[specialist]

[Late to the party, sorry.]

Anyone curious about modern sortition:

Citizen juries are chosen by lottery. They review policy and make recommendations. Non binding, but impactful.

https://healthydemocracy.org

https://xraypod.com/show/democracy-nerd/exporting-oregon-sty...

--

IMHO:

Treat representation and policy making as distinct and separate activities.

I'm very political. Over time, I've become increasingly disinterested in electoral politics and campaigns. At best, it's tangentially related to policy work. Less so over time.

The real power these days lies with interest groups and lobbyists. Both on the left and right.

There are some notable exceptions, where electeds are effective advocates of change, but they're rare. Most are just doing triage.

And what outsiders see as partisanship is just different teams funded by different coalitions of interest groups.

[florencebuzz]

I highly recommend a short book, Hatred of Democracy by Jacques Ranciere.

[0x445442]

I haven't read that reference but I have read some stuff by Hans Hoppe and he raises some very interesting points on the subject.

One of the more interesting points he brings up is that Democracy was not really looked on favorably by serious thinkers throughout history. He also asserts that because, it's implementation coincided with the great leaps forward in science, technology and industrialization, the champions of Democracy are making the classic correlation vs. causation error.

[specialist]

Even Cornel West parrots Athenian era warnings about majoritarian tyranny, mob rule, etc.

I have near religious faith in democracy. I'm so out of step. I don't know why.

My enthusiasm for democracy originated in my workplace experiments. Ideas gleaned from Peter Drucker, Deming, and probably some others. I just needed an efficient, effective way to get my coworkers to step up and contribute their knowledge and expertise.

I really had no stake in the outcomes.

At the time, my role was often called "facilitator", which I've never liked. I now prefer Michael Lewis inspired label of "referee".

Any way. Democracy in the workplace was like magic. Consensus forming just happened. It took a while to build the trust. My job was mostly to ensure the group honored and delivered on its own decisions. I squashed snipers and saboteurs. It made me very unpopular. Until I was tasked with resurrecting the next zombie project. My team mates missed me after I was gone, belatedly realized that I had empowered them.

I think about how to replicate that success all the time. Still no clue.

Edit: Just pulled up his wiki. Hoppe wrote a book called Democracy: The God That Failed. Explains your down vote. Haha. No worries. The world needs its Eeyores (Austrian flavored libertarians). Helps keep us humanists on mission.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Democracy works when you have an educated and informed group trying to make rational choices in a limited context.

It falls apart as soon as you have huge disparities in privilege, wealth, and education in a nation state - manipulated by industrial narrative management techniques engineered by small privileged castes fighting hard to keep and enhance their caste privileges at the expense of everyone else.

They're not comparable situations. There is no sense in which democracy can ever be a solution in the latter, because it doesn't exist in the first place.

You need relative equality of power between participants and groups for democracy to be viable, and as soon as that disappears - it's gone.

[specialist]

Thanks. Been chewing on how to respond.

I still buy into the rational choice theories. Despite the growing evidence to the contrary. Democracy for Realists, folk theory of democracy, and all that.

As I said upthread, I focus on process and feedback loops. Blame my tour of duty as a SQA manager.

I empowered my teams thru delegation. They owned the product. Not me. It was their success. Not mine.

I built trust over time by honoring their decisions. And probably more importantly, fending off attacks on their efforts. Like the helpful SVP PHB giving "suggestions" and shaking the ant farm.

I'm currently totally on board with Stacy Abrams' view of democracy. People buy-in when they see their actions have impact, consequences. They check out when they're ignored.

My own former teammates told me as much. Next manager comes in, asks for input, does their own thing. Completely alienated the team. They never leaned in again.

It takes time, real effort, commitment. Trust is so hard to earn, so easily lost.

YMMV.

[throw0101a]

> Democracy works when you have an educated and informed group trying to make rational choices in a limited context.

Madison:

> Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

* 20 June 1788, Papers 11:163

> It falls apart as soon as you have huge disparities in privilege, wealth, and education in a nation state

I'm not sure that inequality is any worse now than it was, say, during the Gilded Age. Certainly more people have the vote now than ever in the past (especially because of the Civil Rights Act, which the USSC conveniently neutered a few years back).

[0x445442]

Not sure about your down vote reference. I didn't down vote you.

[specialist]

Thanks. I'll try to read that. Skimming his wiki and some of the book reviews, I already know it'll challenge me.

My metaphor for democracy is social cognition. It's just a form of group decision making, collective action. Like an optimization algorithm. So I tend to focus on process and feedback loops.

I really struggle with Marxist frames, as I understand them. Like the phrase "democracy is a releveling of society" and "defense of the public sphere". I'm sure that I'll learn from his pushback against the enemies of civil society. Like Hoppe cited by 0xDEADBABE. What polite company now calls "neoreactionaries", but I generally use much more pointed pejoratives.

Again, thank you.

[supportlocal4h]

This is not new. In fact, it was assumed in the construction of the U.S. constitution.