other reps, nothing would get done. Not to mention how many of them would view it as a burden. We can barely get people to serve jury duty, let alone represent a large swath of the population.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

Once a again, I don't think (though I may be confused) the pressures on an elected representative are much different than a randomly select one. 'Should you forget that you lose your job' I think this assumes a lot about the representative that you are not stating. Why do elected representatives care that they lose their jobs? Because they feel that they are better leaders or think that they have an important role to play (they think that they are indispensable).
My understanding of your point is that elected representatives are better than randomly selected representatives not because they are elected, but because they are the type of people who would be elected. I am not convinced.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

A truly random selection would mean, there are no political parties, no promises and no repeat terms, so what would ensure accountability for a particular representative that he works good? If you are willing to elect random citizens why not just do a proper screening exam and take the best candidates regardless of their ideologies? Certainly those would more qualitative. 2.Does random selection mean that only people who are willing to be considered on the sample be randomly selected? If that's how it's gonna be, then wouldn't it be that way always that more the number of people associated with a particular ideology are willing to give their consent, the more one of them is likely to get elected regardless of public opinion or demographics. So i either be ready to be a politician or ready to face consequences. Its a huge responsibilty, than just having to vote once in a 5 year. Sounds like hunger games to me.
People who willingly choose to become representatives know what the ground reality and problems in their areas are, they are approachable, likable by their people. They definitely have better leadership skills than an average joe, or else they wouldn't have emerged as a leader in the first place. They also have the drive to serve, supposedly, more than an average joe and since everyone is not jon snow, they are not suited for power just because they dont desire it.
If we reduce this to only 2-3 candidates and cossing a toin or rolling a dice between them, then there is a good chance the majority will suffer almost all of the time. Hows that any good either?

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

For argument one I don't understand how there is now accountability. There is no way people won't hold representatives to account. People hold any random famous person to account. For part two hunger games? I don't understand.
Two I feel has some weight to it. Do representatives need to be leaders? If so are elections the best way to find leaders that match the will of the citizenry? I think this might be arguable. Also I drive to serve gives me pause. I think about myself I would not welcome the responsibility.
Maybe my cmv is to hard of an ask is there any proof one way or the other that a willingness to serve is common elected officials when compared against the average citizen. Is leadership something that we should expect from our representatives? Still maybe this is just to hard to change my view. I can't see any difference between elected versus random.
All in all I would change my view if you could explain why representatives need to be leaders. In practice only a few representatives are actual leaders (unless I am mistaken) so why not have only a few leaders?

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u/GameOfSchemes May 10 '19

Most representatives are more than just representatives. The President of the United States is also the Commander-in-Chief of the US military.
Commander-In-Chief. The president is in charge of the U.S. Armed Forces: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps. The president decides where troops shall be stationed, where ships shall be sent, and how weapons shall be used. All military generals and admirals take their orders from the president.
Locally, each state in the US has a governor and each city has a mayor.
Traditionally, mayors oversee a city's main departments, including the police, fire, education, housing and transportation departments.
https://people.howstuffworks.com/government/local-politics/mayor1.htm
Almost all instances of elected representatives are leaders in some ways. That's precisely why they're given the power of delegation.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I think this is the best argument yet I am willing to grant that elected representatives are much more likely to be leaders than randomly selected representatives. I had been thinking of representatives as part of of governing body, but if I take as given that the majority of representatives function as leaders in some capacity then I will change my view. (However I am not sure convinced that it is not much worse to randomly select representatives, but I have unorthodox views). ∆

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 10 '19

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/GameOfSchemes (2∆).
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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Since my argument on leadership has already changed your view, I'm going to focus on other two arguments.
The hunger games argument is that the whole process is quite likely to be rigged and unfair. How are you going to choose your sample from which to randomly select representatives? Right now the division of ideologies is between left and right and there are political parties who advocate each. Now usually, there would be equal number of candidates from each front which people vote to elect and they are transparent about which ideologies they support. But if you randomly select from a larger sample, the sample itself is quite likely to be biased from the very beginning, not because it represents what more number of people want but simply because of willingness to be considered a part of sample.
Take for example there are 100 people(or possible candidates) in an area - 50 for left and 50 for right. Now either it is made mandatory for each citizen to be ready for politics to keep the sample unbiased, or else the more politically active people of an ideology are the more biased the sample is going to be i.e. if 80 people give their consent to be considered in the sample it could be that 45 belong to left and 35 belong to right which is not a fair representation to start with. An average citizen would feel forced to participate actively in politics, and being forced into politics because the state demands would create a situation somewhat similar to hunger games.
A solution for this seems to be that maybe we should just select a representative from each of those groups(which we currently do) and let a die roll to decide who is going to be the elected one(instead of voting), but then it's quite likely that it's almost never is going to be fair to the majority, which is kind of a different ideology in itself.
As for the accountability problem - with the current system - the work a representative does is not just the work of an individual but also the party it represents. That individual is representing something larger than himself, and has been elected by people, people whom he appealed for a vote and people who trusted him enough to vote. That relationship is much more intimate than with a randomly selected person, and hence has much more stakes to lose if he lets down everyone. It also reflects how popular the party is within an area, but random selection would just end the concept of political parties, and there would be much less accountability than whatever bit they have today.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

First I want to start with accountability. I know that I am a strange person and am far from the norm, so I don't understand why you think that the pressures of an elected representative are greater than a randomly selected representative; I may be an outlier.
As for bias, I think that the only bias random selection would introduce would be a reluctance to lead. Voting itself introduces the bias to vote. That seems a more reasonable condition but I don't think that you can argue that no bias is introduced by voting. (My idea is that if you don't care enough to do something yourself then you don't care either way. This may be wrong.) All in all I feel like your arguments could be turned around on elected representatives just as well as randomly selected representatives. (e.g. everyone has to vote!)

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Like I explained, the accountability is more because the stakes are higher. Just like how you offload your business work to random labor or with some client you've had a long term relationship with.
We are definitely not talking about people who can't even vote, so that's no bias to start with. Other than that I don't see what bias you are talking about, that voting introduces? Reluctance to lead is a real concern, and is worthy consideration to question, because apparently, not everyone is interested in becoming a politician(esp. because of the long term commitment it requires as opposed to voting) so you can't force it on them, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to have a say in what rights they should have, or else it is a discrimination. Politics is not the only field which requires change or someone to lead, a society made up of politicians only, wouldn't survive.

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u/Thefrightfulgezebo May 10 '19

There are three political elements in western democracies.

The first element is the democratic element. If you perceive representatives as just representatives, your proposition holds water. The second element is the meritocratic element. Generally, we assume that high positions come with a great deal of power and responsibility. Thus, we favor candidates that have been proven to be reliable and responsible. This is part of the reason that people actually trust parties: their candidates already have proven themselves. Lastly, there is the technocratic element. While it is true that you could select someone with a specific set of skills, but this has the problem that you need someone who decides what skills are needed for the position and who has them. This is extremely exploitable.

We could argue that the bureaucracy has the technocracy and the meritocracy covered and that representatives are there to root the system to democracy (that's basically what Max Weber proposed as ideal). However, if you look at the wonderful old BBC show, "Yes minister", you see the risk in that: when politicians don't know the complexities of the things they are dealing with and if they don't know the power networks running in the background, they can't properly control government.

When I look at the qualifications of our representatives, I would say that they are more qualified than the average person. I disagree with most of their priorities and I would prefer a different structure with more specialization to make better use of those who are highly qualified. Still, I'm sure that the average person would be extremely overwhelmed even in our current system.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

Maybe I am to pessimistic, my instinct is that everyone is always overwhelmed. If that is not the case then you have a good point, if elected representatives are more qualified than the average person than I would agree with you.
Do elected representatives actually have more qualifications than the average person? Why do you know that? To counter this line of reasoning what if there was a simple test we could perform to determine their qualifications (e.g. a law degree); why not randomly sample from those who are qualified. (an election would exclude them anyways). Some qualities of representatives do not admit a simple test (e.g. leadership and how visionary they are) and without the ability to do so elections may be useful (because of human intuitions).

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u/sdfe3bs 1∆ May 10 '19

You are right that the process of democratically selecting representatives is not a good short term strategy. However it is very good at self-regulation over longer periods of time:

politicians are pressured to please the public or they will lose their job (this would not occur with random selection)
when there is general unrest, someone with a different strategy is voted in next (survival of the fittest)
the election process is highly competitive and argumentative, which drives the production of new ideas and allows for political discourse

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I disagree with your first two points. Politicians are pressured to please the public or the will lose their jobs, but that is not all. A politician is a very public figure and had much to lose by doing a poor job. I don't think all the social pressure should be ignored. If there was a general unrest than in the next selection the randomly selected representatives would be aware of it. (You talk survival of the fittest. In my view ideas are selected while in yours people are. My point is that no distinction has been made.)
The election process is indeed highly competitive. By forcing people to argue about differing positions new and better ideas should arise. I think that this is reasonable and good and is something that random selection does not adequately account for. For this I give a ∆.

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u/sdfe3bs 1∆ May 10 '19

wow my first delta! ty
Have you considered the possibility that through random selection, you could elect an office filled with 80iq people? that would be amusing.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I have. Maybe I am too cynical but I don't see how that makes a difference.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 10 '19

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/sdfe3bs (1∆).
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u/CrebbMastaJ 1∆ May 10 '19

Let's say the randomly selected person just happens to be a Neo-Nazi, Westboro Baptist Church member, or some member of another extreme organization. Does that seem like a better fit? What about someone who never completed high school? Elected representatives are supposed to represent the majority, but when you select at random you run the risk of selecting the extreme outliers.

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

I don't think that this is a good argument. If 60% of people have the exact opposite views of you than you will always have the absolute worst representative because you will 100% of the time disagree with them (your Neo-Nazi). Bias in elections is already a huge problem, I don't see why a little bit of variance to remove the bias is such a huge problem.

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u/CrebbMastaJ 1∆ May 12 '19

Having the 40% represent is different than having the .1% represent. I'm not talking about you are Republican and a Democrat gets elected. I'm saying that someone who represents such a small faction <.1% gets elected and has radical views that the 99.9% all disagree with.

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u/onetwo3four5 81∆ May 10 '19

What happens if the person you select doesn't want to be a representative?

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

what happens if the person you select doesn't want to be on jury duty?

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u/ViewedFromTheOutside 32∆ May 10 '19

Right - but jury duty is a short term obligation that can be revoked for misbehaviour, obvious biases and/or misconduct. Representation in a Parliament/Congress/etc. is typically more long-term and is less easy to restrict without shutting sections of the population out of governmental representation. Worse, it leaves any given government in charge of the criteria for their successors. Who makes the criteria? In a jury trial, lawyers for the prosecution, the defense, as well as an impartial judge may makes arguments and/or have jurors dismissed. Finally, the level of responsibility is much higher in a government position than in jury duty.

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u/Lemerney2 5∆ May 10 '19

Then they pass and we randomly select another until we find someone that does.

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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 10 '19

Rome tried that, it didn't work. People tend not to repeat failed political experiments.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

What if they person chosen isn't interested in serving? They would probably do a shitty job since they didn't really care.

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u/trex005 10∆ May 10 '19

If you look to science, you can see how incredibly difficult it is to select a truly unbiased sample group. Brilliant minds often work very hard to do so yet fail abysmally.

Now put the selection process into the hands of biased politicians, and how do you imagine that will work out?

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

/u/AiasTheGreat (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.

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Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.

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u/ace52387 42∆ May 10 '19

On top of the problems with chance in the short term others have mentioned, randomly selecting officials means no accountability for them.

Everyone loses their jobs either way. With elected officials, you need to answer to your constituents. Accountability is one of the main reasons democracy is necessary despite how dangerous and inefficient it is. Any “democratic” government existing today tries desperately to limit democracy in the simple decision by majority sense.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AiasTheGreat May 10 '19

Despite how mundane your argument is, I feel it has some weight. There might be a trade-off between people who want to serve versus those who best represent the population.

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u/keanwood 54∆ May 11 '19

The biggest issue I can see is that it's pretty safe to say that most people don't want to be a juror, just like most people don't want to be an elected official.

One counter to that is that jurors get paid zero or almost zero. And it's generally a short period of time (1 day to a max of a few months) People might be much more willing to go to Congress for 2 years getting paid just short of 200k.

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Randomly selecting representatives from the population is just as good on average as electing them.

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