Brainstorming here, so positive criticism as well as negative criticism is welcome
A huge number of problems with our systems are caused by the existence of the career politician - by this I mean both those who have done nothing other than politics for the majority of their working lives, as well as those who, while having a career in the real world, have remained focussed upon politics and have power as their ultimate aim.
So what can we do to replace this and yet remain democratic? It seems to me that one obvious place to look for inspiration is the jury system. Suppose we elect our governments by a similar system, which is to say around 2000 (we will need a greater number of representatives that at present just to be more, well, representative) people are chosen at random from the electoral roll and forced to become politicians (I’m not sure how long for, but I have a figure of 30 months in my head for some reason). With this system the cabinet and head of government could be selected in a couple of ways, either by direct balloting of the 2000, Sistine Chapel style, or perhaps going to the electorate with a few choices from the 2000. In either case these folks will be drawn from the random bunch.
I would be happy to work on more details (e.g. wages) but I think this is best done collaboratively. That’s if any other posters are interested, of course.
I think that’s a great idea! We should do the same thing with surgeons and pilots, too!
Seriously, though. Politics is a profession, and it should be conducted by professional politicians. If there’s one thing worse than a power-hungry politician, it’s an incompetant one; and what you’re suggesting is government by incompetants.
Is this really true? I can think of a number of career politicians whom I respect and admire. Before we come up with a solution, we should determine whether the problem you describe actually exists. Can you give some examples?
I disagree that the problems are caused by decisions being made by career politicians. Shove Joe Average into the drivers seat, and I bet he’d be just as stupid and/or self-serving as the career politician, if not more so.
I’ve been wondering about this lately, actually. When I hear Congressfolk talk about issues, they seem to have equal parts incompetence, demagoguing and serving special interests. But of course, at least some of that is probably just show, since they want to get elected. And of course, the Michelle Bachmanns of the world probably get a disproportionate amount of time in the press, so perhaps some honest, smart, hardworking congressfolk are writing legislation and working for the constituents and just don’t get noticed due to the wackos going on about how we need to eat all the Musliums or whatever. Is Congress filled with disingenous idiots, or am I just getting fooled.
In any case, I don’t think putting randomly selected people in Congress is such a good idea, but I’d be willing to entertain the idea that some method of changing the types of people who end up in poilitics and their motivations might be necessary.
Also, by way of interesting trivia, the Athenian Democracy used to fill some of their political positions by lot.
Can’t find any online strips, but William Brown had a comic strip called “President Bill” about a man who was selected randomly and forced to serve as President.
No, a huge number of problems with our system are not caused by the existence of career politicians. Government is no less part of the “real world” than anything else, and, like any highly complicated business, should be left to professional specialists. “Citizen legislators” are fine in limited numbers, but they can’t compare with careerists in competence. No modern democracy, no modern government of any form, has found a way to do without a specialized category of career statesmen and a much larger specialized category of career civil servants.
As a small example, if this country was run by even a single person from my work, we’d all be screwed. Same goes for my 11th grade English class, or even any of the political science classes I took.in college. Government run by the John and Jane Does of the world would probably be a disaster. There’s a reason those T.V. segments where the host asks easy questions to random people off the street are so hilariously appalling. I bet close to half of all Americans don’t know how many seats are in the Senate.
But, let’s say that your premise is correct. The problems with our current political system are due to career politicians. Perhaps the problem is not that there are career politicians, but that people can make a career out of politics. Wouldn’t your premise be better served by limiting the number of terms a person can serve in any particular seat, like the President is limited to two 4-year terms? If a member of the House can’t be elected to ten or fifteen terms, doesn’t that solve your problem?
If you get one, or two, or however many terms with a fixed limit, perhaps it forces politicians to do more to earn support, instead of the current system where they do just as much as is required not to lose support. And perhaps you can only move up in the system (House to Senate to President, etc.), too.
I personally think more problems arise from the public voting simply based on party affiliation and/or name recognition, without bothering to do any research on a particular candidate or their platform. Term limits would go a long way to fixing part of that problem, too.
I would imagine that randomly selected citizen-legislators would be at least as subject to being influenced and corrupted by entrenched interests as elected, semi-permanent politician-legislators are. It would be all too easy to see being selected for the legislature as being the equivalent of winning the lottery–a once in a lifetime opportunity to make it to easy street.
If I may take this thread on a tangent, let’s continue discussing the original proposal, yet also consider a slight variation: 10 000 are selected at random to be eligible to run for election to congress/president/parliament/senate/prime minister/whatever. Amongst those 10 000 one would find a few competent (by whatever ones arbitrary standard of professional is) folk, no?
If you take a random sampling of people, what percentage have ANY managerial experience? Maybe one in ten? One in twenty? In most “real-world” companies the workers outnumber the supervisers by an order of magnitude or more. So out of your random sampling of 10,000 citizens, more than 9000 of them won’t even possess the necessary experience to supervise their own staff, let alone handle the other responsibilities of the job.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a random sampling of the population contains a larger number of good leaders than a random sampling of politicians. Politics selects for the most greedy, venal, power-hungry, and narcissistic among us. Nobody else would want the job.
Incidentally, there’s one thing you have to remember about juries - they are utterly useless without tight control by a person possesing near-absolute power, namely, the judge. In fact, all juries are allowed to do is listen and submit a single opinion; actual “rule” is in the hands of a trained professional.
In your involuntary political service system, who are the judges?
Nonsense. It doesn’t pay well enough for that. And the checks and balances of government really limit how much you can indulge your base whims.
If you’re a greedy, power-mad SOB you’re far more likely to go into business than government. There are far more opportunities to wallow in excess, your powers are more dictatorial, and the level of public scrutiny is far less.
I’d prefer that the people who are running the government are people who want to be there rather than people pissed off that their name got pulled out of a hat and now they have to waste the next thirty months on stupid governing shit.
I agree that politics should be left to professionals. However, I don’t think professional politicians have the proper incentives to really benefit their constituency or the country. Politicians are rewarded who trade long term interests for short-term gain and spend an inordinate amount of time advertising their own names and faces. Ability hardly enters into it. Checks and balances are nice for limiting abuse, but to encourage quality civic leadership, we need to implement some incentives. No, I don’t know what those would possibly be.
