On Mon, 24 Aug 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Ya gotta wonder if a Congress chosen like this would end up being all
> that different from the elected kind. Wouldn't institutional structures
> and the power of money push the random members to behave more or less
> like the present lot?
If the worst case is that it would be the same, wouldn't that make it an improvement on cost and cosmetic grounds? :-)
The argument that money would matter less would be because there'd be no re-election.
I think the strong version of the argument is Roberto Michel's old Iron Law of Oligarchy, that in a complex society, if the representatives are short term, they never develop expertise, so the permanent government staff ends up with most of the power. And they'd be colonized by industry.
But of course, that's true now too; a third of all government staff end up working for lobbying firms, and most of the others seem outsourced.
The hope would be that in a sortition government, expertise would be more widely consulted because it wouldn't be pay to play. The health care debate is a perfect example. They give tons of money to everybody. Their real influence is not that they'd cut off the money if you ran against them. It's that when someone gives you a lot of money, you are obligated to give them a very respectful hearing. And if their lobbyists are good, which they are, they'll fill your head with their point of view, and you won't really have time on your schedule for do-gooders who don't donate because between fundraising and legislating there's only so much time in the day. But if it wasn't pay to play, and you were a newbie who wanted to get up to speed on an issue, you might actually do it like a normal person: google it, and then ask the people in you thought were smart.
And then, maybe, the representives who had put the most thought into it would predominate, and often happens on jury duty.
Michael the devil's advocate