I don’t know that Citizen Assemblies work because only those without jobs, families, or hobbies stay engaged past general elections and surely they don’t accurately represent the masses. They certainly weren’t elected to represent us.
Valid point, but I think it's a starting point rather than a breaking point. How can we lower the barriers? Technology is part of the answer, allowing people to participate remotely and making it trivially easy to vote. Dator explicitly points to a post-work world as one that would free time up for this, and labor force participation rates have been dropping over the past two decades (though I think it simplifies the sortition logistics even more). What else can we do? What do you think about delegating your vote to someone who does care? If the people were actually in charge and knew nobody would save them, would they care more? Maybe!
Anyway, you may very well be right that it would be too difficult to work. But I want to try it! We know the flaws of the current system well, and we could always go back to it (this could even be part of the plan, that of 70% of people are currently thumbs up on the "abort mission" button you organize elections and go back to the prior system). Then we would know the dysfunctions of such a system in a lived way.
I don’t know that Citizen Assemblies work because only those without jobs, families, or hobbies stay engaged past general elections and surely they don’t accurately represent the masses. They certainly weren’t elected to represent us.
Valid point, but I think it's a starting point rather than a breaking point. How can we lower the barriers? Technology is part of the answer, allowing people to participate remotely and making it trivially easy to vote. Dator explicitly points to a post-work world as one that would free time up for this, and labor force participation rates have been dropping over the past two decades (though I think it simplifies the sortition logistics even more). What else can we do? What do you think about delegating your vote to someone who does care? If the people were actually in charge and knew nobody would save them, would they care more? Maybe!
Anyway, you may very well be right that it would be too difficult to work. But I want to try it! We know the flaws of the current system well, and we could always go back to it (this could even be part of the plan, that of 70% of people are currently thumbs up on the "abort mission" button you organize elections and go back to the prior system). Then we would know the dysfunctions of such a system in a lived way.