Equality by lot

Martin Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)

17 Responses

1. 

   Yoram Gat, on February 4, 2023 at 7:03 am said:

   Nice!

   There’s also a transcript of an interview with Wolf here, in which you are also given credit.

   LikeLike
2. 

   Nicholas Gruen, on February 4, 2023 at 12:36 pm said:

   Thanks Yoram, yes, hadn’t checked that out yet.

   But I’ll post the relevant stuff here because it’s behind a paywall, or I presume it is.

   Gideon Rachman
   And you also have a quite innovative, radical, political proposal about electing a House by lot.

   Martin Wolf
   Yes, that’s my greatest fun. I had a lot of exchange in doing this with an Australian economist I like very much. He’s very, very original and might be called Nicholas Gruen. And he persuaded me to look at the citizen jury idea. So the jury is a great institution and the jury is, as de Tocqueville would say, one of the binding institutions of Anglo-Saxon democracy, because it’s selected by lot and it’s from everybody. The Irish have used a citizen’s assembly very, very well to discuss really vexed issues. And the best example of that, which I stress because it’s really happened, is when they got a citizen’s jury, which was together for quite a long time, to look at the question of abortion really, really carefully. And they reached a consensus. And that consensus, because it was done by ordinary people, then shaped the subsequent public debate, and here’s a Catholic country which voted overwhelmingly in favour of abortion. Now, I then thought, well, we could do that, we could have done that on Brexit. I would have been, I think, let’s have a couple of years of a citizen’s jury of 200 people or so; present them with all the evidence, the expert advice, and let them put together a view on whether Brexit makes sense for us. I think that would have been a wonderful thing to have done and would have given us the debate among ordinary people we otherwise would never have had. And then I thought, and here’s his proposal, well, the Greeks like the idea of a House by lots, and the electoral process is so defective. It’s so much lying and ridiculous newspaper and press and social media nonsense and the most cynical sort of advertising. Why do we have a House which would be selected by Lords rolling over perhaps every year and major new legislative proposals would have to be approved by this House? They would have to ask the questions and be allowed to ask questions, and they wouldn’t initiate legislation — that would still be the function of the government in the representative House. But the government would need to persuade ordinary people that these ideas, whatever they are, make sense. And this House would have the opportunity to bring in independent experts to assess this. They wouldn’t look at every legislation. We’d have to define in some way what really major legislation is. Maybe I think the referendum could have been done that way. We would have said to this House, well, how should we do such a referendum? I think this is a wonderful idea of bringing back the original idea of democracy, which is that the people, the ordinary people, not just professional politicians, elected, admittedly they should be there to run a government, but ordinary people should have a direct say in public affairs. And I think that’s a very exciting idea. I hope somewhere some country will try it and see what happens.

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3. 

   Oliver Milne, on February 6, 2023 at 12:04 pm said:

   The blind spots of these illiberal liberals are interesting. A brief list:
   – The press. No mention of the right-wing propagandistic effects of the system of private press ownership and, in the UK specifically, the incestuous press-politics nexus. Rather, we get attacks on ‘social leftism’ as provoking a natural reaction from ‘the white working class’.
   – The climate crisis and migration. Climate change will force hundreds of millions of people to move north. If these guys get their way and Europe maintains the sort of hard border it has now, those people will be forced into camps in North Africa, where they will die of starvation and disease, be forced into slavery, and God knows what else.
   – ‘The white working class, who are patriotic’ etc etc – this crude stereotype is taken as a fact of life. ‘Gotta appease those racist chavs!’ Needless to say, this is not only insulting but empirically untrue.
   – They simply assume ‘the nation’, meaning an ethno-nation, is a coherent concept that arises naturally from ‘its’ people and can have such things as ‘sovereignty’. In particular, they assume that what in practical terms gets called ‘national sovereignty’ – i.e. the state’s prerogative to dominate its territory without interference – is in fact the sovereignty of ‘the nation’. None of this is true.
   It’s nice to see prominent voices promoting sortition. The headache for me is that they may taint it by association.

   LikeLiked by 2 people
4. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism, on February 10, 2023 at 7:50 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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5. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Minnesota Digital News, on February 10, 2023 at 7:53 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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6. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Newmexico Digital News, on February 10, 2023 at 7:54 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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7. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Saigon USA NEWS, on February 10, 2023 at 7:55 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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8. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Montana Digital News, on February 10, 2023 at 8:55 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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9. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - South Dakota Digital News, on February 10, 2023 at 9:15 pm said:

   […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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10. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Rodina News, on February 10, 2023 at 9:39 pm said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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11. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - World Football Network, on February 10, 2023 at 10:08 pm said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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12. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - European Football Weekends, on February 10, 2023 at 11:35 pm said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me because it seems!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is speaking up a storm on the disaster of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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13. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - The World News Papers, on February 10, 2023 at 11:45 pm said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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14. 

    2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Current Time News, on February 11, 2023 at 12:31 am said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me because it seems!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is speaking up a storm on the disaster of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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15. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - Wisconsin Digital News, on February 11, 2023 at 3:25 am said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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16. 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism - utahdigitalnews.com, on February 11, 2023 at 4:21 am said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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17. 

    2:00PM Water Cooler 2/10/2023 | naked capitalism – DailyTechTop, on February 11, 2023 at 6:12 am said:

    […] Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)” [Equality by Lot]. “Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s […]

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