On theory and pragmatics

Posted on October 8, 2013 by keithsutherland

For some time the sharp disagreements — often ending up as slanging matches — between different members of this forum has intrigued me. If we are all part of the tiny community that is interested in, or even believes in, sortition, then why do we so often come to blows and indulge in name-calling? This post is an attempt to unpack this issue and, hopefully, help us deal with disagreements better in the future. That’s not to say that we should seek consensus, only that we should understand why others might find our own views difficult to stomach.

Theory

Let’s start with the name of this blog — Equality by Lot. Equality is a mathematical abstraction (“no equality without equations!”), which morphed, over time, into a normative ideal. The first philosopher to develop a normative understanding of equality was Plato, but his treatment of equality appears very strange to modern sensibilities. Plato distinguished “mere” arithmetic equality from equality of value, in which each person should receive according to his desert (geometric equality). This has some parallel in Christian thought via the Parable of the Talents (“For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away.”) However modern Christian sensibilities privilege the (alternative) biblical view that we are all (arithmetically) equal in the eyes of God. This is the view that Jefferson adopted for the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, but that wily old fox Franklin argued that a secular version would be better (“we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”). Of course this is complete nonsense as all the evidence points to the differences (biological and environmental) that we inherit at birth. But no matter, the transition was made from a religious gloss on a mathematical construction to a secular normative ideal.
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Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition, Theory | 24 Comments »

On Netiquette

Posted on August 3, 2013 by keithsutherland

A recent comment on this forum chided me for intemperate criticism of the Trinity Dublin report, to which I can only hold up my hands and plead guilty. It occurred to me, though, that a general post outlining some of the frustrations that led up to these remarks might possibly help prevent a future recurrence.

So far as I’m aware, Equality by Lot is the only internet forum dedicated to sortition, my sole research interest for over ten years. The value of such forums is the opportunity to discuss with other people with an interest in the field in order to develop and enhance one’s own understanding and correct one’s prejudices and misunderstanding. I’ve found this forum invaluable in this respect and my thinking on sortition is now completely different from ten years ago.
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Filed under: meta, Sortition | 75 Comments »

Why is sortition a good idea? A participant survey

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Ahmed R. Teleb

I am curious–seems it would be helpful for anyone interested in sortition–what the different grounds people have for advocating it are. The idea here is not about particular forms of selection by lot, but why might it be a good idea in general.

Please comment with your personal reason(s) in one or two sentences max. It would be best to avoid comment on other people’s comments.

Filed under: meta, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , | 26 Comments »

Is the word government a problem?

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Ahmed R. Teleb

This is a change of pace from the previous posts, and an issue not yet discussed on EbyL as far as I know. To express a new dynamic between citizen and political institutions, through selection by lot and possibly other reforms, would we need a word besides “gov’t”?

The full article is here. I suggest we comment on that site (DaftBlogger), especially explaining sortition or Equality by Lot, as a way to develop some cross traffic and build awareness.

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
William Shedd

Finally, uncannily, a philosophical-linguistic dimension leaves us astounded and open-mouthed.

The word “govern” means to rule over, originating from the Greek kybernân = to steer and kybernḗt = helmsman, tillerman! The word “cybernetics,” by the way, shares this root.

Mr. Tillerman is no appraisal of contemporary government, or American isolationism, or American imperialism. Mr. Tillerman stands for 2500 years of a conception of government as controlling, disciplining machine. To some, it means controlling the masses or keeping their hands off the property of elites. For others, it means checking the abuse of the weak by the strong. For some, it means limiting the influence of social organizations like the church. Again for others, it means curbing the economic power of moneyed elites.

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Filed under: meta, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments »

PR

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Ahmed R. Teleb writes:

The more I explore Equality By Lot the more I’m impressed by the quantity of information and the quality of the discussions.

When Yoram linked to some informative posts from 2 and 3 years ago, I realized that a lot of the work you Kleroterians are doing is virtually invisible on the Internet. I know it because months ago I actively searched and only happened upon one or two posts.

There are some quick, easy remedies for the issue. Here are three.

First, “tags” help posts appear in search results. For example the page we’re on should not only be filed under its current “categories” but it should also include tags taken from the post itself and words that someone is likely to search under. On this post, “direct democracy, deep democracy, participatory democracy, electoral systems, alternatives to elections, sortition, selection by lot, sortition in the judiciary, experts and democracy, representation, etc….” The more the better. You can create a template of recurring “tags” and then adjust it to the particular post by adding or deleting.

Second, a “@Kleroterians” or “@EbyL” on Twitter could spread the word about new posts from and anything that you would like out to the general public. If you’d like, I could to set-up and (co)manage either account, and to spread word through my own social media circles as well.

Third, is the easiest. This blog should have a .com or .org. It costs $10 for the first $5 for the second. To keep everything the same, i.e. have the url changed (redirected) WP asks $13/year. It is something to consider, that would make it just a bit easier for someone to find EbyL or to type it into a browser.

Filed under: meta | 9 Comments »

2012 review – sortition-related events

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Yoram Gat

There were 100 posts on Equality-by-Lot in 2012. Reviewing those posts, here is what appears to me most noteworthy.

The most notable sortition-related news of the year was the petering out of the 2011 protest movement in the West (Occupy/OWS/Indignados). While in several Arab countries the 2011 protests (“The Arab Spring”) led to significant changes in government structure, in the West the protest movements seem to have dissipated without having a noticeable impact on governmental institutions, power distribution or policy.

A fundamental reason for the failure of the Western protest movement is that in contrast to the Arab movement the Western protesters lacked a clear agenda of institutional reform. The agenda of the Arab protest movement was aimed explicitly at dismantling the existing power structure and setting up a structure that was generally modeled after the Western electoral model. The Western protest on the other hand did not offer an agenda for institutional reform. Having not presented an agenda for reform, it is hardly surprising that no reform took place.

What the protest movement lacked is a proposal to move away from an electoral system toward a sortition-based system.

On the positive side, going over the posts of the past year I was struck by how many different sortition advocates have appeared (or, to be more accurate, have become known to me) during the year, including a few semi-high profile figures:

Ètienne Chouard (and here, here, and here), Lawrence Lessig, David Chaum, Jacques Rancière, Clive Aslet, Jim Gilliam, Loïc Blondiaux, and Andrew Dobson and other readers of the Guardian.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2013.

Filed under: Academia, meta, Press, Sortition | 12 Comments »

2012 review – statistics

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the third year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2012 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 1,740 10 122
Feb 2,030 9 116
Mar 2,009 11 131
Apr 1,474 8 93
May 2,008 10 101
June 1,333 7 57
July 1,642 5 10
Aug 1,758 11 200
Sept 1,483 7 140
Oct 2,505 4 120
Nov 1,474 9 55
Dec (to 22rd) 1,627  9 106
Total  21,083  100  1,251

Note that page views do not include visits by logged-in contributors – the wordpress system does not count those visits.

The system reports that posts were made by 9 authors during 2012, with one of those authors making only one contribution. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

There are currently 69 email and WordPress followers of this blog. (The figure 107 displayed on the home page includes those 69 followers as well as “Facebook followers”. I am not sure what Facebook followers are.)

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the third result (out of “about 33,600 results”). Searching for “sortition” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 8th result (out of “about 98,900 results”). Searching for “kleroterion” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 6th result (out of “about 5,210 results”).

2010 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 288 8 30
Feb 242 12 29
Mar 417 7 28
Apr 252 5 16
May 344 6 18
Jun 259 6 15
Jul 324 9 20
Aug 372 7 93
Sep 550 10 38
Oct 704 6 97
Nov 1091 10 133
Dec (thru 23rd) 458 6 41
Total 5301 92 558

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Call for 2012 review input

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Yoram Gat

This year, as in the last two (2011, 2010), I would like to create a post or two summarizing the sortition- and distribution-by-lot-related developments of the year and the activity here on Equality-by-Lot.

Please use the comments to give your input on what you think are the most mention-worthy events or essays of the past year.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Proposal: Video Projects

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Yoram Gat

A post by Tomas Mancebo, one of the people behind Partido Azar. A translation to English follows the Spanish original.

Proyecto Videos

El punto de partida de este post es una realidad desoladora: existen videos sobre el sorteo aplicado a la política, pero son muy escasos, de dudosa calidad, con apenas reproducciones, en solo algunos idiomas, poco atractivos,… y cualquiera puede comprobarlo buscando en Youtube. El déficit es tan evidente como encomiables las exiguas iniciativas que intentan llenar este vacío.

Supongo que para EBL la difusión del sorteo es uno de los principales objetivos. EBL difunde el sorteo y lo hace con la escritura, una herramienta de comunicación tan necesaria como insuficiente. No soy de los que piensa que una imagen vale más que mil palabras. Basta pensar en un enfermo con un tumor sospechoso que visita al medico en el momento del diagnóstico definitivo: cuando el médico dice “es benigno” las lágrimas del paciente serán bien distintas de las que brotarán con un “es maligno”. Sobran las imágenes.
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Filed under: meta, Sortition | 10 Comments »

2011 review – sortition-related events

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In response to my call for suggestions of mention-worthy occurrences relevant to the topics discussed on this blog, George Tridimas wrote to let me know that his paper Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot has made for a couple of weeks the list of 10 most downloaded articles from the SSRN repository in the categories of Welfare Economics & Collective Decision-Making, of History of Political Thought and of Models of Political Processes.

To me, two significant sortition-related developments that occurred this year, happened at two opposite sides of the mass-elite spectrum.

On the elite side, the newDemocracy foundation in Australia has been active in promoting policy juries and successful in garnering some press attention (1, 2). The main force behind this foundation, both intellectually and financially, it appears, is Luca Belgiorno-Nettis.

On the other hand, there have been several attempts to promote and use sortition associated with the global protest movement – the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignados, the Occupy Wall Street movement, etc. Back in February, Sa’ada Abu Bakr suggested sortition to the Egyptian revolutionaries. In June, the Greek activists in Syntagma Square were using randomization to distribute speaking turns. The idea of citizen councils appointed by lot was also featured in some May 15th platforms in Spain and in September a party which had the implementation of sortition as its main goal was organizing there. That party ultimately failed to qualify for the ballot. Finally, the People’s Senate Party promotes sortition in Canada.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2012.

Filed under: meta, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 14 Comments »

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