[xster]

Not commenting on this particular case, but on the general sentiment.

Aristotle did say in Politics IV that appointing public office by lottery, drawing from the real public, is more democratic (power to the people) than elections, which is an oligarchic exercise.

[ActionHank]

Makes sense.

I've always held the opinion that elected officials should have to use public health care, send their kids to public schools, and use public transport.

This would ensure that they would have to maintain these institutions and be able to face their constituents on the daily.

[psadauskas]

> A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

-- Gustavo Petro

[gsf_emergency]

Manhattan :)

[readthenotes1]

"real public" at the time excluded women, slaves, and expats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

[Insanity]

Sure but those need to be understood within context.

Obviously OP is not saying it was unilaterally better and the idea being commented on is just public lottery vs election. You can lift out that idea and apply our current understanding of “public” and the point of OP still stands.

[readthenotes1]

I don't think it does. The voting pool back then would be the modern equivalent of free landowners with citizens parents, and excluding some felons (not gonna investigate which crimes carried the death/exile penalty in Athens).

[kekpopzed]

You dismissed the criticism of your argument without comment and then repeated yourself. Thats very disingenuous and a sign of a weak argument.

[readthenotes1]

I thought perhaps hen hadn't quite digested what it would mean for only a small class of elites to be in the pool that gets picked from.

By excluding over 3/4 of the population, we would hardly get what we think of as democracy.

With those exclusions, the power of being a citizen would increase dramatically and the lottery would make it unlikely bands of eligible citizens would unite to expand the electorate but instead would seek to make membership more stringent, like DPRK's haeksim.

Choice by lottery would also fail to exclude men who have no desire or capacity to do whatever job it is they pulled. I do not know what they did in ancient Greece but in modern times that would lead to a bureaucratic class with the leader being only a figurehead at their mercy--and at times that would be very good. But the bureaucrats class would not be the voice of the people, would not be democratic.

I felt this was obvious from the exclusions and so didn't see the need to elaborate.

[3hoss]

how, exactly, is that relevant here?

[ActionHank]

Because the US democratically elected a would-be dictator who is now building out his oligarchy.

[nico]

> building out

More like consolidating and cementing. It had already been built out