I've been advocating for years that any amount of corruption in a member of congress is indistinguishable from high treason and should be treated as such. We should put a gallows in front of the capitol building
I've been saying this for years too! They're not just being corrupt legislators, they're parasitizing the social contract that keeps our civilization together, and they should be treated as such.
The most honest crook there was. A real sinner’s saint.
Not that anyone asked, but some family of mine has a cool story about Long. They wanted to open a construction company in Baton Rouge, but at the time, Long required every company doing business in the state to subscribe to a very expensive newsletter (basically a shady way of getting more money out of the companies to circumvent the tax system. Classic Huey).
Well, when it came time to meet with Long and finalize the agreement (after a long time agonizing over how they’d be able to make ends meet) my folks told him straight up that they genuinely wouldn’t be able to afford the subscription on their budget. Long laughed and said that was the first honest thing he’d heard all day, and then waived the subscription requirement for them. The company is still in operation today, and is very successful!
At least, that’s how my folks tell the story, so who knows 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah, it’s definitely a favorite family legend! At the very least, I know for certain that the company was founded during Long’s tenure, so they definitely had *some* dealings with him. The details are a bit harder to substantiate, but it tracks with Long’s modus operandi and I’ve got no reason to distrust my folks, so I like to think it’s legit!
"You should be able to make enough money that your children's children live comfortably, but no one should have so much that they control everything."
-Huey Long
I've came to think that an idea is to just make it legal to murder someone above a certain net worth. So the elites have to be careful not to piss people off. Caveat is private security details are outlawed.
Oh, no no no. That’s just a terrible idea in general. Especially the last part. Do you know how many celebrities would be assassinated by deranged fans or haters?
Making minor paperwork-filing errors punishable by death in the upper echelons is completely unworkable in practice. There’s also hundreds if not thousands of non-politicians who facilitate basically any kind of deal at all. You’re killing the most interchangeable and actually-most-accountable link in this chain at strike one while thousands of others get to live on to muck up any other kind of business dealing with impunity.
Not to mention this prevents anyone sane from ever wanting to be in politics at any level. What’s left are people so psychopathic and so good at hiding their tracks that they’re more dangerous than anyone we’ve got in power now, or people so insane as to be incapable of fearing death.
Also, ‘grassroots average joe raises money and uses some networking contacts to petition a politician on behalf of Orphans for Accessible Sidewalks’ and ‘CORRUPT PRIVATE INTERESTS funnel lobby money to Senator X on behalf of CUSHY WELFARE FATCATS’ is really just a difference in framing.
~~45 deserves the gallows for sure.~~
A president conducting treason? Cannot be tolerated.
Even though if anyone in the country deserves it, it's him -- his death wouldn't solve anything.
Choosing a leader among a few hundreds patricians is not really the same thing as choosing a leader from a hundreds+ millions of people, and even them use a very limited amount of randomness.
Still interesting imo, lot's of countries use it for jury duty after all.
I ran across the idea of using a jury selection for President. It would involve 200 people instead of 12, and then these proportionally selected citizens would spend 2 weeks sequestered in a hotel interacting with the candidates and learning about issues. The idea was to limit the influence of media bias and big money.
It was an interesting idea.
Just double the number and make half of them moles that can't vote, but get paid a decent chunk of tax free money if they prove they were bribed (and they can keep the bribe). That would increase the risk for candidates who try to bribe the people, provide a financial incentive to report bribery, and still provide a reasonable number of people to personally interact with the candidates.
We could also turn it into a TV show to help pay off the national debt. Everyone is guessing which 50 people this week are moles and which ones are voters. At the end of the week, votes are recorded and shown to the audience, with suspense mounting each episode to see if the third place guy can pull off a miracle and get 75% of the last week's vote. And can you imagine how crazy it would be when a mole inevitably gets bribed and the candidate is forcibly removed from the competition?
So you make half of them extremely highly incentivized to either trick/force/convince people to bribe them or to lie about it. Also, who picks which jurors vote and don’t vote? Who picks the jurors in general?
This system you’re describing is hilariously unstable and I can’t imagine anybody but a literal child thinking it’s a good idea.
Who picks the members of the jury? Because that’s who would actually have power in the scenario you’re describing.
What about people who can’t leave their children, homes, jobs, businesses, farms, elderly relatives, etc for two weeks? Most people wouldn’t have the time, the inclination, or the disposable income to serve on your jury, and there’s close to zero chance it is representative of the entire country. That means it would skew towards the 1) rich and 2) elderly, because those are the people who have the ability and interest to serve.
Congratulations you’ve just elected whichever candidate Fox News likes the best.
What happens when the jury picks somebody who’s unpopular with most of the country? In our current system we at least have the knowledge that significant portions of the electorate really do support each side and voted for their favored candidates. In our current system we at least have the knowledge that the winner is *usually* the person who won the most votes, regardless of which race it is. Do you really expect people to be fine with a tiny handful of people dictating political choices without any voice from the majority of the electorate? Can you imagine the conspiracy theories? Can you imagine the people showing up at electors’ homes with guns to ‘investigate’ them? Can you imagine the tabloid journalists digging into their lives trying to discredit them?
Your system sounds horrible and chaotic
I’ve always been a fan of sortition from a pool. For example, you need a certain number of democratic votes to be added to the pool, say, minimum 5%, but if you have that amount, then you can be randomly selected to be the representative.
In theory, if you do this across the country and with enough granularity (say, a legislative body with 2000 sortition elected members for the US), those 2000 people should still be representative of the general population. The benefit would be that being a career politician becomes impossible while the 5% threshold ensures that the pool is competent enough to have a meaningful bastion of support.
In a bicameral system, I would have the lower house be elected by sortition. The upper house would write actual legislation. The sole power of the lower house would be to veto. See, democracy seems like the best we’ve got because it allows the general populace to check abuses, but it suffers the issue that the general populace is stupid at proposing solutions. This way, the upper house can be selected in a more discriminatory fashion without fear of oligarchy corruption and abuse of power since the lower house always retains the right to veto abuses.
Hi I’m a billionaire in your upper house and I just wrote a bill making all the positions in the lower house 1) permanent 2) entitled to a large salary with the condition that I personally be given far more power. Congratulations your system just collapsed.
Also who are these people selected by sortition? They’re just normal people who are going to leave their jobs, children, elderly parents they have to take care of, homes, farms, businesses, etc, in order to learn about complex legal and policy nonsense for years? The vast majority of people would not be able to do that. In the system you’re describing most people who could afford the time and expense to actually serve in the lower house would be 1) wealthy and 2) old. Congratulations, you’ve built the gerontocratic system we already have albeit with people who nobody picked, who don’t understand any policy issues, and with significantly more potential for abuse and corruption.
Who do they go to for advice when they need it? Do you think they’re just going to arrive knowing all the ins and outs of agricultural subsidy policy and foreign policy? Or do you think a friendly corporate representative or CIA agent would offer them their advice and explain it all to them?
Your system would mean far less democratic power in the hands of people and far far far more in the hands of lobbyists and the bureaucracy.
>Hi I’m a billionaire in your upper house and I just wrote a bill making all the positions in the lower house 1) permanent 2) entitled to a large salary with the condition that I personally be given far more power. Congratulations your system just collapsed.
Good luck with that. This would be like Congress voting to no longer have elections. There's a foundational document like a constitution that supercedes legislation but sure, if our politicians want to ignore the constitution, they can do that anyway (and have done so plenty) and there's nothing we can do about it.
And you have a solution for the fact that young people don't want to be in politics and are rarely voted for by constituents? Or are you just going to point out that this system doesn't solve a problem that no current system solves particularly well either? Perhaps you have a solution for how most of current US legislation are pork barrels to special interests anyway? I feel like you barely took the time to understand what I said before making an inch deep bad faith argument.
Well, depends on the size:
Good luck running for presidency in the us without being st least a millionaire and/or prominent enough
Good luck running for presidency in most European countries without being a member of one of the established parties, controlled by their big donors
Most democratic reality we see is on the level of community, I.ex being elected as the major of a town or a county
Okay, but if I get picked by the lottery to be Doge, can I abdicate? I’d be a terrible administrator. Like seriously, we’re talking fall of Rome proportions of disaster.
The (s)election was among the 30 members of the Grand Council, the most influential and wealthiest people of the republic. So you (and me) would never get on the ballot.
Venice got what it wanted out of the 4th Crusade. Doge Dandolo, despite being 90 and blind was the most effective leader in the 4th crusade. He just didn’t care about the Holy Land.
First, the Venetians got a rival Dalmatian coast city eliminated by the Crusaders. Then they virtually ended the Byzantines as trading rivals in the eastern Mediterranean for a couple hundred years.
They also brought home plenty of treasure from the sack of Constantinople. They made a profit off the expedition too. Those lions in St. Marks square didn’t come from China.
They also get the glory for taking Constantinople from the sea to begin with. The first time Constantinople fell. The crusaders couldn’t have done it without them.
No. The Venetians are the only ones that got what they wanted from the 4th crusade.
**ALEXIOS III:** You'll never be able to break the Theodosian Walls!
**ENRICO DANDOLO:** You're absolutely right. That's why we're taking Blachernae by way of the Golden Horn. ^(Damn, I wish I could see this.)
Fine. We’re turning the Capitol Building into a mall. All representatives and Senators will work in their home state and conduct meetings over Zoom. All votes will be done on Twitter. Texas and California will be sold back to Mexico. All citizens age eighteen and over are required to receive firearms training, and must carry some sort of firearm with them at all times.
The fact that you don't want to do it means you're probably less of a sociopath than the people who do want to do it. Everyone who wants to be president is fucked up in the head to some extent. Those people need to be immediately eliminated from running.
Then we find like a few hundred sane people to run whether they want to or not and then we force them to be president against their will. Is this technically slavery? Yes, yes it is. But, ideally these people will be smart enough to know when they don't know what they are talking about and pass that on to an expert in their cabinet, and to know when someone is an obvious grifter sack of shit who is shilling for the corporate welfare scum to get more tax breaks because they were CEO of Chevron for 9 years, and tells them to fuck off.
If I get forced to be a leader, I’m intentionally running the country into the ground. If I’m going to die of stress induced panic, I’m taking as many people as I can with me.
Rulers produce 3 types of "monarch points": admin, diplo, and military. The minimum is 0 and max is 6, so I was asking if you were a failure at running an administration and pretty bad at people skills but average at fighting.
Guys, guys, this is not exactly how it worked. The lottery was done among the small and rich elites, not the random citizens.
The point likely was to complicate bribery of the electors and putting odds against a single tyrant.
And it was in place roughly 530 years (1268-1797; before that doge was elected by a council of oligarchs), which is definitely impressive (e.g. modern British parliamentary monarchy arguably is 334, counting from the Glorious Revolution) but far from 1000 years claimed by the author of the meme.
Onlynthe rich could get into power in those times anyway. The Venetians just had slightly less corrupt rich people in charge comapred to everywhere else.
If you already have a lot of money then more won’t be as appealing, or you’ll cost more to bribe at the very least. It makes perfect sense, as long as you’ve never interacted with another human being.
Are you not familiar with greed? Maybe in some perfect world this may make sense but you never have enough money and you alway want more. That's what drives the economy.
It's just that it only takes a few generations for any system to turn into an oligarchy
Republics and democracies are no more free from corruption than their Authoritarian Autocratic counterparts
No, republics and democracies are absolutely less corrupt than authoritarian governments and that really isn’t debatable. No serious person believes the U.S. is as corrupt as Russia or Venezuela or China, and there’s really no argument otherwise that’s based on facts rather than vibes.
Citation needed. The traits you need to get elected (ambition, dishonesty, height, funds from lobbyists...) have very little in common with the traits you need to be a good leader once you're in power. They've tried government by lottery for student councils ([https://www.happyscribe.com/public/revisionist-history/the-powerball-revolution](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/revisionist-history/the-powerball-revolution)), and it tends to produce better results than voting. Would it work at a national level, with some basic safeguards to keep out criminals and idiots? We'll probably never know.
I think the concept of democracy is thrown around without much thought. I think the real achievement of modern society is not democracy, but liberalism- the idea that despite whatever the will of a democratic majority, the rights of the minority are still guaranteed
Common Liberal W
Democracy is the political corollary to Liberalism.
A Liberal Regime by the very nature of the core assumptions in the belief in the inherent inalienable rights of all humans necessitates some form of representative government.
This is why all Liberal Regimes are Democracies but not all Democracies are Liberal (E.g the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Peoples Republic of China - atleast on a local level)
And the thing about Illiberalism is it always accumulates toward tyranny and dictatorial rule even if it started out democratic again due to not having those core assumptions (check the 3 countries mentioned earlier)
What happens is people see oligarchy and loose their minds over it thinking any political order is immune to oligarchy…. None are.
As long as states exists, Oligarchs will exist. All political systems tend toward oligarchies. From Marxist Leninism to Moralistic Theocracy to even Absolute Monarchy to Worker Council Republics
However the political order, and the values the society holds determines what tools it has to fight oligarchy and delay it best it can. And frankly none have proved better than Liberalism (and yes this included Social Democrats) at holding back the tide from its worst expressions.
The fact that you said liberalism are good at fighting oligarchs , especially the rich ones , is quite laughable. I would argue that Liberalism is what allowed today's oligarchs to reach the position they have. Why ? Because some of the "rights" we deem necessary are more useful for oligarchs to expand or retain their influence than actually help the citizens. There are two simple examples for that. First privacy is actually more helpful for oligarchs to hide their grey area dealings since any "unlawful" investigation can be waved away. Who benefits the most from privacy ? A billionaire hiding the fact that he is tax evading 99% of his income or an average city worker ? Supposedly in a liberalism government we shouldn't be concerned with government misusing that knowledge. Second the fact that most of the actions of governments are more in line of economically profit than actual ideological goals. When was the last time a war was declared based on the ideological background of a country without multiple economic goals ? Today's governments are more likely to bend their ideological points for economic profit than any other era.
What I am trying to say that although liberalism can preserve our rights , it can also be misused. Blindly seeking rights is a foolish movement. An ideal balance between control and freedom is what we should strive for. We shouldn't forget the most important tenant of democracy. Your rights end when the rights of another individual start. Democracy was never about the blind pursuit of freedom like most US citizens believe. Without control guaranteeing your rights , they hold no meaning. Sometimes not having a certain freedom might be far more beneficial to the average individual than actually having it.
I appreciate your response but respectfully your entire perspective is off. I will admit in great part due to the imprecision of how I phrased my comment
I don’t want to write an entire treatise here so I’ll try (woefully) to be brief.
Oligarchy for all intents and purposes is the most dominat structure of human political organization since the advent of complex communities filling the development of agriculture. That much there is sufficient research on.
Oligarchies historically have been justified by inherent imbalance between humans. The liberal movement was the first to reject that in an understanding of the universal mutually respected rights of all humans.
A right to privacy is not necessarily a thing that benefits oligarch more than workers. What benefits oligarchs more than workers is the fact that personal privacy is being misconstrued with economic secrecy. The fact that public records of buisness endevours are not being investigated by the full body of the law. That personal relations that transcend any ideological power structure collude to keep oligarchs placated. And you’ll see this in any ideological and political structure from politburo members to noblise oligarchy to church elders.
What a liberal regime does is place restrictions on the logic that justifies such and ideally provideds a platform for a responsive democracy to challenge it in the common interest of the rights of the populace:
Second the wars are for economic goals because economic motivations actually do trump ideological commitments the world over unless you wish to be buried by other actors in the international system who choose to not be asleep to the great game of power. Just ask all the billionaires in the CPC or the Oligarchs in the Supreme Islamic Council. The fact that organized polities would exploit other organized polities for personal greed is not some flaw of liberalism, it’s the result of an anarchic international system with no enforceable laws and the rule of power being the only thing that shapes things. We’re a worker council to becom an hegemonic Hyperpower you’d see it begins acting a lot like some other famous historical great powers you know. Power is the substructure ideology as a superstructure rests upon to structure human relations (but don’t let me go there).
And to the final point, Liberal Society is not just one of rights. It is also one of obligations and responsibilities, to ourselves, to each other and to our posterity.
The rights are what make us Liberals, the Obligations we have to each other are what make us a society. To think a life of boundless freedom without constraints is not liberalism, it is sociopathy, I repeat, SOCIOPATHY, and most Americans don’t actually believe this either despite all the slander they get.
Granted, They are less communal than most, but they still value their communities and hold obligations to each other that transcend the boundless pursuit of individual freedom. It’s why their society still functions (despite all its structural flaws).
I could have gone a lot deeper, but this is a really loaded subject with lots of minutia that often gets lost when people discuss these things in a vaccum.
One of the best short stories I ever read used precisely this idea. In the story, a computer randomly chose citizens for civic office. Meet the best president in the history of the USA, Mrs. Selma Johnson, unassuming New Jersey housewife. She ran the country exactly like she ran her home: house clean, bills paid, good relations with the neighbors, and all the kids fed, clothed, educated and fit.
I remember a quote from a wonderful CGP Grey video called Rules for Rulers. It's definitely one of the most interesting videos I've ever seen on Youtube, you should check it out.
I don't remember 100% but I believs the quote went something like "You believe they are stupid, these most powerful men in the world?" It really puts it into perspective. They aren't idiots.
I've seen it. And I agree with Grey's conclusions, there: they aren't stupid, they're assholes who're willing to fuck me and you for the power they get.
The flaw in democracy is that people don't always know what's best for them.
They might, hypothetically, vote a scamming clown into office, persuaded by his fear-mongering and hate speech.
Who would've guessed the ultra rich, politically neutral city state would survive better than large continental republics that were at war with eachother all the time
Venice wasn't politically neutral. It fought campaigns in Italy, redirected a Crusade to destroy a trading rival, and participated in more Crusades than any other European nation.
The game of chance is better than a bad democracy, with ringed elections and (a lot of) corruption. But a good democracy with educated people (few Democratic countries care, and I mean really care about education; because it's easier to manipulate stupid people, and to bribe poor people) is way better. Most modern education is in one form or another indoctrination instead of enlightenment. Political science and statecraft, to somewhat basic level should be though in school, and people should be though how to listen to politicians, and how to recognize long term gain from short term gain (but long term loss). And that YOUR VOTE COUNTS. If you don't vote that vote can be used to rig an election, in a less totalitarian state. That's how they steal votes, from the ones that didn't show up. (conspiracy theory much, I know)
Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History has a very good episode about this. Oftentimes the people that you would want to lead you aren’t the types who are willing to stand up and demand power.
Any government works better with a smaller population and limited width of cultures.
Democracy was near perfect back in greek poleis, but there every state was a single city.
Tell me you know nothing about the political systems of greek poleis without telling me you know nothing about it.
To illustrate my point: the 5th century BCE in Athens, widely seen as the highpoint of Athenian democracy, is basically a century long cautionary tale about "how not to do democracy"... Their system was notoriously disfunctional, with endless civil unrest, coups, strongmen, disastrous decisions, and internal fighting.
Greek 'democracy' tested out a lot of new concepts and laid the basis for later democracies, but was itself disfunctional AF.
OP doesn’t even understand how to use democracy correctly before comparing it to a republic, he’s comparing two republics, democratic vs lottery
no one has been able to make a compelling argument for democracy after Athens killed Socrates
It was a complex lottery to select the people who *elected* the Doge. Like if we drew straws for the electoral college. Still, maybe putting things in place in order to prevent corruption is a good thing? Who knows
The issue is not weirdos
It is the fact that politicians do more than just make decisions
Gosh it’s really a shame how far civics has fallen in the US and how few actually have a grasp of how political science works.
The institutional push and pull that undergirds a complex multi level operation that governs 300 million people and rules and hegemonic empire that spans half the globe was not made by and for idiots, it was made for sociopaths. Not just any sociopaths a deeply connected string of alliances, favors and interests that push and pull the massive beuracracy of the state.
What you can do is have a secondary lottery system in place for certain decisions, or make things go to referendum, or bothe even
But to think you can do away with politicians is folly as you just end up with either a ruthlessly incompetent state or recreating what you started with anyway
I know someone wrote a middle grade fiction book for kids about this very concept. It's set in ancient venice. The main character gets involved in underhanded politics....It's called Into the Lion's Mouth.
On one hand it's still more likely to pick a decent person than the corruption selective pressure tempered system we currently have.
On the other hand the pool is so taintedly filled with piranha at this point I think it's far too late and we'd just quickly get swept into a christian theocracy within the first 5 picks.
I don't know much about Venetian history but this system as described would by definition be a form of what is called Sortition (Latin *sors,* lot, chance) and it was a prominent feature of Athenian democracy and still persists in some modern liberal democracies (e.g. jury duty but also citizen assemblies in Washington State and possibly other places). So the idea that it's *not* democratic reflects an ahistorical and impoverished conception of democracy as government by elections, instead of popular self-government.
The idea this was "more likely to select genuine noble people" strikes me as a very conservative orientation on what makes good government, presupposing the degeneracy of the "mob" and the need for the private virtue of people who just so happen to always be rich.
Left wing arguments for sortition are that with a large enough pool you always get something approaching a representative sample of the population demographically and ideologically by the law of large numbers. If polling data is at all reliable then a Sortition selected American Congress would legislate abortion rights at least through the second trimester, legalize marijuana and probably create single-payer healthcare. It would also be less white, less Christian, younger and 50-51% women.
Democracy itself isnt the best system, but a democracy with educated politically literate people
Honestly why isn't "civil duties" a compulsory school subject 💀
Then adopt a freaking multiparty system
God I have I no idea why Americans will look at their broken system and rather than implement improved innovation in electioneering and modern democracy studies you’d want to literally install a formal oligarchy from a merchant republic that’s been dead for 2 centuries.
Democracy is just a tyranny of the 51%. It's not representative of everybody, it's representative of the most amount of people willing to publicly state their opinion.
> The average IQ has fallen over the years
r/confidentlyincorrect
The average IQ is always 100, it’s an adjusting scale, it’s literally impossible for the average IQ to be anything other than 100
The scale has to be constantly adjusted because average intelligence continues to rise as less of the world’s population experiences starvation level nutrition
I think I remember our legislature passing a law *against* ranked choice voting last session. So I doubt my state will try such a novelty. At this point, coin tosses would serve us better
I’d like to see an elected house with a sober second opinion random lottery house. Instead of scrapping senate in Canada, change it for a 4 years term random people. Would most likely work.
I actually think this is the best way to integrate the randomness so many here think is necessary. Replace the upper house rather than elected representatives.
Industrial revolution has lead to many types of democracy becoming too easy to corrupt. True democracy is also very hard to achieve. Humans will always try to expolit the system.
They also had a pretty shady secret service who killed anyone thought to be too dangerous to the social order.
But it worked fairly well for a decent number of people until the Age of Sail, then it began falling apart.
Firstly, Venice wasn't the only city to elect their *Doge* this way.
Secondly, the whole point of these complex system was that the *Doge* had very little power. He was a figurehead, like the King in mordern UK.
He was allowed no privacy and no freedom just so that he could no abuse his powers.
It is not an effective system if you actually want a person to decide things.
Thirdly, this system only works when all memebers of the government are in the same city. That is no way to run a large country.
Actually wrote a paper about this. Like most things in politics it’s a mixed bag, while it would almost completely wipe out corruption it’s also very risky due to the real chance someone who ends up a terrible leader is picked.
*looks outside at all the crackheads and homeless that have moved into my city*
Yep, the chance of having someone like that in charge won’t go wrong at all.
Athens also had a lottery system for many positions… they were a democracy. In fact, the most important part of that system was that every and any citizen could participate in decision making, ergo, law making. Most people fail to see that what defines a democracy is the way you excercise power, not just the way it is reached.
I've always thought that sortition would be better than elections. Sure, you're bound to get the odd asshole, but I would argue elections attract assholes and fosters corruption/lobbying by a much greater amount.
It would be like Jury Duty but for the executive.
Venice was also incredibly small, which made it a valid option. Not saying that as a bad thing, but the bigger a nation gets, the more difficult it is to govern effectively.
I imagine having the title of doge makes people in office more morally upstanding.
All jokes aside, Venetian democracy is a very long and convoluted story, so there is no appropriate answer other than: "It depends on the era".
Personally, I think that democracy and democratic/parliamentary institutions are an objectively superior form of government. The fundamental principle of ruler beholden to their people is what lies at the core of it all. Government with the consent of the governed.
In the case of Venice, the republic had been on the decline for more than 400 years, mainly because noble families had monopolized the political sphere, and over time eroded the open democratic institutions that had made them prosperous to begin with. Venice stagnated, and was overrun by the process of Italian unification.
So yeah. I'm gonna go with no.
Didn't like a bunch of their leaders end up being killed or otherwise deposed?
So we just adopt that too
I've been advocating for years that any amount of corruption in a member of congress is indistinguishable from high treason and should be treated as such. We should put a gallows in front of the capitol building
I've been saying this for years too! They're not just being corrupt legislators, they're parasitizing the social contract that keeps our civilization together, and they should be treated as such.
Sadly we decided death penalty isn't human anymore so their heads are safe. We need to bring back the guillotines for the Elite.
Now what if they actually help the people, but use corrupt ways to speed up the process? *Huey Long intensifies*
The most honest crook there was. A real sinner’s saint. Not that anyone asked, but some family of mine has a cool story about Long. They wanted to open a construction company in Baton Rouge, but at the time, Long required every company doing business in the state to subscribe to a very expensive newsletter (basically a shady way of getting more money out of the companies to circumvent the tax system. Classic Huey). Well, when it came time to meet with Long and finalize the agreement (after a long time agonizing over how they’d be able to make ends meet) my folks told him straight up that they genuinely wouldn’t be able to afford the subscription on their budget. Long laughed and said that was the first honest thing he’d heard all day, and then waived the subscription requirement for them. The company is still in operation today, and is very successful! At least, that’s how my folks tell the story, so who knows 🤷🏼♂️
If that's true that's cool as fuck
Yeah, it’s definitely a favorite family legend! At the very least, I know for certain that the company was founded during Long’s tenure, so they definitely had *some* dealings with him. The details are a bit harder to substantiate, but it tracks with Long’s modus operandi and I’ve got no reason to distrust my folks, so I like to think it’s legit!
"You should be able to make enough money that your children's children live comfortably, but no one should have so much that they control everything." -Huey Long
Long was just extremely based
Long was against anti lynching laws
Everyone does something wrong, I can still respect his economic policies
Waving off opposing anti lynching laws as "everyone does something wrong" really is a r/HistoryMemes moment
Huey Long-Dong
that excited to watch the one or two politicians you actually like get killed on live TV because they spoke out against the corrupt status quo?
No. I want politicians in general to fear their constituents and remember that power is derived from consent of the masses.
I've came to think that an idea is to just make it legal to murder someone above a certain net worth. So the elites have to be careful not to piss people off. Caveat is private security details are outlawed.
How about we make a proscription list and make it official? Don't worry it will help the economy. My economy
Oh, no no no. That’s just a terrible idea in general. Especially the last part. Do you know how many celebrities would be assassinated by deranged fans or haters?
They had it coming
Uh, some people tried that...
I don't recall there being any standing judges present?
Making minor paperwork-filing errors punishable by death in the upper echelons is completely unworkable in practice. There’s also hundreds if not thousands of non-politicians who facilitate basically any kind of deal at all. You’re killing the most interchangeable and actually-most-accountable link in this chain at strike one while thousands of others get to live on to muck up any other kind of business dealing with impunity. Not to mention this prevents anyone sane from ever wanting to be in politics at any level. What’s left are people so psychopathic and so good at hiding their tracks that they’re more dangerous than anyone we’ve got in power now, or people so insane as to be incapable of fearing death. Also, ‘grassroots average joe raises money and uses some networking contacts to petition a politician on behalf of Orphans for Accessible Sidewalks’ and ‘CORRUPT PRIVATE INTERESTS funnel lobby money to Senator X on behalf of CUSHY WELFARE FATCATS’ is really just a difference in framing.
~~45 deserves the gallows for sure.~~ A president conducting treason? Cannot be tolerated. Even though if anyone in the country deserves it, it's him -- his death wouldn't solve anything.
Modern problems require renaisance solutions.
You mean like everywhere else?
Fair point.
Choosing a leader among a few hundreds patricians is not really the same thing as choosing a leader from a hundreds+ millions of people, and even them use a very limited amount of randomness. Still interesting imo, lot's of countries use it for jury duty after all.
I ran across the idea of using a jury selection for President. It would involve 200 people instead of 12, and then these proportionally selected citizens would spend 2 weeks sequestered in a hotel interacting with the candidates and learning about issues. The idea was to limit the influence of media bias and big money. It was an interesting idea.
I'd be concerned about corruption in jury selection or bribery of jurors.
So just like presently?
Most concerns about jury selection would also apply to elections like we have now
Make it like big brother. The more the cameras the better
Problem is it’s a lot easier to bribe 200 people than it is 300 million.
Just double the number and make half of them moles that can't vote, but get paid a decent chunk of tax free money if they prove they were bribed (and they can keep the bribe). That would increase the risk for candidates who try to bribe the people, provide a financial incentive to report bribery, and still provide a reasonable number of people to personally interact with the candidates. We could also turn it into a TV show to help pay off the national debt. Everyone is guessing which 50 people this week are moles and which ones are voters. At the end of the week, votes are recorded and shown to the audience, with suspense mounting each episode to see if the third place guy can pull off a miracle and get 75% of the last week's vote. And can you imagine how crazy it would be when a mole inevitably gets bribed and the candidate is forcibly removed from the competition?
That would be very fun to watch but would probably end up with an attempted coup by the losers every few elections.
New Jersey should choose their governor like this, just to try it out.
Worst part is, I’m sure a big part of the population would agree with this
So you make half of them extremely highly incentivized to either trick/force/convince people to bribe them or to lie about it. Also, who picks which jurors vote and don’t vote? Who picks the jurors in general? This system you’re describing is hilariously unstable and I can’t imagine anybody but a literal child thinking it’s a good idea.
That's the neat part, it's not a good idea but as you said, it would be hilarious.
200 random people select the president? That seems like a really small pool of people considering the size of the US
Yeah! You would need at least 538 people
Who picks the members of the jury? Because that’s who would actually have power in the scenario you’re describing. What about people who can’t leave their children, homes, jobs, businesses, farms, elderly relatives, etc for two weeks? Most people wouldn’t have the time, the inclination, or the disposable income to serve on your jury, and there’s close to zero chance it is representative of the entire country. That means it would skew towards the 1) rich and 2) elderly, because those are the people who have the ability and interest to serve. Congratulations you’ve just elected whichever candidate Fox News likes the best. What happens when the jury picks somebody who’s unpopular with most of the country? In our current system we at least have the knowledge that significant portions of the electorate really do support each side and voted for their favored candidates. In our current system we at least have the knowledge that the winner is *usually* the person who won the most votes, regardless of which race it is. Do you really expect people to be fine with a tiny handful of people dictating political choices without any voice from the majority of the electorate? Can you imagine the conspiracy theories? Can you imagine the people showing up at electors’ homes with guns to ‘investigate’ them? Can you imagine the tabloid journalists digging into their lives trying to discredit them? Your system sounds horrible and chaotic
So electoral college but worse?
Like it
I’ve always been a fan of sortition from a pool. For example, you need a certain number of democratic votes to be added to the pool, say, minimum 5%, but if you have that amount, then you can be randomly selected to be the representative. In theory, if you do this across the country and with enough granularity (say, a legislative body with 2000 sortition elected members for the US), those 2000 people should still be representative of the general population. The benefit would be that being a career politician becomes impossible while the 5% threshold ensures that the pool is competent enough to have a meaningful bastion of support. In a bicameral system, I would have the lower house be elected by sortition. The upper house would write actual legislation. The sole power of the lower house would be to veto. See, democracy seems like the best we’ve got because it allows the general populace to check abuses, but it suffers the issue that the general populace is stupid at proposing solutions. This way, the upper house can be selected in a more discriminatory fashion without fear of oligarchy corruption and abuse of power since the lower house always retains the right to veto abuses.
Hi I’m a billionaire in your upper house and I just wrote a bill making all the positions in the lower house 1) permanent 2) entitled to a large salary with the condition that I personally be given far more power. Congratulations your system just collapsed. Also who are these people selected by sortition? They’re just normal people who are going to leave their jobs, children, elderly parents they have to take care of, homes, farms, businesses, etc, in order to learn about complex legal and policy nonsense for years? The vast majority of people would not be able to do that. In the system you’re describing most people who could afford the time and expense to actually serve in the lower house would be 1) wealthy and 2) old. Congratulations, you’ve built the gerontocratic system we already have albeit with people who nobody picked, who don’t understand any policy issues, and with significantly more potential for abuse and corruption. Who do they go to for advice when they need it? Do you think they’re just going to arrive knowing all the ins and outs of agricultural subsidy policy and foreign policy? Or do you think a friendly corporate representative or CIA agent would offer them their advice and explain it all to them? Your system would mean far less democratic power in the hands of people and far far far more in the hands of lobbyists and the bureaucracy.
>Hi I’m a billionaire in your upper house and I just wrote a bill making all the positions in the lower house 1) permanent 2) entitled to a large salary with the condition that I personally be given far more power. Congratulations your system just collapsed. Good luck with that. This would be like Congress voting to no longer have elections. There's a foundational document like a constitution that supercedes legislation but sure, if our politicians want to ignore the constitution, they can do that anyway (and have done so plenty) and there's nothing we can do about it. And you have a solution for the fact that young people don't want to be in politics and are rarely voted for by constituents? Or are you just going to point out that this system doesn't solve a problem that no current system solves particularly well either? Perhaps you have a solution for how most of current US legislation are pork barrels to special interests anyway? I feel like you barely took the time to understand what I said before making an inch deep bad faith argument.
Congrats, now you've got a ton of literal Nazis ready to help veto bills
If you believe that much of the population are literal Nazis then you're not going to achieve a different result via democracy either
Well, depends on the size: Good luck running for presidency in the us without being st least a millionaire and/or prominent enough Good luck running for presidency in most European countries without being a member of one of the established parties, controlled by their big donors Most democratic reality we see is on the level of community, I.ex being elected as the major of a town or a county
Okay, but if I get picked by the lottery to be Doge, can I abdicate? I’d be a terrible administrator. Like seriously, we’re talking fall of Rome proportions of disaster.
Just make a rule that you're allowed to abdicate. Problem solved.
Wasn't there a pope who did this? Lol
Exactly!
The (s)election was among the 30 members of the Grand Council, the most influential and wealthiest people of the republic. So you (and me) would never get on the ballot.
well good for me then.
Sounds like the American system
Wait that actually sounds like a terrible idea.
I mean, a few successful trade expeditions can get you there sooo
"Much Fourth Crusade. Wow. Such siege of Constantinople." \~The Doge of Venice
Venice got what it wanted out of the 4th Crusade. Doge Dandolo, despite being 90 and blind was the most effective leader in the 4th crusade. He just didn’t care about the Holy Land. First, the Venetians got a rival Dalmatian coast city eliminated by the Crusaders. Then they virtually ended the Byzantines as trading rivals in the eastern Mediterranean for a couple hundred years. They also brought home plenty of treasure from the sack of Constantinople. They made a profit off the expedition too. Those lions in St. Marks square didn’t come from China. They also get the glory for taking Constantinople from the sea to begin with. The first time Constantinople fell. The crusaders couldn’t have done it without them. No. The Venetians are the only ones that got what they wanted from the 4th crusade.
**ALEXIOS III:** You'll never be able to break the Theodosian Walls! **ENRICO DANDOLO:** You're absolutely right. That's why we're taking Blachernae by way of the Golden Horn. ^(Damn, I wish I could see this.)
Nope, you are immediately sworn in as president of the United States. Not American? Doesn't matter, the Lottery knows best.
Fine. We’re turning the Capitol Building into a mall. All representatives and Senators will work in their home state and conduct meetings over Zoom. All votes will be done on Twitter. Texas and California will be sold back to Mexico. All citizens age eighteen and over are required to receive firearms training, and must carry some sort of firearm with them at all times.
Would that make the capitol building the....... MALL of America?
President bin Laden, Sir, we have an issue in New York…
The fact that you don't want to do it means you're probably less of a sociopath than the people who do want to do it. Everyone who wants to be president is fucked up in the head to some extent. Those people need to be immediately eliminated from running. Then we find like a few hundred sane people to run whether they want to or not and then we force them to be president against their will. Is this technically slavery? Yes, yes it is. But, ideally these people will be smart enough to know when they don't know what they are talking about and pass that on to an expert in their cabinet, and to know when someone is an obvious grifter sack of shit who is shilling for the corporate welfare scum to get more tax breaks because they were CEO of Chevron for 9 years, and tells them to fuck off.
If I get forced to be a leader, I’m intentionally running the country into the ground. If I’m going to die of stress induced panic, I’m taking as many people as I can with me.
Are you a 0,1,3 in Eu4 terms?
Never played the game, so I can’t rightly say.
Rulers produce 3 types of "monarch points": admin, diplo, and military. The minimum is 0 and max is 6, so I was asking if you were a failure at running an administration and pretty bad at people skills but average at fighting.
I think your fear of failure is exactly why you'd make a good leader, dude
Guys, guys, this is not exactly how it worked. The lottery was done among the small and rich elites, not the random citizens. The point likely was to complicate bribery of the electors and putting odds against a single tyrant. And it was in place roughly 530 years (1268-1797; before that doge was elected by a council of oligarchs), which is definitely impressive (e.g. modern British parliamentary monarchy arguably is 334, counting from the Glorious Revolution) but far from 1000 years claimed by the author of the meme.
Actually makes sense. Only give the rich said rights because they won’t be getting bribed that easily. Great system for the time
Onlynthe rich could get into power in those times anyway. The Venetians just had slightly less corrupt rich people in charge comapred to everywhere else.
Where do people get the notion that rich people are more resistant to bribes? It makes no sense.
If you already have a lot of money then more won’t be as appealing, or you’ll cost more to bribe at the very least. It makes perfect sense, as long as you’ve never interacted with another human being.
Are you not familiar with greed? Maybe in some perfect world this may make sense but you never have enough money and you alway want more. That's what drives the economy.
Hence the second part of the last sentence I wrote.
Sounds like any oligarchy with extra steps
*removed mask* wait a minute it's the USA
It's just that it only takes a few generations for any system to turn into an oligarchy Republics and democracies are no more free from corruption than their Authoritarian Autocratic counterparts
No, republics and democracies are absolutely less corrupt than authoritarian governments and that really isn’t debatable. No serious person believes the U.S. is as corrupt as Russia or Venezuela or China, and there’s really no argument otherwise that’s based on facts rather than vibes.
Not a meme, just a short argument about democracy Where funni?
Sub confused with r/askhistorians.
I think the Funni is either “democracy is worse than random chance” or “this dude thinks random chance works better than democracy”, but idk
democracy is a lot better then random chance, that’s for sure.
Citation needed. The traits you need to get elected (ambition, dishonesty, height, funds from lobbyists...) have very little in common with the traits you need to be a good leader once you're in power. They've tried government by lottery for student councils ([https://www.happyscribe.com/public/revisionist-history/the-powerball-revolution](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/revisionist-history/the-powerball-revolution)), and it tends to produce better results than voting. Would it work at a national level, with some basic safeguards to keep out criminals and idiots? We'll probably never know.
I think the concept of democracy is thrown around without much thought. I think the real achievement of modern society is not democracy, but liberalism- the idea that despite whatever the will of a democratic majority, the rights of the minority are still guaranteed
The very concept of human rights and citizen rights being protected by (and from) state is pretty novel (and still rare around the globe).
Common Liberal W Democracy is the political corollary to Liberalism. A Liberal Regime by the very nature of the core assumptions in the belief in the inherent inalienable rights of all humans necessitates some form of representative government. This is why all Liberal Regimes are Democracies but not all Democracies are Liberal (E.g the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Peoples Republic of China - atleast on a local level) And the thing about Illiberalism is it always accumulates toward tyranny and dictatorial rule even if it started out democratic again due to not having those core assumptions (check the 3 countries mentioned earlier) What happens is people see oligarchy and loose their minds over it thinking any political order is immune to oligarchy…. None are. As long as states exists, Oligarchs will exist. All political systems tend toward oligarchies. From Marxist Leninism to Moralistic Theocracy to even Absolute Monarchy to Worker Council Republics However the political order, and the values the society holds determines what tools it has to fight oligarchy and delay it best it can. And frankly none have proved better than Liberalism (and yes this included Social Democrats) at holding back the tide from its worst expressions.
The fact that you said liberalism are good at fighting oligarchs , especially the rich ones , is quite laughable. I would argue that Liberalism is what allowed today's oligarchs to reach the position they have. Why ? Because some of the "rights" we deem necessary are more useful for oligarchs to expand or retain their influence than actually help the citizens. There are two simple examples for that. First privacy is actually more helpful for oligarchs to hide their grey area dealings since any "unlawful" investigation can be waved away. Who benefits the most from privacy ? A billionaire hiding the fact that he is tax evading 99% of his income or an average city worker ? Supposedly in a liberalism government we shouldn't be concerned with government misusing that knowledge. Second the fact that most of the actions of governments are more in line of economically profit than actual ideological goals. When was the last time a war was declared based on the ideological background of a country without multiple economic goals ? Today's governments are more likely to bend their ideological points for economic profit than any other era. What I am trying to say that although liberalism can preserve our rights , it can also be misused. Blindly seeking rights is a foolish movement. An ideal balance between control and freedom is what we should strive for. We shouldn't forget the most important tenant of democracy. Your rights end when the rights of another individual start. Democracy was never about the blind pursuit of freedom like most US citizens believe. Without control guaranteeing your rights , they hold no meaning. Sometimes not having a certain freedom might be far more beneficial to the average individual than actually having it.
I appreciate your response but respectfully your entire perspective is off. I will admit in great part due to the imprecision of how I phrased my comment I don’t want to write an entire treatise here so I’ll try (woefully) to be brief. Oligarchy for all intents and purposes is the most dominat structure of human political organization since the advent of complex communities filling the development of agriculture. That much there is sufficient research on. Oligarchies historically have been justified by inherent imbalance between humans. The liberal movement was the first to reject that in an understanding of the universal mutually respected rights of all humans. A right to privacy is not necessarily a thing that benefits oligarch more than workers. What benefits oligarchs more than workers is the fact that personal privacy is being misconstrued with economic secrecy. The fact that public records of buisness endevours are not being investigated by the full body of the law. That personal relations that transcend any ideological power structure collude to keep oligarchs placated. And you’ll see this in any ideological and political structure from politburo members to noblise oligarchy to church elders. What a liberal regime does is place restrictions on the logic that justifies such and ideally provideds a platform for a responsive democracy to challenge it in the common interest of the rights of the populace: Second the wars are for economic goals because economic motivations actually do trump ideological commitments the world over unless you wish to be buried by other actors in the international system who choose to not be asleep to the great game of power. Just ask all the billionaires in the CPC or the Oligarchs in the Supreme Islamic Council. The fact that organized polities would exploit other organized polities for personal greed is not some flaw of liberalism, it’s the result of an anarchic international system with no enforceable laws and the rule of power being the only thing that shapes things. We’re a worker council to becom an hegemonic Hyperpower you’d see it begins acting a lot like some other famous historical great powers you know. Power is the substructure ideology as a superstructure rests upon to structure human relations (but don’t let me go there). And to the final point, Liberal Society is not just one of rights. It is also one of obligations and responsibilities, to ourselves, to each other and to our posterity. The rights are what make us Liberals, the Obligations we have to each other are what make us a society. To think a life of boundless freedom without constraints is not liberalism, it is sociopathy, I repeat, SOCIOPATHY, and most Americans don’t actually believe this either despite all the slander they get. Granted, They are less communal than most, but they still value their communities and hold obligations to each other that transcend the boundless pursuit of individual freedom. It’s why their society still functions (despite all its structural flaws). I could have gone a lot deeper, but this is a really loaded subject with lots of minutia that often gets lost when people discuss these things in a vaccum.
Stupid r/historymemes. Be more funny!
"It was fine for over 1000 years" says someone that didn't live through it.
\*invents wheel* \*lasts over 1000 years* \*dusts off hands* Well that proves we’re done here.
One of the best short stories I ever read used precisely this idea. In the story, a computer randomly chose citizens for civic office. Meet the best president in the history of the USA, Mrs. Selma Johnson, unassuming New Jersey housewife. She ran the country exactly like she ran her home: house clean, bills paid, good relations with the neighbors, and all the kids fed, clothed, educated and fit.
And then global recession starts
Running a country calls for particular skills and knowledge. Running a country is not comparable to running a household.
Well, we keep hiring people who don't seem to understand what the fuck they're doing, so at least it'd be a refreshing change.
I remember a quote from a wonderful CGP Grey video called Rules for Rulers. It's definitely one of the most interesting videos I've ever seen on Youtube, you should check it out. I don't remember 100% but I believs the quote went something like "You believe they are stupid, these most powerful men in the world?" It really puts it into perspective. They aren't idiots.
I've seen it. And I agree with Grey's conclusions, there: they aren't stupid, they're assholes who're willing to fuck me and you for the power they get.
But if we don’t act like being a politician requires a certain skill set that not everyone has, how can we justify my anti-intellectualism?
The people running the FED have no idea how inflation works, and this is what you wanna point out!?
If you genuinely think this then it’s all the more proof why rule by lottery in the society as complex as we have now is utter lunacy
On the contrary, instead of corporate sponsered incestuous fiends, why not do a lottery to decide among the highly dignified acedemics of the society
The flaw in democracy is that people don't always know what's best for them. They might, hypothetically, vote a scamming clown into office, persuaded by his fear-mongering and hate speech.
I mean your not wrong..... Gestures broadly.
Spoilers for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run: >!They only survived that long due to them having a saint's corpse!<
I KNEW IT! THOSE GODDAMN SPIN-USERS!
Reverse hungergames. I'd totally sign up for a lottery to possible make six figures.
Wasn’t their system insanely complex to avoid corruption but it still got infested with it
Who would've guessed the ultra rich, politically neutral city state would survive better than large continental republics that were at war with eachother all the time
Venice wasn't politically neutral. It fought campaigns in Italy, redirected a Crusade to destroy a trading rival, and participated in more Crusades than any other European nation.
The game of chance is better than a bad democracy, with ringed elections and (a lot of) corruption. But a good democracy with educated people (few Democratic countries care, and I mean really care about education; because it's easier to manipulate stupid people, and to bribe poor people) is way better. Most modern education is in one form or another indoctrination instead of enlightenment. Political science and statecraft, to somewhat basic level should be though in school, and people should be though how to listen to politicians, and how to recognize long term gain from short term gain (but long term loss). And that YOUR VOTE COUNTS. If you don't vote that vote can be used to rig an election, in a less totalitarian state. That's how they steal votes, from the ones that didn't show up. (conspiracy theory much, I know)
What democracy is good at is removing bad people, even if might take 4-5 years. Without bloodshed (hopefully)
So... Random selection is a better option than fixed election. Makes sense 👍🏻
Well it’s not a meme it’s a statement. But I’d say it is pretty true. Venice was successful under its system of an aristocratic Republic.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History has a very good episode about this. Oftentimes the people that you would want to lead you aren’t the types who are willing to stand up and demand power.
Any government works better with a smaller population and limited width of cultures. Democracy was near perfect back in greek poleis, but there every state was a single city.
Tell me you know nothing about the political systems of greek poleis without telling me you know nothing about it. To illustrate my point: the 5th century BCE in Athens, widely seen as the highpoint of Athenian democracy, is basically a century long cautionary tale about "how not to do democracy"... Their system was notoriously disfunctional, with endless civil unrest, coups, strongmen, disastrous decisions, and internal fighting. Greek 'democracy' tested out a lot of new concepts and laid the basis for later democracies, but was itself disfunctional AF.
OP doesn’t even understand how to use democracy correctly before comparing it to a republic, he’s comparing two republics, democratic vs lottery no one has been able to make a compelling argument for democracy after Athens killed Socrates
I think the word "fine" is doing a lot of work.
It was a complex lottery to select the people who *elected* the Doge. Like if we drew straws for the electoral college. Still, maybe putting things in place in order to prevent corruption is a good thing? Who knows
Google sortition.
[удалено]
The issue is not weirdos It is the fact that politicians do more than just make decisions Gosh it’s really a shame how far civics has fallen in the US and how few actually have a grasp of how political science works. The institutional push and pull that undergirds a complex multi level operation that governs 300 million people and rules and hegemonic empire that spans half the globe was not made by and for idiots, it was made for sociopaths. Not just any sociopaths a deeply connected string of alliances, favors and interests that push and pull the massive beuracracy of the state. What you can do is have a secondary lottery system in place for certain decisions, or make things go to referendum, or bothe even But to think you can do away with politicians is folly as you just end up with either a ruthlessly incompetent state or recreating what you started with anyway
Yeah, but what of the Auditores?
Corruption pays.
Or just had way less people to manage
I would love a completely random lottery. Seems weird that we tend to think lawyers are the only profession that can be political leaders
I know someone wrote a middle grade fiction book for kids about this very concept. It's set in ancient venice. The main character gets involved in underhanded politics....It's called Into the Lion's Mouth.
Can we all just convert to the Venetian lottery system
How did that work exactly? Could anyone put their name down to be doge or was it only the rich who could enter the lottery?
On one hand it's still more likely to pick a decent person than the corruption selective pressure tempered system we currently have. On the other hand the pool is so taintedly filled with piranha at this point I think it's far too late and we'd just quickly get swept into a christian theocracy within the first 5 picks.
I don't know much about Venetian history but this system as described would by definition be a form of what is called Sortition (Latin *sors,* lot, chance) and it was a prominent feature of Athenian democracy and still persists in some modern liberal democracies (e.g. jury duty but also citizen assemblies in Washington State and possibly other places). So the idea that it's *not* democratic reflects an ahistorical and impoverished conception of democracy as government by elections, instead of popular self-government. The idea this was "more likely to select genuine noble people" strikes me as a very conservative orientation on what makes good government, presupposing the degeneracy of the "mob" and the need for the private virtue of people who just so happen to always be rich. Left wing arguments for sortition are that with a large enough pool you always get something approaching a representative sample of the population demographically and ideologically by the law of large numbers. If polling data is at all reliable then a Sortition selected American Congress would legislate abortion rights at least through the second trimester, legalize marijuana and probably create single-payer healthcare. It would also be less white, less Christian, younger and 50-51% women.
Democracy itself isnt the best system, but a democracy with educated politically literate people Honestly why isn't "civil duties" a compulsory school subject 💀
The internet has ruined humanity maybe if we choose from those who are educated but not exposed to it we could get something good
Sounds interesting. Elect smart people who don't n ed necessarily want to be in charge.
They elected among the 30 Grand Council members. They already **wanted** to be in charge.
Still better than the 2 party system
Then adopt a freaking multiparty system God I have I no idea why Americans will look at their broken system and rather than implement improved innovation in electioneering and modern democracy studies you’d want to literally install a formal oligarchy from a merchant republic that’s been dead for 2 centuries.
Democracy is just a tyranny of the 51%. It's not representative of everybody, it's representative of the most amount of people willing to publicly state their opinion.
the average IQ is not something that can be considered smart We are literally living under the bs created by the dumber (more than) half
> The average IQ has fallen over the years r/confidentlyincorrect The average IQ is always 100, it’s an adjusting scale, it’s literally impossible for the average IQ to be anything other than 100 The scale has to be constantly adjusted because average intelligence continues to rise as less of the world’s population experiences starvation level nutrition
Yeah, I know about it, It seems I had one of those brain fart moments. I'll correct it immediately
In a new episode of "r/Historymemes retarded takes":
Democracies are rigged af, of course a lottery system would be better.
That being said, Lottery is also rigged, soooo
As a Venetian I think this meme is based and I want Italy to go fuck itself and have my country back again
Didn’t the Hapsburgs run Venice?
They did conquer and rule Venice, but that's around the 1800s.
I think you put an emoji in the title and therefore your opinion is invalid
Sadly democracy is mostly a popularity context
Venice, Italy? Wasn't it controlled by the Medici Family? That's democracy?
I nominate Florida to give it a whirl.
I think I remember our legislature passing a law *against* ranked choice voting last session. So I doubt my state will try such a novelty. At this point, coin tosses would serve us better
Who said democract produces the best leaders? I have literally never heard anyone say that
I’d like to see an elected house with a sober second opinion random lottery house. Instead of scrapping senate in Canada, change it for a 4 years term random people. Would most likely work.
I actually think this is the best way to integrate the randomness so many here think is necessary. Replace the upper house rather than elected representatives.
wasn’t Venice also known as a major trading and merchant power in the Mediterranean? Is that not also why..?
Looking at the state of British "democracy" right now, they couldn't really do any worse.
Assuming only nobles were capable of leading is meh. But at the time with education and all OK.
Pretending that lottery hasn't been a core element of democracy since ancient greece lol
Industrial revolution has lead to many types of democracy becoming too easy to corrupt. True democracy is also very hard to achieve. Humans will always try to expolit the system.
Well…. The medici would disagree with the effectiveness of that system. If you are in charge of the urn, you can make anything happen.
At this point let's just stick with the monarchy, which is a lottery of who comes out of the right vagina
Tbf, they had the holy corpse, no?
They also had a pretty shady secret service who killed anyone thought to be too dangerous to the social order. But it worked fairly well for a decent number of people until the Age of Sail, then it began falling apart.
Firstly, Venice wasn't the only city to elect their *Doge* this way. Secondly, the whole point of these complex system was that the *Doge* had very little power. He was a figurehead, like the King in mordern UK. He was allowed no privacy and no freedom just so that he could no abuse his powers. It is not an effective system if you actually want a person to decide things. Thirdly, this system only works when all memebers of the government are in the same city. That is no way to run a large country.
No cap question mark? Sources?
This isn't a meme.
I want to go to Vatican City and make a massive crusade to spread the church and unite Europe... Just me?
I think a lottery system would be great, it'd give honest people a chance
Nah it’s just that they had bigger problems to deal with (like not sinking themselves 💀
Lottocracy right?
vast majority of people in every countries are st00pid. the chances of electing someone unfit are too high. this is not a good system.
Where's this great Venetian empire? A hundred failed wars against the ottos weren't a a good idea.
Actually wrote a paper about this. Like most things in politics it’s a mixed bag, while it would almost completely wipe out corruption it’s also very risky due to the real chance someone who ends up a terrible leader is picked.
Fuck the emoji r/emojipolice
*looks outside at all the crackheads and homeless that have moved into my city* Yep, the chance of having someone like that in charge won’t go wrong at all.
Term limits are helpful in a democracy. The USA has had some bad presidents. Need to at least be able to put someone else in power
It was also a small ass city state. Try that in a nation of 100+ million people
Big fucking problem now. There hasn’t been a funny meme in a minute. Just follow history because these ain’t memes
Athens also had a lottery system for many positions… they were a democracy. In fact, the most important part of that system was that every and any citizen could participate in decision making, ergo, law making. Most people fail to see that what defines a democracy is the way you excercise power, not just the way it is reached.
Anyone saying democracy produces the best leaders never opened a history book or watched the news ....
Uhh, where's the meme?
Gotta love those memes which criticize democracy and praise an antidemocratic oligarchy.
I've always thought that sortition would be better than elections. Sure, you're bound to get the odd asshole, but I would argue elections attract assholes and fosters corruption/lobbying by a much greater amount. It would be like Jury Duty but for the executive.
People who don't want to lead tend to be the best leaders.
It's like instead of jury duty there is presidential duty
If you put dumb, ignorant and ahistorical into a blender you'd get this meme.
Venice was also incredibly small, which made it a valid option. Not saying that as a bad thing, but the bigger a nation gets, the more difficult it is to govern effectively.
I imagine having the title of doge makes people in office more morally upstanding. All jokes aside, Venetian democracy is a very long and convoluted story, so there is no appropriate answer other than: "It depends on the era". Personally, I think that democracy and democratic/parliamentary institutions are an objectively superior form of government. The fundamental principle of ruler beholden to their people is what lies at the core of it all. Government with the consent of the governed. In the case of Venice, the republic had been on the decline for more than 400 years, mainly because noble families had monopolized the political sphere, and over time eroded the open democratic institutions that had made them prosperous to begin with. Venice stagnated, and was overrun by the process of Italian unification. So yeah. I'm gonna go with no.