Best products from r/democracy

Good question. America Speaks is still around. It is part of the 'public engagement' movement which can also be called 'deliberative democracy.' There's a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Do-Yourself-Democracy-Engagement-Industry/dp/0199987262 . But all you really need to do is read the conclusion: it doesn't have any lasting effect after the organizers leave town. IMHO, this is because it doesn't provide people with any real sense of power, it only recruits a small percentage of the population, and it requires too much time and energy from each individual to be sustainable.

Nope. Just a scientifically literate free thinker, if you really need a label. I am very much a proponent of democracy, though, since it is probably our ancestral condition.

Karl Popper quite convincingly traces modern day fascism to Plato and his ideal city, in The Open Society and its enemies.

From Popper:

I believe that practically all the elements of Plato's political programme can be derived from these demands. They are, in turn based upon his historicism; and they have to be combined with his sociological doctrines concerning the conditions for the stability of class rule. The principal elements I have in mind are:

(A) The strict division of the classes; i.e. the ruling class consisting of herdmen and watch-dogs must be strictly separated from the human cattle.

(B) The identification of the fate of the sate with that of the ruling class; the exclusive interest in this class, and in its unity; and subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for breeding and educating this class, and the strict supervision and collectivization of the interests of its members.

(C) The ruling class has a monopoly of things like military virtues and training, and of the right to carry arms and to receive education and training, and it is excluded from any participation in economic activities, and especially from earning money.

(D) There must be a censorship of all intellectural activities of the ruling class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding and unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and religion must be prevented or suppressed.

(E) The state must be self-sufficient. It must aim at economic autarchy; for otherwise the rulers would either be dependent upon traders, or become traders themselves. The first of these alternatives would undermine their power, the second their unity and the stability of the state.

This programme can, I think, be fairly described as totalitarian





From the voice of Plato himself (emphasis mine):

"The greatest principle of all is that nobody,
whether male or female, should be without
a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody
be habituated to letting him do anything at
all of his own initiative; neither out of
zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and in
the midst of peace - to his leader he shall
direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And
even in the smallest matter he should stand
under leadership. For example, he should
get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals
. . only if he has been told to do so, by long
habit, never to dream of acting independently,
and to become utterly incapable of it."
-- Plato of Athens

Wikipedia resumes this as:

The subtitle of the first volume is also its central premise — namely, that most Plato interpreters through the ages have been seduced by his greatness. In so doing, Popper argues, they have taken his political philosophy as a benign idyll, rather than as it should be seen: a horrific totalitarian nightmare of deceit, violence, master-race rhetoric and eugenics.

>Ignorance isn't a crime, willful ignorance is

Are you not willfully refusing to investigate a philosophy you're criticizing?
>Richard Dawkins can explain the basic premise of atheism without sending someone to read a book

...and convince precisely no one, and arm those he does or doesn't convince with absolutely no ammunition to deal with the issue in the future.

I read books like that precisely because it clarifies where the problems of such systems are. And there are problems, but they are subtle and must be couched in the proper context to actually have a discussion. You hear something about String Theory implying that there's giant infinitely dense fibers spanning the universe, and you say "That's absurd." Do you really think you would be equipped at this point to argue with a top-grade physicist, even if some other top-grade physicists think the theory is wrong?

As others have said, the dynamics between the two houses would have to be figured out, but it's a solid foundation to start with.

The question that kept occurring to me while reading this was: "Okay, but who is going to specialize in the politics?" At first, that may seem like a ridiculous question because "politics" is exactly what people probably want to exclude from their governmental institutions but I don't think political disagreement is something that we can really expect to be rid of anytime soon. The best we can expect is to manage it better.

When I speak of political disagreement, I mean disagreement about current issues (many of them sensitive in nature) in the wider society. Of course, with sortition, people are plucked from wider society and they will have the other house to consult with, but is that enough? Is there ever a time when society at large itself should be consulted?

I like the idea of a third layer to this system; the voters at large. I recommend reading The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy by James Fishkin. Parts of that book have stuck with me for years; one of them being the explanations of the roles of things like initiatives and referendums. It's true that initiatives can be abused by special interests (the recent Prop 1 initiative in Austin comes to mind, which was basically initiated by corporations) but referendums are less subject to abuse.

Here's an example situation: say that the upper house has consulted with the lower house and is still nervous about passing a law on a certain contentious issue. They don't want to make a big mistake and be solely to blame for it. Could they, then, decide to put the measure on the ballot and have voters at large vote for or against it (a referendum)? If so, would the voters at large be making the final decision or would the upper house still have to approve it? Similarly, would everything the upper house votes on by themselves automatically become law without consulting the voters or just some things (like lower house appointments/hires)?

I don't necessarily have a strong opinion on this yet. I know voters have made some big mistakes when voting on ballot measures (such as Californians voting to stop taxing themselves during Reagan's time as governor of California) but they have also made some huge, culture-shifting changes that probably wouldn't have been made had it been put to a vote in the legislature (such as marijuana decriminalization/legalization).

I guess the main question is: does the upper house bear too much responsibility and incur too much blame and is that a healthy political arrangement? Because it's possible that a rogue group could be picked, by simple chance, and pass some devastating law that many, many people disagree with. That would cause the whole system to be questioned.