Here's another interesting suggestion, possibly as a transition method: use sortition to fill the non-voter share of parliament members (by randomly choosing from people who have not voted.)

Everyone can decide on their own whether they want to vote or not, and only those that do not vote run the "risk" (or reward) of possibly being randomly chosen for parliament duty. If 65% of people vote, 65% of parliament is elected members, the other 35% is randomly choosen from non-voters.

And you fix voting fatigue as a freebie.

Except that [i] ignorance, apathy or severe illness is a bizarre characteristic to select for in government, and [ii] it probably makes it highly irrational for most interested and knowledgeable people vote (tiny chance of actually wielding significant power and influence vs not-much-bigger chance of making a difference to which elected representative gets to wield it). Unless, say, the opposition party is really, really threatening to them to the point they're prepared to surrender their chance of representation to vote against the threat....

This is quite brilliant. It (correctly, in my view) equates non-voting with "I don't care enough, just give the job to anyone minimally qualified". Let's do it.

Good idea!

Would it counter the ability of money and power to influence elections? I can imagine lobbyists flocking to whomever gets selected and using a combination of flattery, bribery, threats and cajoling to get them to vote the way they want, just as they do with representatives right now.

If sortition were issue, rather than term-based, I'd imagine you could use something like a sequestration process for selectees, combined with independent oversight and public transparency rules for the organizations creating prep materials.

It'd be even easier, since the decision makers they were attempting to influence wouldn't have any need to worry about the appearance of propriety to secure reelection, and would be less likely to have a pre-existing set of biases.

They're also more likely to lack knowledge on the things lobbyists will attempt to lobby them on.

Already lobbyists try to run "education programs" with representatives as a means of influencing them (which works rather well). That tactic would be a lot more effective if representatives were perpetually lacking in knowledge about relevant issues.

And I'll bet a lot of these randomly selected representatives will choose to be educated by the group that takes them to a fancy dinner and ball game after, or has donated money to their church rather than the one operated by the local chapter of a perpetually underfunded Walmart Union who offer stale cookies.

All of these things can be mitigated with stricter antilobbying laws, but then again, so can our current problems.

I don't see the problem as necessarily being worse with randomly selected representatives, and in some aspects it may work better (randomly selected hippies will tell big corps to take a hike) , but I don't see it as solving the problem structurally.

Good question. Does someone know how sortition helped fix the oligarchy problem in Ancient Greece? I can't find an immediate answer on wiki, even though it claims that.

Sortition was an indelible feature of Athenian democracy but it was not its decisive characteristic. That would be that the assembly was sovereign, and that it was not representative. Any citizen could participate in any given meeting of the assembly, make speeches and vote directly on the issues. The discussion here assumes sortition to select a representative body. Sortition in Athens was for bureaucratic office and for juries, not for the assembly.

Uncharismatic people don’t do well even if elected.

GHW Bush was uncharismatic but won and also was ineffective at much. I mean, what did he do effectively?

Come to think of it, at least back to Carter, VPs seem to be quite uncharismatic. Ford on the other hand was more charismatic than Nixon.

GHW Bush's crew planned for the first Gulf War in the early 1980s, designing a "rapid deployment force" that could occupy Saudia Arabia if something went down in the Persian Gulf.

Saddam Hussein was deep in debt and heading for an appointment with the IMF. Much of that debt was owed to Kuwait and he figured that annexing Kuwait would clean up his books from the Iran-Iraq war. He told the U.S. Ambassador that much; she said nothing in reply, went home to inform the Pentagon. Saddam took that as a "yes".

Bush put together a large coalition, established a lot of legitimacy, and ultimately won the war, and sent the troops home to a ticker tape parade.

Bush ended the "Vietnam Syndrome", completing the rebuilding of the military. CNN didn't show you the four days of nonstop ground combat that traumatized veterans who experienced the same mental health symptoms as Vietnam vets.

(You might think Bush and the CIA are evil, but up to this point, his team GOT THINGS DONE)

Saddam Hussein tried to blow the ex-president up when he was visiting Saudi Arabia. He took it very personally and so did his son -- that's why GW Bush was in such a hurry to attack Iraq after the Sept 11 attacks.

That war was a mistake to begin with, but in retrospect the Bush crew make big mistakes in the "nation building" phase - Don Rumsfeld for instance would be compared favorably to Robert McNamara except that he went along with Gulf War II.

Hmm interesting write up. Taken at face value, it would appear he was a capable bureaucrat (could get things fine within a system), but as a politician he was lacking. Which I guess makes sense.

Politicians have to compromise and made deals with the devil and other things which require good rapport even with those you disagree with. They also need to sell their ideas to people and have them accept those ideas. Bureaucrats on the other hand just have to work well within a system. There are similarities of course, but I think one of them requires more agreeability and charisma than the other where procedure and connections are more important.

Wild. I remember reading about Saddam getting tacit approval for the war. Thanks for the write up.

The UK had at least one superbly "uncharismatic" Prime Minister in living memory: Clement Attlee. Even though he was Labour, Thatcher wrote of him:

"Of Clement Attlee, however, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee

On the other hand May, Brown and Major also had very little charisma in public and they were far from effective prime ministers [although Brown was generally effective as a Chancellor]

Good point - I meant extremely effective and uncharismatic - which does rather rule out those PMs you mention.

> what did he do effectively? Cover up his involvement in Iran-Contra.

UPDATE: Wrong guy! Missed the middle initial there.

He lied his way into two extremely expensive and unwinnable wars, both of which are effectively still on-going after almost 20 years. That required charisma. His legacy is north, south, west, and east of Tikrit.

GHW Bush = George Herbert Walker Bush, the first president Bush (1989-93)

What a fail on my part. Sorry!

The large majority apparently can't distinguish between a handful of policies, because if they could, money and power would not have the ability to influence elections, nor would charisma, yet sortition assumes they would make good leaders. I don't see it.