In a Spanish town where one in three people are without a job, getting one can depend quite literally on the luck of the draw.
Alameda is surrounded by neat rows of olive trees that stretch for miles towards the distant sierra. Two hours east of Seville, the town is a maze of narrow streets lined by orange trees and whitewashed houses.
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Employment | Leave a comment »
There must be a lottery fan at work in the Guardian! (There is of course. Our very own kleroterian Martin Wainwright.)
Unthinkable? The Eton raffle
It seems only fair to offer every 13-year-old the same chance of being immersed in a community entirely directed to helping them shine
A cursory glance at the background of the new establishment confirms that Eton is flourishing beyond Henry VI’s wildest ambitions. It’s not only the new archbishop of Canterbury, nor the next but one in line for the throne, nor of course the PM, his chief of staff, nor even the chief whipand the chancellor’s chief economic adviser. There are the actors (Eddie Redmayne, Dominic West, Damian Lewis), the diplomats, the mandarins and all those cabinet ministers. And the London mayor. The school hasproduced 19 of 53 prime ministers, but who would have expected such a 21st-century renaissance of privilege? Eton always boasted that it was comprehensive. The difference between it and, say, neighbouring Slough is the indefinite article and approximately £30,000 a year. This buys your lad world-class academic, artistic and sporting facilities plus star teachers drawn by top-dollar pay. For seven days a week, 24 hours a day, pupils are immersed in a community entirely directed to helping them shine. It seems only fair to offer every 13-year-old the same chance. All parents of 10-year-olds (yes, girls too) would be issued with a special 09- phone number. It would cost, say, £15 a call to defray lost fees, and the number could only be used once. Two hundred names would then be drawn from a top hat. For the next three years they’d prepare, learning to tie a white tie while mugging up on Latin so they too could cry “Floreat Etona”. Twenty years on, high offices might at last be filled from humble homes.
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Describing what a lottery can contribute to the process of choosing.
Sanitization, Arrationality or should it be called Super-Humanity?
Whatever it is used for, a lottery does something for the process. Sanitizing is Stone’s description; Arrationality is Dowlen’s.
I do not disagree with either definition, but feel that both are a bit lacking.
Sanitization implies a clean-up, removal of contaminating elements, but leaves open the question: Cleansed of what?
Arrationality, besides being a neologism, hence not easily understood, might also even be taken to mean some kind of crazy departure which abandons the only human attribute that truly sets us above the animals – the ability to use our brains to think about things.
So either incomplete or liable to be mis-understood; can I come up with something better?
Continue reading
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Religion, Theory | 15 Comments »
A few weeks ago, I got contacted by “The Point,” a weekly online panel discussion show put out by the Young Turks. The format of the show is that an expert delivers a “point” on some issue of the day, and then the panel discusses it for 15 minutes or so (with 3 points to a 45-minute show). They asked me to contribute a “point” about lotteries. The reason they asked me was because one of the panelists, Walter Kirn, had recently written an article on Obama’s decision to raffle off a dinner to a randomly-selected campaign donor. See–
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/104235/suckerball-obama-celebrity-fundraising-lottery
I originally tried making a point specifically about Obama’s lottery, but the producer of the show wanted a more general point about lotteries. The resulting show is online:
I’m at the start of the second segment (about 18 minutes into the show). The show has been up for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been traveling, and only had the time to watch it yesterday. The good news is that they give a plug both to my book and to Equality by Lot (in the closing credits). The bad news is that the discussion of my point is complete garbage. None of these idiots seem to have even heard of lotteries before me. I think the hostess might even think I invented the idea of allocating goods by lot! I plan to drop them a line, but you might want to make a few comments on Youtube.
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Press | 11 Comments »
Randomness vs. Stupidity is the eye-catching front cover of the latest issue of Improbable Research.
These guys have form, having picked our Sicilian friends, Pluchino et al. for their ‘IgNobel Prize’ in 2010. It was they who suggested, using maths, that we’d be no worse off using randomness to pick politicians and employees. (Earlier entries on this topic have already appeared here in equality-by-lot.)
As well as this issue devoted to this topic, the Editor, Marc Abrahams, has a 2-page spread in the London Observer, (which you can read at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/19/most-improbable-scientific-research-abrahams).
In the article, Abrahams refers to an old-ish paper by Phelan (2000) which seems to support the idea of random promotion: “random promotion systems (supposedly a baseline condition) outperformed up-or-out and relative merit-based systems …”.
I am greatly encouraged that my hobby-horse of lotteries for hiring, firing and promoting employees is supported by these studies, and that they are getting a widespread airing in mainstream media.
Now, is there anyone else who might be interested in studying ‘Lotteries for Jobs’?
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Employment | 2 Comments »
Arizona to operate medical marijuana dispensaries, including one in Sun City West.
The random selection process culled 404 applicants who were in competitive bids to get licensed in 68 of the state’s “community health analysis areas.” Slots for another 29 areas drew only one applicant each.
You can find out more about this fun-lottery at:
http://www.yourwestvalley.com/suncitywest/article_fb6529b8-e0fd-11e1-ac8f-001a4bcf887a.html
Filed under: Distribution by lot | Leave a comment »
The third sortition conference will take place on May 24-25 at CEVIPOF, Science-Po, Paris. Programme:
Gil Delannoi, Update on the research programme
Bernard Manin, Principles of Representative Government revisited
Keith Sutherland, The triumph of election: Natural right or wrong?
Andrei Poama, Virtues and limits of judicial luck: Reasons for randomising the choice of jurors and verdicts
I’d greatly appreciate advance feedback on my own paper which challenges Manin’s central argument as to why sortition hasn’t been considered as a candidate for representative government.
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Juries, Sortition | 3 Comments »
Along with its famous opening sentence: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’ Rousseau’s Social Contract is best known for its clear distinction between sovereignty and government. The latter was a delegated administrative function: the ‘Prince’ could either be single, few, or many (monarchy, aristocracy or democracy) but was a mere servant of the sovereign popular will. Although Rousseau argued that democratic government was more suitable for small states, he had no problem in principal with the notion of elected delegates administering government under the watchful eye of the sovereign people and subject to their dismissal if the delegated mandate was breached.
Continue reading
Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Sortition | 44 Comments »
We have already seen one major catastrophe in 2011 with a lottery allocation procedure, when the ‘Green Card’ went wrong. There were a reported 22,000 people world-wide who thought that they had won, and were then told that they hadn’t.
How did these lottery-losers feel? ‘Humiliated’ according to a paper by two kleroterians Jon Dolle and Anne Newman.
Badly-run lotteries leave the participants, and even the winners, feeling humiliated. Even a properly-run lottery may leave both winners and losers feeling bad, if there is not complete transparency about the randomisation mechanisms used. Continue reading
Filed under: Distribution by lot, Press | 1 Comment »
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