• iocase@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Athenian democracies solve a lot of our current issues. It’s a bit like jury duty. You put your own name down and can be picked for roles in government.

    France did that after the yellow vest protests. They randomly picked 100 citizens to lead a citizens Senate to propose solutions, and Macron promised to implement their suggestions (he lied. Only partial implementation happened)

    One of the emergent properties to picking 100 random citizens is you get close to a random sample of society. Rich and poor, left and right all with different perspectives and life experiences. They all have to argue their perspective and back it up with evidence for it to function properly.

    They also can’t be bought out the same way as entrenched parties. The candidates are random. Nobody knows until the results are announced.

    It also results in a much stronger sense of civic duty for the average citizen when you participate in the civic process regularly like this.

    This video does a far better job than I can making the case for them

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The idea is nice, except that if you allow the rich to participate, they will just buy their way. As was the case with every non-socialist political system in history.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Athenian democracies solve a lot of our current issues. It’s a bit like jury duty. You put your own name down and can be picked for roles in government.

      Sortition?