You could get a few people who are immune to power seeking and thus would never end up holding office otherwise.

Replace them frequently and have them assemble in a place without outside influence for the duration of decision making, essentially like a jury.

I mean if you really wanted to get futuristic about it you could even have a sort of crypto sortition where everyone is completely anonymous and representatives don't even know each others identity.

> Replace them frequently and have them assemble in a place without outside influence for the duration of decision making, essentially like a jury.

A jury also gets to hear arguments from both the prosecution and the defense. For complex trials this can last weeks/months. Presumably for the "jury" legislature that you propose, you'd want lobbyists/bureaucrats to plead their case. How do you prevent them from being hoodwinked by the lobbyists/bureaucrats? If you think that they shouldn't be able to hear arguments from lobbyists/bureaucrats, how do you prevent them from coming up with absolutely braindead policies like "haha tax cuts/spending go brrr"?

thats a good point

probably there would have to many kinds of concurrent reforms and adjustments to make something like that work...

some type of lobbying reform would have to take place, as well as some kind of basic reasoning/education tests for sortition... also perhaps candidates could be picked by sortition but you'd have to get a winning vote by a majority of people etc... i wonder if there are any studies/books about this kind of thing

I should have been more precise. I don't have an issue with public information being accessible, in fact that's kind of necessary for any democratic deliberation. What I think is relevant is nothing going out. A lobbyist making their case openly to the public is fine, that's just speech essentially, although you can have a different discussion about the media around it.

But the important benefit of an anonymous sortition in particular to me is that there is no connection between individuals and lobbyists. You cannot trade personal favours down the line. The pernicious part to me is when the guy who regulates the arms industry gets a board seat ten years later.

Essentially what I think of as ideal is a sort of black box. Uncorrelated, impersonal, representative and random snapshot of the public opinion on an issue. Transparency is I think the worst celebrated value because it opens decision makers up for capture. If the policies are still braindead afterwards, well I think then we're democratically at our wits' end.

Presumably, like in a court of law, there could be rules and restrictions about what sort of arguments you're allowed to make in front of the jury. Just like there's some evidence and arguments that are inadmissible in court, various things (Bribery, threats, ad-hominem attacks) could be inadmissible in Congress. I haven't thought through all the implications, and you'd probably need a "judge" to interpret and enforce those restrictions.