links:
- https://www.fairvote.ca/open-list-proportional-representation/
- https://www.fairvote.ca/stv/
- https://www.fairvote.ca/mixed-member-proportional/
- Regional Proportional Representation
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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I like the sound of it, but I worry that instead of producing the Cincinnatus-types, we'll produce an electorate that is mostly comprised of political hacks who are too entrenched in their views to be able to effectively compromise, because all of the apathetic and apolitical people wouldn't have the will or the desire to take such a role on. It would require a massive cultural shift to encourage people to participate in the system willingly - "Doing your civic duty" is often said about voting, but so few people actually follow through with it because there is friction involved.
Also, special interests might not be able to bribe future politicians, but there's nothing stopping one who takes the job from also getting handed a bunch of "favors" and "gifts" to influence their thinking when voting. Not to defend plutocracies, but I feel like it's a lot harder to bribe a rich politician than it is to bribe one who is working or middle class - if anything, someone who is poor would be more susceptible to corruption, because even a "small" kickback from some corporation looking to get a politician on their side could be a life-changing one for them, one that they could not afford to say "no" to.
But man, wouldn't it be cool to see what society would look like when any one of us could be called up to make decisions for the entire nation? With some effective guardrails and a strong constitution, I could see it being one of the best forms of representation.
There are indeed ways to design it poorly; I'll just point again to juries to say that we know how to do it competently. I'll rephrase the objections in terms of juries (but please note the quotes are from a hyperbolic strawman, and not literally what you said. I hope my replies to the strawman are still useful).
"People who don't care about the particular law/case will refuse to join a jury and they'll all get stuck in endless deliberation" - being on the jury is not always optional! While there are strategies to avoid being a juror, the large majority of folks don't use them. People get real nervous about perjury. Also, we have several levers of control here. Congress salaries+benefits aren't bad, getting an important position might be akin to winning a lottery. Many folks skip voting day because they feel uninformed or are required to work, but we educate jurists and require companies to give time off for their service. Finally, if a jury is stuck we call a new one; by random draw we'll eventually get a lot of all people from one side or the other. Gridlock is only ever stochastic.
"People could bribe the juries for the outcomes they want!" - extremely risky, the state knows who is on the jury at the same time as everyone else, predicting it ahead of time is impossible, and we strongly regulate the interactions of juries + invested parties once they're chosen. Note that we can assign political decision bodies to fairly narrow issues, so managing this at scale isn't so difficult.
The laws are currently written by lawyers for bankers
Changing to a system where laws are written by actual humans instead of demonoid homunculi will alleviate a lot of the pain revolving around the apathy and complexity pain points.
I worry that a lot of it comes from scale. It's expensive/tricky to scale up human flexability; I think I've seen well meaning people design systems they intended to be human, and got much worse results than the lawyers and bankers. There's some skill here.
Start low. Baloon tests cities, work out the kinks, increase the scope, etc. How we do pretty much anything.
Which systems are you referring to?
Administration in non-profits and schools mostly.
Administration has little to do with democracy and everything to do with capitalism.
They have been carving out education dollars to add more administrators over the last 30 years,leading to budgets strained for actual teaching while increasing the amount of bureaucracy.
All this just to ensure the populace doesn't get too smart and start thinking of implementing new systems like sortition and ranked choice.
Administrative costs are high in health care and education (which are not really the US federal government), but I can't find data on this for the labor costs to administrative professionals in government. Source?
Labor costs are high for the federal government, but I thought a lot of that was pensions + regular raises. I don't think these things should be attributed to capitalism run amok.
Virtually every poll shows that around 1/4 to 1/3 of the population are Nazis, so it's only a matter of time before one of them gets picked
Just logging that this doesn't match any data I've seen, unless you take Nazi to be an obscenely broad tent. Sources + definitions required.
Exhibit 1 is Trump's approval rating, currently 36%
But generally most political opinion polls (at least in the US and other western countries) show around 1/3 of responses constantly support literal fascist ideology. It's a block of voters that will not change their minds for anything.