I am an advocate of democracy through sortition. I am also employed as a structural dynamic finite element analyst.
John Huang
Karma: 30
I take the perspective that the United States is just tending towards the more typical behavior of presidential electoral systems. America will start acting more and more like Latin American presidential regimes, because the of the deadlock that presidential systems create. The checks and balances aren’t protecting us. Instead, the checks and balances are what drive the public to elect “strongmen” who can “get things done”—often through illegal and unconstitutional measures.
Trump for example is celebrated for “getting things done”—things that are often illegal and unconstitutional. That’s the selling point. Therefore I’m not the only one who has suggested that presidential regimes are unstable. Yet as we look across the world, parliamentary systems also have their own problems with authoritarian takeovers.
I write about what I think the solution is here.
In short, I think we can create a smarter democracy using a system called “sortition”. Please take a read of the article I linked for more information.
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Even if sortition might be an interesting policy to you, it’s not particularly clear if implementation is politically feasible. The inertia of the US political system is so vast it’s hard for any money to budge it. Any financial investment will yield highly nonlinear results. Policy might not change for years, or decades, until suddenly one day policy changes. Yet just because the response to investment is extremely nonlinear doesn’t therefore mean it’s unwise to invest. (There’s also the question if America is the wisest place to invest in. Pro-sortition movements also exist in Europe. Could pro-sortition movements be launched more easily in African and South America?)
In terms of what you can impact in terms of an idea such as sortition, your investment can be used to drive “public awareness” and “lobbying”. Money can be used to persuade local governments to adopt pro-sortition policies. Or money could be spent raising public awareness of sortition—public awareness that might lead to movement growth.
Hi Abraham, I have a suggestion on how to improve your democratic process if your membership continues to grow.
I’m a huge fan of lottocratic processes (ie sortition) to make informed and smarter democratic decisions than mere voting. The rationale of lottocratic democracy is simple. Imagine how insane it would be that instead of using juries to decide court cases, we decided innocence or guilt based on voting. What jury duty does is facilitate democratic specialization. It allows a representative sample to perform a complex tax so that the larger whole does not have to. I write a full defense of sortition here (and full disclosure, I am a frequent advocate of the practice).
Although the process you have created is much more democratic than the typical nonprofit, you personally retain enormous powers in setting the agenda and setting the final choices that can be allocated. It is admirable that you are putting in significant work to administer the fund; however that choice is not democratic.
I suggest that the fund be administered by a small council of members (perhaps about 5 councilors) selected by lottery. One of the primary tasks of the small council is to elect an executive of the fund and review the executive’s performance. It is far more efficient to let a small council perform this task; 5 people doing a performance review is vastly more efficient than demanding 20 people (assuming 20 participants) perform a performance review.
If your fund manages to grow, I would suggest adding more and more councilors to the small council up to 25 councilors, to say manage 200 members. Eventually, I would even do away with voting all-together, and instead rely on the small council to make donation choices. With the same justifications as above, a small council would be far more efficient at the task. Moreover, councils are capable of deliberation, assigning roles/tasks, so that the council can make better informed decisions than voters.
In contrast, voters need to make tradeoffs. A voter might devote more time towards working and generating more revenue for the fund, in exchange for less informed voting on what ought to be funded. Sortition mitigates these kinds of tradeoffs by increasing decision making efficiency by several factors.
Sure, I think your proposal is a great idea.
In my opinion you’ve neglected sortition’s ability to vastly improve the capacity of citizens to make informed decisions. Improved capacity makes sortition the better way to select, and hold accountable, political leadership compared to elections.
Your calculator is honestly pretty depressing. You don’t really get any tax benefits unless you are wealthy enough to donate large sums in the ~$20,000 to $100,000 range.
Imagine the median American, about $50K income, takes the 10% rule in an act of extreme generosity and donates $5000.
His tax reduction is $241, a 3% reduction. Pretty insignificant.
At my income level of only around $100K, the optimal donation strategy would be to hold onto your money until you can eventually save to about $60K, then donate it all in a single tax year. The fact that US tax law demands you play these idiotic games makes me roll my eyes.