I've given this a lot of thought over the years (decades!) and ... short of appointing me (Benign) Dictator Of The Universe In Perpetuity
… still haven't found a solution that I find satisfactory ¹
But, the idea of a Sortocracy most definitely isn't it.
That might work in a city state with a population of a few thousand in a disconnected world, but it is unsuited to the world in which we live today.
It won't solve the problems of those too insecure to argue for a particular policy (who will be easily influenced by those with an agenda).
It won't solve the problems of those too lazy to do the job (who will simply mouth whatever is suggested to them by those able to persuade them).
It won't solve the problem of corruption. In fact it might well make the problem worse: someone who will accept a bribe might well do so all the more frequently, if they only have a once in a lifetime opportunity to do so and, moreover, don't need to worry about the long-term effect on a non-existent career if they get caught out. And ‘special interest’ groups aren’t going to stop lining up to offer to line people’s pockets, just because there isn’t a dynasty of politcos with whom they can form a lasting relationship — nor are powerful individuals with vested interests in the statutory/legislative status quo.
It won't help resolve issues that take more than a term to deal with: each new representative requires time to get up to speed, wasting time better spent on pursuing a programme already in motion. Furthermore, upon being brought up to speed, how many of the newly selected will want to stop and vote to change direction ... meaning decisions are constantly being reversed before having any effect? Moreover, some issues can take a lifetime of study and intimate experience of the relevant factors in order to fully appreciate the intricacies ... selecting randoms from the population to sit on a board for a term and then never again won’t help with that. This matter is further exacerbated, if all representatives are simultaneously replaced … and, if the replacements occur in staggered manner, the year-on-year cycling of representatives risks “I have no idea who’s in government right now” fatigue for the population, which then simply stops caring.
It won't resolve the disconnect between the governed and those doing the governing that all too many feel today: if you think voter apathy is bad now, wait until even more people think there's no point interesting themselves (never mind getting actively involved) in politics and stop paying attention. If there's nothing anyone can do to influence the outcome of the selection process, there's no reason to care who is selected … and, if the selected will be here today, gone tomorrow, there's even less reason to do so. If there's no reason to care who's selected, there's no audience for breathless television profiles of them. If there's no audience, there's no money to be made. If there's no money to be made, there's no budget for biographic exposés of this year's random selection from the one-term hoi polloi. If there are no television spectaculars, nobody will miss what they never knew they wanted and the negative feedback loop will be perpetuated, meaning there never will be any demand either. Again “I don’t know who’s in government and I don’t care to know either — who can keep up with all the constant change in personnel anyway? And they’ll be gone in a year from now at the latest, so what does it matter? No, I’ve no idea what policies are being pursued in our name — they seem to change all the time too, whenever someone new is selected and, frankly, I’ve got better things to do than spend what little free time I have glued to the TV, watching dull, procedural debates about the selection of wardens in municipal parks next year.”
And those are just the first five things that spring immediately to mind.
The problem is that it will simply reflect the population as a whole ... and the population as a whole is the root cause of the problems we currently face — if it weren't, the problems we face would be different already:
“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.”
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
At the risk of repeating myself, at it's most prosaic a sortocracy doesn't account for the fact that real life gets in the way. After you’ve been to work all day, made dinner, cleaned up, put the washing on, helped the kids with their homework, put them to bed, got ready for work tomorrow, etc. … you really don’t have the time or energy to go down to the civic centre and discuss the latest trends in progressive pedagogy, the national trade deficit or the geopolitcal climate in the Middle East, let alone come to some sort of mutually acceptable decision on what to do about any of them. But, for a sortocracy to work, that is precisely what the population needs to be doing day in day out whilst it isn't sitting on government commissions and decision panels during its turn at the helm ... just in case it is ever at the helm.
If you read the discussion with Gareth you'll see that I don't know what the solution is ... but I do know one thing ... namely that the laws of Systemantics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics) cannot be ignored: as soon as we think of a solution, we create new problems. So, we have to ask ourselves whether the new problems will be worth it. And, in the case of a sortocracy ... in today's world at least ... there will not only be new problems, but it won't even solve the old ones along the way!
Maybe there could be some room for a mechanism of that type somewhere within the various wheels and cogs of government. But as the core mechanism for determining the makeup of government, if it were really going to work it'd already be the most common form of governance there is — for all the 'might makes right' anarchism of human societies, progress in the direction of more equitable forms of government has been made over the millennia, yet, even after bloody revolution of the people, by the people, for the people, culminating in the execution of monarchs and other aristocratic oppressors, no other society has subsequently come to the conclusion that a sortocracy was the solution to their problems ... and whilst I'm extremely sceptical of the wisdom of the crowd myself, even I have to admit that is perhaps grounds for pause for thought re the approach.
As an aside … tinkering around the edges of the US political system by debating various ways to (dis)empower the President is no more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic — if you want rid of the monarch, stop putting one in power! ²
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¹ See the discourse between Gareth Douglass and myself here: https://seestheangles.medium.com/i-like-the-idea-of-negative-votes-3bcfe4e5fe43
² https://extranewsfeed.com/hypocrusy-2ae59f64af10
