Sortition - doing democracy differently | Brett Hennig | TEDxDanubia
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2017
- In his talk Brett Hennig presents a compelling, coherent case of fixing broken democracy by replacing elected politicans with ordinary people. Sounds crazy? You’ll be suprised to hear, it actually works.
Dr Brett Hennig (taxi driver, software engineer, social justice activist, mathematics tutor, PhD in astrophysics) is a director and co-founder of the Sortition Foundation whose aim is to promote the use of Citizens' Assemblies to resolve contentious political issues. He has been studying and following the global use of such forums for several years. He is the author of 'The End of Politicians', a book he has written on the subject.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
I think this talk got much less attention than it should have.
spread the good word
I'm sure there are ppl in power against this...
More people need to watch this now more than ever
Maybe a "slow trickle" effect: every day, add a new random person, and retire the person who has been there the longest. Everyone gets 100 days. There is never a leader, just an ever-changing board of 100 people.
A good idea, but some things take longer than 100 days to address/resolve, so I could see things simply NOT getting done because of this.
@@zachmoore9974 I had imagined a period of two years.
even so, who gets to pick these 100 people? Sure, maybe it should be the most well-educated, but at the same time the most educated are often the richest people, and who have very little contact with people who suffer the most in society and would have very little reason, other than genuine care for their countryman, to provide the needy of the country with the help they should get.
Great idea! I believe that randomly selected people can enrich the arena, with unknown capabilities to inspire politicians. In the beginning the existing politicians should be working together with the newcomers. After a couple of years we'll see what happens. May-be less professional politicians, and more know how. It'll probably be better, for at least the atmosphere anywhere. We should take the chance and start talking about this. I will, in my neighborhood, anyways.
Intriguing & new to me. Question-I live in the US where jurors are similarly chosen (in theory). We have great trouble getting citizens to step out of their daily lives & jobs & businesses for only a week for jury duty. How would random citizens be induced to give up (dedicate) 2 years? How has that worked in practice? Thank you.
Allow citizens to decline the job but pay a fortune (at least two million bucks) to those who accept the position. I'm not joking. Make them rich ( but eliminate most of the obscene perks they currently enjoy) and pay the bulk of the fortune after their term is over. As a percentage of the US budget it would be minuscule, the possibility of corruption is greatly reduced, and no need for campaign finance laws (there would be no campaigns anyway).
First of all, we would make it 8 years for one full Congressional term. The reason for making it 8 years is so Sortition Representatives will have an opportunity to get really good at governing without getting burned out by being there Forever. We would pay Sortition Representatives 1 million dollars a year, and then a 1 million dollar a year pension. If you get a job while you're receiving your pension, the amount of your salary would be deducted from your pension.
Good talk, which I agree with virtually entirely. The only things I'd say are a) I don't see why referenda shouldn't play some role alongside sortition; and b) pedantic, but the singular form is kleroterion.
Excellent talk Brett! I especially liked the opening questions to the audience.
I especially liked the idea of trying sortition as a replacement for the Senate. However, there were two (non-critical) factual errors in the talk. One is that the Hammer & Sickle design was somehow associated with Karl Marx, who had been dead 34 years before Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks adopted the symbol.
Second, the promise of Electoral Reform in Canada (which had a lot to do with Justin Trudeau being elected) was officially abandoned 4 months before this TED talk. Brett can be forgiven for not knowing that one, since Electoral Reform was promised 1,800 times during the election and everyone expected it would happen. That's a good example of why politicians are so often reviled.
Correct and to your point, Karl Marx said "I am not a marxist".
Brett, love your idea! A real 'return to the past'. A movement that is already taking place (on a very small scale) in redesign and improvement of some healthcare services in OzA
a representative random-sample of society would be able to identify societies problems, but wouldn't be able to come up with solutions. Political problem solving is like every other skill or knowledge, it has to be developed. Not everybody has the interest or time to develop that skill.
Not true. He said there is an evidence it works better and people are responsible when can. Even referendum (studies by John Matsusaka) decides better than political pros. If a lottery winner is not interested they can pass and the similar next-in-line would have a go...Also the puzzling externalities and nepotism of party lives would disappear and so problem solving would be easier.
a referendum is written up by political pros though. Sounds like we still need politicians. I'm curious what policies random people would come up with too. Put 100 random people in a room and I'd like to see what economic solutions they come up with
I highly doubt it would be anything useful
@@maxithewoowoo I think the straight forward way to include sortition into the most western democracies would be to have a legislature with two chambers, an elected chamber and a random chamber. The random people could then identify the problems and the politians could come up with a good solution.
Yes, and they would have that time once chosen and would have the interest to develop that skill in a culture that prides itself on sortition. We can build a culture from the ground up that helps people develop the skill, as well.
I use to advocate for Sortition. Until I realized that we've haven't even tried to tweak our current Political system. I'd first want to end the reelection campaign, extend the length of service for all three houses, and limit our Representatives from running for a second term. In theory, this should solve the problem of Divisiveness, too much money in Politics and Political dysfunction.
Tell 'em about the dream Brett!
Only problems are that people would be less likely to support an unelected government and it wouldn't be easy to judge public opinion on the performance of the government without elections. These are problems with replacing all elected politicians in a parliament, as the guy said there are other ways of introducing sortition to real politics. In the UK I would like to see elections for local councillors replaced with random selection because there is already such low voter turn out and a ward's vote could be bought with such a tiny amount of money by buying targeted Facebook ads, for example.
Andrew Nutbourne He only talked about replacing the legislative not the executive. So there would be still "normal" politicians in the executive, which makes sense because especially in the government you need a higher degree of expertise and know how. (e.g. Trump 😀)
And the government would be still responsible to parliament (at least in a parlamentarian democracy) with the only difference there wouldnt be any factions to rely on. (This could make a con argument, because governments would likely be more unstable)
Also there still would be public polls, but they woulndt have such an impact on politics since the parlament would be already truly representative. So there would be just no need for representative polls.
In the uk the executive is part of parliament, we don't have a President. And, like most, our parliament is comprised of two houses: commons and lords or lower and upper. The house of lords does need to be filled by professional politicians who aren't biased by a desire to win votes and can't be threatened with expulsion from a party, because they would still hold their seat anyway. The house of commons, on the other hand, is filled by anyone who isn't a lord. The vast majority of them don't even receive any expert advice, just those in the cabinet really. They aren't any better informed than an astute member of the public who has the ONS bookmarked.
There are a lot of possibilities how you could make use of sortition. It is not limited to a certain political system, it is more a basic democratic method like elections nowadys. It is very interesting to think about ways how sortition could be used in our political systems and challenge the common believe that there is no alternative to elections.
I know it is just a system for selecting people, like elections. I think you have slightly misunderstood both of my comments. But I am sceptical about it's use in national government because choosing a prime minister without any political parties would be complex (not that you need a prime minister, but who would represent you if you didn't have one, the Queen?), and it is very important to have have people familiar with legislature drawing it up and amending old laws. I'm actually someone who is opposed to major reform in the house of lords because of this last reason. It is a very backwards institution that logically shouldn't do any good for the average person, yet consistently prevents governments from fucking the poorest and most vulnerable.
It's great that this is being discussed, and I have heard all kinds of arguments on both sides.
It's very instructive to read up on how sortition worked in ancient Athens. Athens is regularly held up as being the first democracy, and indeed it was the Greeks who coined the term 'democracy'. And yet that system, which worked very successfully for 300 years, only included elections as a rather small part of its operation. The MAIN form of selection that democracy took in that city state was sortition (aka random selection or selection by lot.)
This was not because they hadn't invented elections. They knew all about elections, but viewed them as being intrinsic to an oligarchy, not a democracy. A democracy was where the people (demos) made decisions, whereas an oligarchy was where decisions were made by elected members of a powerful elite class.
Actually one of the main reasons they adopted democracy (i.e. random selection) was to counter the tendency for political factions to develop along tribal lines. People often feel they should vote for members of their own tribe, class or religious group, as otherwise they could be dominated by other groups, and this 'tribal' voting behaviour can artificially polarise society. As a city state, existing in a context of almost perpetual war with its neighbours, social cohesion and unity was an over-riding and existential concern.
I say all this, not out of mere historical interest, but because human nature has not changed at all in the past 2,500 years. We still face the same challenges of, as Brett says, "how we live together."
The one remnant we have of the Athenian style of democracy is in the 'trial by jury' systems in the US and UK legal systems. (And those of other countries too no doubt.) There, we easily accept the idea of randomly-selected citizens being presented with evidence mediated by trained legal experts, and making the final judgement on a person's guilt or innocence. Do we feel the need to hold jury members to account? Generally not, I would say. Generally we feel that if we had been in the courthouse, and had been presented with the same evidence, then we may well have come to the same conclusion.
I would say that if the public feels a trial has gone badly it is because they feel the judge has been too lenient, or because the evidence presented was fabricated, etc. It's really quite rare I think for the public to blame a jury for a bad judgement. In general we DO trust panels of randomly-selected citizens, and accept their decisions. On the odd occasion when we mistrust a jury it is typically because we feel the selection process was NOT truly random, and that the jury members are not truly representative 'peers' of the accused.
I think that's the point, that under a system of sortition there is not the same need for 'accountability' as there is in the standard 'ballot-box oligarchy' we currently employ. I would imagine that members of a randomly-selected legislative chamber would be relatively immune from the kind of intense public scrutiny that dogs an elected politician's every step and every word.
I am always impressed at how elected politicians manage to get any productive work done at all, when half their attention has to be focussed on the demands of the electorate who can vote them out of office, and the other half has to be focussed on the demands of the party, who can promote, demote, or de-select them at any time. Very special, high-achieving people, no doubt, but I feel, on balance, that ordinary citizens, given the resources, the time, and a good salary of course, would do at least as good a job.
Excellent talk. Sortition would help to eliminate all of the challenges surrounding the election process: the time and energy required to campaign, claims of voter fraud, campaign finance, dark money, the "buying of politicians," etc. Furthermore, with a predetermined cycle (2 to 4 years) and a set end date, the randomly selected representatives would be able to prepare for their return to their "normal" lives. They would be paid a fair salary and provided with benefits, and possibly even housed near their respective state or national capitol. However, they would/should not receive lifetime benefits, and could be removed if it were found that they had accepted future employment or compensation in return for voting a certain way. Of course, many other details would need to be worked out, but I strongly feel Sortition is better than what we have right now.
And the next Prime Minister of Canada is: Keanu Reeves
election by jury is better, but he's generally correct.
What would disqualify one from being selected? How long would those selected be in power?
Federal Representatives already have to meet a certain set of qualifications for becoming a Member of Congress. There would be No reason to alter those Qualifications in a Sortition Government. If you're Not a US citizen you still wouldn't be able to serve. A Sortition Representative would serve for One 8 year term with No possibility of Recall. However a Sortition Representative could be removed from office for breaking the Law and being convicted of a crime.
What would incentivise representatives to do a good job if not the desire to be re-elected? What would prevent inexperienced representatives, acting on their own outside of a party system, from being overly influenced by lobbyists? How would you know if representatives were doing a good job? How would you influence them to take constituents views into account?
They can surely refuse the well paid post and leave it to the similar next in line one... a politician is a pest since they clog the long term common good with the decisions powered by undeclared perks ( nepotism).
There is so much energy lost in pre election politics (networking, lobbying, campaigning, votes buying, trying to establish the pecking order etc) that it would be a crazy sunken cost to exercise just the logic for common good.
Doing good job control = one only knows from the hindsight and there is empirical evidence that even experts (esp when they compete)err more than random crowd.
Constituents views are easily put into account when there is a feedback system using Internet
If you make the terms really short then they'll be incentivised to do a good job because they themselves will then face the consequences of their votes/actions.
Their views will likely reflect those of the constituents anyway, just because of the laws of probability. If we say for instance 45% of people consider themselves liberals, 35% consider themselves conservatives and the remaining 20% consider themselves moderates, then as long as the lottery is fair then we will most likely see that ratio in the parliament/congress/whatever.
"What would incentivise representatives to do a good job if not the desire to be re-elected?"
The fact that the chosen representatives will have to live with their decisions and deal with the consequences, whatever they may be. I'd really want to do a good job if the fate of my country depended on it. The desire to be re-elected doesn't incentivize politicians to do a good job, it incentivizes them to do what gets them re-elected. Those are not the same thing.
" What would prevent inexperienced representatives, acting on their own outside of a party system, from being overly influenced by lobbyists?"
Lobbying should be illegal, even in our current system. Preventing outside influence by money will be difficult but a solution is possible. Certainly more possible than in the current system.
"How would you know if representatives were doing a good job?"
Well, you'll have to have some degree of faith. How do we know that elected representatives do a good job? We don't. Many don't think they're doing a good job but have no vote on the matter. We can measure it based on economic growth, political satisfaction, and quality of life.
Pay them a couple million salary to lessen the possibility of corruption.
I agree.
Ironic to see where this speech was held 6 years ago. To do the same today - no chance.
Here in the US, sortition would become a special interests paradise. Think.of it. Each person.picked would hold their post for just a very brief length of time. Then, they would have to rejoin the work force. I first saw this happen at a place I worked at. It had a union, but the company always got the better end of the deal with contracts. A major reason for this was that the company would offer the steward and even some committee members management positions, after the new contract started.
These management positions paid considerably more than the working ones.
I can imagine the same problem with this proposed system.
Like cops and lawyers, we need politicians. We just need to find a way to make them more loyal to those they are supposed t represent than they are to those who pay their election campaign bills. This, in my opinion, is why the present system doesn't work.
"We just need to find a way to make them more loyal to those they are supposed t[o] represent." How do we do this? This has been a problem for decades, if not centuries. We need something radically different that still aligns with the fundamental ideas of democracy. If these randomly selected representatives know that they cannot be "reselected," and that they would be prohibited by statute to taking specific employment in exchange for voting a certain way, then we eliminate many of the problems we find with career politicians.
The Lottery system would work a lot better than the political system that we have in the United States of America and Canada..
For one it forces political competence on the population. I would add an amendment to the system which would allow for people to volunteer which would basically mean increase the amount of times that your name pops up for potential to pick for jury service.
And for certain individuals to remove themselves from jury service for a brief period of time.
I think one thing that we should do to make the system really work is to have a jury system replace the legislative and the executive but the maintained Department positions as elected positions where basically in order for someone to become a sheriff or a judge or head of sanitation they would have to present themselves amongst a set of other candidates to a jury of their peers and basically beg to hold the job for a year or two depending on the term of service.
Testing person who didn't have to present themselves to a new jury the next year against Duke candidates and potentially keep the job based off of their actions or lose it for the potential of a new coming individual.
It would allow for us to have the positions that actually help meaningful power to departments subject to meaningful scrutiny I mean if any jury of your peers if any individual within your Society has the potential to one day destroy your political career and remove you from office it changes the way that you view both your political office and your fellow citizens.
But the system as it stands now really is a system of some elections which are going to inevitably favor the rich and aristocratic and appointments which favor cronyism and nepotism on the national level.
I mean I don't know if you've ever looked up how often the person that who is chosen for education is related to a member of the staff of the presidential campaign it's disheartening in most countries including the United States of America.
@@valer119
I see you put a good deal of thought into this. But I have to admit that I don't quite understand your proposed system.
What I do get is that, for those on "the jury", and for those elected, extreme job insecurity becomes the order of the day.
I suppose that to serve on any of these bodies, one must give up one's day job.
Some can afford to do this far more than others. In some parts of the old south, government positions were unpaid. So guess who filled them? Members of the aristocracy, of course--the only ones who could afford to.
Sortition in my opinion offers the same devil's bargain. You can serve, but you better have a plan for when your term runs out. Then you will be desperately seeking new employment. This is where the corruption will come in.
Now, the idea that a jury will do the actual electing of officials does have some appeal to me. This way, the uninformed do not compete with the informed, when filling these positions. This would likely make elections less expensive. And that would be a real good thing.
But, in my view, the reason elections are expensive right now is because huge campaign funding advantages can be easily purchased by anyone who has the means.
Recently, The Republican Party got a huge influx of campaign cash. They got $1,600 million from a singular source. This all but guarantees corruption.
Now, suppose they had to share this cash with their most likely opponents.
Then, what ever advantage they had would be suddenly diluted. This would almost certainly discourage other huge contributions, because it would destroy the purpose of such contributions.
Turns out to be a bit of irony that this talk on democracy was given in Hungary. Sad changes in that country.
I love the concept, but we need to step up, grow up ourselves and stop looking for saviours and messiahs. It's important that we stop depicting politicians as 'devils' and realise that WE have created them. Are we ready to be tough with ourselves?
Daz, that is why we need to change the system. This is us as a species growing up and taking responsibility. Look at capitalism, what is that really based on? Mainly our "Neaderthal" urge to be on top and survive and thrive? Greed and Gluttony is just that. We are different, we have a brain and hopefully a soul as many Christians would like to say. What we need to do is to be constantly evolving and hopefully for the better or we will just annihilate ourselves.
Umm..Transforming to a Sortition Government is being tough on ourselves. We want a Sortition Government so we can resist the Temptation of voting for Politically motivated Representatives who Campaign on telling us we can have everything we want, and we don't have to pay for it. Hence we end up with a 30 trillion dollar National Debt. My concern is that people like you will believe that a Sortition Government is being TOO TOUGH on ourselves. LOL!
First we get a cowboy actor then a reality TV host - they both failed miserably.
Curious, what does this have to do with Sortition?
Wait. He cites the “wisdom of crowds?” Is this something like “mob mentality?” I like the idea of sortition but I don’t think this guy is really getting it. I don’t believe putting the mob in power which is what true democracy is, is the answer. I like the idea of a very short (2years) Single terms for all politicians. That’s enough time to contribute to society and then go back to your regular profession, which is what our founding fathers had in mind. Instead, we have an oligarchy of career politicians doing each other favors, colluding with big business in true fascism. Not a democracy. Not a republic which is what our government was actually created as. Ask Benjamin Franklin. this is what he literally said to a woman who asked him what kind of government we would have.
This video is being so heavily put down by the CZcams algorithm its crazy, Sortition may not be a solution to all our problems but it is a solution to many problems and may possibly make life just much better in a democratic system.
Humans can never solve this problem as it is a systemic problem and a matter of "power of intelligence".
Do not misconstrue democracy with democratic values. The values are important: but true democracy is impossible because it is not feasible for any one human to understand the complexity of the world, and increasingly will fail to do so with an ever changing technological world with increasing population size.
The only way out is a vastly superior intelligence devoid of human (subconscious) traits and psychological pitfalls.
The decisions need to be made by an entity that is not hindered by time and has no vested interest and does not have any bias.
Possible: probably not. Any intelligence vast enough will eliminate all inefficient elements.
Another option is decentralized block-chain like intelligence, like the Borg, which represents true democratic values by connecting all intelligences.
Look at any major City, responsibility is something sorely lacking. Who gave this guy a TEDtalk?
This talk makes you wonder wheter when his bathrooom breaks he will open his contact list and call someone at random or search for a plumber
Socialism and sortition
Do we really want our leaders to be some random people elections are more democratic because the rulers are skilled statesmen governing by popular consent not some random people that may even have far left or fascist views . With election we are informed on the type of people governing us
I believe you misunderstood some points here. Those people will only be representitives but not leaders in a traditioinal sense.
@@jinghuang7985 yah but they'll still be lawmakers and can use emotions over rationality and be easily influenced you need to be skilled to make laws and deliberate
I support a Sortition Government, but I actually agree with you. So here's what I would do to address our concerns. I would randomly select 25 Sortition Candidates. I would then produce a Blind unscripted 10 minute video interview of all 25 Sortition Candidates. Then I would continuously play those 25 interviews on a loop on community Television and the internet for 1 month, during which time those Sortition Candidates would be sequestered like a Juror. During that month I would invite the people in their district to vote for the Sortition Candidate of their choosing.
Sorry Brett,
But your interpretation of this data is largely wrong due to one simple reason - you seem very disconnected with the true history of "the human-condition!" PLEASE, don't assume that you know what I agree or disagree with you about until you ask me!!!
DO NOT fatten your own flawed anthropocentric worldview (incorporating human-chauvinism) with any data that you can find - rather, keep searching for something that surprises you!
Can I help you acquire the schemas so as to grasp what my own interpretations of the same knowledge and observations are?!?
Correct, choosing people in the audience to give the last TED Talk of the night might end-up being the best one!?!
By the way, I also think that sortition would be better - but only if people-primates could meet certain basic minimal standards in "human-thinking-tools." Sadly, the truth about "the human-condition" is that the tipping-points for this have already past! :(
What has caused this devolution of the people-primates' abilities to use the higher functions of their brains as a collective has NOT left the elites (e.g., politicians, professors, etc.) immune to it!
Thank you,
The Unknown Professor-Marty.
“Social Justice activist”, NOPE.
would you like to elaborate such that I could understand what you said?
Sortition is a big step away from democracy, as soon as you focus on the fact, that democracy requires self-determination of the people. There is a significant reduction of conscious choice and self-determination with sortition. The whole questions starts by the premises: That politicians and parties are in essence a bad thing! In reality, the only thing we can say is, that they work against us. But that could be due to "possibilities or holes" we have in our version of democracy, where we were unable to detect any failed or kidnapped element. In other words: our negative impression of representative democracy could just be caused by the awareness that it is not democracy at all, and it could just mean that we are unable to detect, why it is not democracy.
"Sortition is a big step away from democracy...."
What makes you say that?
Sortition is inherently more democratic than elections.
Democracy isn't self-determination by the people nor is it self rule. It is rule by the people. But people don't have time to do that. So they delegate it to the government. A sortitioned assembly would be better for this purpose than an elected legislature as a sortitioned assembly will be made up of members who are acutely aware of the ills and problems of society and will be able to actually have time to address those issues.
Democracy is founded on the idea that people are smart enough to govern. But in society today people don't have the time to do that. A sortitioned assembly would be a microcosm of the people and thus will be composed of everyday people. If the underlying assumption about democracy is true, they should be capable enough to govern, and since they'll be everyday citizens they'll think twice about things. The idea is that since it's a random sample it can be by definition representative once it is big enough - literally almost any and every kind of person will be represented. Most of them will be normal people. People who will have to go back to their lives once their term is up. Thus they will have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Think about it: everyday citizens will know where their tax dollars go and actually have the ability to change it.
It's not guaranteed to work or be better, but it can be better. And is more democratic by its nature.
Successfully campaigning for a political office requires the combined and undemocratic centralized power of political parties and mass media. The amount of corruption that can be eliminated by sortition is staggering. Sortition only requires the willingness of average citizens to care about the commonwealth and that is the core of democracy.
What's going unnoticed, is that the two successful Political Parties have been Captured by Reelection Consultant's. So the only campaign ideas that get promoted are those campaign ideas that will increase the chances of reelection for their Representative Clients. And the one Political Consultant campaign Theme that both Parties have adopted, is the message that Government can give us everything we want, and we don't have to pay for it. Hence we get a 30 trillion dollar National Debt. If you're a Sortition Representative, you don't have to take that particular reelection campaign Theme into consideration because you're not getting reelected.
On the Contrary. A Sortition Government would resolve every one of those concerns.