I guess I missed the original explaination, but am I to assume that a
random government is one where all elected or appointed positions are
filled by lottery instead?
That woud be an interesting SOP, and would at the same time be useful as
a fund raising instrument. Of course, there would need to be some
serious checks and balances to prevent anyone from just buying enough
tickets to obtain the position by overwhelming odds, say, any one person
can only buy $2,000 in Presidential Lotto Tickets each year or four
years, $10,000 for senate seats, and $50,000 for representative seats
(sue to the dilution of power with more people in the given body, there
is less danger of causing harm.)
Possibly also, any given law would need to either be passed by two of
three successive congresses, and signed by two of three successive
Presidents to become law, or might even simply be put to a Russian
Roulette type test, where a set percentage of laws are randomly passed,
and another set percentage randomly failed, and the rest must pass by a
supermajority.
Another concept to explore is Hyperdemocracy, where every voter has
veto power over any law, so the only laws that would pass would be those
that all agree on. Under such a system, since the only laws allowed are
those that all agree do not harm anyone, there is no tyranny of the
majority. Now we do have the case where a law may be passed which harms
no one at a given time, but may harm someone at a later date, possibly
that someone has come of voting age in the meantime. Given this, there
would need to be a sort of ballot initiative mechanism, where if one can
convince a minimum number of people of the need for a vote on
something, not just to change a law, but to reratify a law which may
have become burdensome since its inception, then a new vote may be
called, but only after a given period from the original laws enactment.
What is important in such a system is to start off with a minimum number
of laws, possibly just a Bill of Rights.
Both random democracy and hyperdomocracy could be combined, where the
judiciary and executive branches are lottery systems, and the
legislature is everyone in the body politic with an equal veto power.
So becoming a judge, magistrate, soldier, beauraucrat, cabinet
secretary, or President is a position one is drafted for, either
specifically to the job, or from a common pool. There would probably
need to be both, common draft for positions below a certain level, and
specific drafts for the higher level positions, possibly reqiring one to
have been previously drafted from the common pool to a prior position,
to at least acquaint the individual with how the government works, and
possibly also with some professional requirements as well for certain
positions, but not to restrictive.
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com
Website: http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ Now Featuring: Mikey's Animatronic Factory http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/animations.htm My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ Transhumanist, Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Arms Exporter-see below. ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}