[loup-vaillant]

Okay, then, how effective is the high end? I expect not very.

And more importantly, are elections the best we can do? Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

No way. There's got to be a better system.

[dragonwriter]

> And more importantly, are elections the best we can do?

I would say elections are almost certainly an essential element of the best we can do; elections alone aren't a complete system of government.

> Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

Elections don't imply that. It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

[loup-vaillant]

> It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

A bit of both. Elected officials have way too much power, and not enough ways to control them. Look for instance what it takes to revoke someone. But the way election themselves work suck too: by nature, elections will mostly select a narrow elite, which right now is mostly hereditary. And when we vote, we can hardly judge the wannabe official on his discourse: many are lying to gain the favour of the people.

If you get only one thing, get this: policy making shouldn't be in the hands of a few policy makers. The people should vote their own laws directly. The people should even write their laws directly, though I don't know how to do that technically (with computers networked together, we should find a way).

[dragonwriter]

> A bit of both. Elected officials have way too much power, and not enough ways to control them. Look for instance what it takes to revoke someone.

Recall procedures (and whether they exist at all) vary considerably. There are lots of means of control available with elections -- the particular means implemented in particular places vary.

> But the way election themselves work suck too: by nature, elections will mostly select a narrow elite.

That is not true at all. Whether that is true depends both on the form of elections, the rules of eligibility for election, and what people are being elected to.

In a population of the same size, elections by STV in 5 member districts for a 2,000 member national legislature from which a government is formed by typical parliamentary-government rules are different than election of a strong President indirectly by elections of electors in multimember districts apportioned disproportionately to population by winner-take-all plurality who then elect the President by majority election where a failed majority goes to a different body to resolve coupled with election of a bicameral legislature by FPTP elections in single-member districts, where the house which has both legislative and quasi-executive functions isn't apportioned by population.

> which right now is mostly hereditary

Its clearly (and trivially) possible to avoid this in an electoral system itself (though, really, I don't think elections are the source of the problem, the problem is that the economic system favors hereditary wealth. And this has been generally true throughout all of history, even without elections, so blaming elections for it is way off point.)

> And when we vote, we can hardly judge the wannabe official on his discourse: many are lying to gain the favour of the people.

Its hardly as if discourse is the only thing available to judge by.

> If you get only one thing, get this: policy making shouldn't be in the hands of a few policy makers. The people should vote their own laws directly.

That still involves elections. And, more importantly, why do you think that people who can't successfully educate themselves sufficiently to elect good candidates every few years will do any better when they are called on to vote on every law?

And, even if the legislative function was in an assembly of the whole population this way, it wouldn't eliminate the need for executive and judicial officers, who still need to be selected somehow. Without elections, how do you propose we do that? Or do you imagine that the laws the people pass will magically implement and enforce themselves?

More importantly, I don't see how that does anything to address the problem of a hereditary elite exercising the most influence and power -- after all, in the present world, they do that through economic power and control of the means of communication; to the extent that there are hereditary electoral political dynasties, that's a symptom of the problem, not a root cause.

[loup-vaillant]

If the problem is that hereditary wealth leads to hereditary elections, and I tend to agree, then we have a sufficient condition for plutocracy.

Elections could work better, but not much better. Your 2000 member national legislature will still be mostly made up of professional politicians. A given politician will still be way closer to another politician (even from an opposing party), than the people. A bit like 2 NBA players are closer to each other than they are to their respective fans.

Referendums are not elections. Citizens will do better on laws than they do on people, if the laws affect them directly. And it's not only laws. Some things are way more important than laws: budget policies, whether to build a hospital there, destroy a school here… More generally, if you need >110 IQ to understand a law, then there is a problem with the law itself. Like computer code, laws should be readable.

Some roles do need individuals in charge. How to select them? By random trial of course. Also make sure they are double and triple checked before, during, and after their mandate. The Athenians had such mechanisms that we can emulate. Here is an example: if the sheriff, randomly selected for a year, is mean to people, someone he has been mean to may well be sheriff later. That's a rather weak control mechanism, but you get the idea.

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Anyway, my central point isn't about elections. My central point is that people who are used to rule wrote the constitution themselves. People of power wrote the rules of power. Such a conflict of interest is unacceptable and can only lead to a broken system. The constitution therefore needs a complete rewrite, which probably means gathering a constituent assembly.

But.

Who do you think should be in this assembly? Certainly not people of power, or we will have the conflict of interest all over again. I'm not against elections as a mechanism, but do you see a way to have elections which does not select people who are used to rule?