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Sortition has a lot going for it and certainly encourages participation far beyond our current democratic engagement. I'd like to see it start to appear on a small scale, beyond Juries, in modern democratic states.

There's an interesting EconTalk discussing the Ancient Greek economy where Russ Roberts asks his guest: "We certainly romanticize Greece as this great democracy; but it wasn't much like the United States, tell us about it"

But after Josiah Ober describes Athenian democracy it ends up sounding like what we call modern democracy is a very poor imitation.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/08/ober_on_the_anc.htm...