Who gets to say who’s qualified? While I appreciate experts, any filter you add to democracy is dangerous. I think experts should serve a large council of randomly selected citizens and people who were ranked higher than a lottery option in a ranked voting system. That allows us to have career politicians, but also prevents them from entrenching themselves as the “lesser evil”.
I don’t think politician should be a career… There’s an old saying i’ve never much agreed with “those who can’t do teach.” I think that a more accurate saying would be “those who can’t do go into politics.”
I think career politicians help prevent administrators from taking too much power, and there’s always another level of administrators waiting in the wings with their own self interests. While I agree that there are very few politicians I’d trust with power, having a few who know how things work could prevent a lot of problems. Plus, I strongly suspect that large chunks of the population will rank lottery at the top out of sheer principle, so it’s not just that 50% of the population views these politicians favorably, but that 50% actually see them as good i.e. if 30% puts lottery top out of principle, then 50/70 = 71% of the remaining population to think these career politicians are actually better than a lottery. The more people who are convinced of the lottery being superior, the higher the bar is for career politicians.
Also, this whole transition thing can’t be over stated. We really have to pick our battles to make it happen, and telling politicians that it won’t have much effect because they’ll just advertise themselves and voters won’t even notice the difference is a good transitory narrative that can easily and permanently be undermined after one pro-lottery round of advertising.
Who gets to say who’s qualified? While I appreciate experts, any filter you add to democracy is dangerous. I think experts should serve a large council of randomly selected citizens and people who were ranked higher than a lottery option in a ranked voting system. That allows us to have career politicians, but also prevents them from entrenching themselves as the “lesser evil”.
I don’t think politician should be a career… There’s an old saying i’ve never much agreed with “those who can’t do teach.” I think that a more accurate saying would be “those who can’t do go into politics.”
I think career politicians help prevent administrators from taking too much power, and there’s always another level of administrators waiting in the wings with their own self interests. While I agree that there are very few politicians I’d trust with power, having a few who know how things work could prevent a lot of problems. Plus, I strongly suspect that large chunks of the population will rank lottery at the top out of sheer principle, so it’s not just that 50% of the population views these politicians favorably, but that 50% actually see them as good i.e. if 30% puts lottery top out of principle, then 50/70 = 71% of the remaining population to think these career politicians are actually better than a lottery. The more people who are convinced of the lottery being superior, the higher the bar is for career politicians.
Also, this whole transition thing can’t be over stated. We really have to pick our battles to make it happen, and telling politicians that it won’t have much effect because they’ll just advertise themselves and voters won’t even notice the difference is a good transitory narrative that can easily and permanently be undermined after one pro-lottery round of advertising.