A set of more off-the-wall alternatives to representative democracy, of which I liked 'demarchy' best: "a randomly selected group of citizens would debate and decide on policy. Randomly selected groups would also run the business of government - looking after schools, the health service, transport etc - on a local level, although these groups would be selected from volunteers with expertise in their particular area. You would be expected to serve on a 'citizens jury' for a set time every few years. FOR: The jury system has worked for hundreds of years in criminal cases. AGAINST: Things might get a bit too random."
If the argument of The wisdom of Crowds is to be believed, this could actually be a pretty good system. I doubt it would be random though; the problem would be, in reality, that politically naive people would be lobbied until their heads hurt and so their ability to perform within the parameters of the wisdom of crowds would be severely curtailed. The reality is also that most people don't have the kind of heads for detial than some legislative debate needs -mind you; most MP's don't either except when it's their hobby horse ....
BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Do we really need an election?:
1 comment:
There's a lot of people saying why they won't be voting at Not Apathetic. A lot of the reasons are also general critiques of why the system doesn't work - such as mine
Post a Comment