Filed under: Books, Proposals, Sortition | 9 Comments »
Problems with Deliberative and Allotted Decision-Making: Path-Dependency and the Polya Urn
Posted on December 10, 2012 by keithsutherland
According to Robert Goodin (2008), one problem with a deliberative forum (allotted or otherwise) is that:
conversations, seen as serial processes with dynamic updating, can easily be path dependent. The outcome of the conversation depends upon the sequence of conversational moves, particularly those early in the conversation that set it off down one path rather than some other. (p.114)
A path-dependent process displays the following features:
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Unpredictability. Because early events have a large effect and are partly random, many outcomes may be possible. We cannot predict ahead of time which of these possible end‐states will be reached.
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Inflexibility. The farther into the process we are, the harder it becomes to shift from one path to another.
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Nonergodicity. Accidental events early in a sequence do not cancel out. They cannot be treated (which is to say, ignored) as ‘noise’, because they feed back into future choices. Small events are remembered.
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Potential path inefficiency. In the long run, the outcome that becomes locked in may generate lower pay‐offs than a forgone alternative would have. (p.112)
Filed under: Academia, Books, Theory | 66 Comments »
Letters to President Obama January 23 2009
Posted on December 9, 2012 by avanderven
The following two letters were sent by postal mail to President Obama at the beginning of his first term as President of the US.
Until now no response.
First letter:
January 23 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
The reason why I am contacting you is, that I would like to bring to your attention the following important issue (at least in my opinion). The issue is about the establishment of a World Parliament by means of the principle of Lottocracy. The idea of Lottocracy is described in detail in the chapter: A Concept for Government in the book: The World Solution for World Problems. However, the text of that chapter is also available on my homepage. You can go directly to:
http://www.socsci.kun.nl/~advdv/Lottocracy.html
The book: The World Solution for World Problems is available as an electronic book on:
However, you can find the book directly on:
http://www.socsci.kun.nl/~advdv/leonbook/leonbook.html
The book (ISBN 90-9002592-8) has originally been published as a hard copy and is, for example, available in The Library of Congress in Washington DC. Continue reading
Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »
The Veto Nonsense and Unanimity
Posted on December 7, 2012 by avanderven
Herodotus reported about a people that had the custom (like many animals living in tribes) to kill a person who is ill. ‘Naturally’, he comments, ‘the unfortunate man protests that nothing is wrong with him but to no avail’. In such a case, a veto-right, the right of one person in a small scale group being able to torpedo a general decision, would be life-saving (for the man). It would even be advantageous to the group in Summum Bonum fashion. In our case, things are different. When 20 shipwrecked people in a lifeboat should agree with a proposal to drill a hole in the boat except one sane person, who means to survive, the existence of a veto right, then, might well save the lot. This example more or less reflects our state of affairs. But there are other reflections possible.
First of all, one wise man in a boat-load of 20 may compare to a ratio of 100 in the 5 billion, or even to 3 in the 1000 governors.
Secondly, the proposal and vote to drill a hole, can easily be made into the opposite proposal ‘not’ to drill such hole. The veto of a sane man for the first, could be compared to the veto of a crank, the one saving lives, the other destroying life. When you veto the ‘not’ drilling, you in fact drill.
Continue reading
Filed under: Theory | 3 Comments »
I like you as a voter
Posted on December 5, 2012 by Yoram Gat
Ever since Socrates
It is a long standing tradition to deride sortition for putting in power unqualified people. The critics of sortition interviewed by Kevin Hartnett carry this tradition to the present.
Whether it is because the average person is incorrigibly incompetent, or just because they are inexperienced, the bottom line is the same: you just cannot hand power to the average person and expect good government. Socrates put it this way:
[N]o one would care to apply [sortition] in selecting a pilot or a flute-player or in any similar case, where a mistake would be far less disastrous than in matters political.
The straightforward argument is that the unqualified would simply make poor decisions:
There are ways in which we want our elected officials to look like us and then there are other ways in which we want them to be better than us. We actively try to select for some skills and talents when we choose politicians. (Susan Stokes, professor of political science at Yale University)
Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, Press, Sortition | 16 Comments »
The case for governing by lottery
Posted on December 2, 2012 by Yoram Gat
Kevin Hartnett has an article about sortition in the Boston Globe “Ideas” section.
The performance of our elected officials has led many people to wonder whether we might as well just pluck people at random and send them to Washington. For a small but fervent group of political philosophers, that’s not a joke—it’s a serious idea.
The piece focuses mainly on the ideas of Alexander Guerrero, who is a professor at the department of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and who, we learn, has an upcoming book on sortition called “The Lottocratic Alternative”. Others mentioned as proposing various ways to use chance in politics are Richard Thaler, and Peter Stone (“a lecturer in political science at Trinity College in Dublin and contributor to Equality by Lot, a blog about lottocratic politics”) and Scott Wentland.
Continue reading
Filed under: Academia, Press, Sortition | 17 Comments »
Interview with Kristinn Már Ársælsson
Posted on December 1, 2012 by Yoram Gat
Kristinn Már Ársælsson, of the Icelandic government reform group Alda, advocates sortition in the following interview:
Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »
Spain eurozone crisis: Where jobs are a lottery
Posted on November 29, 2012 by Conall Boyle
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 »
Paradise Lost, Paradise Found: The True Meaning of Democracy, by Arthur D. Robbins (Review)
Posted on November 27, 2012 by keithsutherland
Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh won’t you please take me home
Guns ‘N Roses
This fascinating book is unique amongst radical theories of democracy in that it’s written by a clinical psychologist with a particular interest in psychopathology – as such his primary emphasis is on the (two-way) relationship between political systems and character. Whereas most books focus on the institutional level, Dr. Robbins constantly reminds us that entities like ‘governments’ and ‘nations’ are merely abstractions, by adding (in parentheses) ‘person or persons in power’ every time he uses the word ‘government’. History is ‘nothing but a vast battlefield after the battle is over – a mountain of the corpses of men, women, and children from around the world and across time who have been slaughtered to satisfy the warriors in their quest for blood and glory’ (p.229). Political leaders are subjected to psychoanalytic scrutiny and are (with the exception of a small number of Athenian statesmen) mostly diagnosed in terms of psychopathy – not just the obvious cases (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) or even the usual suspects (Alexander of Macedon, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon), but also less extreme examples like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Dr. Robbins explains the development of psychopathy in terms of dysfunctional childrearing and early maternal relationships, so history is, in effect, reduced to the psychiatrist’s couch. Strangely enough (given his idolisation of Athenian democracy) this explanation is derived from Greek literature, forcing him to conclude that the dysfunctional relationship between mother and son is limited to the Greek aristocracy (p.303). Given that such psychopathic individuals – ‘a special subset of men’ – are fundamentally different from ‘us’ (p.309), then the goal of democracy is not so much ‘power to the people’ as making sure that the bad guys don’t get hold of the reins. Rotation of office (and/or mass participation in government) is not so that we may all, as Aristotle put it, ‘rule and be ruled in turn’ but simply to reduce the likelihood of handing power to a psychopath.
Filed under: Books, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 4 Comments »
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