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Wayne Liebman's avatar

The ideas on the use of randomness and the necessity of diversity are compelling. I think they are most characteristic not of an elected democratic system, but an allotted one. Replace elected representatives with randomly chosen representatives, who bring all the diversity of their varied lived experience to the table. Democratic lottery is not as radical as it sounds. It obtains in our jury system, in the original Athenian democracy, and in hundreds of citizens' assemblies around the globe, most recently in the Fort Collins, CO assembly in the US.

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MBKA's avatar

Third generations... were you thinking about Bismarck's "The first generation creates, the second administers, the third studies art history and the fourth degenerates completely"??

On self organizing processes and decentralization. The issue with the self organization you describe here is that most people, including political theorists and most certainly most countries' citizens and politicians, are deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of ever changing equilibria of indeterminate nature. People want some certainty. Even illusory certainty.

On federalism, and small, self contained experimental spaces that are safe to fail rather than fail safe: If you compare the US and the EU, you can see the trade offs. Centralization of presidential power in a federal system rather than remaining a decentralized confederation is what gave the US its unmatched ability to project its power globally. The EU meanwhile is often derided for its lack of single voice and inability of external power projection. On the other hand, yes the EU is a much better laboratory for diverse experiments.

I see a clear trade-off here between effectiveness and adaptability. The US has had the upper hand in many ways for the last good 100 years, comparatively speaking to Europe pre-EU and EU. The US' political stability goes back even longer of course, something we can't say about the EU yet due to lack of runway. And this in spite of the US civil war. That speaks for the US model. Then again as we now see, with its political makeup, the US may have been able to "win" comparatively speaking for a long time, but when it loses it may lose as a whole and very quickly. In this particular way, the US turned out surprisingly brittle. The EU loses smaller battles constantly but is too diffuse to be attacked, lose out, or decay completely as an entity. Its constituent parts may do all these things but elsewhere, something may clear up, fix itself, innovate, or grow. Interesting times.

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