I'm simply saying your contention that these people will be harder to corrupt is false and that they are in fact far easier to corrupt than your average politician.
I have absolutely no idea what makes you believe that. There isn't any evidence that suggests regular people are more likely to take bribes than wealthy people.
Hoplite said:
1 and 2 can be accomplished by simply putting term limits on existing offices, except them you get officials who look at their job as just "putting in their time" and they arent around long enough to actually do anything they care about.
Term limits would be an improvement as well. However, this would be better because with term limits you'd still have professional politicians with partisan grudges. It would be better than we have now, but still not as good as a deliberative democracy ruled by a random sample of people.
Hoplite said:
Number 3 has already been shown to be false.
Just saying it and offering no substantiation doesn't mean you've "shown it to be false."
Hoplite said:
Go take a walk and grab a random stranger and ask them political questions. The vast majority of PEOPLE are usually partisan one direction or another.
No. They aren't. Most people (if they have any political opinions at all) have opinions like these: "I'm pro-choice" or "Obama should do more to help the economy." That is FAR more common than "I'm opposed to cap-and-trade because of X, Y, and Z."
If you really think that the average person is a rabid partisan that would preclude compromise (or even has firm preexisting political convictions), I suggest you spend more time off this message board.
Hoplite said:
What gets people re-elected is results and stability. Throwing ten ideologues in a room and expecting anything other than bloodshed is wishful thinking.
The idea that a random sample of the population would produce mostly bloodthirsty ideologues is, frankly, ridiculous. It would be representative of a population which is not particularly ideological. There are far more ideologues in Congress today. See: Demint, Jim. Franken, Al.
Hoplite said:
So it's majority rule? What do you do if the majority wants to do something wrong, say, start a system of concentration camps for Muslims? What power can over-ride them in that instance?
:roll: The Constitution.
Do you think that the majority of people want something like that? Because if they do, they can elect representatives who favor that. If you'd care to critique this system of governance, I suggest you limit yourself to criticisms that don't ALSO apply just as much or more to the current system of governance.
Hoplite said:
Bull, say Socialism to anyone on the street and try to convince them that Socialism really isnt what they probably think it is and see how far you get. People DO NOT like their ideas of the world screwed with, it's a fact of human psychology.
Legislation isn't "We hereby vote to implement socialism." There are actual POLICIES that go into legislation. If the majority of the people favor a particular policy, so will a random sample of the population (assuming the experts don't talk them out of it).
Your rant about socialism sounds to me like what you actually dislike is that this system won't make everyone suddenly agree with you on the issues. No system of government (other than a dictatorship) can fix that problem. You have to convince people that your views are correct just like everyone else.
Hoplite said:
Humans tend to ignore answers they dont like or just make up alternative explanations. See anti-vaccination idiots and the ACLJ.
They aren't anywhere close to a majority of the population.
Hoplite said:
I never said they were more corrupt. I said it's easier to bribe someone making minimum wage as opposed to someone who forgets how many houses they own.
And I said that there isn't a shred of empirical evidence to support that. Every social experiment I've ever seen on corruption has concluded that there is either no relationship between dishonesty and income, or that wealthy people are actually MORE likely to be dishonest.
Hoplite said:
Finding common ground in a discussion and agreeing on legislation for the entire country is quite a bit different.
Only if you have "professional" politicians who are deeply entrenched and want to make sure they get their own. Furthermore, this system need not be applied nationwide. It would be better to start it out at a state or local level.
Hoplite said:
People are not this magically benevolent force in politics.
:roll:
And career politicians are not Jesus incarnate. Now did you actually want to discuss the topic, or shall we just make asinine straw men comments henceforth? I already explained to you the ways in which a random sampling of the population would be better than the current system, and none of them had anything to do with people being a magically benevolent force.
Hoplite said:
Why do you seem to think that this entire system can be dragged back to center by people who can probably count the number of times they've voted in a lifetime on two hands?
You are the only one who keeps bringing up specific political ideologies. I have no idea if a random sampling of the population would produce anything that we would describe as "center" under the current political system. What I do know is that it would produce something that was well-informed, nonpartisan, and representative of the population as a whole. You can't ask for much more than that from a governing system.
Hoplite said:
It doesnt matter if you have the cure for cancer. If you are an outsider, you will probably be bullied into sitting down and shutting up. Try it, stick a Socialist in a room full of free-market people and have them all try to come up with solutions to fix the economy. Even if the Socialist comes up with a truly good idea, he will most likely be ignored simply because of the source of the idea.
And there is that veiled criticism again: "This system of governance is bad because it won't make everyone agree with MY political ideology." If you're the only socialist in a random sample of the population, it's probably because socialism isn't a very prevalent ideology amongst the population. That doesn't mean you're right or wrong, it just means that your ideas have to endure the same scrutiny as everyone else's. Convince others to adopt your ideas and they will be reflected in the random sample of the population.
Hoplite said:
I'm not saying people have a desire for conflict, I'm saying people see themselves as right and dont really stop to consider other people's points of view. Why do you think people watch FOX? They WANT to see people that agree with them, they dont want to compromise, they dont want to negotiate. They see their solutions as the best, period.
I'm looking at last Thursday's television ratings. All of the shows on FOX combined had about 13 million views (and that's assuming that there aren't any repeat viewers), or about 4% of the US population at most. When you factor in the repeat viewers, it's probably more like 4 or 5 million. And a lot of them are probably just casual viewers watching "the news," not rabid ideologues. So your example applies to maybe 1% of the population.
Hoplite said:
Maybe not everyone is this way, but enough are to cause serious problems for your system.
How many people do you think fall into this category? Let's look at the numbers. Only 57% even turned out for the last presidential election. Now let's estimate that two-thirds of them knew which party they'd be voting for regardless of the candidates/issues (roughly 40% of the population). Now let's assume that of those partisans, fully HALF of them are rabid nutcases unwilling to compromise with the opposing party on anything. Even with these incredibly dim assumptions of humanity, that's still only 20% of the population. The sane 80% of the random sample could just ignore them.
Hoplite said:
Then how do you ensure that the experts arent misleading the panel?
By giving them access to any experts they wanted, especially experts with opposing points of view.
Hoplite said:
And if experts are the key, why not make experts available to politicians today?
We already do. Politicians just ignore them, because they either think they know better, or they just want to get reelected.
Hoplite said:
My point is that the vast majority of people are idiots.
You'll get no argument from me there; most people are horribly uninformed and shouldn't be voting. But that's just because they haven't been educated on political issues. This is understandable; most political issues don't affect their day-to-day lives and their individual vote counts for very little, so for many people it simply isn't worth the time investment to learn about politics and form in-depth opinions. But if you take 100 of those same people and give them the power to actually make decisions, suddenly it's worth their time to learn about it. If you give them access to the experts, they'll be fine.
Hoplite said:
Then my view would be different, but that isnt what you're talking about. You're talking about picking random people who may or may not give a crap about what they're doing and who, more likely than not, haven't the faintest clue where to start.
No. I'm not. As I've already mentioned, I'm talking about giving them access to experts on the issues, and making it very clear to them how the legislative process works.
Hoplite said:
On top of many of them probably being partisan enough to cause headaches for everyone else.
Your view that the average American is more partisan than the average elected official is ridiculous. Do you really believe that the average voters are clamoring for more partisanship from Congress?
Hoplite said:
I agree, but this is not a society where that is encouraged. Confirmation biases get handed to you almost when you're born like door prizes. Cooperation and teamwork are only buzzwords when they make someone with a bigger office than you piles of money. We are NOT socially conditioned to work together and expecting twenty or fifty or a hundred random strangers to do so, even with access to any information they want, while giving them control over a country of 30+ million people is a step short of insane.
Sounds to me like you are projecting your own flaws onto everyone else. Most people, when thrown into a room together and told to solve a problem, will give it their best shot and WILL work together. And if they can help others, they'll feel very proud.
Hoplite said:
Yes! Yes it does! When money doesn't mean as much to you then you're a lot less likely to take it when someone waves it in your face.
That's a wonderful theory, but there is no empirical evidence to support it. The poor and middle-class are no more likely to be dishonest than the rich. In any case, I'm not talking about paying our officials minimum wage or anything close to it, so this whole line of thought is a moot point.
Hoplite said:
So you'll end up with people who are either too disinterested in politics to care about the choices they make
Most people are disinterested only because they don't have any power, so there isn't really any benefit to caring. If they were actually in charge, they'd suddenly care a lot more. And if they really just didn't give a damn, they wouldn't be under any obligation to serve.
Hoplite said:
or with people who will let partisan politics get in the way.
Your contention that the average person is a foaming-at-the-mouth partisan (but the average member of our current Congress is not) is silly, no matter how many times you repeat it.
Hoplite said:
No it isnt better, it's handing power off to people who generally dont care or cant see the big picture past their own politics.
That's a fairly accurate description of our current Congress, and is pretty much exactly the opposite of this system. You'd get people who were motivated to do a good deed for the public rather than motivated by reelection, who came in with few ideological bones to pick, and had access to all the information they needed.
Hoplite said:
If you're really fired up to have this kind of democracy, then why not select from people who ARE the experts. Have a pool of volunteers and form groups that include a cross section of experts from as many disciplines as you can get. Skip the middle-burger-flipper-man and use the experts themselves.
I have no problem with a technocracy other than it isn't representative of the public and has no checks to prevent corruption. Experts can become well-entrenched and corrupt just like our incumbent Congress.