zlacker

>>gruseo+(OP)
I think we have seen for ourselves how dangerous democracies can be when mixed with fears.

Alas, people will continue to argues that democracy is the best form of government despite its various flaws.

>>kiba+R6
as opposed to what? Every time I try to come up with an answer for that question I get stuck at 'dictatorship headed by the fairest and wisest person I know.' It's probably just a coincidence, but that person usually turns out to be me :)

What's your alternative good?

>>anigbr+I9
Personally, I think random selection would produce a better result than the system we currently have. Select the legislature by lottery. Pick N (where N is some fixed integer designated by law for a each political office) candidates for each office by a random lottery, selected from a pool of everyone who has ever served jury duty. Re-roll for anyone who declines to serve or is currently incarcerated, in a coma, etc. (Obviously, the particulars of the exclusion rules have to be made very explicit so that nobody can exert undue influence by arbitrarily disqualifying people they don't like.) Give each candidate a fixed amount of government funding for their campaign. Nobody is allowed to solicit campaign contributions of any kind or permitted to spend their own money, so everyone is on an even playing field. The quantity of funding depends solely on the particular office that the person is running for. You don't get to choose what office to run for; there is a lottery for each individual office. If you are selected as a candidate for an office by the lottery, you are ineligible for other lotteries for that election year. The candidates run their campaigns. The voters pick the winner for each office by condorcet voting.

>>blahbl+te
What would stop special interests from buying a new candidate every cycle? They help the candidate get elected, the candidate crafts legislation to the special interests' benefit, then the special interest hires them as a lobbyist when their term is over.

>>bff+ak
This already happens under the current system. It's not a new problem specific to the Jury Duty Model of Representative Democracy. The solution is to have strong ethics rules to prevent it from happening. You prohibit ex-legislators from working as lobbyists for a lengthy period of time after their term of service. You make a rule, similar to the rules in place regarding reserve military service or FMLA, that guarantees that the person's old job is still there for them after they finish their term of service in the legislature. You treat a promising a job or material wealth to a candidate or sitting legislator in exchange for their vote as a crime and prosecute lobbyists for doing it.

In one way, the system I've proposed has an inherent protection against this problem that our current system doesn't have. Specifically, because all candidates are chosen by random lottery, an incumbent cannot run for a second term except in the exceedingly rare circumstance that they are chosen twice in a row by the lottery. Therefore, the incumbent has no incentive to try to please any third party that helped them get elected in order to retain their support for a re-election campaign.