Effective Altruists Should Embrace Sortition

Sortition Santa could bring us the best present the West has ever seen!

“A traveling family of beggars is rewarded by poor peasants on Christmas Eve” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1834)

Henry George writes, “Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.”

When, then, is charity effective? And when ought justice to reign?

The Effective Altruism (EA) movement, which I consider myself to be part of/aligned with, has worked very hard on figuring out the charity part. While we have no Pope in our holy church of EA, in my heart, the writings of Scott Alexander are our scripture :)

His words are carefully chosen and his efforts are thorough. However, he neither is, nor claims to be, inerrant. He has just published a persuasive post about donations, and I confess that I slightly, but with extreme significance, disagree with Father Alexander!

Scott writes, “Unless you’re a genius or a saint, your money is the strongest tool you have to change the world. 10% of an ordinary First World income donated to AMF saves dozens of lives over a career; even if you’re a policeman or firefighter, you’ll have trouble matching that through non-financial means. Unless you’re Charlie Kirk or Heather Cox Richardson, no amount of your political activism or voting - let alone arguing on the Internet - will match the effect of donating to a politician or a cause you care about. And no amount of carpooling and eating vegan will help the climate as much as donating to carbon capture charities.”

Yes, in 99 cases out of 100, donating $80 will relieve more suffering than 1 hour of activism or 1 afternoon spent at the voting booth. However, there is certainly one kind of activism that I believe is worthy above all others: sortition advocacy.

Sortition is the formation of legislative bodies by random selection. It is activism for activists.

If you want to get money out of politics, consider sortition.
(This includes obviating obnoxious political campaigns!)

If you’re stumped by voting methodologies, consider sortition.
(Frustrated by the irrefutability of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem?)

If you’re sick of having a false choice at the ballots, consider sortition.
(Some say the trick to getting toddlers to do what you want is to give them a choice: would you rather brush your teeth or take a bath? This way they feel like they have agency. Some say the same trick is played upon voters every election.)

If you think juries are valuable, consider sortition.
(Yes, juries are fiddled with by the selection process. Yes, juries get it wrong sometimes. Yes, juries are only 12 people. But juries are pillars of justice nonetheless!)

If you’re concerned about expertise, consider sortition.
(I argue here that sortition is the best way to surface expertise.)

If you think people are too dumb to vote, consider sortition.
(Sortitionists’ preferred term is “rational ignorance”, go read Terry Bouricius.)

If you agree with John Adams that a representative assembly “should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.”, then consider sortition.
(Adams concludes these thoughts by advocating for elections, yet Congress has always been mostly white, male, homeowning, and inflation-adjusted millionaires.)

I believe the fundamental role of government is justice. Sortition is not effective altruism, it is effective justice. As government becomes more just, then charity has a clearer target. Charity efforts will be captured less and less by the state or lost to friction.

We live in an electocracy where elections systemically empower a class of people who are good at winning elections. Over time, their tendency is to promote their own interests over the interests of the people. It results in a crippled system that, at best, can only ever provide partial justice. Therefore, charity is crippled.

From https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics/, I found the following (disclaimer: statistics are…often deceptive, duh! I did not dig super deeply into this, I checked a few of the sources. Also, of course, nonprofits ≠ charities, but close enough for today):

• There were >1.8 million nonprofits as of 2022

• Volunteers volunteered 4.99 billion hours valued at approximately $167.2 billion in 2022

• Nonprofits employed 13 million people in 2022

• Individuals, bequests, foundations and corporations gave an
  estimated $592.50 billion to U.S. charities in 2024

How efficiently is this being done? How much of these efforts are a substitute for justice? Personally, I’d bet at least half of these resources, careers, and volunteering are wasted. Yet I’d also bet nearly 95+% of the people involved are earnest.

Not only can sortition help with clearing the path for charities, but it can serve as a (nearly) uncorruptible oversight committee for all the expenditures of government! My priors are that like half of the US spending on military and healthcare are a complete waste, too.

I claim trillions of dollars a year are wasted, or handed out as sinecures to an entitled class, because the US government is badly structured.

When I explain Givewell and Effective Altruism to people, I feel a twinge of embarrassment that the conclusion is to, “buy malaria nets”.

I believe the government can be fixed at its very foundation.

Through sortition. With the abolition, or at least the diminution, of elections.

This will unshackle the vast goodwill of humans on Earth.

Within the EA movement, it seems to me that many are driven by a desire for justice. Whether this is distinct from an urge to do good, I’ll let others tease apart. I do not wish for anyone who took Scott Alexander’s recommended pledge to renege! Instead, unleash your full potential as a Super Duper Effective Altruist by embracing sortition.

In Los Angeles, I’m part of a group of about a dozen local activists and we are starting change. We are using sortition in helping rewrite the charter of Los Angeles (RewriteLA.org). In December 2025, we convened our first sortition body in LA. In 2026, we are scheduled to conduct at least three more. Although LA may be in the bottom three of holiest cities on the planet, it may soon become a light on a hill.

A light among other growing lights. In the 21st century, sortition has been used in the US cities of Boulder, Fort Collins, Petaluma, Deschutes, and Montrose. Globally, it has been used in France, Belgium, Ireland, Canada, and Mongolia.

The NY Times has written about sortition here last November.

The Guardian has written about sortition here.

The National Review has written about it here.

Jacobin has written about it here, here, and here, and now is urging Zohran to consider using assemblies (no explicit mention of sortition) here.

Not all of these outlets are big fans.

Of course, long ago, a form of sortition was used in Athens and a little later in Venice, which you can read about on Wikipedia.

Any city can do this. To tell them about it, you do not have to be a “genius or a saint”. This kind of advocacy may be more effective than any other activity you can spend 80,000 hours on.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”

—Henry David Thoreau

Yours truly,
Max Clark