On Aug 11, 2009, at 6:28 PM, Max Battcher wrote:
On 8/11/2009 18:53, Trent Shipley wrote:
More fundamental is his objection to the U.S. Government. In
effect, he
is saying that the U.S. system of government is inherently
illegitimate,
largely because it is run by politicians. By John William's
standards
ALL representative democracy is illegitimate precisely because a
representative democracy REQUIRES professional politicians.
Crazy tangent: I've always wondered if it might be worth the effort
to introduce a third house, a tricameral legislature of sorts, where
the members are brought in through a random civic duty lottery (akin
to jury duty selection in most states, perhaps). Call it the "House
of Peers" or "House of the Public", for instance.
I think such a "crazy" idea would only work in the modern
communications era. You can't expect a person to serve even a 1-year
term if they have to pack their bags for Washington and may not be
able to expect to have their existing job when they return (much
less can't afford the salary differential during the term). However,
with the Moderne Internet, I think that "average folks" might be
persuaded to do a little bit of work for their country online every
so often for even a tiny amount of compensation. You could even
contemplate things like "micro-terms" of only a few weeks duration
with the right technological leverage. With micro-terms and lots of
paid eyeballs you might even get awfully close to a sort of
"representative wiki democracy".
Even if this "House" was of lesser standing than the existing
legislature it would be useful just to have a "public oversight
committee" directly drawn from the public and "in the same turf" as
existing legislatures.
Anyway, it's just a crazy thought experiment (that I created for use
in a short story I never wrote) and I doubt that it would be easy to
amend the Constitution to try it, but it might be something to play
with at local or state levels and see if it survives/replicates...
--
--Max Battcher--
http://worldmaker.net
I've been thinking very much the same thought.
As long as the selection process itself isn't compromised
("Congratulations to our Glorious-Leader-For-Life on yet another
unprecedented term in office. Only by Divine Providence could such an
extraordary event happen with our random selection process!"), the
worst case for random selection is better than the worst case for
selection by popular vote, because it's very difficult to game a
random selection system without compromising the selection system
itself.
And, considering the arsenal of media manipulation that's deployed
around every election to game the popular vote system by what are in
effect social engineering hacks, random selection *does* have a
certain appeal ..
"When you mention that we want five debates, say what they are: one on
the economy, one on foreign policy, with another on global threats and
national security, one on the environment, and one on strengthening
family life, which would include health care, education, and
retirement. I also think there should be one on parts of speech and
sentence structure. And one on fractions." -- Toby Ziegler
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