Heiress is letting 50 strangers give her €25 million fortune away

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Fortune tells the story of Marlene Engelhorn who is busy dispensing with €25 million which she inherited.

Engelhorn settled on an idea: Let 50 strangers decide how to give it away.

Those strangers, all of whom live in Engelhorn’s native Austria, will meet for the first time this weekend at a hotel in Salzburg. Dubbed the Guter Rat, or Good Council, they were chosen through a statistical process run by research group Foresight and range in location, age, race, socioeconomic background and other demographic factors chosen in an effort to be representative of the overall Austrian population.

Engelhorn’s goal is not only to give away €25 million, but also to spark conversations on wealth inequality. She’s frustrated that her windfall wasn’t taxed — Austria eliminated its inheritance tax in 2008 — and doesn’t see traditional philanthropy as a good solution because it still gives her too much power.

“I’m just one brain, I’m just one person and so to me, this is a huge relief knowing that the process of redistribution is much more legitimate and thorough and democratic than I could ever do it,” she said in an interview. “Nobody needs another foundation.”

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Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

A Brown University student proposes sortition at Brown

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Continuing what is a bit of a tradition, Evan Tao, a Brown University student, proposes employing sortition to select student government at Brown.

Over the past decade, many countries have held citizens’ assemblies in which citizens are randomly selected to deliberate and make policy recommendations to legislators. Hundreds of these assemblies have been held around the world with great success. An Irish citizens’ assembly’s proposal to legalize abortion was sent to a national referendum; in France, an assembly submitted recommendations on combating climate change to the incumbent government. Citizens’ assemblies can be effective pilot programs, proving to the public that sortition works. Ideally, they will become regularized and eventually hold direct legislative power in local government.

If I’ve convinced you that lotteries are preferable to elections, and you’re wondering what to do about it, we can start right here at Brown. Our student government election process has room for improvement. I don’t know about you, but I only voted for the people who asked me to or who had cute posters, neither of which seem like a good indication of the best future leader. Voter turnout in the class of 2026 first-year elections was only 33.5 percent. And, as we saw with the recent Undergraduate Finance Board budget surplus fiasco, who our student government representatives are matters. Let’s make it an opt-in lottery at Brown—and then take it to the rest of the country.

Filed under: Academia, Press, Proposals | Tagged: Student government | 9 Comments »

Demiocracy, Chapter 16: Sortition, i.e., a purely lottery-chosen, randomized Proxy electorate, isn’t sufficiently legitimate; Democracy requires mass electoral input, ideally of a “sifting” sort

Posted on March 16, 2024 by Roger Knights

Drawing a statistical microcosm out of the mass population, regardless of its abstract attractiveness, isn’t enough to make a Proxy Electorate seem legitimate in the eyes of the populace. Democracy, the populace generally and strongly believes, allows it to express itself by balloting, the outcome of which will never be a microcosm.

The most severe drawback to government lottery … is that it cuts people off from the opportunity to vote for their congressional representatives.… It is this specific citizen endorsement—and not any abstract idea of democratic representation—that gives the government is legitimacy and insures citizen, acceptance of the government decisions. —Malcolm Margolin, in Ernest Callenbach & Michael Phillips, A Citizen Legislature, 1985, p. 74.

Advocates of sortition should therefore somehow incorporate balloting.

If you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant [their intuitional “priors”] first. If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch—a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed. —Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 2012.

Ordinary people don’t want randomly chosen noxious and/or numbskull neighbors making decisions for them. Instead, they wish to elevate persons whom they respect.

It is at least worth considering whether people in electing the kinds of congressional candidates they do have deliberately chosen not to be governed by their barber, their accountant, the unemployed derelict who hangs aound the neighborhood liquor store, or the nice lady who runs the cosmetic counter at Woolworth’s … but because they want to be ruled by people whom they perceive (however, mistakenly) as successful, powerful and capable … often with a background in law. —Malcolm Margolin, in Ernest Callenbach & Michael Phillips, A Citizen Legislature, 1985, p. 77.

Demiocracy will satisfy this yearning to elect “the best man.”

If balloting were finagled away somehow, sortition might not be robust enough to weather political storms. A non-negligible minority might not accept the new system as legitimate in a crisis, leading to disorder and collapse. Only if there is regular “buy-in” to the system—by balloting—will it have strong enough legitimacy.

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Filed under: Books, Sortition | 27 Comments »

Iain Walker: Gaza needs democracy without elections

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Iain Walker, executive director of The newDemocracy Foundation, has an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post. Walker offers Israel and its allies advice about what government they should set up in Gaza (once they tire of killing tens of thousands of its inhabitants).

Gaza needs democracy without elections

Instead of elections, Athenian democracy used a simple random draw among citizens (known as “sortition”).

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives regular criticism for failing to share the plan for Gaza after the military role concludes. The lack of an official position on this subject could stem from the fact that all over options are unattractive, and so a new approach is required.

Israel as an occupying force is undesirable, it would draw global criticism and simply push off the problem to a later date.

Equally, traditional electoral democracy is an unworkable option.

With polls reflecting up to 80% support for Hamas among Gaza residents, elections would only allow for some incarnation of Hamas to emerge newly empowered – an untenable situation following its acts of terror targeting civilians.
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Filed under: Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Demiocracy, Chapter 15: The Rest-of-the-World Level of Corruption and Misgovernment under DeMockery is Intolerable

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Roger Knights

Democracy is the paradise of which the unscrupulous financier dreams. —Georges Sorel.

Corruption is a heartbreaking problem, because it is so enervating, insidious, invisible, and seemingly intractable. There are regions and nations where it is so pervasive that they are halfway to being “mafia states”—Russia is one example, and Ukraine is (or was) another. The parasitic top dogs siphon off wealth and prosper at the expense of the poor and of the vitality of the economy, which wouldn’t be happening under a true, all-seeing Demiocracy—i.e., if the common man, or Everyman, were really in charge.

Africa is the worst victim. Gaining independence and a one-man, one-vote democracy did not make Africa free and self-governing. That is to say, independence did not usher in true democracy, but only DeMockery. It empowered the Political class and other Pathological P’s, not the common man. Members of the political class, there as everywhere, put their personal interest first, their party’s interest second, and the people’s interest third—a distant third. The kleptocrats prospered and misgoverned, leaving most Africans poor, despite the continent’s natural wealth.

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Galloway vs. the British duopoly

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Yoram Gat

George Galloway’s recent landslide win the UK was certainly a rejection of the British duopoly by the Rochdale voters. Despite his obvious loathing of the people put into power by the UK electoral system, and the policies they pursue, Galloway seems to still adhere to Van Reybrouk’s rule – “we despise elected officials, we venerate the elections” – and avoid offering a systemic change that would be more likely to promote different people and different policies.

Filed under: Elections | 2 Comments »

Nonpartisan Democracy: Extract from a Wikipedia Entry

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Roger Knights

This variant of democracy should be of interest to persons wanting a less “political” (adversarial) system of government. (A few paragraphs might be quoted in support of demiocracy.) The Wikipedia link is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy

Nonpartisan democracy (also no-party democracy) is a system of representative government or organization such that universal and periodic elections take place without reference to political parties. Sometimes electioneering and even speaking about candidates may be discouraged, so as not to prejudice others’ decisions or create a contentious atmosphere.

De facto nonpartisan systems are mostly situated in states and regions with small populations, such as in Micronesia, Tuvalu, and Palau, where organizing political parties is seen as unnecessary or impractical.

A direct democracy can be considered nonpartisan since citizens vote on laws themselves rather than electing representatives. Direct democracy can be partisan, however, if factions are given rights or prerogatives that non-members do not have.

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Filed under: Elections | 6 Comments »

Kalypso Nicolaidis proposes a permanent EU citizen assembly

Posted on March 7, 2024 by Yoram Gat

CEPS is “a think tank and forum for debate on EU affairs”, founded in Brussels in 1983. CEPS has a project it calls Ideas Lab whose aim is “to provide a high-level intellectual forum for exchanges concerning the wide range of current and pressing issues faced by the EU”. In this forum, Kalypso Nicolaidis, chair of global Affairs at the New Florence School of transnational governance at the European University Institute in Florence, is proposing to set up a permanent allotted EU citizen assembly.

Nicolaidis writes:

Why Citizens’ Panels haven’t quite cut it…

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Filed under: Academia, Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Demiocracy, Chapter 14b, Postscript: Reasons for Britain & France to Abhor DeMockery

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Roger Knights

WWI: Even if the analysis below can be disputed or disproved, it illustrates the common sort of situation where, when “the ruler’s imperative”—political survival—is threatened, it will take precedence over the common good.

I reminded my friends of the formidable domestic difficulties which the British regime was facing in 1914, and how [they] made it politically impracticable for it to declare its intentions until after the first gun had been fired.

[“Its intentions”—i.e., to declare war if Germany invaded Belgium; the Germans believed that Britain’s pre-war statements in support of Belgian neutrality were merely pro forma waffle. The Germans were amazed and felt betrayed when Britain entered the war. They thought they should have been clearly warned if Britain had really intended to do this.]

These difficulties were: the impending consolidation of labour into One Big Union; the pressure for home rule in Scotland and Wales, as well as for Ireland; and the pressure for land-value taxation. All these matters were due to come to a head simultaneously in the summer of 1914.

If in July 1914 Sir Edward Grey had served Prince Lichnowsky with a firm notice of the regime’s intentions, it is a hundred to one that the war would have been considerably deferred; but England would have been split up by convulsions far worse than those of the eighteen-forties, and the Liberal regime would be tossed to the dogs. —A.J. Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, 1943, p. 248.

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International Network of Sortition Advocates Presents

Posted on March 3, 2024 by richwbrown

Scheming for Democracy

Our deliberative ecosystem has a linguistic blind spot. In thinking about lottery based democracy, we often leave strategy off the table. It’s actually the conversation that we should always be having: ABC–Always Be Calculating. What strategy to use depends on the goal, but whatever your goal, thinking strategically will ease the way.

Let’s talk about how!

Date:

Wednesday, 27 March · 18:00 – 19:00 UTC/GMT

Thursday, 28 March in Australia

Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/bct-xucx-gep

Or dial: ‪(DK) +45 70 71 41 04‬ PIN: ‪464 474 557‬# — More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/bct-xucx-gep?pin=1550818843600

About the Speaker: Wayne Liebman, M.D. is an American activist, advocate, and strategist for democratic lotteries and deliberation based in California. In 2020, he founded Public Access Democracy (PAD) an advocacy group that aims to catalyze the formation of deliberative citizen groups chosen by lot. PAD provided the impetus for the 2022 City of Petaluma Fairgrounds Citizens’ Assembly. In addition, as a project of PAD in concert with the Berggruen Institute, Healthy Democracy, and other democratic organizations, he co-initiated the Public Democracy LA project with the goal of setting up a citizens’ assembly in Los Angeles by 2026.